The following is a reprint of my recent Eye Weekly Psychogeography column where I went to the Zoo. Photo by Jacob Earl. In August one of the Toronto Zoo’s older gorillas, Samantha, had a stroke and was euthanized at the age of 37. She was one of the original animals present at the zoo’s 1974 opening. The news of her death — and watching friends and folks on the various social networks I follow post remembrances — reminded me of the connection people have with their zoo, and that I had never been to Toronto’s. The first experience the Toronto Zoo affords is an understanding of how gargantuan the city is. By car or by TTC, it takes a long time to get there (even if you live in the western parts of Scarborough), yet it’s still within the city limits. In an election year, it’s good to head out to the city limits (or the opposite limit, if you live near one already) to see how big the place we keep referring to as a single entity is.

WHAT: Heritage Toronto mayoral debate WHERE: St Lawrence Hall, 3rd floor in the Great Hall at 157 King Street East (at Jarvis) WHEN: Monday, August 30th at 7:00pm - 9:00pm Here's a new spin on all the mayoral debates that have been occurring over the last few months, one where Toronto's built heritage is discussed. In this angry season (or fake-angry season) who could be angry over heritage? As we've seen over and over, because the city doesn't have a properly functioning heritage policy, and the designation of heritage buildings has a historically long ...

The following is a reprint of my recent psychogeography column in Eye Weekly looking at the future of Ontario Place. The photos included in this post are from Not My Father's Slides, Tanja Tiziana's wonderful project that rescues abandoned Kodachrome slides she finds at estate and yard sales. The pictures used here, of an unknown family, are dated to July 1973. They are very much like the golden-hued ones I write about below. Happy days at Toronto's happy day machine. Check out Tanja's site when you're done reading. In one of the photo albums I grew up with, one that contained snapshots of my parents’ lives before I was born, there were a handful of pics taken in 1971 at Ontario Place, the year it opened. They’ve all got the golden tint that photos from that era have acquired — the troubles of the day seem far away as everything is muted by that gilded patina. One that always stood out is of a polyester-clad choir singing what I imagine is the old Expo ’67 Ontario anthem “A Place to Stand.” It all looked so optimistic and young, the brilliant future of Ontario and Canada. The future is old now — nearly 40 years old — and it’s easy to drift into nostalgia about a place like Ontario Place, one of those civic spaces that are nostalgia machines. Everybody of a certain not-too-old age has a memory of either romping or working around here or heard stories passed down from a baby-boomer parent of working here in the early 1970s.

We've posted this before, but why not put it up again? The circa 1979 Oh Canada film (the best one, certainly). Happy Canada Day, Toronto.

Yesterday my Cities for People walk ended in Kensington Market after a tour of Clubland and the Queen Street Graffiti Alley. I started to talk about how the Market has changed over the years, but not really. Certainly there are more patios now than there ever have been, and there are more boutiques among the thrift and vintage and other-stuff stores, but the rough edges have never disappeared as they have on Queen West or some other areas. It's still an incubator of culture, art, punk rock, indie rock and whatever else. I mentioned the notorious and venerable Kensington punk band Bunchoffuckingoofs and how part of their legend involves (kind of) keeping the peace in the Market from their equally legendary headquarters/boozecan "Fort Goof" when both Skinheads and crack cocaine were rolling through the neighbourhood. How much is true or myth is certainly debatable (would love for readers who were around to recount their first-hand memories here) but it's an instance where culture and city building went hand in hand, and artists became a kind of community leader. I found this partial documentary that seems to date to about 1984. While showing 1980s punk rock lifestyle in all its unglamorousness, there are fantastic shots of the Market and Spadina from that era, as well as a magnificent pan of the downtown core from the CN Tower. Take a look at all those parking lots. Most of them are filled in now (the next time somebody complains to you about "Condos," remind them of what was there before). What this video does reflect is a kind-of-roughness -- a bleak, almost-British-1970s-punk-rough -- that the market certainly does not have anymore writ large; though as one of the Goofs says in the video, much of Kensington still closes early, allowing bands to play and more noise to happen than would be allowed in other parts of the city, and the dumpster diving they mention still occurs (see Jessica Duffin Wolfe's archived Spacing article on the practice from our Fall 2007 issue). For more recollections of the era, listen to this short recollection of Courage My Love's history I recorded Stewart Scriver giving for our Kensington Market [murmur] project as well as (former Spacing intern) Liz Worth's recent book Treat Me Like Dirt: An Oral History of Punk Rock in Toronto and Beyond 1977-1981. Below check out the Goofs, still in action, two years ago at a Pedestrian Sunday on Augusta Avenue.

Consistent Spacing Toronto readers will recall last June students in my then-brand-new 3rd year Cities for People workshop/course at OCAD University posted their work here on the blog. The course has been in full swing again for a few weeks now, and students are about to start posting again. We hope you, our good readers, will contribute to their work by offering observations and thoughts on their findings and ideas. Cities are for a lot of things, but they’re mostly for people. Or should be. ...

The following is a reprint of my recent psychogeography column in Eye Weekly on cycling in Toronto. As columns go, it was near the top in terms of the number of responses I received regarding it (via Twitter, in person, etc) and by far (20 to 1, thereabouts) they were supportive remarks. I mention this only because it supports my feeling that for a long time people who cycled felt they weren't allowed to talk about bad cyclist behavior or object to bad cycling politics publicly. Ignoring both of those things undermines all efforts towards better cycling conditions in Toronto. If you, bicyclist, have ever given thought to bike culture in Toronto and perhaps wished for more bike lanes or bike infrastructure, a safer ride or just more respect on the street, you are political and should behave in a manner that will further your political aims. If you don’t care about any of that, keep riding happily into oblivion. But if you care, everything you do on a bike is a political move, whether you like it or not, and whether it seems fair or not. Cycling culture in Toronto is in what another columnist in this magazine might call a “quarterlife crisis.” It’s rich and robust, sure, but it’s still got an often-awkward  relationship with the rest of the city and isn’t 100 per cent grown up. Cycling for anything other than recreation is still a fairly radical and foreign idea for a big chunk of the city’s population: it’s something people do in China or Amsterdam, not Toronto.

