The Sugar Shack is back! The family-friendly “cabane à sucre”-style weekend has become a cold-weather fave on Toronto’s waterfront, celebrating all-things Canadiana, including the simple joy of fresh Ontario maple taffy rolled on snow. Sugar Shack TO was cancelled last year due to funding and cost pressures, but it’s making a comeback this March Break, bringing a little maple-on-snow magic back to the city.

Since its inception, the event has been held at Sugar Beach, but this year it’s moving to Harbourfront Centre for March 14 and 15, and it promises to be equal parts food fest, winter carnival and maple lesson!

Guests can expect two “sugar shacks” serving Ontario maple taffy rolled on snow. The process is simple: grab a stick, find a patch of snow, pour fresh Ontario maple syrup over it and then enjoy the delicious, sweet frozen treat!

There will also be maple-infused comfort food, sugar cookies, a bonfire warming station, hot apple cider and additional treats and partner activations. If you’re into the science behind turning watery sap into syrup, there’ll be a maple sugaring demonstration! Because the event is about much more than eats, look out for live entertainment, including the Great Canadian Fiddle Show and Tim Burr, the Circus Lumberjack.

Best of all: Sugar Shack TO is an accessible event, dog-friendly (as long as your pup is leashed) and free! Just note that maple taffy is priced at $5 each or five for $20, plus tax (cash and debit accepted).

Sugar Shack TO officially returns on Saturday, March 14 and Sunday, March 15, 2026, 11 a.m.-6 p.m. at Harbourfront Centre, 235 Queens Quay W. Follow @sugarshackto on Instagram for more delicious details.

Mumford & Sons have officially announced a major North American run in support of their new album Prizefighter, and Toronto is one of the early stops! The band’s Prizefighter Tour will hit the city on Saturday, June 13, 2026, with a stadium show booked at Rogers Stadium. Opening acts include Caamp and Dylan Gossett.

If you want to try your luck early, tickets will be available for pre-sale for AGORA members starting Feb. 24 at 10 a.m., with general on-sale tickets available this Friday, Feb. 27 at 10 a.m. Mumford & Sons will also have a limited number of student-priced tickets available for select shows (full details can be found at www.mumfordandsons.com).

And if you’re a superfan, the tour offers VIP packages and experiences for fans to take their concert experience to the next level! Packages vary but include premium tickets, access to the pre-show Prizefighter Club, exclusive VIP merch and more (see vipnation.com for more info).

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Mumford & Sons (@mumfordandsons)

The tour is built around Prizefighter, which was co-produced and co-written with Aaron Dessner of The National, and features collabs with Hozier, Gracie Abrams, Chris Stapleton and Gigi Perez.

The album comes less than a year after the band’s March 2025 album, RUSHMERE, which debuted at No. 1 in the U.K. According to Live Nation, the album sessions were as much about rediscovery as recording, and the 14-track set feels unpolished in the best sense.

The band is already getting into the Prizefighter era visually, too. The official music video for the album track “The Banjo Song” is out now, with a few stripped-down sessions making the rounds online! And if the early reaction is any indication, it’s quickly becoming a fan fave, with more than a few followers saying it’s already on repeat.

“Despite the magnificence of all the songs on Prizefighter which we receive in full sonic glory tomorrow, The Banjo Song is soooo sweet, really resonates lyrically and it’ll stay on repeat for me,” one fan wrote under a private serenade of the song on Instagram, with another simply adding that the song was “absolutely amazing!”

If you’re new(ish) to the band’s orbit: Mumford & Sons is a London-based folk-rock group that helped push the banjo-forward sound into mainstream music in the late 2000s. The group is now a trio (founding member Winston Marshall left in 2021), and this June’s Toronto date will be a notable return for local fans: the last time they were in the city was for a two-night run at Scotiabank Arena in December 2018.

This time around, Toronto fans can nab tickets through Ticketmaster once sales open.

Winter in Toronto can feel like it lasts forever, so it helps when the city turns into a giant gallery. From a visual art exhibition by Ukrainian and Turkish artists to rarely seen works by a key figure in Toronto’s 1940s art scene, here are five upcoming exhibitions worth planning around in the next few weeks.

The Soul in Five Forms

Where: Etobicoke Civic Centre Art Gallery, 399 The West Mall, Etobicoke
When: Feb. 25–March 26, 2026. Opening reception: Sunday, March 1 at 2 p.m.
Cost: Free (no tickets required)

The Soul in Five Forms brings together Ukrainian and Turkish artists to celebrate and promote Ukrainian culture and identity through visual art. The show’s big theme is human-scale: it’s all about identity, belonging and transformation, told through multiple artistic voices (described as five cultural perspectives that reflect on the human spirit). Expect a mix of styles, including gestural landscapes like Mustafa Cetin’s Abstract Nature.

