The Toronto Star shares Shawn Micallef's timely article about humble overlooked Christmas trees. This does matter, perhaps particularly tonight, when my Instagram feed is still fresh with photos of the great showy trees of the Eaton Centre and City Hall. Less showy things also matter.

The hardest-working Christmas tree in Toronto is in Cumberland ( Read more... )

Floria Sigismondi's Pneuma is so much easier to appreciate away from peak viewing at Nuit Blanche, when the crowds on Nathan Phillips Square are so much less. It's a haunting dreamscape.

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Fans of Nuit Blanche like me should be happy to find out that two exhibits at Toronto City Hall will stay open to the end of the weekend.

Nuit Blanche might seem like a distant memory already, particularly for those who've spent the last 48 hours recovering from the all-night affair, but if you've seen all the stunning photos from this year's ( Read more... )

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One thing I liked about The Idea of North was the inclusion, mostly towards the end, of works which inspired Harris or which were inspired by Harris. His aesthetic lives on.

Rockwell Kent's Icebergs, Greenland, also painted in the 1930s, looks at the same Arctic territory Harris explored.


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At Spacing Toronto, Sean Marshall writes about how Toronto City Hall and the Toronto-Dominion Centre are the two buildings which best sum up modern Toronto. That both are creatures of the modernist mid-century is likely not a coincidence.

Construction began on Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s modernist Toronto-Dominion Centre in 1964; the first tower ( Read more... )

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... )

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The Monument to North American Energy Security put on a memorable display at Toronto City Hall in last year's Nuit Blanche, in the reflecting pool.


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