The Spacing Store, in the basement of 401 Richmond Street, is an enterprise long overdue. It features quality products celebrating TORONTO and other Canadian cities created by local designers, writers and artists. Prices are low to moderate.
Among the merchandise for sale: maps, framed prints, books, skateboards, wearing apparel, stationary, buttons, magnets, hats, and various kinds of urban ephemera. Both the latest and back issues of ‘Spacing Magazine’ – Canada’s finest urban publication – are on sale as well.
The Spacing Store, TORONTO’s City Store, 401 Richmond Street West at Spadina Avenue, http://www.spacingstore.ca
The architects who oversaw the multi-million dollar revitalization of TORONTO’s civic square will be awarded The Governor General’s Medal in Architecture. Finnish architect VILJO REVELL’s modernest design, unveiled in 1965, wasn’t looking its best by 2007 when an international design competition was launched to bring the square into the 21st century.
The rebuild was accomplished by a consortium of mostly TORONTO firms. Architects and designers from Perkins + Will and PLANT Architect Inc. over hauled everything, installing new fountains, a permanent stage, moving the Peace Garden with its full-growth trees, and planting a green roof around the third level of City Hall itself.
Nathan Phillips Square – named after a popular former mayor – is the largest civic square in Canada.
The project is being privately funded to the tune of $125-million. <RENDERINGS ABOVE – Cicada Design Inc.>
Diamond Scmitt Architects have considerable experience in the theatre business. The company designed and built TORONTO’s Opera House in the Four Seasons Centre (home to the National Ballet of Canada & the Canadian Opera Company, as well as MONTREAL’s Maison Symphonique (home base for the Montreal Symphony Orchestra).
At the moment the Bloor Street West Bike Lane is a pilot project, but the numbers so far are quite impressive. Bells on Bloor have counted 6,100 bikes on the line in 24 hours. During Monday’s morning rush hour the group counted 660 bikes and 1,105 cars – cyclists thus represented 37% of all traffic between 8 and 9 am.
Founded in 2003 as a non-profit organization, DOMINION MODERN set about collecting, cataloguing, preserving and promoting Canadian architecture, design and engineering, with an emphasis on 20th century modernism. Supported by individuals, business and volunteer labour, the archive has grown an impressive collection of objects and photography. It has published a number of books (available online), runs a website and blog, has mounted some superb exhibitions, and is now assembling an oral history project with architects, engineers and designers.
<PHOTOS ABOVE – 1) Ontario Place , waterfront theme park, 1971-2011; 2) PO-MO lobby, 151 Yonge Street, WZMH Architects; 3) Google Canada’s headquarters, 111 Richmond Street West, a redesigned Peter Dickinson building erected in 1954; 4) Don Mills aerial, Canada’s first planned suburban community.
<PHOTOS ABOVE – 1) Anshei Minsk Synagogue, Kensington Market, traditional and modern; 2) detail, Polish Combatants Building, 1973, 206 Beverley Street, architect – Wieslaw Wodkiewicz; 3) O’Keefe Centre (now the Sony Centre), architect Peter Dickinson, 1960 If you’d like to DONATE (money, objects, photography, etc) you can do so on the website. WEBSITE – 
As TORONTO continues to grow and prosper, so does its airport. PEARSON INTERNATIONAL is having quite the year – 9.6-million people passed through in July and August alone. Traffic has grown by 6% in each of the past two years. The airport’s record in 2015 was 41-million passengers in total.
Canada’s position in the Great Circle Route flight path, and growth in the use of larger wide-bodied planes such as the Boeing 787 and Airbus A-380 have helped boost Pearson’s standing among international airlines. Right now there are direct flights from TORONTO to nearly 70% of the economies of the world.
Pearson is Air Canada’s main hub and the second largest airport in North America serving international travellers – behind only JFK in NEW YORK. Air Canada has increased its marketing effort in the United States to encourage Americans to fly to international destinations through TORONTO, Vancouver, Montreal and Calgary.
<Air Canada jets waiting to depart on a frigid winter morning>
The future has arrived. School boards around the Greater TORONTO Area are introducing all-gender toilets to high schools this fall. In the Durham Region elementary and secondary schools already have at least one. The City of TORONTO and York Region are phasing them in.
Linking cycle-share stations with public transport is a key METROLINX priority. To that end, BIKE SHARE is offering PRESTO card owners a hefty discount on new memberships. Transit riders who use a Presto card will get 50% off if they sign up for a new one-year Bike Share membership, which normally costs $90. 40% off next year, 30% in year three, and so on.
BIKE SHARE TORONTO now has 4,778 yearly members, up from 3,885 last July. This summer METROLINX funded a $6-million expansion of the service, adding 120 new stations and 1,000 new bicycles to the network, more than doubling is size.
“Sooner rather than later” both patrol cars and stealth cruisers will have a new look. The bodies of patrol cars will no longer be white, but they’ll still be easily identifiable as police cars. “People need to know that it’s a police car when they see one,” spokesman MARK PUGASH told Newstalk1010. ‘Stealth’ cruisers will be darker than the patrol cars with near-invisible markings. The transformation of the entire fleet of 1,500 will happen in the near future. <PHOTO – The Policefreak/YouTube>
<PHOTO – the distinctive yellow TORONTO police cars of the 1950’s, 60’s, 70’s>
Like many TORONTO commercial strips Ossington Avenue South is a mix of auto repair shops, a cigar manufacturer, Vietnamese restaurants, taverns, a fish monger, and some of our city’s latest and greatest restaurants and bars – as well as a number of fashionable clothing shops, many of them new to the neighbourhood.
There are also a few art galleries, the Lower Ossington Theatre, Bohmer’s famous ice cream store, and Ossington’s laneway murals – the most spectacular in town. Unspoiled Victorian architecture dominates the leafy side streets.
In 2017 the Museum of Contemporary Art will occupy several floors in TORONTO’s Automotive Building. Built in 1920, the Sterling Road icon had a long history making aluminium, sheet-casting and auto parts. In 2005 it was designated a heritage site and then shortly thereafter, closed. It’s the tallest structure for several kilometres around. A remnant of the industrial past, the Auto Building will soon be our city’s art centre of the future.
Toronto Savvy 