Eglinton West police station to stay or go?

By

-

3:45 pm

Toronto Police Service, 13 Division, located on Eglinton Avenue West near Allen Expressway, will be consulting the community this fall on its future at this location, as part of a facilities review. Local councillor Joe Mihevc said he is adamantly against options that are being considered — other than keeping the station in the community — of either relocating the station or redrawing the neighbouring station boundaries to absorb 13 Division.

“I am very strongly opposed to it being closed down and integrated into any nearby stations to create what would be superstations,” Mihevc said. “From a policing perspective, having an address in the community is important — they [officers] get to know the community better, rather than driving in it or through it.”

“I am very strongly opposed to it being closed down.”

He is cautiously optimistic that the community’s desire to have the police station stay put will sway the decision in that direction.

Insp. Glenn Holt from 13 Division explained that the review is being done proactively as it comes up on the Toronto Police Service capital budget. They will be assessing changing needs and looking for efficiencies without sacrificing service. As part of the review, statistics on everything from violent crime to how evenly work is spread between officers in different divisions will be taken into account.

“I live in the city, so I know what kind of policing I want, so I’m looking at the service that they receive, and I wouldn’t want that impacted,” Insp. Holt said. But, he added, “I tell them [residents], ‘Remember you are taxpayers, and you also want best bang for buck, and by reconfiguring, maybe we can save money.’ ”

It’s a review that might potentially have implications for 53 Division, which polices midtown, as the portion of Forest Hill now part of 13 Division might naturally be absorbed by it if the boundaries are redrawn. This November, 13 Division is expected to make recommendations to the Toronto Police Service chief and deputies. From there, a report will be sent to the Toronto Police Services Board.

Blondes author lands a bombshell

By

-

3:45 pm

0

While on a plane to New York, local author Emily Schultz flipped through Vanity Fair and spotted an eerie Gucci ad. The advertisement depicted almost clonelike images of blonde women who looked, as she describes it, “vampire-ish.”

It was this image that set the wheels in motion for Schultz’s newest fiction work, The Blondes. She had been toying with the idea of a novel that examines blondes, women and beauty, and that ad solidified the theme.

The book begins with semi-naive Hazel, a Toronto grad student who has moved to New York to finish her PhD. She soon finds out she is pregnant with her married professor’s baby. Schultz adds some action, adventure, satire and then a wild plague that afflicts only blonde-haired women who go berserk and start attacking people in the process.

“I like to try to walk a line where something is a little bit of this and a little bit of that,” says Schultz, “sort of crossing genres.”

Shultz, who describes the book as Contagion for blondes, wanted to hook readers with an adventure aspect while exploring beauty, pop culture and the struggles women have with each other and with society.

“The most difficult part in writing a story like this is trying to make a plague that’s impossible believable for that moment that you’re in the book,” she says. “And so for me, I think that’s another reason that I wanted Hazel. I wanted her to be the grounding, you know, of all these fantastical circumstances.”

While writing the book, Schultz and her husband rented a cabin in the California desert, 30 miles from the nearest Internet connection. She was looking for a new headspace to write in, and it helped her immerse herself in Hazel’s character, too.

Trying to escape the plague in New York and make her way back home, pregnant Hazel finds herself holed up in a northern Ontario cabin with none other than her professor’s wife.

“I just wanted an absolute sense of isolation,” Schultz says about the experience. “The desert was very barren. You can hear a sound for miles and miles. It didn’t have the winter, but of course, writing winter if you’re a Canadian is pretty easy.”

Schultz studied English at the University of Windsor and co-founded the literary journal Joyland. Her first collection of short stories, Black Coffee Night, was shortlisted for the Danuta Gleed Award for Best First Fiction in Canada.

The Blondes, Schultz’s third novel, was released on Aug. 14. She will be appearing at Toronto’s International Festival of Authors next month.

Girl guide: playing nice on the playground

By

-

3:45 pm

0

I went to see the movie Bully at the Varsity and was shocked — not by the movie, but by the empty seats all around me. Everybody knows bullying is an issue for kids, but we don’t go see the movie … or do anything about bullying — because we feel hopeless and resourceless.

