Culture
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Soundscapes on College: This ain’t a library
This article originally appeared in Spacing #14, summer 2009. It was recently announced that the iconic music shop Soundscapes on College Street in Little...
By Jonny Dovercourt -
PODCAST: Spacing Radio 054, Packaged Toronto
To celebrate Spacing‘s latest book, Packaged Toronto: a collection of the city’s historic design, we go deep into the history of early...
By Spacing Radio -
The Bentway: Rethinking public art amidst COVID-19
The publication of the city’s 10-year public art strategy accompanied an announcement that 2021 would be Toronto’s Year of Public Art. Of course...
By Sarah Ratzlaff -
How racism in Ontario schools today is connected to a history of segregation
Toronto’s Africentric Alternative School first opened in 2009 after years of advocacy and then months of heated public debates and criticism about the...
By Funké Aladejebi -
The role of cricket in an inclusive city
Cricket has a rich cultural history in Toronto. The sport is closely tied to Black history, following the Black Diaspora throughout the colonized world ...
By Perry King -
EXCERPT FROM ‘UNCLE’: Aunt Jemima in Chicago
Excerpted with permission from Uncle: Race, Nostalgia and the Politics of Loyalty, published this month by Coach House Books. Thompson, a Ryerson...
By Cheryl Thompson -
The ‘bashment’ parties of my childhood are Black history
In 2002, reggae artist Sean Paul shot the video for his song ‘Get Busy/Like Glue,’ in Vaughan. Directed by Toronto’s own Director X, the video begins with...
By Cheryl Thompson -
‘Out of this world’ sculptures land in midtown
In Toronto, there are a number of public artworks that re-imagine the human subject. I’m thinking, for example, of Hadley+ Maxwell’s Garden of Future...
By Sarah Ratzlaff -
THOMPSON: What if the Caribana Carnival went back to its roots?
“The watching Torontonians didn’t cheer, didn’t wave,” reported the Toronto Daily Star on August 5, 1967, as “Caribana” left Varsity Stadium on Bloor...
By Cheryl Thompson -
The connections between public art and activism
In this moment of social and political upheaval, as protesters demand racial justice in response to police brutality and systemic racism, people are...
By Sarah Ratzlaff -
If Black lives truly matter in Canada, an apology for slavery is only a first step
Natasha Henry is a 2018 Vanier Scholar completing a PhD in History at York University on the enslavement of Africans in early Ontario. She is the...
By Natasha Henry -
Tales from The Concert Hall at the Masonic Temple
“You need to get there by 5. Or 4, if you can.” This advice might have come from someone’s older brother, or more likely someone’s older sister. My...
By Jonny Dovercourt