This may be a cliche, but I've always loved Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue because it sounds like a city. Well, it sounds like New York, or some 1920s metropolitan metropolis New York. Looking for a YouTube version of it last night, I found this animation I hadn't seen before. It's unapologetically big city and unapologetically New York. I encourage you to watch the entire thing. You'll need one less coffee today if you do. It's stuff like this that makes you (me) realize other people love ...

ED: You may remember at the Fort York Toronto the Good party the Soft City exhibit in one of the Block Houses (a stuffed and sewed together skyline). Part of that collective, Rose Bianchini and Jason van Horne, have an opening tonight that is a kind of "tiny Doors Open" on this, the (big) Doors Open weekend. Rose is also the filmaker behind our "Reasons People Love Toronto" video made at our 5th anniversary party last year. WHAT: A collaboration between Rose Bianchini and Jason van Horne. An art show of magical and interactive miniatures. Peer into the private lives of an eclectic group of people as they dream, watch TV, stare out the window and ponder the lives of their neighbours. Neighbourhood Watch brings to life a cast of whimsical characters who live in ramshackle and darling little homes. It is a show about where we live and how our space defines as much as our work and family. WHERE AND WHEN:  AWOL art gallery 76 Ossington, May 27- June 6, 2010 Gallery Hours: Thursday to Saturday, 12pm - 6pm, Sunday 1pm - 5pm, or by appointment  Reception: Friday, May 28 from 7pm WHY: We strive to make work that shows the symbiotic relationship between people and architecture. While we enjoy mimicking the real world in miniature form we also love to re-imagine and create worlds that are much more mysterious and peculiar.

Very sad news today. After a long illness that he fought longer and harder than any doctor expected, Toronto has lost Will Munro. Will was a cultural force in this city and helped change the way we think about Toronto's geography and expanded ideas of where various communities are supposed to live and play.  Along the way he created new spaces for untold numbers of people (many of whom may never even knew of him or that he was behind the event or place they were enjoying). He was an artist; a volunteer; a community councillor; a DJ, an impresario; an entrepreneur; and a friend to many and civic glue to so many more. He would occasionally DJ our Spacing events, yet in the middle of it have to run back to the Beaver Cafe on Queen to set up the turntables for a night that was unfolding there. He was constantly doing three things at once and was always hard to reach because he was always — always! — in the middle of making something or making something happen. This energy put up the most formidable force against cancer and, at times, it seemed impossible it could ever beat him. Will Munro is a city builder in the widest and best sense and Toronto would be a different city today if not for him. His spirit will live on in it. Below is the "Placemaker" feature Bert Archer wrote about Will that appeared in the Spring-Summer 2009 issue of Spacing. -- Shawn Micallef The evolution of the big gay dance party Will Munro changed where and how Toronto's gay community celebrated public life in the city by Bert Archer /// photo by Carlos Weisz The world moves in a mysterious way, its cities reform, and though there are any number of ultimately undecipherable forces at work in the way any city evolves, there are almost always people who act as conduits. Sometimes it’s through direct influence, like Gian Naaz opening the Naaz Theatre at Gerrard and Coxwell in 1971, or City Councillor Kyle Rae expelling the financial underperformers from Yonge and Dundas and replacing them with a public square. Other times, it’s more circumspect, like the way Jane Jacobs glamourized the Annex through her writing and her presence, or the way Geoff Polci and Alana Duggan, by opening Crema Café in the Junction, pushed the neighbourhood over the edge it had been teetering on for years, making it the sort of place people would finally admit to living in. Or the way Will Munro queered the city west of Yonge. As he’ll be the first to tell you, he wasn’t the first. A quick browse through Rick Bébout’s online opus, Lives, times, & place (rbebout.com), or a trip through the Xtra, NOW, and Eye Weekly archives with the search term “Denise Benson” will tell you how long people have been leaving the gaybourhood. Benson, who moved to Toronto in 1986, didn’t know about George Hislop, Peter Pan, and Charlie Pachter when she started her dyke nights at the Caribou above Sneaky Dee’s, and later at the Claremont where the Starbucks at Queen and Claremont is now, or later still at the Boom Boom Room across the street. And though she did know about various era-bridging forces like Bruce LaBruce, or El Convento Rico on College, the media, including the gay press, didn’t pick up on any trends. It was only when Will Munro started Vaseline (later “Vazaleen,” after some pointed letters from Procter & Gamble) at the El Mocambo that the whole press machine started to take notice that there was same-sexing happening off Church Street, and that there was this thing called queer which, once you got over the initial strangeness, seemed a little on the sexy side. At least when it involved young people. Within a year of Munro’s starting up his monthly nights, the National Post, the Globe and Mail, and the Toronto Star (in that order) had mentioned it in one way or another. By the time Munro had taken his night to Ottawa for the second time, in 2004, the Citizen ran a 1,200-word story called “Everybody do the Vazaleen.” Meanwhile, back in Toronto, the Star ran a 1,500-word piece in September (i.e., not hooked to Pride coverage) on a new gay generation “finding places to live and play” off the Church strip.