Let’s fix that! Now! And let’s start by pulling the veil off girl world. Girls are struggling with that which is most important to them — their relationships — and we’re not helping … yet. A great place to start is the new documentary Finding Kind. Get your daughter’s school to screen the movie and use it as a springboard for unwinding the twisted troubled skeins of girl world.

The movie describes girls’ cruelty to girls, which affects all girls. One of the filmmakers talks about her friends at middle school: “One day they just turned on me.” There followed two years of being afraid to go to school, “telling my mom I wasn’t feeling well.” She’s a hot blond now, and was then too. Which goes to show you it can happen to anybody. Girls end up sitting alone at lunch (because they move away from you when you sit down). Girls get told they’re sluts, or they need liposuction, they’re wearing the wrong thing. Then they ask themselves: “What’s wrong with me?” They try desperately to break in.

Girls can go from BFF to bloodbath in the blink of an eye, and you never know why they turned on you. Even the pretty girls are insecure … it’s tough to be at the top because you always worry about being de-throned.

In the movie we hear girls and women describe all this. We see their tears. They articulate how girls keep score … for years. It’s secretive, when you’re mad at someone you go to other friends and gossip about them, whereas guys get mad, get over it and move on. Girls do this because we find and define ourselves, literally, in our relationships, and relationships are thus the arena where we enact everything, including our aggression. Girls are still socialized not to say angry things; so instead of talking it through when we’re mad at a friend, we use that which matters most to us — friendship — as our weapon.

We do anger via ostracism and cruel gossip because we don’t know how to say: “I’m mad at you … you let me down.”

We vie for power that way too: In the movie, a grown-up queen bee says: “I was a cheerleader and I felt like I owned the school.… I really dished it out.… If they did not have social status, me and my friends … made fun of them.” This is social contagion. A queen bee shuns a girl and everyone else follows suit, lest they too be shunned.

The scope and intensity of girl world cruelty is greater now than ever before, thanks to two factors: the movie blames the media for sexualizing girls and showing girl-on-girl violence, which influences girls to compete against each other. Your worth (and hence your place in the social hierarchy) is based on what you look like, how thin you are and what you wear. That is a recipe for disaster. The second factor is the Twitterverse, cells and Facebook: 24/7 communication — minus a face-to-face encounter — desensitizes girls to the power of their messages. Cyber world seems unreal to them, so their inhibitions shrink.

So what’s the solution? In the movie, Queen Bees and Wannabees author Rosalind Wiseman says: “A real apology is transformative … you cannot have justice in a relationship without being able to acknowledge what you have done that has wronged the other person.” We see girls write personal apology cards in a group session. They speak their apologies aloud in the group. They speak them to the girls they wronged. There is the catharsis of tears.

Talk is the only answer. Girls desperately need to learn to speak their feelings instead of acting them out — and that depends on grown-ups’ help. Get your daughter’s school to screen Finding Kind. And start the healing conversation.

Locals kayak 200 kilometres for SickKids

By

-

3:44 pm

0

A plan two years in the making took a local father and son 202 kilometres from Kingston to Ottawa for the trip of a lifetime. However, it is not only their lives that this 12-day kayak paddle up the Rideau Canal will ultimately touch.

Larry Shapiro, 65, and son Adam, 45, kayaked up the Rideau Canal to help raise donations to send children to Camp Oki, Canada’s only summer camp for children with congenital heart disease. Every $1,000 they raised allowed another child to attend the week-long Muskoka camp.

“Children who go to this camp are more confident when they come home,” says Larry, a Thornhill resident, “because they are able to see that, even with all this equipment in their bodies and medication that they’re taking, they can participate in all the same sports as children who have not had this problem.”

“Children who go to camp are more confident when they come home.”

Some children who attend the camp have pacemakers and defibrillators built into their bodies that may make them feel handicapped, he adds.

“It’s not just for fun and games. It’s for them to recognize their abilities that they may not have thought they had.”

Larry says that, with the help of other locals — often customers at the Nortown Foods he manages — and partners at the Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), they exceeded their original fundraising goal of $2,000 by almost $3,000 even before the duo cast off Aug. 20.

Behind the scenes was Carol Lavine of Toronto, who originally had the idea of combining the Shapiro kayak team’s bucket list dream with helping SickKids. She suggested to Larry Shapiro that they do a “mitzvah,” or good deed, by using the impressive trip to help raise awareness for the cause.

