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Toronto Life •

Beloved Toronto clothing brand Horses Atelier is shutting down

For 14 years, Horses Atelier was the wardrobe du jour for a certain segment of the city’s creative class (specifically, extremely hip women over 30 with healthy bank accounts). The brand’s instantly recognizable field suits, oversized coats and prim collared blouses dotted the streets of Toronto, often draped over cultural heavyweights like Leslie Feist, Sarah Polley and Margaret Atwood. But, this Wednesday, founders Claudia Dey and Heidi Sopinka—both of whom are acclaimed novelists...
Toronto Life •

This Toronto director filmed the horror movie Undertone in his childhood home

Get two lively hosts behind the mic of a creepy podcast that records at 3 a.m., add a dash of ancient demon mythology and a heavy dose of Catholic guilt and you’ve got Undertone, writer-director Ian Tuason’s new A24 horror flick, out on streaming platforms April 14. It centres on Evy (Nina Kiri), a recovering alcoholic temporarily living in her childhood home while caring for her dying mother. She has one hobby: co-hosting a ghost-story podcast with her friend Justin.
Toronto Life •

“I was eight years old when the first season came out”: Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair star Kiana Madeira is ready to launch

If you grew up in the early 2000s, your evenings might have involved the following ritual: logging on to MSN Messenger on the family desktop, eating a scorching-hot pizza pop straight from the microwave and sitting down for an episode of Malcolm in the Middle, the fourth-wall-breaking portrait of suburban family life. But, in 2006, the show ended abruptly after seven seasons, leaving viewers in the dark about what happened to that comically dysfunctional family.
Toronto Life •

The National Ballet of Canada’s fastest-rising star just left the company

When Siphesihle November joined the National Ballet of Canada as a corps de ballet member in 2017, it looked like the unusually gifted dancer would have a long and fruitful career with the company. Eight years prior, at just 11 years old, November had moved from South Africa to Canada to attend Canada’s National Ballet School. He was hand-picked by Karen Kain to join the company and rocketed through the ranks to become principal dancer at just 22 years old.
Toronto Life •

Ballpark calamari, anyone? Here’s the new starting lineup of snacks and drinks at the Rogers Centre

If you’re still grieving last year’s World Series loss, consider this your moment to slip into grief’s least-discussed stage: eating your feelings in a crowd of nearly 40,000 strangers. Ahead of the Jays’ home opener against the Athletics tomorrow, the Rogers Centre dropped its new lineup of concession-stand snacks. Past seasons have leaned into deep-fried delirium—we see you, cotton candy poutine—but this year, the new additions don’t rely as much on gimmicks.
Toronto Life •

Toronto art legend Katharine Mulherin's son is carrying on her legacy with a new west-end gallery

Two decades ago, Toronto rent was unfathomably cheap and Queen Street West was a louche artists’ playground—totally unrecognizable from the corridor of upscale boutiques it is today. Much of that scene coalesced around art dealer Katharine Mulherin, who opened Bus Gallery in 1998, an experimental space that sold the artworks of both stars and unknowns, launching the careers of many young artists.
Toronto Life •

Wiarton Willie, Ontario’s harbinger of spring, has died

Meteorology can be a turbulent business for even the best forecasters, but it proved especially demanding for the walnut-shaped heart of Ontario’s rodent oracle, Wiarton Willie—the albino groundhog tasked predicting spring’s arrival. Every February, the loaf-size soothsayer emerged before hopeful onlookers across the province to reveal whether he could see his shadow. The gig was high stakes, but someone had to do it.
Intermission Magazine •

Mirvish’s 'Shucked' plants row after row of corny jokes

What humans do with corn might be the closest thing we have to alchemy. We distill it into fuel, ferment it into excellent poisons like bourbon, press it into microplastics, and liquify it into nutritionally suspect high-fructose corn syrup. Considering we can’t digest it, the weirdest thing we do with corn is eat it. Corn goes through yet another magical transformation in Shucked, a bombastically corny musical about a yellow-eared town called Cob County as it faces blight.
Intermission Magazine •

It’s form versus feeling in the National Ballet's winter bill, featuring a North American premiere from Crystal Pite

At the turn of the 20th century, Sergei Diaghilev’s avant-garde company Ballets Russes was producing ballets so radical that nearly every conservative Parisian was clutching their pearls. But one of Diaghilev’s last protégés, Serge Lifar, wasn’t so interested in impolite modernism. Instead, he prioritized form above storytelling and psychology, believing ballet was a mathematical architecture that could be systematized similarly to musical harmony.
Toronto Life •

“I need my 10,000 steps to be pure joy”: Degrassi actor turned DJ Sarah Barrable-Tishauer on throwing dance parties in Allan Gardens