Edna Taçon: Verve and Decorum

Where: Art Gallery of Ontario, 317 Dundas St. W.
When: Feb. 28–Aug. 31, 2026. Free public opening on Feb. 28, 2–3 p.m.
Cost: General admission applies, but admission is always free for AGO Members, AGO Annual Passholders, Ontarians under 25 and Indigenous Peoples

The AGO’s new spotlight on Edna Taçon is an easy add to your calendar, especially if you’re into non-objective art! Taçon was a key figure in Toronto’s 1940s art scene and had a huge impact on the development of abstract painting in Canada, with work characterized by floating compositions and flowing lines rendered through a loose blending of colours. This exhibit features more than 25 oil paintings, watercolours and paper collages from the 1940s, as well as archival material, courtesy of Taçon’s family and lenders across Canada. Curated by Renée van der Avoird, AGO Associate Curator of Canadian Art.

Porcelain Narratives

Where: Cedar Ridge Creative Centre, 225 Confederation Dr., Scarborough
When: Feb. 28–Mar. 23, 2026. Opening reception: Sunday, March 1, 1–3 p.m.
Cost: Free (and no tickets required)

Toronto-based artist Tanya Besedina will fill Cedar Ridge’s gallery space with porcelain sculptures and installations that explore themes of memory, transformation and resilience, but it’s the material details that will really pull you in! The works use porcelain for its strength and translucency, then add accents like cobalt pigment and gold lustre, with recurring motifs like faces, eyes, seeds and organic forms that represent renewal and interconnectedness. It’s the perfect way to spend an afternoon, because the works encourage you to slow down and notice subtle shifts in form and meaning. Bonus: check out the live performance by Ave Choir Toronto at the opening reception (March 1, 1–3 p.m.).

Tangled Art + Disability: Naal-Naal

Where: Tangled Art Gallery, 401 Richmond St. W., Suite 124
When: March 6–May 1, 2026
Cost: Free

Naal-Naal is a new solo exhibition by Pree Rehal, an artist-educator whose work is rooted in the disabled community. The exhibition moves across textiles, audio, film, embroidery and even puppets, with a central collaborative piece called “The Chrysalis.” Opening night includes light refreshments and a chance to meet the artist.

Constructed Light Exhibition

Where: Clark Centre for the Arts, 191 Guildwood Pkwy., Scarborough (inside Guild Park and Gardens)
When: March 4–30, 2026. Opening reception: March 7, 1–3 p.m.
Cost: Free

Constructed Light is a calming little gallery detour! Scarborough artist Yue Gao plays with the push-and-pull between light, colour and geometry, creating a “dynamic tension between freedom and order” (it’ll kind of feel like you’ve stepped into an atmosphere with its own rules). The exhibition starts from digital studies of light and form, then reconstructs those ideas into new spatial arrangements on canvas, creating scenes that focus on structure and stillness. Afterward, take a quick walk through Guild Park and Gardens.

If you’re looking for more installations to explore, check out this mid-winter Toronto beach exhibition that will feel like you’re stepping into an optical illusion, and this epic art crawl that takes place in Toronto’s coolest neighbourhood.

As Blue Jays pitcher Kevin Gausman enters the final season of his five-year, US $110 million deal he signed with Toronto (a contract that helped reshape the team’s rotation heading into 2022), he’s become noticeably reflective about what comes next.

This week in Dunedin, Fla., the Jays right-hander didn’t exactly dismiss the idea that his time in the MLB could be nearing the end.

In a recent interview with The Athletic, Gausman acknowledged retirement has been on his mind during the offseason as he enters the final year of his contract with Toronto.

“I think it’s definitely a possibility,” Gausman said Wednesday. “I have really loved my time here. Do I know what’s ahead of me? I don’t really know. No idea. It’s something that I have definitely thought about in the offseason. But now that we’re here, I’m just focused on this year. I’m gonna give everything I have for this organization and this team this year. What’s beyond that? I really have no idea.”

That possibility lands differently coming from a player like Gausman. He’s 35 and heading into his 14th major-league season. And on paper, there’s nothing about his recent performance that suggests it’s time to go.

In 2025, he logged 193 innings with a 3.59 ERA and 189 strikeouts, and played a huge part in helping the Jays reach the 2025 World Series.

So why raise the possibility now? It appears to come down to time, and, more specifically, where he wants to spend it.

“My kids are only getting older,” Gausman told The Athletic. “The more you push that envelope, the more you’re risking. What’s the positive? What’s the negative? Do I get home and really only have a couple more years of them even wanting to be around you?”

With the 2026 season set to begin March 27, Jays fans have at least one more year to watch Gausman at the top of the rotation (whatever he decides comes next).

You might not remember exactly when it happened, but sometime in 2016, suddenly, The Ordinary was everywhere. The Toronto-based brand, immediately recognizable for its no-frills packaging, extremely low prices and unconventional marketing strategy, turned the skincare industry on its head at a time when transparency was a rarity. But a couple years later in 2018, the brand started making headlines for a different reason: their founder, Brandon Truaxe, started posting erratically on the company’s Instagram, from publicly firing employees to cruelly responding to commenters. More confusing drama ensued, ending in Truaxe being ousted as CEO by an Ontario Superior Court judge. Months later, in early 2019, Truaxe tragically passed away.

