Toronto Life articles from March 1999

Toronto Life archives from March 1999

Hear me roar.
March 1, 1999... "They are asses," Sandra Shamas sniffs. "And I--" she pauses, then looks at her reflection in the dressing room mirror, pushing at her short, curly hair. "I've only been in the city ten years, you know. Why would they want to spell my name...

This issue (homelessness in Toronto).
March 1, 1999... A YEAR AND A HALF AGO, I wrote about a homeless man called Red who frequented the corner of Church and Front begging for spare change. We don't see him anymore, which could mean that he's found a new corner or--more likely--that he's succumbed...

No deal: Torstar's David Galloway insists they were talking takeover. Sun Media's Paul Godfrey thought they were just talking. In the end Quebecor won the day, leaving Godfrey rich and Galloway bruised.
March 1, 1999... EARLY LAST November, Torstar chief executive David Galloway called his counterpart at Sun Media, Paul Godfrey, to find out if he was going to attend a bash at the Royal Ontario Museum at which Norman Jewison was to receive a...

Shutout: no one in women's hockey has an impressive a CV as Angela James. So why is the Canadian Hockey Association keeping her out of the game?
March 1, 1999... SHE HOPS over the boards at York University's Ice Palace and flies across the rink, her blades dancing with deft familiarity. She pivots near centre ice and charges after the puck. She has an intensity that can't be coached. While she assumes a...

Dalton who? He's squarely in the political middle, he's a family man with a traditional streak, and he's not Mike Harris. The odds should be in Dalton McGuinty's favour.
March 1, 1999... "Above all, gentlemen, no zeal." --French diplomat Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand's advice on politics in the wake of the fanaticism of the Revolution and the despotic rule of Napoleon Bonaparte (attributed 1868) Avery: "Don't know if...

Side of egg foo young (Toronto's Garden Gate Restaurant has been a fixture of Queen St. since 1952).
March 1, 1999... HOW HARD would it be to duplicate the charms of the redoubtable old Garden Gate Restaurant, which has kept the southeast corner of Queen Street East and Beech Avenue since 1952? Well, you'd have to lay your hands on a load of exhausted vinyl...

Woman's place: for fifty years, my grandmother's home stood ready for social events that never took place - no housewarming, no evening cocktails, no afternoon teas in the garden.
March 1, 1999... THE YEAR THAT DYNAMITE ripped through Ardwold, the spectacular Eaton estate that stretched along the escarpment at Davenport and Spadina, an era ended. It was 1936. For almost three decades this fifty-room mansion with its own state-of-the-art...

Spinning for your sins (spinning exercise classes popular in the nineties).
March 1, 1999... AT SEVEN A.M. the lights are dimmed in a small room in the Mayfair Lakeshore Racquet & Fitness Club, and the music swells, the Gypsy Kings singing "My Way." "This is your time," the instructor says. "You are your own creation." She is...

Dead reckoning: every year 1,100 autopsies are performed at the morgue on Grenville Street. Determining cause of death is what forensic pathologists live for. The mandate: think dirty.
March 1, 1999... THE SCORES OF GOLDEN DOTS glinting like mica on the surface of his liver are disarranged by the repeated slice of the blade. Their owner (1) lies on a stainless-steel table at right angles to his innards. His hollow torso is split from genitals...

Think mega: how do you fit fifty-seven councillors and a little mayor with big ideas into City Hall? Good architects. Willing bureaucrats. Millions.
March 1, 1999... EVERY BUILDING tells a story, and Toronto City Hall is anything but the exception. Forty years after it was conceived, it's almost impossible to appreciate the ruckus that preceded this grand expressionist edifice into the world. Grown men...

Picture perfect: inside a time traveller's closet (proprietress of vintage clothing store).
March 1, 1999... One look at Martine Blackhurst, chic proprietress of Richmond West's vintage clothes mecca, Zinc, and you know you're not in the land of kitsch: "I can be futuristic and old at the same time. I'm not just some crazy vintage freak." My...

Really good restaurants - such as Il Posto Nuovo and Pastis - soothe the bourgeois in us all and gratify the inner hedonist. Utter the words on the menu and the bounty of the world appears.
March 1, 1999... COMFORT? Why would anyone with a home to go to go to a restaurant for comfort? I guess there are times, after work, after dark, with the buses and streetcars spraying black slush onto sheet-ice sidewalks and the cold wind dragging at bags and...

Nosing about (review of various wines).
March 1, 1999... What's new THESE TASTING NOTES list producer/shipper, agent (and telephone), CSPC number (V indicates a Vintages bottle), price/750 mL and region. Rating is on a five-star system that stresses quality for price: basic (); acceptable ();...

Drink list of the month (review of Toronto restaurant Accolade).
March 1, 1999... Accolade (Crowne Plaza Hotel, 225 Front St. W., 597-8142) The place Just off the hotel's lobby, tucked behind burgundy wooden lattice. Up a few steps and past a row of decorative marble planters. High ceilings, burgundy-rose walls, dark...

Calzone (review of Toronto restaurants serving calzone).
March 1, 1999... Pity the poor cugino of the pizza. Its name is regularly mispronounced (cal-ZOH-ney is correct). It has been reduced to a pop-culture footnote (the infamous Seinfeld episode). And its bastard brother, the exploding star of many a goofy...

Sylvanus Apps: January 18, 1915 - December 24, 1998.
March 1, 1999... OFF THE ICE, Syl Apps, who died last month at eighty-three, was the Clark Kent of hockey, but on it he could clear tall buildings. It is fifty springs since he played his last game as a Maple Leaf, which means you have to be close to sixty-five...