Philip Alves

Bay and Gerrard A garden is to be built in the unlikeliest of places this summer: a parking lot amid the towers at Bay and Gerrard streets downtown. Hellmann’s, purveyors of mayonnaise, announced plans yesterday for a community garden at 686 Bay St., to last from May to September. “Here’s a place that hasn’t really [...]

If Dovercourt-Wallace Emerson-Junction were a person, it might be a high-priced lawyer with a penchant for frequenting crack dens. Simultaneously posh and poor, this hyphenated amalgam from Toronto’s official neighbourhoods list is the poster child for gentrification. Roughly boat-shaped, DWEJ is culturally mixed. Nearly one in four claims a mother tongue other than English or [...]

De Boer to build development at Allen-Sheppard Idomo furniture’s iconic, bearded pitchman/owner has turned to building condos, in a project that will transform the desolate corner of Sheppard Avenue West and Allen Road. North York Community Council this week approved a mixed residential and commercial development that includes six buildings ranging in height from 13 [...]

JULIAN RICHINGS Queen Street West is the stage British-born actor Julian Richings has loved since moving here in 1984. Richings, a star of the upcoming production of Noble Parasites, spoke to Philip Alves about life in West Queen West and downtown. PARKDALE DAYS It hasn’t completely gentrified and become homogeneous, so it has its own [...]

For most of the year, Exhibition Place, a 78-hectare expanse between the Gardiner Expressway and Lake Shore Boulevard West, feels desolate. Eerie feelings of loneliness creep into a pedestrian’s thoughts. But looks can deceive. Something’s going on down there – or rather, a confluence of cool somethings – a mini-renaissance obscured by the jagged, crystal-shaped [...]

We may not have two-tier health care, but The Scarborough Hospital (TSH) is plunging into self-service health care. No, it’s not handing out suture kits or defibrillators to patients, but rather installing computer kiosks that will allow a patient to update his or her condition — in eight different languages — while waiting to be [...]

The ROM, the Four Seasons Centre, the AGO — Toronto is in the midst of bona fide cultural renaissance. But in the middle of it all, a pair of important theatres, the Canon and the Panasonic, have been adorned with For Sale signs. The Church-Yonge corridor neighbourhood is home to both theatres, which current owner [...]

Acclaimed British filmmaker Ken Loach has been directing for more than 40 years, always delivering films infused with a sense of social realism. Coinciding with the release this Friday of The Wind that Shakes the Barley, Cinematheque Ontario is presenting Wind of Change: The Cinema of Ken Loach, a retrospective look at 22 of his [...]

When I was tasked with determining the best churrasco chicken joint around St. Clair Avenue and Christie Street, I felt a sudden swell in my often subdued Portugueseness as images of countless family functions and community events flashed before my eyes. Churrasco chicken, for the uninitiated, is rotisserie poultry done Portuguese style. A churrasco meal [...]

In the early hours of Feb. 18, the 512 streetcar rolled back into full service along the strip of St. Clair between St. Clair station and Vaughan Road. For 19 long months, buses had ferried people to and fro while the TTC tried and ultimately succeeded in building the first phase of the planned 6.7-kilometre [...]

As we continue to recover from Wednesday’s impressive storm, we should all remember that not that long ago, we were lamenting the fact that global warming had killed our winter. But winter did come, and with an icy blast we should have expected but didn’t. Meanwhile, 10,000 kilometres away in Tokyo, winter still hasn’t shown [...]

People are spending longer hours in tighter quarters at work than they ever have before, leading Julian Barling, associate dean and professor at Queen’s School of Business in Kingston, Ont., to conclude “organizational reality today is just ripe for relationships.” It’s been estimated as many as one-third of all romantic relationships begin in the workplace. [...]