OP-ED: Olivia Chow’s message of hope and a new kind of politics
Recently I watched a brash Bonnie Crombie accept the leadership of the sad Ontario Liberal Party. I’d been catching up on the winning ways of Toronto’s new mayor Olivia Chow and listening to her...
View ArticlePODCAST: Spacing Radio 074, 20 Years of Spacing
Spacing is celebrating its 20th Anniversary. To celebrate, we talk to publisher Matthew Blackett and executive editor Dylan Reid about how the magazine came together, the latest issue and anniversary...
View ArticleRe-naming Yonge-Dundas Square
It’s not often that I strenuously disagree with Spacing editor Dylan Reid, but when I read “To Rename Yonge-Dundas Square, Let’s Follow the Process,” I felt a visceral need to offer a countervailing...
View ArticleOP-ED: Noise Pollution – no defense from a slow killer
My friend and I both nearly jumped out of our skin. The difference between us is that I could see it coming. Two rows of vehicles were stopped at a red light when I saw the motorbike weave into the...
View ArticleThe debate about e-scooters on Toronto streets will speed up in 2024
Ontario’s first attempts to keep pedestrians safe on our roads began a century ago in 1923 with the passage of the Highway Traffic Act. Back then, the focus of regulators was on a relatively new...
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Anatomy of a bus shelter removal
During the week of December 2, 2023, the City of Toronto removed a TTC transit shelter at Dundas Street East and Sherbourne Street, in Moss Park. The removal, carried out by the street furniture...
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Rejecting the condescension of Metrolinx advertising
I was sitting in the Cineplex at Yonge and Eglinton, watching the pre-show for the new Nic Cage film Dream Scenario. We were still in the ever-expanding advertising portion but not quite into the...
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Book Review: The Painter Le Corbusier, Eileen Gray’s Villa E1027, and Le Cabanon
“From the end of the 1930s onwards, Le Corbusier tested the possibilities of mural painting to enliven architectural space. Following a first project in Vézelay in 1936, the walls of the Villa E1027...
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LORINC: Toronto’s ongoing property tax drama
There are some pundits who specialize in setting up the double-loaded trap for left-leaning politicians. If they break their election promises, they get scorched for pulling a fast one on the...
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LORINC: Why is Toronto obsessed with taxing foreigners who buy real estate?
Governments across Canada have an apparently bottomless appetite for foreign buyers’ taxes, a mild and very Canuck form of policy racism that begins with the premise that people from away are driving...
View ArticlePODCAST: Spacing Radio 075, What does change cost?
With the Toronto budget about to be voted on shortly, we talk to crisis worker and homelessness advocate Diana Chan McNally about what the City needs to invest to help refugees and other unhoused...
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LORINC: The time to solve Toronto’s student housing crisis is now
The federal Liberals spent a good chunk of January fixating on foreign students, and how Canadian universities and colleges have become addicted to the full-freight tuition they’re required to pay....
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How did Toronto the Good become Toronto the Slow?
Here’s an interesting chronological footnote about this week’s much-hyped GTA-wide “One Fare” integration announcement, which will allow commuters from 905 municipalities to transfer onto both...
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Ten Years of Winter Stations
Amidst a record-breaking spell of winter heat, Winter Stations, the longtime East End project created to enliven the deepest cold snaps, is opening its tenth annual installation along Woodbine Beach....
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How We Can Make Toronto More Pleasant, 1971-Style
Publications periodically like asking local leaders and celebrities for their advice on how they would improve their city. One good example was a feature published by the Toronto Star at the beginning...
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Ford’s legislation fast-tracking Ontario Place mega-spa overrides land-use...
The Ford government has used its majority at Queen’s Park to pass two bills to fast-track the redevelopment of Ontario Place. The New Deal for Toronto Act, 2023 (Bill 154), which includes the...
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World’s longest blackboard hides Doug Ford’s mega-spa project at Ontario Place
The Doug Ford government has given Torontonians an unexpected gift — the longest blackboard in Canada, and possibly the world. It stretches for some 800 metres along the Martin Goodman Trail on the...
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The Urban Photography of Arthur Goss, Part 1
Anyone who delves into the visual records related to Toronto’s twentieth-century social history is likely to come across photographs taken between 1910 and 1940 by the city’s first Official...
View ArticleOP-ED: Rethinking the role of Toronto’s Chief Planner
When Toronto last searched for a new Chief Planner, in 2017, we encouraged the City to look at planning, and planners, through the lens of human rights. We argued that taking a human rights-based...
View ArticleHow can we make Black history matter?
This piece is co-authored by Dr. Cheryl Thompson and Daysha Loppie Many statues have commemorated white historical figures in Toronto’s public spaces: Canada’s first prime minister, Sir John A....
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