Toronto Life articles from July 2002

Toronto Life archives from July 2002

Village person (Kyle Rae).
July 1, 2002... Spot the Homo, Test Number 17: Ask him the colour of his walls. If he tells you the name on the colour chip, he's given you two answers. The second answer is "Yes, darling. I am." "That's a beautiful yellow," I tell city councillor Kyle...

Natural (Amy Redford in Neil LaBute's play The Shape of Things).
July 1, 2002... Next fall, watch out for celebrity progeny at the Berkeley Street Theatre: leading in CanStage's production of Neil LaBute's hot new play, The Shape of Things, will be none other than 31-year-old Amy Redford, Sundance's favourite faculty brat....

Politically correct (Thurston Moore's interest in Canadian poetry).
July 1, 2002... When Sonic Youth plays at Kool Haus bar in August, fans hoping to spot the post-punk band's leader, Thurston Moore, around town might want to forgo the usual celebrity haunts in favour of lingering in the stacks of the city's better second-hand...

Pissing match (perforated urinal pads with Osama bin Laden's picture).
July 1, 2002... Following the age-old adage that if you can't capture your enemy, the least you can do is urinate on his picture, Joseph Hamra, a commercial artist whose work includes several Absolut Vodka ads, and Thanos Tripy, a bartender at the ferociously...

Frozen assets (Martina Sorbana's new video).
July 1, 2002... The music video for Martina Sorbara's sultry ballad "Bonnie & Clyde II," which began its regular rotation on Much-Music in the spring, is pretty racy by Canadian standards. In a road trip--inspired sequence, the 23-year-old singer-songwriter...

Malt shop (Companions of the Quaich).
July 1, 2002... The Companions of the Quaich just might be the coolest club since, say, Fred Flintstone's Loyal Order of the Water Buffalo. Membership includes judges Lucien Beaulieu and John Jennings, as well as local cigar purveyor Jerry Hartman. They pay...

Estate of the art.
July 1, 2002... Low interest rates, consumer confidence and a fear that prices will just keep on going up: that's why more people have bought property in the past few months than at any time in Toronto history. For the city's top real estate agents --those who...

New York stories (celebrities).
July 1, 2002... Big screen cinemas are out, and corporate party venues are in. That was the lesson of the bash in early May to celebrate the reopening of the old York movie house as an upscale event space. In its new incarnation (thanks to a seven-month...

This issue.
July 1, 2002... WOODY ALLEN CAME TO TORONTO RECENTLY TO PROMOTE his new film, Hollywood Ending. It was his first visit here, which is remarkable, since there isn't a city in North America, other than Los Angeles and New York, in which the people who make...

Ballpark figures: in the new economics of baseball, the Blue Jays can't afford the marquee players of yore. We can forget about winning the World Series ...
July 1, 2002... ON THE FIRST DAY OF MAY, THE BLUE JAYS were stuck in the middle of a nine-game losing streak, though they didn't know it yet. At that point, they'd only lost six in a row. They were in last place in their division. On the previous night--while...

Greened acres: around every other corner, we bump into a patch of grass, some sad-sack trees, a few benches upon which on one ever sits. The last thing Toronto needs is another banal park.
July 1, 2002... AT FIRST GLANCE, THE TTC'S DEFUNCT Wychwood yard near St. Clair and Christie is an unprepossessing four-and-a-half-acre expanse of rubble. Along its northern edge is a complex of five crumbling streetcar barns with weathered accordion doors, a...

Who earns what: from underpaid millionaires to overpaid wives, unemployed environmentalists to accident-prone stuntmen. Our 2002 salary survey.
July 1, 2002... DAVE ALBRIGHT First-class firefighter HAVING PASSED his captain's exams last fall, Albright works at Rescue 112, Bathurst and Finch, awaiting a permanent promotion. Until then, he receives a captain's rate of pay (15 per cent over his...

Camp classic (Chockablock store).
July 1, 2002... At certain summer camps scattered around northern Ontario in the 1980s, your social status relied not on which neighbourhood you came from or what your daddy did for a living or what school you spent those lesser months of the year attending....

White noise: the story of FLOW's tumultous 10-year journey to the airwaves is one of government fumbling, business acumen and community vitality, but it's also a story about race ...
July 1, 2002... IN AN OVERHEATED STUDIO across from the Eaton Centre, DJX, slight and handsome in a T-shirt that reads Here to Save the Industry, sways above two turntables, doing a live mix. Over by the window, his partner, J Wyze, bobs tip and down in his...

Marooned (lighthouses on Toronto Island).
July 1, 2002... It's easy to forget that Toronto is on the water. Unless you're a hardy Islander or a Beach type, you're lucky if you steal a hasty glimpse from the top of the Gardiner--a rusting tanker, the flicker of a sail like a bird's wing in the...

Smells and bells: this month 350,000 young Catholics from 150 countries will gather here for World Youth Day ...
July 1, 2002... WHEN I WAS IN GRADE 7 AT HOLY ROSARY SCHOOL, one of the parish priests asked me to come with him into an empty office one day. Immaculately dressed in a sharply cut suit and crisp Roman collar, he must have been in his mid-30s. He was...

Gypsy roses and takeout clout.
July 1, 2002... French connection Part of the charm of Paris's Left Bank is its impossibly chic gallery-stores, where antiques and objets d'art are assembled with a cultivated eye. Enter the Roseland Gallery, recently opened by the charming Dante and...

Vineland saga: for years, the notion of a Niagara wine country cuisine has been touted by publicists - and debunked by chefs - without every taking shape.
July 1, 2002... "WHAT IS THE LIGHT IN THE WESTERN SKY, Mother, that shines like gold when the sun goes down?" "It's just a reflection, child. Do they teach you nothing in school?" "A reflection of what?" "Of the sun on the orchards of Tir-nanog,...

Tasting notes.
July 1, 2002... Earth to the Loire Most oenophiles cite soil as a factor in winemaking, but the proponents of biodynamic farming go one step further: they believe the soil's health and balance play an integral part in the interrelationship of air, planet and...

Restaurants (in Toronto and surrounding area).
July 1, 2002... Restaurants are rated on a five-star system by A LA MODE Centro *** Palatial and theatrical are the words that come to mind. Boisterous groups are everywhere, 20 or so partying on the mezzanine, a Powerpoint demo mesmerizing two...

Jean Monty, king of convergence.
July 1, 2002... I wrote a history of Nortel in 1995, when the company was still an icon instead of a curse. It was a grand saga, stretching from Alexander Graham Bell, its founding father, to Jean Monty, then its guiding light and CEO. The Bell part was easy....