Donations will be accepted until Thanksgiving for next year’s kids, with this summer’s camp having concluded in August.

For more information call SickKids directly at 416-813-6166, ext. 2361.

Lights, camera, action! — true love blossoms on set

By

Andrew Mannsbach

-

3:44 pm

0

Waking up and starting the workday was a mundane routine for Jennifer Valentyne — until one day she met the man of her dreams. Thinking her new camera guy on set was just a young intern, she was shocked and pleasantly surprised to find out his actual age — much closer to her own. Friendship quickly blossomed into love behind the scenes of Breakfast Television. The happily married couple are proud parents to two beautiful children, Jackson and Georgia. Here, Jennifer shares their story.

The first impression
I loved his quirky sense of humour, and in between weather hits we would sit around and laugh hysterically. I would joke with my roommate at the time that I thought my camera guy liked me. Greg is five years my junior, and I didn’t think of him romantically. One afternoon, Greg told me he liked someone and didn’t know how to tell them. I thought he was talking about me and that I’d have to let him down easy. After all, he had been flirting with me for two months! When he said another girl’s name, my heart went into my stomach. I couldn’t believe it. He liked someone else! I tried to act cool by pretending I didn’t care but it was written all over my face.

The first date
There was never a first date. In fact, he still owes me one! Three days after he told me he liked someone else, our company held its annual holiday party at the Docks. He never left my side. I acted a little cold but didn’t let him out of my sight. By the end of the night, most people had left the bar and we were alone. And then he said something that changed my life. Greg said he was the best kisser, and that if I kissed him, I wouldn’t regret it because it would be the best kiss of my life. I couldn’t believe his nerve! I wasn’t going to kiss him, but I couldn’t stop thinking about his confidence and about what he said, so I turned around and kissed him. He was right! It was the best kiss I’ve ever had.

The proposal
There really was no proposal. I was pregnant, and we were living together, so we decided to get married. We always knew we were getting married anyway. We definitely talked about marriage, but we talked more about kids. We really wanted kids, and we knew that we wanted a boy named Jackson.

The big day
Greg and I were married at Casa Loma on Jan. 28, 2000. I took a cancellation date at the venue. We planned the wedding in two and half months. My wedding day was magical. You know what was great? We didn’t have that stress of planning a wedding for over a year. People plan their weddings, and then you get to the day, and it’s such a letdown because you’ve put so much weight on that day. We didn’t. We didn’t have time. Picking a caterer, going out and doing taste testings: we had something to do every day. It went by so quickly and the day couldn’t have been more perfect.

Secret to their success
We live for our kids. We never want to be without them. They grow up so fast, and we don’t want to miss a thing. Also, Greg and me still working together is great. I’m the “LiveEye” host for BT. Greg is a technical floater on BT and is still my camera guy when I host in the studio. And of course, laughter. You can’t sweat the small stuff.

Band of the Week: Cuff the Duke

By

-

2:22 pm

0

As fans, it’s always a toss-up when our best-loved artists explore unknown sonic realms. So when folk outfit Cuff the Duke announced that their upcoming album, Union, would veer from their acoustic tradition, we were admittedly wary. And boy, is it heavy. Rife with electric hooks that, at times, have elements of psychedelia, frontman Wayne Petti (Toronto’s answer to Jeff Tweedy) ventures into rock territory while keeping the band’s alt-country bones.

We caught up with Petti ahead of their weekend gig at Yonge-Dundas Square to talk Greg Keelor, the folk-psych-rock scene and why WestJest owes him an acoustic guitar.

I heard WestJet broke your guitar recently. What happened?
We flew out to some festivals out west, and when I got on stage, I unpacked my acoustic right before we’re about to play and it had been smashed. I ended up being able to borrow one, but after the show I was frustrated and I took photos and I tweeted about it, calling them out on it. I was just talking to them today, they’re paying for the repairs and they’re renting me a replacement and they’re replacing my case. They’ve actually [laughs] been amazing about it. All things aside, I mean, they did ruin my guitar, but at the same time, they’re stepping up and taking responsibility for that.

