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?
(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. Read the rest of this entry »
Finally, a transit story that has absolutely nothing to do with Transit City.
When Tron: Legacy hits theatres tonight at 12:01 a.m., you can bet there’ll be legions of super-fans in attendance, eager to carefully pick apart every tiny detail that deviates from the cult-classic original. Canadian prop master Jimmy Chow knows this better than anyone. Chow was born and lives in Vancouver where much of Tron: Legacy was filmed. He’s the man behind the sleekly designed discs, bikes and bodysuits that will hopefully impress both diehard fans and newbies alike. Chow spoke with the CBC about the making of the film and the numerous challenges he faced as a designer. Here are four creative snags Chow encountered and overcame: 
The upper house of Parliament, apparently finished snuffing out 
With the Greater Toronto Area having one of the world’s longest commutes (
One 
