Spacing Toronto

Pride and Prejudice

Amy Gottlieb tells Mary Breen about her memories of Pride Day 1981, protesting the bath house raids

It’s getting to be that time of year – queer or straight, people will be busting out the rainbow garb and glitter. Toronto hotels and restaurants will once again be overflowing with post-pandemic Pride tourists, and companies will flaunt their allyship with sponsored window displays, floats, and advertising. It’s been a good fifty years since Canada’s first Pride events. They were mostly small-scale social gatherings or political protests where the gay community (as it was then... Read more

Food

Filling in the Missing Middle for food retailing

How public markets can bring greater access to food security
By Glenn Miller
Elections

MAYOR’S RACE: A Saunders mayoralty and the coming crisis of police oversight

John Loirinc argues if former police chief wins, any prospect of independent civilian oversight will have gone up in smoke
By John Lorinc
Events

The promises and perils of AI at the Provocation Ideas Festival

This weekend sees the launch of more events from the fine folk at Provocation Ideas Festival. “Our mission is to be a new public square of civic...
By Joseph Wilson
Waterfront

EXCLUSIVE: What is the source of Therme’s financing?

Senior editor John Lorinc examines how the company behind the Ontario Place mega-spa makes money
By John Lorinc
Elections

OP-ED: Making encampments obsolete should be a priority for Toronto’s next mayor

No one wants encampments. Not the people who live in them, who would almost certainly rather live in a stable, adequate home. Not the neighbours, who want...
By Alan Broadbent and Elizabeth McIsaac
Housing

LORINC: Fourplex on the Council floor

Senior editor John Lorinc examines City Council's new policy that allows multi-unit houses to be built as-of-right in Toronto neighbourhoods
By John Lorinc

Elections

MAYOR’S RACE: The twisted politics of Toronto’s byelection

Are you, dear reader, keeping it all straight? Like a river that has overtopped its banks with a sudden spring melt, the mayoral by-election has rapidly...
By John Lorinc
Events

Space for Grief: A public space model for community connection and healing

Tucked behind shelves holding books on suicide, financial literacy, and farming, on the third floor of the Toronto Reference Library, I see an arch. A...
By Yasmin Afshar
Podcast

PODCAST: Spacing Radio 070, Toronto Mayoral Election Redux

Now that John Tory has officially stepped down as mayor, the field of candidates hoping to replace him is a big one. With roughly 50 candidates on the...
By Spacing Radio
Elections

MAYOR’S RACE: We need to talk about Doug

I have no idea what Ontario Place will look like in 2118, but I feel confident in predicting that Therme Canada’s 65,000 sq.-m human aquarium...
By John Lorinc
Elections

MAYOR’S RACE: Will it be a fear-mongering or city-building election?

The late Jack Layton used to have an adage about public life that profoundly informed his approach to politics: Proposition, he’d say, not...
By John Lorinc
Elections

MAYOR’S RACE: Parsing the politics of Mark Saunders’ performative allyship

Toronto’s mayoral election is historic. So many candidates and so many political affiliations, identities, and experiences. Voting is going to be a...
By Cheryl Thompson

History

WATCH: Amazing archival videos of Toronto Pride 1988-1995

Between 1988 and 1995 (save for 1991 when he did not have a camera) Toronto editor and filmmaker James Leahy documented Toronto Pride, both the street...
By Shawn Micallef
Elections

MAYOR’S RACE: Toronto’s not very green election

With 102 candidates on a ballot that may look more like a scroll than anything else, you’d think someone would be talking about carbon, and what the...
By John Lorinc
Photos

Farewell to Malabar, Toronto’s former costume emporium

Malabar Limited, the famed costume emporium, closed in March 2022. Although it had been a fixture of downtown Toronto’s cultural landscape for 99 years...
By Peter MacCallum
Waterfront

EXCLUSIVE: What is the source of Therme’s financing?

When Infrastructure Ontario executes public-private partnership arrangements, there are numerous permutations — design-build-finance-maintain, outright...
By John Lorinc
Civic Engagement

Pride and Prejudice

It’s getting to be that time of year – queer or straight, people will be busting out the rainbow garb and glitter. Toronto hotels and restaurants...
By Mary Fairhurst Breen
History

The Toronto Circus Riot of 1855 — the day the clowns picked the wrong Toronto brothel

EDITOR: This is the second post of a new collaboration with the Toronto Dreams project by Adam Bunch (see the first here). The project is a series of...
By Adam Bunch

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