So tell me about Union. How is it the continuation of Morning Comes?
Yeah, it is the continuation in many respects, and some of the songs on there are continuations, literally continuations of other songs from Morning Comes. This one is more looking forward, lyrically. Everything in the last one was really retrospective — looking back, questioning the paths and choices that were made, and this one is more looking forward and optimistic, in some ways there’s a level of acceptance in those decisions. It’s more optimistic than doubtful. Musically, there are definitely not typical Cuff the Duke songs. We’re trying to move forward sonically.

The new album sounds heavier, even influenced by classic rock. You’ve come a long way since “The Ballad of Poor John Henry.”
Right, yeah, totally. I think this record is more electric-based. Our last two records were very much acoustic-based, so it’s just another avenue, like, I wanted to play more electric guitar [laughs].

Is that a natural progression for the band?
For us, it’s hard to see the forest through the trees. To us it feels very natural and it doesn’t seem like that much of a difference, but for an outsider looking in, when you compare "Poor John Henry" to “Open Your Mind” on the new record, or “Where Did We Go Wrong,” which is a television-inspired song — but yeah, to us, it feels natural.

So if we were to get a hold of your iPod, who would be on the Most Played list?
The War on Drugs, big time. And likewise Kurt Vile, whose in that Philadelphia-folk-psych-rock scene. I don’t really think you hear too much of that on the record, but I think it’s electric-based and sonically more interesting than your typical rock albums.

Did Greg Keelor have anything to do with this record?
Oh yeah, well he loves the psych-rock [laughs]. Sometimes when we were trying to describe what we’re thinking, he’ll just go down and he has a crazy record collection, and he’ll just pull out an old psych record and put it on and say, ‘Is this the kind of thing you’re talking about?’ and we’re like, ‘Yeah, that’s the sound!’ He’s totally good at helping us find that vision, and also help it make sense. Sometimes when you’re trying new sounds, you can get lost in that process.

What can we expect from the show at Yonge-Dundas Square this weekend?
You’re going to hear a mix of music from all six of our albums, cause we’ll be playing some new songs, some Morning Comes, we kind of touch on every album in the set.

What I Wore: vintage finds from Penny Arcade and Value Village, plus, the best pair of $8 sunglasses ever

By

-

10:30 am

0

This edition of What I Wore is dedicated, in loving memory, to my sunglasses. We had a good two-year run before they were tragically lost at sea. Well, really, they were lost at lake while I tried to prove to my brother that I am still the underwater gymnast star I was as a child. Note to self: in the future, remove sunglasses before attempting backwards somersaults and handstands beneath the blue surface. Also, you are not as skilled as you once were, sorry.

Despite being the cheapest pair of sunglasses I owned, they were rarely removed from my face. I really can’t think of any other pair of $8 sunglasses that I would purchase in London, replace in New York and repeatedly fix in every city in between each time one of the arms fell off. As you can imagine, that happened often, being from the back of the bus and all.

Moving on, the rest of my outfit, thankfully, has not had to suffer the repercussions of any of my other failed attempts at showing off athletically. The entire outfit, in fact, was found over a weekend of shopping and fun spent with one of my NYC-based best friends who came to town for a visit.

The star-studded leather jacket was a gem found at Penny Arcade, one of my favourite vintage stores along the Dundas West strip, after a Caesar pit stop at The Lakeview. The crop top came from the launch party of online shop Nowhereland, right before a break on the Cold Tea patio. The skirt was a treasure found at Value Village in Leslieville, just after a delicious brunch at Lady Marmalade. Would you believe it is a vintage piece from Club Monaco? It’s funny how trends come around — this looks like it could be hanging in their stores this season. I also found chic black Dolce & Gabbana pants at Value Village that same day, but we’ll save that for another What I Wore story.

What I Wore: vintage leather jacket from Penny Arcade, criss cross crop top from Nowhereland, vintage Club Monaco skirt from Value Village, sunglasses (RIP) available at The Public Butter.

Gracie Carroll is a Toronto-based freelance writer whose work has appeared in ELLE UK, ELLEcanada.com, Plaid magazine and FILLER magazine. Keep up with her daily blog at www.graciecarroll.com.

Drink This: La Carnita’s Who Shot Ya?

