Kids and coffee, together at last (well, sorta) (Image: Karolyne Ellacott)

Playful Grounds has only been open a few days, but the kid-friendly College Street café is already garnering plenty of attention from the neighbourhood. Indeed, when we dropped by, one mother looked around incredulously before asking, “When did this open?” The shop is the creation of Davina Cheung-Brown and Tera Goldblatt, who met at a local drop-in centre. “We wanted to create a place that has everything moms need,” Goldblatt told us. “Drop-in centres are life savers, but we wanted an adult place that can accommodate kids—rather than the other way around.” Tired of getting the hipster brush-off in regular coffee shops, the duo decided to open a café that welcomes kids but can still appeal to adults.

Cheung-Brown and Goldblatt snagged a spot that already had child-friendly bones: a step-free entrance and toilets on the main floor. While the whitewashed bricks walls and black leather seating are much like those of any other new café, the front of the room is reserved for “stroller parking,” and tables feature corner protectors to prevent little heads from getting knocked. Each washroom comes equipped with kid-friendly seats and stools to aid hand washing; the family-sized bathroom is fitted with a chalkboard for babes to scribble upon while mommies or daddies tend to dirty diapers. Most importantly, the play zone is filled with enough stuff to keep the little ones amused for about as long as it takes to drink a cup of coffee.

With regard to beverages, adults can opt for coffee-based drinks from Alternative Grounds or Herbal Infusion tea. Weary parents can also sip on a glass of wine ($5) or have their coffee with a kick ($6.25) as the kids amuse themselves in the play area. “My mom’s always said, ‘One in the afternoon’s worth three at night,’ ” Goldblatt notes. Kiddie options include hot chocolate ($1.75) and steamers ($1.75)—available in sippy cups—in addition to Kiju juice ($2). Baked goods from Wanda’s Pie in the Sky and Sweets From the Earth are currently on the roster. As of next week, healthy lunch options will be introduced, and kid-friendly brunch is in the works.

Playful Grounds, 605 College St., 416-645-0484, playfulgrounds.com

Inside BruDa, once home to Negroni (and, briefly, Carpano)

Little Italy has seen a brisk changing of the guard in the past couple years, with the rise of new buzzy spots like Woodlot, Acadia and Frank’s Kitchen. A couple weeks ago, Neil Da Costa and Victor Brum, two veterans of the neighbourhood who first met at Trattoria Giancarlo, opened BruDa in the space that long held Negroni (and briefly held Carpano). Rather than pigeonholing themselves into specifically Italian, French or Spanish cuisine, they describe their restaurant’s menu as “European.”

Da Costa and Brum renovated the space themselves, creating a large, open-concept room with high charcoal ceilings and classic white walls, which house artwork by local artists like Nadia Lloyd and Loredana Blandisi. At the heart of the restaurant is an open kitchen helmed by executive chef Gordon Calman, whose most recent stint was at the Inn on the Twenty in Jordan. Calman aims to bring some of that wine country sensibility to his approachable menu here, with dishes that are simple yet refined.

The lunch menu is casual, with items like like wild mushroom bisque ($8), a smoked ham hock sandwich ($12) and chef-rolled gnocchi with truffle, Brussels sprouts and Ontario burrata ($14). At dinnertime, there are classic seared scallops ($13), slow-cooked spiced rabbit served on a potato cake ($10) and double-smoked pork tenderloin in a coffee-fig reduction ($17). The wine menu, chosen by Brum (who’s also a sommelier), includes European as well as Canadian selections. Just don’t ask for a negroni at the bar.

BruDa, 492 College St., 416-927-0222, brudarestaurant.com

By Signe Langford | Photographs by Kevin Hewitt

On November 30, councillors Joe Mihevc and Mary-Margaret McMahon took on the considerable challenge of trying to overturn nearly three decades of city hall opposition to backyard hens. They didn’t quite succeed. (Their motion to study the issue was referred to the municipal licensing and standards committee for consideration in February.) With his trademark zeal for kindergarten humour, Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti opined, “Now we’re going to have thousands of chickens crossing the road and we’re going to have neighbours fighting against neighbours because they don’t want to hit the chickens.” But what Mammoliti and his ilk don’t understand is that urban hen keeping didn’t really go away when it was outlawed in 1983. It just went underground—into garages, sheds and secluded corners of backyards. The hopes of these renegade urban hen keepers are now running high, riding Toronto’s ever-growing wave of locavorism. Here, nine of those rebels, who break the law every day, talk about that other love that dare not speak its name: that between man and hen.

First up, Jill and Sunshine »

ADDRESS: 701 Dovercourt Rd., Unit 305

NEIGHBOURHOOD: Palmerston-Little Italy

AGENT: Daiva Dalinda, Royal LePage

PRICE: $749,500

THE PLACE: A recently converted, 105-year-old Methodist church at Ossington and Bloor.

