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Toronto Star •

Award-winning Toronto author Téa Mutonji mines the mess of a broken friendship for her raw new book

Looking to prove she could finish what she started, she submitted her manuscript to an open call — and ended up with a book deal. The collection, which navigates sex, femininity, class and self-definition in Scarborough, went on to win the Trillium Book Award. Mutonji was later named a Writers’ Trust Rising Star, completed an MFA in creative writing at New York University and saw “Shut Up You’re Pretty” become a finalist for CBC’s Canada Reads.
Macleans.ca •

Elon Musk’s Neuralink Chip Changed My Life

In the spring of 2022, my body felt powerful. After leading the Vancouver Police Department’s bike unit for seven years, I’d recently been promoted to sergeant. I was training at the gym five days a week and had spent the previous six Septembers cycling hundreds of kilometres in the gruelling, eight-day annual Cops for Cancer ride. I didn’t drink. I had never smoked. I was “the healthy one” in my friend group.
Macleans.ca •

Your Boss Is Spying on You

In July, more than 20 Meta employees who had been selected for a company-wide layoff sued Meta, alleging that it had used internal AI systems, keystroke and activity data, AI-usage dashboards and algorithm-assisted performance rankings to help determine whom to fire. The system, they claim, failed to account for employees who were on protected medical, parental and family leave. Meta has denied the allegations, but using digital tools to monitor employees is hardly unique to the company.
Toronto Life •

The Toronto Zoo has been blessed with a pygmy hippo baby

Last weekend, into the hot and humid Toronto haze, a tiny queen was born. Roughly the size of one of the city’s raccoons, the new arrival is the much-anticipated female pygmy hippo calf first announced in April. Let the memes begin: the Toronto Zoo now has its very own Moo Deng.The baby hippo—the love child of 20-year-old mother Kindia and 31-year-old father Harvey—is the result of a whirlwind eight-day romance. The calf made her royal entrance hooves-first Sunday afternoon...
Toronto Life •

“The best songs expose something about the performer”: This Toronto producer just earned one of the country’s top musical honours

While most 12-year-old boys in the early aughts were punching each other over Xbox games, Toronto songwriter and producer Zale Epstein started visiting recording studios, soaking up everything he could from local legends and new artists breaking ground. Since 2012, he’s amassed songwriting credits on bangers by big names. It’s been a particularly good year for the tunesmith.
Toronto Life •

An abandoned building on the waterfront is reopening as an Irish cultural centre

This fall, local Hibernophiles—people obsessed with Ireland—will have a new hub. The Corleck, a waterfront arts centre specializing in Irish culture, will open its doors in November, with a promising agenda of theatre performances and events—plus, one assumes, a high concentration of mellifluous accents.“We consider ourselves a Canadian organization, but we specialize in Irish culture,” says executive director William Peat.
Macleans.ca •

Davenport, Toronto: The Food Lover’s Paradise

I’ve lived in Toronto’s west end for my entire adult life, and it feels like I married my high-school sweetheart. I’ve never lived anywhere else. I’ve never had a wandering eye. When I travel to another city, I find myself defending Toronto with a missionary zeal. Everyone here is trying hard to make the best *something.* That reverence doubles in my neck of the woods. Davenport, just northwest of the city’s downtown, is in the most interesting and complicated phase of neighbourhood evolution: mid-stage gentrification.
Toronto Life •

"I'm a location scout. After decades of making Toronto look like somewhere else, I’m keen to portray the city as itself"

For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to direct movies. When I read books as a kid, I would picture the characters’ gestures and movements along with their faces, their environments and how the light fell. Film felt like the closest art form to how life really was. At 12, without telling my mother, I applied to study directing at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London—I didn’t want anyone to talk me out of becoming the world’s first child director. (Of course, I was politely rejected.)
Toronto Life •

The Gemini, a sort-of-secret seafood spot, is hiding above a west-end bakery

A certain kind of magic happens when three creative hospitality vets open a restaurant together—and that’s certainly the case with the Gemini, a new Basque-ish affair on Dundas West. Combining New York cool, old-world tavern warmth and the charm of your kooky friend’s house, it’s the kind of place that feels like an instant institution. It’s also a welcome counterpoint to the big-ticket steakhouses that have dominated Toronto’s restaurant scene over the past couple of years.
Toronto Life •