But those are just the headlines. Six years later, the casual outsider likely doesn’t even remember Truaxe’s name, only the vague narrative beats that formed The Ordinary’s rise, fall and rise again. A group of his friends, and employees, wanted to change that.

The result was The Abnormal Beauty Company, a new Crave documentary chronicling parent company Deciem and The Ordinary’s evolution and the real story of the man behind it. Of course, it’s been years since this story began, and the brand seemingly has emerged relatively unscathed. So why now?

“The public narrative around him froze at a singular, tragic moment — one that flattened the complexity of who he was and what he built,” Dakota Kate Isaacs, executive producer of the documentary, says. “Those of us who were inside the company knew the story was incomplete. This . . . was about reclaiming a narrative that had been reduced to headlines and restoring the dimension of a very human story.”

The documentary is unique in that the company it follows was also involved in the creation of the film itself: it’s directed by Aref Mahabadi, a founding member of Deciem and executive produced by Isaacs, who was the senior director of global new ventures at Deciem until recently. In a few scenes when Mahabadi sits down with a group of former and current Deciem employees, the conversation is much more of that between friends rather than between director and interviewee. With a different subject, or a different story, this overlap might come across as disingenuous, corporate and sanitized. But here, it lent a much-needed softness to the film. Truaxe’s story is devastating, and in less careful hands, The Abnormal Beauty Company could have become a gossip tale, rehashing the most dramatic moments of his life.

Instead, viewers learn the full story of who Truaxe was, through the eyes of his friends and family. The documentary paints a compassionate portrait of a man who was a true skincare genius, endlessly outgoing and friendly. He built a true “family” out of the workplace; the entire staff and Truaxe would often go on social outings together, choosing to spend time with each other outside of work hours. His true friendship with co-founder Nicola Kilner is clear in the clips of the pair from the early Deciem days — they appear almost joined at the hip, Kilner the calm and measured counterbalance to Truaxe’s effervescent energy.

It also sheds some light on his final few months.

“Brandon was brilliant, generous, difficult, kind, magnetic and human. To this day I’ve never met anyone like him, he was truly a genius,” Isaacs says. “To reduce his complexities would have been dishonest, and to shrink his story to his final year would have been missing the point.”

His friends and past co-workers, dad and sister, Kilner and his former partner all candidly share their perception of Truaxe’s breakdown on Instagram, and the fallout that followed. Isaacs says that while some people the documentary team asked to interview said no, finding reliving the memories of the person they loved too painful, a few changed their minds over time.

“Many people chose to participate not because it was easy, but because they felt it mattered. They wanted Brandon remembered as a full, complex human being and not reduced to a headline or a final moment,” she says. 

His struggle with mental illness is briefly touched on, and treated with compassion — and Isaacs says that was an important part of the filmmaking process. “We tend to flatten people when they struggle, either into tragedy or into cautionary tale,” she says. “The reality is much more complicated. Many high-functioning, high-achieving people are privately battling things most of us cannot see.”

The Abnormal Beauty Company is currently streaming on Crave, Prime Video and Apple TV.

Most Torontonians cringe (just a little) when someone hits Toronto with a hard second “T,” and Raptors star Scottie Barnes just proved it.

In a now-viral moment from NBA All-Star Media Day, Barnes paused an interview after a reporter pronounced the city’s name in a way that sounded very, well, not-from-here, hitting it with the second T.

Barnes jumped in with a friendly correction.

“Torono, Torono,” he repeated, hinting that you have to let the second “T” fade out. The reporter playfully brushed it off with a quick “yeah, yeah,” and moved on, which only fuelled the online comments.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by The Brandon Gonez Show (@brandongonezshow)

 The clip has been making its rounds online, with Toronto fans celebrating Barnes for doing what many residents do instinctively: either quietly correct the pronunciation, or decide whether it’s worth stepping in to begin with (and Barnes, apparently, decided it was).

On YouTube, one commenter summed up the vibe perfectly: “The Toronto Mans letting the International media know what’s up hahaha,” while another went full proud-parent mode: “I love Scottie Barnes as a person, as a great basketball player, and as a Raptor… Scottie did a great job trying to correct the interviewer on how to pronounce Toronto as ‘Torono’… he knows that the last ‘t’ is silent. I love it!”

Over on Instagram, the comments were a bit more playful: “Turrronno loves you @ya.boy.scottie,” one user wrote. Another joked, “They didn’t even realize this in the movie ‘The Man from Toronto’.”

Things got a bit more animated on Reddit. In one thread, a few people even stood up for the reporter. “It’s people from the suburbs who want to reaffirm themselves. I was born here and I sometimes pronounce the second T…” one user said, drawing a ton of backlash.

Another user responded, “I’m no fan of our carbrained suburbanites, but pronouncing the second T is absolutely an instant tell that you’re not from here. Torontonian born and raised. It’s definitely not a suburban thing. It’s GTA wide.”