Brian Bethune's review in MacLean's of the new book edited by John Lorinc, The Ward: The Life and Loss of Toronto's First Immigrant Neighbourhood, really makes me want to read it. How many people know that, where City Hall stands now, an entirely different neighbourhood once existed?

To arrive in Toronto, and to arrive poor, in the decades before ( Read more... )

One of the tags I'll be giving Debra Black's Toronto Star article will be "Three Torontos" since this article speaks about the ongoing ethnic--and, consequently, geographic--polarization of Toronto between a well-off largely white population and a less-well-off population of immigrant origin. This Is Not Good.

[S]ome experts worry the increasing ( Read more... )

When I disembarked from the TTC bus at the corner of Dufferin and Dupont, I was interested to see that the Dupont Avenue street sign was labelled, in smaller type, "Rua do Alentejo." Taken from the south-central Portuguese province of the same name, like Dundas Street's label "Rua Açores" near my old neighbourhood, this street sign is ample ( Read more... )