What actor Paul Gross loves about Stratford

In the ’70s, when actor Paul Gross was naught but a barne (as Shakespeare would say), his mother took him to see King Lear at the Stratford Festival. Afterward, Gross’s heart swelled, his eyes widened and he proclaimed, “I want whatever that is.” He is perhaps best known for his portrayal of hunky RCMP constable Benton Fraser in the TV comedy-drama Due South, but he’s also played Hamlet and King Lear at Stratford. And this season, he’s back as Vladimir in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. When...
Toronto Life •

$4.8 million for a Gothic Revival hotel near Prince Edward County

Originally a single-family home built in 1878 for Judge Edwards Merrill—the first magistrate of Prince Edward, whose father taught law to John A. Macdonald—this mansion was converted into a hotel in the ’80s. In 2018, owner Jordan Martin bought the hotel with the goal of redoing it to incorporate his unique taste for art and design. He had considered a selection of vintage properties for sale in Europe but ended up falling for Picton’s Merrill House Hotel, both for its style and for its century-old roots.
Intermission Magazine •

Review: Mirvish's "Paranormal Activity" summons real screams

How should a play handle horror? One option is trying to replicate movies: controlling the viewer’s gaze, building suspense, and then springing a jump scare. Another is to lean into what theatre can do better than film: turning the space into a haunted house, giving an unnerving sense of being in a dangerous room. Paranormal Activity, the touring play loosely adapted from the eponymous film franchise, tries to do a bit of both.
Toronto Life •

Q&A: “I started sobbing during the first scene”: Author Carley Fortune on watching the TV adaptation of her book

In the past five years, author Carley Fortune (who happens to be a former Toronto Life editor) has become the high priestess of the wistful Canadian summer romance novel. Since leaving journalism to write fiction full time in 2020, she’s published five gently steamy novels, all of which have become number-one New York Times bestsellers. Now, her romance empire has found its way to the screen.
Toronto Life •

Inside a Hallmark-worthy wedding celebration at the Toronto Reference Library

Jordy Mincer, a 29-year-old branding specialist, and Dan Segal, a 29-year-old investment analyst, have a homegrown love story straight out of a Hallmark movie. The couple played on the same kids’ hockey team when they were eight, then reunited in Grade 11 over their shared love of adventure. They studied at Western University together, then endured four years of long-distance across New York, Australia and San Francisco.
Toronto Life •

Hot Docs is screening a 2005 documentary about the Toronto police that’s eerily relevant today

Toronto filmmaker Min Sook Lee’s award-winning 2005 documentary Hogtown: The Politics of Policing gets screened every few years—usually in lockstep with fresh news about the Toronto police. The film is about the Toronto Police Services Board (the force’s civilian governance board) and a series of scandals and controversies that surrounded the Toronto Police Service in 2004. It’s playing again at Hot Docs this week, right on schedule.
Toronto Life •

“Doug Ford should listen to my album Parallel World ”: A Q&A with multi-hyphenate Rollie Pemberton, a.k.a. Cadence Weapon

Edmonton-born, Toronto-based multi-hyphenate Rollie Pemberton—better known to many as rapper Cadence Weapon—went to journalism school in Virginia in the early aughts. When he told classmates he was a Canadian rapper, they laughed. At the time, Canada was thought of as a remote dad-rock preserve. Two decades later, the joke’s on them. Pemberton has built a singular career as a critic, memoirist and former poet laureate of Edmonton who makes brainy, city-minded rap records full of socially attuned lyrics.
Toronto Life •

The west end just got a cute new children’s bookstore

When Nadia Alam was a kid, every time she announced that she was bored, her mother would point a decisive finger at the family’s bookshelf, sending the message that it held the key to amusement. The habit turned Alam into a lifelong reader who channelled her passion by becoming a children’s book illustrator. Her works include Sarabeth’s Garage by Melanie Florence, about a young girl who takes an unconventional interest in cars.
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