Brrr!

My walk home from Yuk Yuks took me through the crowd of clubbers in the Entertainment District tonight and I'm amazed at how little clothing the girls wore as I shivered in my coat. There were girls in halter tops and short skirts tottering about in to high heels. Like, seriously! The club scene has certainly changed since the days I used to go out.

p.s. Yuk Yuks was funny. I'm pretty certain Steve Patterson, tonight's headliner, was drunk.

Opening night at the AGO

I caught up with wL over sushi Friday night and stood in line in the rain to get into the newly-renovated AGO designed my Frank Gehry. I walk by the AGO everyday on my way to work and have always found the spiral stairs that jut out of the southern facade rather odd, but after having climbed the stairs down, I've a new appreciation for them because the view's fantastic!

Here's the view from the inside of the northern facade - it reminds me of a ship's skeleton. In the first picture below, you can see some of the names of the Italian families who donated $10 million for the new sculpture gallery.


The collection isn't entirely new to me so we wandered through rather quickly. I have plans to go back soon in the day to take in the views of the city - preferably in sunlight.

Still here...

So my cousin M and his girlfriend I left Tuesday morning and I've been catching up on my sleep ever since. It was a short visit but it was long too because I've never myself played host to anyone before and I must say, it's rather exhausting!

We spent Friday afternoon at Pacific Mall before meeting the rest of my family for dinner. We spent Saturday wandering along Queen West to Trinity Bellwoods and broke for brunch at Czehoski before heading to the Distillery District to browse. We finished it with a big family dinner back at my mother's with my aunt, uncle and cousins in attendance. We went to Niagara Falls on Sunday so I can tell people back in Amsterdam that she's seen the Falls should they ask, and of course, winetasting in Niagara-on-the-Lake! We finished the night with dinner at Jamie Kennedy Wine Bar - I figured it was a good choice and the food served there is pretty representative of Canadian cuisine - whatever that is! Also, the tapas-style dishes meant we could try lots of different things.

M has a maternal great-aunt here so I dropped him and I off Monday to have lunch with her and did some work while I waited for them to call me back for a pick-up. I had never been to a Pottery Barn before so we spent the rest of the afternoon at Yorkdale. I think I may get this endtable from PB and this rug from Crate and Barrel for my living area. We had dinner their last night here at Foxley since they were asking for Asian Fusion. Yummy blue crab and avocado salad...and black sesame creme brulee!!! Mmmmmm!

And every night, we'd chat until 2 or 3 am so I never well-and-truly-recovered from my hangover Friday morning.

Project Blinkenlights

I walked through Nathan Phillips Square on my way home from yoga last night and noticed that the windows were all lit up in seemingly random patterns....until the letters L, O, V, E lit up the glass. I guessed that it was some kind of dry run for Nuit Blanche and turns out I was right.

Stereoscope by the Berlin-based trio, Project Blinkenlights uses every single window of city hall and a grid-work of multiple light sources to create a unified light show that can be activated by smart phones and control mechanisms at the site itself.

Queen & Soho @ 5:45pm

Beautiful Day

I woke up this morning and went for a run and am so glad I did because I feel so good! I headed down towards Harbourfront and it was the perfect weather - partly cloudy with just a touch of a breeze off the water. I ran for 50 min which is unusual since I'm usually good for maybe 15 min before the first stitch teases me but none of that today. I kept up a steady, comfortable pace and probably could have gone longer but decided to circle back after hitting the Power Plant.

I am really loving how close everything is - I ran through the Toronto Music Garden where it seems free classical concerts are held in the summer so I have that to look forward too, not to mention the close proximity to the Harbourfront Centre where the International Festival of Authors is held annually and there are various reading events through the year. So glad I'm finally downtown!

CB & WE in TO!!

I knew that Crate & Barrel was coming to Toronto - and I've been waiting impatiently for their first store to open at Yorkdale later this month - but what I didn't know was that West Elm is coming too, to the Liberty Village neighbourhood not too far from me, as reported in October's Style at Home! I've long had my eye on their goodies, like this lovely branch table:

And their Parson's Desk:

But what I think I may end up getting is their Overlapping Squares Daybed for my den:


Can't wait!!

Swaminarayan Mandir

I made it out to Swaminarayan Mandir yesterday afternoon and am so glad I did because it is an extraordinary feat of architecture.

Photos were prohibited inside the temple but check out the amazing detail of the carved teak outside the main entrance below:


The great hall beyond the entrance doors featured the same intricately carved teak details. It was awesome.


The Mandir is open to the general public for meditation and prayer, so if you have the chance, do head on out to the 427/Finch for a visit. You won't be disappointed.

Doors Open Toronto: Swaminarayan Mandir

handout photo via Toronto Star

I blogged about Swaminarayan Mandir last July before it officially opened and this weekend I have the chance to see it since it is one of the buildings that will be featured in Doors Open Toronto this year. Click here for a listing of all the participating locations and click here for a video tour of Swaminarayan Mandir with Christopher Hume, the Toronto Star's architecture critic.