Most fans know Sarah Barrable-Tishauer as Liberty Van Zandt, the misunderstood, tightly wound teen with sky-high ambition on Degrassi: The Next Generation. But these days she’s better known as DJ Me Time and the co-founder of Brightside, a guided drug-and-alcohol-free movement night that transforms Allan Gardens into a cathartic and uplifting dance party every second Thursday of the month.
Toronto Star •

What makes a film Canadian? The director and star of new Ontario thriller ‘Sweetness’ have some ideas

In “Sweetness” Hallett plays Rylee, a volatile teen who crushes on rock star Payton Adler (Herman Tømmeraas), a tortured dream boy who’s open about his struggles with substance abuse. After Payton plays a concert to hundreds of tenderhearted teens in small-town Canada, Rylee discovers him using again and takes it upon herself to help him detox — by kidnapping him and holding him captive in her bedroom.
Toronto Life •

The Toronto Zoo is welcoming an adorable baby giraffe

In recent years, there have been some dark developments in the giraffe department of the Toronto Zoo. On New Year’s Day, 13-year-old Kiko, a male Masai giraffe—a species listed as endangered—died from a heart attack after he got caught in a habitat enclosure door. But today we bring you much sweeter news: this weekend Kiko's widow, Mstari, gave birth to an adorable two-metre-tall calf yet to be named.
Toronto Life •

You practically need to apply to eat at this six-person restaurant

You wouldn’t necessarily expect to find a chef’s dinner series in the same building as a graffiti-covered cannabis shop—and cooked by the owner of the Instagram handle @spikey.licious, no less. But, as visitors head inside Spike’s Table, a clandestine six-seater run by chef Spike Nath, those skunky wafts of sativa out front quickly give way to the more delicious aromas of browned butter and simmering jus.
Toronto Life •

How a Gen Z finance enthusiast in Forest Hill spends her money

Two years ago, 25-year-old Chaeeun Lee graduated from McGill with a degree in chemical engineering, but after working at a rating agency, she fell in love with finance. Now she works as a business analyst at a bank and is on track to make $85,000. She also runs a TikTok account, sharing market insights and life advice with her 5,800 followers. She rents a one-bedroom in Forest Hill and contributes about $3,000 a month to her investments.
Intermission Magazine •

The Grand's 'Piaf/Dietrich' considers fame, friendship, and desire

French chanteuse Edith Piaf and German-American film icon Marlene Dietrich were near opposites. Where Piaf sang as though trying to pull her heart through her throat — hunched, pleading, nervy — Dietrich glided onstage: chin lifted, half-smiling, the room her calculated chessboard. Offstage those personas persisted. Dietrich was tall, tailored, cool; Piaf was petite, trembling, easily combustible.
Toronto Life •

What Giller-winning author Souvankham Thammavongsa loves about the Entertainment District

As a kid growing up around Keele and Eglinton, Souvankham Thammavongsa declared that one day she’d live right downtown. Five years ago, she manifested her childhood dream by moving into a studio apartment near the old CityTV building, which once hosted the MuchMusic and Speakers Corner segments she adored in her teens. Here, she takes us on a tour of her favourite haunts.“I have a membership to the aquarium, and I wrote about it in a short story called ‘Bozo’ for the New Yorker.
Toronto Life •

Toronto is getting a Stephen King–inspired film fest

In 1976, a shy girl in a pink prom dress changed horror movies forever. Carrie, the first big-screen adaptation of a Stephen King novel, in which Sissy Spacek plays a high school nerd doused with pig’s blood, turns 50 this year—and its revenge fantasy feels fresh as ever. To mark the occasion, Bloordale’s Paradise Theatre is hosting All Work and No Play, a 10-film Stephen King retrospective devoted to the literal King of mainstream dread.
Toronto Life •

Twelve things to do this Valentine's Day—including a mass wedding and Star Wars burlesque

Valentine’s Day can be divisive. It tends to privilege romantic love, amplify loneliness and—thanks to baked-in commercialism—make everything way more expensive than it needs to be. Still, we can’t say no to a celebration of love, whether it’s enjoyed by long-time partners, platonic friends or slow-burning flames. We rounded up 12 quirky, sexy and downright unhinged events for anyone looking to celebrate differently this year.
Intermission Magazine •

New season of PlayME promises wholehearted radio dramas

After nearly a decade on the air, the CBC radio-drama podcast PlayME hardly needs an introduction — but it deserves a fresh one. What began in 2016 as Laura Mullin and Chris Tolley’s experimental radio translations of Canada’s most compelling contemporary plays has since ballooned. With offshoots like their writing-workshop series PlayPEN and more than 80 recorded plays, PlayME has grown into a living archive of Canadian dramaturgy.PlayME’s appeal is obvious. Skip the commute and get a free...
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