BRAGGING RIGHTS: Being ahead of the real estate curve. Right now, church conversions are hotter than Rob Ford’s temper (see our November issue for some of the city’s best). This development has preserved its holy heritage by incorporating the original steel trusses, brick, stained glass windows, cornice mouldings and even pews into the space.

BIG SELLING POINT: The building may be neo-Gothic, but it’s not gloomy: skylights were added to the vaulted ceiling to let extra light into the loft.

POSSIBLE DEAL BREAKER: Lapsed Christians might feel a bit guilty sleeping in on a Sunday morning with the sunlight streaming in through the stained glass windows.

BY THE NUMBERS:
• $749,500
• $737.64 monthly maintenance fees
• 1,370 square feet
• 105 years of history
• 19-foot ceilings
• 2 bedrooms
• 2 bathrooms
• 1 powder room
• 1 fireplace
• 1 Juliet balcony
• 1 parking space

By Monika Warzecha

The Buyers: Venezuelan expats Adriana Rosemberg, a 29-year-old scriptwriter, and her husband Jonathan, a 32-year-old ad executive.

The Story: The Rosembergs moved to Toronto in June 2009 to escape the violence and political instability of Venezuela. They were accustomed to the noise and street life of Caracas and wanted to live in a vibrant neighbourhood downtown. They also wanted enough space to spread out, and they quickly fell for the idea of a finished attic that could serve as a studio—she writes, he deejays. So the couple set a limit of $800,000—and armed themselves with a home inspection handbook—before setting off last December on a search that would span five months and more than 40 houses.

(Images: Couple by John Cullen; Crocker Avenue by Rachel Wine)

Kyle Brown and Rodney Bowers outside Hey Meatball!’s College Street storefront (Image: Caroline Aksich)

On a wall in Rodney Bowers’s new College Street venture Hey Meatball!, there’s a photo of a bandana-clad Bowers holding up a sign that reads “You’ll love the taste of our balls.” Bowers’s name is usually associated with more elevated dining—he worked at Mistura, opened The Citizen and The Rosebud and consulted for The Gabardine—but after getting married and having a daughter, he wanted a break from the high-stress world of $45 entrées.

The inspiration comes from a kofta (Turkish meatball) shop Bowers and his wife Natalie saw in Istanbul. The premise was simple: customers picked their meatball (beef, lamb or chicken) and paired it with a side dish like salad or roast potatoes. “I was just so in love, I knew I wanted to open a kofta shop,” Bowers tells us. In the end, he’s opted for a more multicultural approach to the meatball. Expect to see daily specials like butter chicken meatballs, chicken wing meatballs in a blue cheese sauce or, come Christmas, a Newfie-inspired salt cod invention. There are also more than enough Italian-inspired dishes on the menu for this new kid to fit in on the Little Italy block. The Rodfather, for example, is three pork-and-beef meatballs with a spicy veal bolognese sauce, garnished with fresh basil, grana padano and, according to kitchen manager Kyle Brown, “attitude.”

Bowers is trying to source all his ingredients from a 100-mile radius, but because of the shop’s late opening they only managed to catch the tail end of pepper season. Still, the Hey Meatball team did manage to can 1,200 litres of roma tomatoes this year. The meat is mostly from Rowe Farms. The mix ’n’ match menu allows customers to choose a protein (veal, beef, turkey, chicken, pork or vegetarian balls), a sauce (pesto, tomato, bolognese or alfredo) and a side (risotto, polenta, pasta, seasonal veggies or salad), all for about $11 (the prices are still in flux). There are also extra sides like a roast beet salad with feta and balsamic for $5 and epic meatball subs offered in three sizes: the hero with four balls ($9–$10), the crusher with two balls ($5–$6) and a single-ball slider ($3–$4). Two more items you don’t normally expect to see served with your meatball sub: organic soft serve ice cream ($3) from a giant mid-century machine and homemade sodas prepared with Q water and fresh produce like Ontario field strawberries ($3).

Hey Meatball!, 719 College St., 416-546-1483, heymeatball.ca

Acadia, Scott Selland’s first restaurant, serves food inspired by the South, the Lowcountry and the Maritimes (Image: Renée Suen)

Earlier this summer we previewed Acadia, a new venture by first-time restaurateur Scott Selland (Splendido, Colborne Lane, Susur) aimed at introducing the flavours of the Lowcountry and the South to the city. The restaurant opened without much fanfare in late July, but has already seen a lot of buzz in the industry. We ventured back to the corner of College and Clinton to check out how Acadia is doing on its promise to shake up Little Italy’s complacent dining scene.

