Remembering the Harriet Tubman Youth Centre On St. Clair West
From November 1, 1972 to September 30, 1975, a Black cultural hub known as the Harriet Tubman Youth Centre operated in a building located at 15 Robina Avenue, just north of the St. Clair West/Oakwood...
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The urban photography of Arthur Goss, part 4: Toronto Water Works, 1910-1939
Unlike his Parks Series, which highlights the inclusiveness of the City’s recreational facilities, Goss’s Toronto Water Works Series documents what was at that time exclusively a man’s world of civil...
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Notes from Britain
For the past two decades, Spacing contributor Sean Ruthen has written several architectural travelogues on places near and far – here in Canada from Calgary to Charlottetown, and in Europe visiting...
View ArticlePODCAST: Spacing Radio 080, Toronto’s Drone Scandal
We heard a lot about drones at the Paris Olympics, but what about in our own backyard? In this episode, Spacing‘s John Lorinc tells us about a piece he wrote called Eyes in the Sky, which documents the...
View ArticleOP-ED: Free our Front Yards
An Etobicoke native plant gardener is ordered to cut his “turfgrass and weeds” (he actually has neither) to 20 cm (8 inches). An Annex ecologist is ordered to cut down his oak saplings. A Scarborough...
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Listen Up! What birdsong tells us about everyday life
This article is published in conjunction with Spacing‘s new issue (#67), which is themed around noise in the city. Click on the links of bird names to hear the relevant birdsong. It’s ubiquitous the...
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NEW ISSUE: Sounds of the City
I first moved into my current home around this time of year, in early August. I’d moved from downtown to a greener, more residential area, and when we sat outside on our first evening in the new...
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From drainage ditch to vibrant, pollution-absorbing habitat
When Douglas Counter heads out the front door of his Etobicoke home to appreciate the day’s new blooms, he doesn’t have to go far. The flowers are waiting for him right in his yard, including the...
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Documenting the collapsed Dundas Street buildings
For the most part, the buildings on the north side of Dundas Street West between Spadina and Bathurst are an architectural hodgepodge. The one exception to the general heterogeneity was, until...
View ArticleOP-ED: The lessons of the Dundas St. building collapse
Like a lot of Kensington residents, when I walk by the metal hoarding around the collapsed buildings at 606-614 Dundas West, I feel a mixture of grief and rage. The sight of the roof torn off, the...
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Ontario Place’s West Island trees on death watch
Every week this summer Francesca Bouaoun has launched her kayak at Ontario Place to check on the trees. They’re a stand of 850 trees planted 54 years ago by landscape architect Michael Hough on the...
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Exploring Toronto through its Indigenous heritage
We discovered new avenues of the city we would have never found unless we had a reason to be there. Many places were sitting right under my nose, not far at all from my apartment, that I never would...
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Re-visiting the subway art of ‘Atmospheric Lens’
Inside the Vaughan Metropolitan Centre Station’s airy concourse, architecturally integrated public artwork, Atmospheric Lens, transforms the mundane commute into an experience of unexpected wonder....
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LORINC: Booze in the corner store
Until the mid 1970s, you couldn’t buy lottery tickets in Ontario. Ontarians could go to the horse races and place bets; the ponies, after all, have always had a kind of aristocratic patina, so that...
View ArticleOntario Place premieres at TIFF
A documentary about Ontario Place featuring Francesca Bouaoun of Ontario Place For All, as well as Steve Mann and many other members of SwimOP, will have its world premiere at the Toronto International...
View ArticlePODCAST: Spacing Radio 081, Talking Transit ’24
It’s been a while since we had a good, old-fashioned transit talk with friends of the show Tricia Wood (York University urban geography professor and Spacing contributor) and Matt Elliott (Toronto Star...
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