By

-

10:10 am

0

Originating as a pop-up, La Carnita is the hottest thing to hit Hogtown since, well, Grand Electric. Spinning out tacos, ceviche, spicy street-style corn and much more, this College Street eatery has had a proper homestead for a few months now — and it’s packed to the rafters as soon as the doors open.

Named after a Biggie song, the Who Shot Ya? cocktail from bartender Japhet Bower pairs Bulleit bourbon with hibiscus grenadine, ginger syrup and freshly-squeezed lemon juice ($11). Finished with a curl of grapefruit zest, this tart and citrusy blend is like a breath of fresh tropical air after all the spicy offerings.

The best part? When you pay up, the bill arrives hand-in-hand with one of the Día de los Muertos prints that have become synonymous with the place. You’ll just have to fight over who gets it.

La Carnita, 501 College St., 416-964-1555

Other must-try Toronto cockails:

The blueberry soda at L’Unità
The Manhattan at Cocktail Bar

Morning Throwback: even before The Bachelor, Toronto women competed for attention

By

-

9:56 am

0

Back in 1936, attention-seeking Toronto women competed in scanty attire to win the affection and approval of their male peers. In 2012, they still do that — but just on national television. And with helicopter rides and hot tub scenes.

The Double Deuce Saloon closes; new resto-bar set to open in its place

By

-

3:52 pm

0

Queen West dive bar The Double Deuce Saloon has closed, and the venue has new owners who plan to open a bar and restaurant in its place. The bar was opened by The Harbord Room’s Cory Vitiello and his partners in 2009, but it changed hands shortly after. It closed for good about a month ago, and the space’s brand new owners — who officially take over in September — hint that the new venue will feature a “food twist uniquely original to Toronto.”

New mom goes mummy to battle baby weight

By

-

3:21 pm

0

I gained 60 pounds when I was pregnant with Holt, who was born six weeks ago. It got so bad, I took to naming my love handles, Pancake on the left and French Fry on the right. Get the picture?

I lost 40 pounds in the past few weeks by just eating healthy, avoiding sugar and fried foods and basically having no fun (or pancakes or French fries).

As everyone seems to know but me, the last 20 pounds are the hardest to lose. Although I’m not one who believes in quick fixes, I figure I put in my time, I’m doing my weights and giving up my goodies. Why can’t I get a little help? No, I’m not talking about sucking out my love handles.

But when I heard about the non-invasive, painless Universal Contour Wrap, well, I thought I should try it out. You know, research. I mean, if I could lose six inches just by being bandaged up lying down for an hour, it was worth a shot. People need to know about this stuff, right?

The thing with body wraps is that they are offered, well, everywhere, but they are all different to some degree and all claim to have the secret recipe for taking off the weight.

Hair Sculpture and Spa, located on Yonge Street just north of Davenport, also offers something called the Eurowave, billed as the “ultimate slimming machine.” So I went for the double-double.

It seemed a lot easier than seeing my trainer, who makes me actually sweat and work out.

I meet Bielinah, the woman who is going to do the treatments, and she tells me that she has clients who come in every three weeks for these treatments, some from as far away as the United States.

First, she measures my rib cage and my waist because the patches of the Eurowave are going to target my stomach (problem area numero uno!). Next, I’m hooked up with wires to a machine. (If you’ve ever had an ECG, it looks the same.) She cranks it up, and a tingling sensation grabs a hold of my love handles and stomach. I imagine the little electrical impulses zapping those pesky love handles to smithereens.

She ups the intensity every couple of minutes and can go as high as 25, but I stop at 18.

“This is like doing 200 sit-ups,” she says, and I really want to believe her. This “treatment” only lasts 18 minutes, I don’t sweat at all and nobody is up in my face asking for five more, just five more!

After she unhooks me, she measures me again and tells me I’ve lost 2.2 inches, which I think is fantastic.

My stomach is still tingling when I get into a disposable pair of underwear and bra, so I can begin the Universal Contour Body Wrap ($200).

Bielinah measures me again, but this time everything, including my jaw line, neck, upper chest, bust, under bust, rib cage, waist, abdominal, butt, hips, both thighs, mid-thighs, knees, calves, ankles, biceps, forearms and even my wrists.

