Toronto Life articles from January 2001

Toronto Life archives from January 2001

Happy couple: (Jack Layton and Olivia Chow).
January 1, 2001... It's Saturday night, and there's a big pot of chicken-feet and elephant-clam soup bubbling on the stove in the Chow-Layton kitchen, a large, warm, absent-mindedly cluttered room in their three-storey Victorian on Huron Street. City councillor...

Cross that bridge: (Martha Stewart's problem with the Toronto Island Airport).
January 1, 2001... These days, everybody seems to have a suggestion for how to save Toronto from its urban ills: bury the Gardiner, develop the waterfront, build a rail line to Pearson, discourage sprawl. The latest participant in this wave of armchair town...

Forty years down the brain drain.
January 1, 2001... There was a warm fuzzy feeling at Convocation Hall the evening of Michael Ignatieff's Massey lecture. The Canadian-born thinker, now a visiting prof at Harvard's prestigious Kennedy School, gushed in his speech about the success of Canadian...

High road: (journalist Sandra Martin's interviews author Steven Heighton).
January 1, 2001... Thirty-something Steven Heighton has earned a reputation in literary circles for his short stories, poems, essays, and his latest effort, a novel called The Shadow Boxer. He failed to impress the Globe and Mail writer Sandra Martin, however,...

Auction blocked: (picture of Bruce LaBruce and eye magazine sexpert Sasha).
January 1, 2001... Hard to imagine what non-Torontonian on-line shoppers thought of "Right to Bare Arms," Joanne Tod's portrait of filmmaker Bruce LaBruce and eye magazine sexpert Sasha, posted for auction in late November. But there it was, up for grabs on eBay,...

(The Giller awards).
January 1, 2001... CAMERA Author, author Sprays of red roses, dimmed chandeliers, flickering votive candles, tuxedos and gowns: the seventh annual Giller soiree felt more like a wedding than a literary gathering. In fact, newcomers might well have mistaken a...

This issue: (philanthropist Ted Rogers).
January 1, 2001... THE COVER STORY OF OUR SEPTEMBER ISSUE WAS A WIDELY discussed piece by John Lorinc about Chicago, a city much like Toronto, except that it's in better shape. One of the reasons--perhaps, Lorinc suggested, the most important reason--is...

(Events taking place in Toronto in January 2001).
January 1, 2001... THEATRE OPENINGS Happy. First seen at last season's du Maurier World Stage Festival, Ronnie Burkett's play (see highlight, bottom right), featuring 37 marionettes, returns for a longer run. The title character, Happy, is a war vet who...

What we all want.
January 1, 2001... HOUSE SECRETS When Michelle Berry finished writing What We All Want, her darkly comic novel about a trio of siblings who decide to bury their dead mother in the backyard, she figured she'd better make sure her instincts--about things like what...

Class act: from The Farm Show to The Drawer Boy, David Fox has been offering theatre-goers his impressive range and talent for almost three decades ...
January 1, 2001... EIGHT YEARS AGO, A YOUNG ACTOR named Michael Healey and a veteran actor named David Fox were sharing a bad experience in Meaford. Helping to launch a new theatre company, they were preparing the familiar staple Sleuth with a minimum of...

Clean slate: school closures, curriculum changes, labour unrest: it looked like things couldn't get worse at the Toronto District School Board ...
January 1, 2001... ANATOMY OF A SCREW-UP: ON MAY 15, 2000, the 22 trustees who supposedly govern the Toronto District School Board made what must have seemed, at the time, like an innocuous decision. Informed that an inspector was conducting an audit on...

Mister Rogers: he once looked like just another ho-hum cable guy ... suddenly Ted Rogers has become Mr. Toronto.
January 1, 2001... It was the spring of 1996 when I first laid eyes on Ted Rogers. He was rounding out of a meeting with Richard Li, of the very rich Hong Kong Lis, wearing a suit in a teal tint that had a high shine to it. The suit left me thinking: that number...

Rituals: the money pit: (the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation).
January 1, 2001... They might be waiting to renew their driver's licences, so patiently do they shuffle toward the five computer kiosks on the ground floor of 33 Bloor Street East, just across from the Bay. Every Monday morning, the same polite queue forms at the...

Showtime: a glimpse of pre-TV Toronto, when movie theatres were as common as corner stores.
January 1, 2001... I am speaking now of Saturday afternoons in the 1940s, when I was a kid, when every neighbourhood had a movie theatre. I ate my sandwich early, at the enamel table in our kitchen, and set off on my blue Raleigh, my 25-cent allowance warm in the...

Steak out: (House of Chan).
January 1, 2001... There was a time when waiting in line for an hour at the House of Chan got you more than a red vinyl booth, a 16-ounce slab of Missouri beef and a $100 steamed lobster. It got you a whiff of legend. Or so its 14 backers--who in 1978 bought the...

Murder in a small town: in a journal entry marked January 1997, Al MacDonald - ... explained why he hadn't yet gunned down constable Tom Coffin ... by the following spring, he had solved the problem.
January 1, 2001... AT 1:34 A.M. on the morning of April 24, 1996, Constable Tom Coffin made a U-turn on Penetanguishene's Main Street and began following a pickup truck with a burnt-out tail light. The 31-year-old Coffin had the largest number of arrests on the...

Super shopper: eye candy and desktop handy.
January 1, 2001... Crystal meshed From metallic lip gloss to sexy sequins and paillettes, putting on the glitz is no longer reserved for special occasions. Think '40s diva and hip hop mama, and shine in the daytime with a woven crystal wristlet from the...

Style counsel: to construct a Carlaw Avenue loft, Anna Simone analyzes a bachelor's most intimate secrets. Interior design as therapy session.
January 1, 2001... WHEN ANNA SIMONE ASKS PEOPLE IF THEY bathe alone or where they store their underwear, it's not out of prurient interest. She needs to know so that she can do her job. Small and dark with cherry-red lipstick, she could pass for a worldly...

Design diva: Alexia von Beck.
January 1, 2001... The Chilean-born designer has been constructing frocks since she was a disgruntled t4-year-old style maven: "I was frustrated with fashion then, so I taught myself how to sew. If I didn't make my own clothes, I don't know what I would wear."...

French twist: Torch, Reds and Biff's - the most notable restaurant debuts last fall were bistros. Which means going for a meal is becoming a habit instead of an occasion.
January 1, 2001... ON MARCH 31, 1814, WHILE NAPOLEON AND the remnants of his army gnawed their knuckles at Fontainebleau, Czar Alexander's forces entered Paris. The French were well aware of the enemy's ferocious reputation for pillage and rapine and surely...

Tasting notes.
January 1, 2001... These notes list producer-shipper, agent (and telephone), CSPC number (V indicates a Vintages bottle), price per 750 mL and region. Consignment bottles are generally bought by the case from the agent. Rating is on a five-star system that...

Restaurants (in Toronto).
January 1, 2001... Restaurants are rated on a five-star system by Toronto Life's anonymous reviewers, who are required to be honest, accurate and fair. Marks are awarded only for a restaurant's cooking, taking into account the kitchen's ambitions, consistency of...

Sai Woo: May 2, 1957 - November 12, 2000.
January 1, 2001... There was only one solution to the midnight munchies in Toronto in the 1960s. On Saturday nights, my girlfriends and I would climb the stairs to Sai Woo, a second-floor dive with the chilly decor of a cheesy rec room. That, of course, was part...