Toronto Style

The Toronto Star published a story in its Ideas section today about a distinct Toronto architectural style, or school, as noticed by Architecture professor Rodolphe el-Khoury who is Canada Research Chair in architecture and urban design at the University of Toronto.

In his own words, he describes it thusly:

If I were to be very general, it is a particular way, particular manner in the use of materials, for instance a predilection for very tactile materials, for rough stone, textured stone, rich woods and natural materials. What's interesting is the combination of this very rustic palette with a very modern, clean, formal language. So you get the sharp geometry and outlines of modern architecture, but you get the more traditional rustic materials blended with it, and it makes for a very particular flavour.

Click here to read more.

Now, if you had asked me even 3 months ago if I could imagine myself living in a modern home such as artist Charlie Patcher's home studio below, I would have said no way! I would have said my ideal home is something more traditional...maybe English or French in style...something you'd see in the Annex or Hogg's Hollow neighbourhood, but there's something about the square-shaped glass facade that reminds me of framed shadow boxes which I love.

Image by David Cooper via Toronto Star

The case for walking

I got a pair of free passes to see a preview screening of Becoming Jane, the movie starring Anne Hathaway as Jane Austen this Thursday and had to go down to Bloor and Jarvis to pick them up. I took the subway down during my lunch hour and walked out east along Bloor where I noticed this sculpture called "Community" by Kirk Newman. According to the nearby plaque, it was commissioned by Manulife Financial in 2001.

I can't tell you how many times I've driven by it in the last 6 years and not noticed it. I love how dynamic the people look: the men striding briskly through the crowds swinging tbeir arms to the left; the tourist looking upwards through the lens of his camera; the group of men standing in the middle taking calls on their cell phones; the boy kicking a ball; the father holding his son up in the air; and the guy looking to make his way through this crowd on his rollerblades on the right.

It's come to my attention in the last little while that I miss a lot while driving around in my car. One of the things I'm really looking forward to about living downtown is being able to just walk around and experience the city up close and personal. I can't wait to share what I see.

U of T Time

I had time to kill in between Fringe shows today and played tourist beginning with a stop at the ROM to check out the visiting Ancient Peru Unearthed: Golden Treasures of a Lost Civilization exhibition and spent the 30 minutes I had left before picking up the ticket to my last show by wandering along Philosopher's Walk through the U of T campus.

I went to school in Waterloo where the campuses lack the history and character of the buildings here and there's a tiny part of me that wishes I'd stayed in town for school if only because of the U of T campus, which has stood in for many an American university in movie and television production filmed here.

The sundial above is on King's College Circle, and below is Trinity College, the Anglican college founded in 1851 that counts among its graduates writer Malcolm Gladwell, filmmaker Atom Egoyan, businessman Ted Rogers, former Governor-General Adrienne Clarkson, and Canada's ambassador to Washington, Michael Wilson.

Below is Soldiers' Tower, built in 1923-4 and located at the western end of Hart House.

Carved in stone on the Memorial Screen are the ranks, names and units of the 624 members of the U of T who gave their lives while on active service in WWI, along with In Flanders Fields (below) the poem written by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae in 1915 which continues to symbolize the sacrifices of those who fought in WWI.

The two walls of the archway record the service of the 557 men and women lost in WWII:

Below is Convocation Hall, which was built 100 years ago and plays host to the university's annual graduation ceremonies - hence the name.

And last but not least, Robartes Library, where I spent much of my non-working and sleeping hours for all of May and the first half of June in 2003 studying for my 2-day CMA Entrance Examination. I'd heard that it was designed to resemble a turkey but I could never see it until this evening, on my walk back to St. George subway station after my last show. I was waiting for the light to change so I could continue northward when I looked up and it just clicked: I've been blind to it all this time because I've always approached it from the wrong direction!

So tell me, d'you see the turkey too?

Varsity Centre

Rather than take the subway back to my car from Dupont station, I decided to walk to Yonge/Bloor. I cut through the residential streets of the Annex, a neighbourhood I would LOVE to live in one day if only I could afford it.

I saw Varsity Centre for the first time and was intrigued as I glimpsed the stands first on my walk eastward along Bloor.


The track is blue rather than the more typical ruddy-brown after U of T's Varsity Blues athletics teams. The view of it with CN Tower and the blue skies in the background was hard to resist so I just had to share:

Simply Fantastic

Richard Lautens/Toronto Star

I came across this article in today's paper about a Hindu temple going up at Hwy 27 and Finch and from the looks and sound of it, it's simply fantastic:

- the local Hindu community paid for the $40 million building without any public or foundation funding and provided 400 volunteer workers

- the materials include marble from India and Italy and limestone from Turkey which were first shipped to a series of villages in India where they were sculpted into their final form

- there is no steel amongst the 24,000 individual parts as the walls are all load-bearing and every element is carved in stone: the 340 columns are solid rock, the curved interiors of the domes are sculpted from marble and held in place with keystones and even the balustrades are made of carved stone

The project, begun in 2005 and officially opening July 22, will have taken only 18 months to build given that construction stopped in the winter months.