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House of the Week: $1.7 million for a green-minded home overlooking the Don Valley

ADDRESS: 118 Parkview Hills Crescent

AGENT: Raza Haider Naqi, Re/Max Vision Realty Inc., Brokerage.

PRICE: $1,749,000

THE PLACE: Designed by Toronto-based sustainable design firm Urbaneco, this open-concept home is the ultimate in eco-friendly modernism. Twelve-foot glass walls in the kitchen and living rooms retract to seamlessly integrate the interior living space with the professionally landscaped backyard, while the master bathroom overlooks the Don River ravine, creating the feeling of a pastoral oasis within the busy urban environment.

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The Informer

The New Normal

May 11, 2011 | 4:34 pm

2 Comments

Apparently, Toronto still isn’t in the big leagues. But that may be a good thing

T.O. is the second best (Image: Anonymous)

U.S. firm PricewaterhouseCoopers has released a list of the world’s best cities, in which “best” is defined by a high score on an index that’s intended to highlight “cities of opportunity.” That New York City took the top spot is no surprise—they did, um, pay for the study—but we’re a little bit tickled that Toronto came in a close second, despite what the report calls its “beta city” status, which, apparently, means that it isn’t “part of the conversation with London, Paris and New York.”

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The Informer

Quibbling Rivalries

May 5, 2011 | 2:49 pm

3 Comments

Kissinger versus Ferguson: three things we hope to see at the next Munk Debates

It’s interesting—in the “kind of weird” sense of the term—that an academic debate hosted by the University of Toronto garners the attention that it does. Nonetheless, the Munk Debates have somehow managed to make a splash on the international scene (which is exactly the sort of splash Toronto cares about). Whether the subject is the environment or atheism, the foreign press corps takes note, and the next debate should be no different, as Henry Kissinger and Fareed Zakaria square off against Niall Ferguson and David Daokui Li over whether the 21st century will belong to China. Given the stodgy, prim and proper environs, those in attendance will probably be painfully polite—but we’re still holding out hope for some fireworks. A small wish list after the jump.

1. Someone brings up Rising Sun
It may be a distant memory now, but back in the early 1990s, plenty of smart people thought that Japan would supplant the U.S. as the world’s biggest superpower. One real-estate bubble—and resultant economic collapse—later, and Japan’s economy has spent nearly 20 years underperforming. It makes the entire genre of Japan’s-coming-to-eat-our-lunch fiction look rather silly.

2. Someone brings up Wilfrid Laurier
If the supposed best and brightest couldn’t predict the future two decades ago, they probably shouldn’t attempt a century’s worth of guessing. Seriously: predicting how the 21st century is going to pan out in 2011 is about as hubristic as saying, in 1904, that Canada would “fill the 20th century.”

3. Someone goads Henry Kissinger
It’s a shame the debate is likely to be so gosh-darn polite, because we’d be awfully tempted to give Kissinger a poke and a prod. Say, if he claims China can’t sustain its power without respecting human rights, or if he argues that China needs to respect the rule of law. Or better yet, if he says he’s worried about China’s treatment of other, smaller Asian countries around it.

• Be it resolved the 21st century will belong to China [Munk Debates]

The Dish

Culinary Curiosities

May 5, 2011 | 2:21 pm

5 Comments

Environmentalism vs. health throwdown: two Girl Scouts launch petition against cookies made with palm oil

Girl Scout cookies: delicious but potentially habitat-destroying (Image: Marit & Toomas Hinnosaar)

This story has all the right ingredients for a made-for-TV movie: multinational food producers, the war on trans fats, a dash of environmentalism and two young heroines caught in the middle of it all. Rhiannon Tomtishen and Madison Vorva, two Grade 10 Girl Scouts from Ann Arbor, Michigan, have launched a petition to the Girl Scouts of the USA to stop using palm oil in their signature cookies—and not because it’s high in saturated fat.

