HOLY BLOSSOM’s Out of the Cold program, which has been operating at the mid-Toronto synagogue since the mid-1990s, continues to be one of the most excellent programs of its kind in the city. This is an article I wrote a few years ago for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. It was published in numerous cities across…
Tag: toronto
Obit: A. Douglas Tushingham, ROM archaeologist (1914-2002)
by •
A. Douglas Tushingham, the Royal Ontario Museum’s chief archaeologist for 27 years, participated in many major international digs, including several in Jerusalem and Jericho with the eminent British archaeologist Dame Kathleen Kenyon, yet his greatest moment of glory may have come as a result of a spectacular project that had nothing to do with archaeology:…
Obit: Dr. Arthur Squires (1909-2002)
by •
Dr. Arthur Squires, former chief of medicine at Toronto’s Wellesley Hospital, was such an outstanding physician that many of his patients, colleagues and friends formed the Squires Club, an organization to honour him upon his retirement in 1974. Although Dr. Squires died in late June at the age of 92, the Squires Club lives on.…
Profile: Toronto poet-essayist Kenneth Sherman
by •
Toronto native Ken Sherman loved fishing as a boy at Jackson’s Point, where his family had a summer cottage. But these days, whenever he tosses out a line, it’s usually a line of poetry. At 50, Sherman is celebrating the publication of his 10th book — The Well: New and Selected Poems (Wolsak and Wynn,…
The Producers generates squirms, laughs
by •
It’s been more than 40 years since comedy writer Mel Brooks first conceived of the idea for what would become The Producers, the $10-million musical that opened December 11, 2003 at Toronto’s Canon Theatre, courtesy of real-life theatre producers Ed and David Mirvish. In town for the opening, Brooks appeared on stage at the show’s…
A sensational Toronto murder from 1894
by •
Eighteen-year-old Frank Westwood had gone out with friends about 7.30 that Saturday evening, October 6, 1894. By the time he returned to his family’s Jameson Avenue mansion about 10:30, his father, sister and brother had already retired upstairs; his mother, seeing he was safely in, shortly went up, too, leaving him on the stairs. The…
Profile: Honest Ed Mirvish (2001)
by •
If this year is anything like previous years, the sun will be shining when “Honest” Ed Mirvish, Toronto’s legendary salesman and theatre impresario, hosts a mammoth street party on Sunday July 22 in celebration of his 87th birthday, offering free refreshments and entertainment to as many as 60,000 people over a seven-hour period. The party…
An encounter with David Cronenberg
by •
Twenty years ago this summer (i.e., the summer of 1974) this reporter was a 20-year-old film student at York University, who had been lucky enough to find some meager employment as a pre-production assistant for a $180,000-budget feature film being shot in Montreal. The working title was Orgy of the Blood Parasites, the director was…
A sketch of artist Gerald Gladstone
by •
Humanity’s future: will it be “earthbound” or “spacebound”? My uncle, the artist Gerald Gladstone, posed this question to me recently outside Yorkdale shopping centre in North York. We were standing in the parking lot near The Bay, beside one of his major works, a bronze colossus called Universal Man, which was installed there in late…
Crossing the Yellow Line into Murder-Mystery Territory
by •
Toronto lawyer and writer Robert Rotenberg has produced a credible “police procedural” murder mystery called Old City Hall that is set in Toronto and features the famous building of the title — now home to an array of criminal courtrooms — as an iconic centrepiece of the story. Rotenberg’s debut novel focuses on Kevin Brace,…