I’m standing up as she wraps warm bandages “soaked in a secret solution” (some sort of mineral-rich clay) all around me. I look ridiculous, but sometimes a girl has to look ridiculous for a good cause. She uses approximately 20 bandages to wrap my entire body and then helps me into a silver rubber suit. I look like I’m 400 pounds and should be on a rocket ship.

The bandages are firm under my “spacesuit,” but I’m not claustrophobic. She tells me I have to lie there for an hour, and I do (reading about Kate Middleton in an old issue of Hello magazine wondering if she has to sit in a silly looking spacesuit to shed those vacation pounds? — probably not…).

After an hour, Bielinah comes back to get me. By this point the bandages are warm and soggy, and I’m itching like mad, so I’m desperate to get them off.

She measures me and tells me I’ve lost 11.2 inches overall. She also tells me that I shouldn’t shower for three days (gross) because the clay solution continues to work and make your skin silky smooth, helping with the tightening process.

So, now, do I notice anything right away? I really want to. The love handles still seem to be there, but I must admit my butt looks a lot better, and almost all the cellulite is gone.

But Bielinah reminds me: This doesn’t work on its own. I will still need to eat healthy and exercise and drink a lot of water. (I knew just doing these treatments alone was too good to be true.)

The following day I go to see my trainer. “I lost 11.2 inches,” I tell him. He looks at me skeptically and finally says, “Well your stomach does look a little smaller. But I still call bulls**t on the wrap.” He would say that.

Apparently the results last for 30 days. And it was pretty relaxing and revitalizing. But, in the meantime, I’m back to working out, no sugar, no fried foods and no fun. See you at boot camp?

Post City Magazines’ columnist Rebecca Eckler is the author of Knocked Up, Wiped!, and her latest books, How to Raise a Boyfriend and The Lucky Sperm Club.

Will condo bust spread?

By

-

3:19 pm

0

The gentle flap of For Sale signs in the torrid summer breeze has suddenly become a lot more commonplace in our ’hoods. No longer are they all plastered with a Sold Over Asking sticker in a matter of 48 or 72 hours. Some people attribute this slowdown to vacation-time doldrums. But has Ottawa’s new war-on-the-house campaign already had an impact?

Hmm. It wouldn’t be a surprise. After all, the 30-year mortgage has been murdered, with the drop to just 25 years equating to a mortgage increase of almost one per cent in terms of monthly payments. The cash-back home loan will also soon be history, so first-time buyers must actually use their own money rather than the bank’s. Borrowing qualifications are being hiked and regulators are insisting appraisals be more thorough. And no longer will CHMC even insure a mortgage on a house changing hands for more than a million.

Some people think this will nuke only Toronto’s out-of-control condo market. But whereas the changes ensure many projects are never built, the fallout won’t stop there. My pal Gwen recently bought a Leaside faux baronial McMansion for $1.5 million, and when her lawyer searched the title, it was discovered the previous owner had a $1.2 million mortgage on a 2009 purchase of $1.265 million. Yep, five per cent down. Full CHMC insurance. Now banned.

This raises the question of how much external trivialities — the government, the economy, interest rates — affect micro-markets such as Leaside, Lawrence Park, Thornhill, Moore Park, Hogg’s Hollow or Richmond Hill. Does it actually matter when there’s a recession or a stock market collapse?

Gwen asked me about that, so I sourced some numbers for her in-demand area. Leaside has a total of about 5,000 homes, for example, and new structures only arise on the graves of former bungalows.

The 22-year scorecard is in the table above. What does this tell us? That the area recovered quickly from the T.O. real estate meltdown of the early ’90s and even faster after the 2008–2009 financial crisis. We can also see the number of houses listed annually is consistently stable: an average of 168 a year or just over three per cent of the housing stock, which is the main reason prices usually swell.

But this chart’s also troubling. The average Leaside property now costs 184 per cent of what it did in 2000. It has doubled in just five years — light-years ahead of the 70 per cent increase in GTA real estate since 2002. Demand has consistently outstripped supply, pushing valuations to the extreme and ensuring new buyers are in the elusive one per cent of income earners. But has it been too much, too fast? Will the fed’s attack on the GTA’s downtown condo bubble throw spray all the way into midtown?

Gwen prays it’s different here.

Post City Magazines’ real estate columnist, Garth Turner, is a financial author, investment advisor and former MP. His daily blog is greaterfool.ca.