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The Informer

Battleground Toronto

April 18, 2011 | 12:31 pm

24 Comments

Gerard Kennedy versus Peggy Nash in Parkdale-High Park: the huggiest grudge match ever

Gerard Kennedy and Peggy Nash are slugging it out in Parkdale-High Park (Images: John Michael McGrath)

Like so many ridings in the 416, Parkdale-High Park is hosting a showdown between the Liberals and the NDP while the Tories and the Greens duke it out for third place. What’s odd about this district, however, is that it might actually change hands on May 2—and both of the viable candidates have “re-elect” signs (the NDP put orange tape over the “re-” without being forced to the way the Liberals were elsewhere). Liberal incumbent Gerard Kennedy took Parkdale-High Park from the NDP’s Peggy Nash in 2008 by 3,000 votes, and Nash is back for a rematch. Like in Trinity-Spadina—the one other downtown riding that may swing—this is a fight between the left and the really left. The knives aren’t out, but the fight is interesting nonetheless, especially with the NDP’s numbers on the rise across the country. Here, we talk to Kennedy and Nash about what’s at stake for Parkdale-High Park.

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The Informer

From the Print Edition

March 7, 2011 | 9:17 am

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Reason to Love Toronto: Because our blades are glorious

(Image: Derek Shapton)

Come winter, al fresco activities tend to go into the deep freeze. Heads down, we scurry along grey streets, grimacing as frigid puddles breach the fragile barriers of supposedly waterproof boots. It can be hard to stay positive, let alone active, which is why we love the Colonel Sam Smith Ice Trail. It’s a 250-metre, figure-eight-shaped skating path in south Etobicoke, and it’s putting real smiles on pale February faces.

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The Informer

It's Miller Time

March 1, 2011 | 10:54 am

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David Miller now getting handsomely paid to do the stuff he wanted to do anyway

Grist for the Miller: at his new gig, the former mayor will focus on the environment

While the new city council busies itself getting rid of what he built and planned, David Miller is going back to Bay Street. The formal announcement came today that the former mayor is returning to the law firm he left in 1994 to run for public office. According to the press release from Aird and Berlis, Miller will hold the title of Counsel, International Business and Sustainability: “Mr. Miller will assist the firm in the implementation of its international business development strategy, with an initial focus on its clean technology, energy and environmental practice areas.”

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The Informer

Pan Amania

February 23, 2011 | 4:44 pm

1 Comment

If some Toronto parks smell gross, blame the Pan Am Games

Downtown as viewed from Riverdale Park (Image: Susan Drysdale)

Some of Toronto’s favourite parks, such as Riverdale and Centennial, are built on former landfills. This isn’t normally a problem, because a) these landfills are generally very old and stable by now, and b) any problem of leaking methane gas or leaching fluids is monitored to the tune of $6 million per year. Well, normally, anyway—thanks to the Pan Am Games, the $23-million fund put aside to monitor the old landfills is now being used to clean up the building site for an aquatic centre in Scarborough.

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The Informer

The New Normal

February 22, 2011 | 3:17 pm

6 Comments

Toronto fourth most livable city in the world: The Economist

The big easy: life in T.O. is relatively sweet (Image: Still The Oldie, from the Torontolife.com Flickr pool)

According to The Economist’s annual ranking of global cities, Toronto is the fourth most livable city in the world. Hogtown scored 97.2 out of a possible 100 points—a rating that considers a number of indicators under the categories of stability, health care, culture and environment, education and infrastructure. Each indicator is rated according to acceptability, and each category is given a certain amount of weight, all of which are then amassed to assess the locations around the world that have the best and worst living conditions. Toronto’s scores, after the jump.

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The Informer

Yours to Recover

February 14, 2011 | 1:03 pm

7 Comments

Kneel before Scarborough, Ontario: province’s biggest renewable energy resource will go untapped thanks to Bluffs voters

Offshore wind farms, like this one near the English Channel, won't be coming to the waters near you (Image: phault)

There’s nothing quite like watching a government run against itself: after years of touting itself as the greenest government in North America, Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal government has spent the last three months running away from various parts of its clean energy program. Friday saw the latest and greatest example of this, as Queen’s Park used exciting, headline-grabbing news elsewhere in the world to distract from an announcement they’d rather not have made: Ontario is halting offshore wind projects in the Great Lakes until further study.

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The Informer

Quibbling Rivalries

February 10, 2011 | 5:04 pm

3 Comments

“Toronto greenest big city”? Um, not quite

A new report from the magazine Corporate Knights has ranked Toronto’s cities by a number of factors, and found that Toronto is the greenest city in the category of “large cities.” So, inevitably this gets a bit of crowing from Toronto’s chattering classes: the Globe and Mail, BlogTO, both cheered the news. Even the city of Toronto itself got in on the triumphalism. While the Globe notes that Toronto lags behind Vancouver, there’s something that should set off anyone’s spidey-sense: the Corporate Knights report ranks Vancouver as a “medium city” instead of a large one—but the list of “large cities” includes Ottawa and Edmonton. Huh?

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The Informer

From the Print Edition

February 2, 2011 | 9:02 am

54 Comments

The unaffordable city: how did Toronto get so !@#$%&* expensive—and is it worth it?

Middle-class life isn’t what it used to be. Thanks to a heated real estate market, a strong dollar, new taxes and stagnating incomes, Toronto has become, improbably, one of the world’s most expensive cities. Is it worth it? By Jason McBride

(Illustration by Julien Pacaud; skyline photo by Brian Summers)

Today, an average Saturday, I spent the following: $6 on a round-trip TTC ride; about $17 on groceries from the Wychwood Barns farmers’ market (organic Crispin apples, an olive boule and free-range eggs); $34 on two bottles of wine (one decent, one plonk); almost $20 on the recent Superchunk CD and $11 on toiletries. Lunch was cheap and simple: a peanut butter sandwich, an apple and a few spoonfuls of raspberry yogurt. Dinner was free: homemade rice-and-bean burritos at a friend’s house. On the way home from that modest dinner party, waiting forever for the Dufferin bus, I almost splurged on a cab, but it seemed wasteful. Then I got home and booked a flight to New York on Porter for a friend’s 40th birthday: another $326. There’s also what I spend on my mortgage, property taxes, insurance, utilities, cellphone, Internet, YMCA membership, charitable donations and credit card debt. All of that adds up to roughly $65 a day. So, as a childless, home-owning, not-terribly-extravagant-but-not-entirely-miserly-either Torontonian, this one day at the tail end of 2010 cost me—not counting the airfare, which, for argument’s sake, I’m setting aside as an exceptional expense—about $153.

That doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s about $20 more than what I make every day, after taxes. And it leaves nothing, obviously, for home repairs, clothing, vet bills, investments, medical expenses, birthday presents, savings, recreational drugs, holidays or the kid that Liz, my fiancée, and I have been talking about having this year but which, if things continue in this fashion, we’ll have to postpone having until we get jobs that net us more than $50,000 each a year.

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The Informer

In Transit

January 19, 2011 | 2:07 pm

6 Comments

Diesel vs. electric trains: study vindicates Clean Train Coalition on debate over rail line to Pearson (but the province is buying diesel cars anyway)

Finally, a transit story that has absolutely nothing to do with Transit City.

This one’s about a basic disagreement over technology choices and hasty cost-cutting by the Liberal government of Dalton McGuinty. In order to build a rail link between Pearson and Union Station in time for the Pan Am Games, Metrolinx has chosen to run diesel-powered trains through neighbourhoods where 25,000 schoolchildren play. Local activists, primarily the Clean Train Coalition, have been trying to get the province to consider electric trains instead. Today, they were (slightly) vindicated by a report from Metrolinx that recommends electrification—but not until 2017.

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The Dish

Weekly Lunch Pick

January 17, 2011 | 8:22 am

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Weekly Lunch Pick: oysters at Rodney’s by Bay

(Image: Trevor King)

The King West seafood mainstay opened this financial district offshoot on quiet Temperance Street last spring. The owners are as environmentally conscious with their food as they are with their decor, using mostly reclaimed pieces for a stylish maritime vibe. Between five and 10 kinds of oysters are available each day, drawn from both coasts and sometimes from as far away as Japan. This day’s selection includes clean-tasting Rappahannock River oysters from Virginia, briny Merigomish from Nova Scotia, and the salty-sweet Kusshi from B.C., helpfully arranged from the most subtle to most potent ($3 to $5 each). Mix and match with the house-brand condiments, including the appropriately named Danger Bay hot sauce. A bowl of Rodney’s crispy, salty frites rounds out the lunch, like an ultra-refreshing version of moules frites. A house-made ginger beer ($2.50) is the perfect seafood complement.

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The Informer

The New Normal

January 4, 2011 | 1:23 pm

2 Comments

London mayor doesn’t like Toronto’s garbage (but then again, who does?)

London bound (Image: Anthony Easton)

The newish mayor of London, Ontario, Joe Fontana, has a bone to pick with Rob Ford. He is upset that trucks pass through his city in order to ferry garbage from Toronto to the Green Lane Landfill, the new London-area destination for T.O.’s rubbish. He’d like to speak to Ford about cutting some kind of deal to stop the garbage, but his suggested fix is likely to be just as controversial: light it on fire.

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