Selland has transformed the crowded mahogany interior of the space’s predecessor, Langolino, into an airy and minimalist southern country home. The wood-panelled split-level room is bright, with bronze wall sconces and exposed bricks. Selland’s wife, Lindsay, picked out the dark, refinished hostess stand, side stations and antique soda siphons. At the heart of the long dining room is a custom-designed stainless steel–covered bar that draws the eyes towards Acadia’s open kitchen, where patrons can see chef de cuisine Matt Blondin (Colborne Lane, Senses, Rain) and his crew at work.

Blondin’s cuisine takes familiar southern flavours and reinterprets them in a meticulously plated contemporary style. The food highlights the high-quality ingredients that Blondin brings in, such as the Anson Mills grits from Carolina and the Ocean Wise–certified shrimp used in Acadia’s shrimp and grits ($12). Acadia’s menu also relies heavily on east-coast seafood supplied by purveyors such as Taro Fish and Hooked and featured in mains like the Kolapore Springs speckled trout ($19), which is served with oyster mayonnaise, sunchoke relish, charred scallion and sea asparagus.

Acadia’s drink menu, meanwhile, is a carefully curated list of spirits, craft beers from small producers and southern cuisine–inspired cocktails. That means a heavy emphasis on bourbon, of course. State Lines ($14) mixes the distinctively southern spirit with Aperol, sweet vermouth and a maraschino cherry. Rarer varieties like the Eagle Rare Single Barrel ($13) or a 12-year-old Elijah Craig ($12) are probably better consumed neat.

Both Blondin and Selland tell us that their small, focused menu will evolve organically, with dishes shifting gradually as the season changes. “We push each other quite a bit; to always be excelling and improving in what we do,” Selland told us. “We have many exciting ideas bouncing around, but the ones that will come to fruition, only time will tell. At the end of the day it’s our call—we don’t put any limitations on ourselves. We both have the mindset that we’ll do anything once.”

Start the slideshow »

Acadia Restaurant, 50C Clinton St., 416-792-6002, acadiarestaurant.com.

By Serah-Marie McMahon. Photography by Michael Graydon

Karen Troubetzkoy and Derek Schreyer met at film school in Vancouver more than 15 years ago and have been romantically and professionally inseparable ever since. Nine years ago, they bought a 1940s two-storey home in Little Italy—their first house. It was stumbling distance from Café Diplomatico, Schreyer’s favourite hangout, and a bargain because it had been slow to sell.

But the place was too small for the two of them (who both work from home), their Portuguese water dog Cooper and their two cats. They planned on renovating but abandoned the idea after being told that any expansion would cost them their large backyard. Then, while they were in Montreal filming 18 to Life, the CBC show they created about a young married couple, inspiration struck. “When the family at the centre of the show needed an apartment for the newlywed characters, the show just built a third-level attic on the set of the family house,” Schreyer explains. So Troubetzkoy and Schreyer went about getting permits, and by November 2009 they had ripped off the roof of their home. Less than eight months later, they had a new hideaway loft—and their lawn intact. The bright, airy space is influenced by both the woodsy British Columbia cabins from Schreyer’s tree-planting days and a St. Lucia resort Troubetzkoy’s father (an architect-turned-hotelier) built. Now they spend almost all of their time on the third floor, using it interchangeably as a bedroom, bathroom, office, living room, gym and spa (the kitchen is still on the ground floor). They couldn’t have written a better ending.

Troubetzkoy and Schreyer refinished the claw-footed tub with matte grey Farrow and Ball paint so it would look more like a piece of furniture.

The simple IKEA pendant lamp over the bath creates dramatic and inexpensive spot lighting.

The photograph—of a building in wreckage—was taken by Troubetzkoy’s father. They deliberately hung it near a window with a skyline view for contrast.

They bought this antique industrial measuring tool in Vancouver. “I’ll give $100 to anyone who can tell me what it does,” Troubetzkoy says.

Troubetzkoy and Schreyer had planned on buying a prefab sauna, but they were so impressed with the craftsmanship of the rest of the addition they asked their team of Finnish builders to make one instead.

The Candela luau lamp, a wrap present from 18 to Life stars Stacey Farber and Michael Seater, is rechargeable and has a built-in dimmer—great for taking out on the deck at night.

Designed by contractor Andrew Hotari, the sliding barn door is made of wood salvaged from an old building near Barrie.

ADDRESS: 6 Shannon Street

NEIGHBOURHOOD: Palmerston–Little Italy

AGENT: Michael Camber, Bosley Real Estate Ltd., Brokerage

PRICE: $799,000

THE PLACE: Inside and out, this two-bedroom, three-bathroom row house in one of the Toronto’s hottest neighborhoods is the ideal home for a new family or a pair of up-and-coming young professionals. After a complete gutting and full-scale renovation in 2007, the house looks and feels brand new while still fitting into its traditional Victorian neighbourhood.

BRAGGING RIGHTS: The bright blue paint job, slatted wood detailing and manicured landscaping exude the kind of curbside charm that will make your neighbours wonder who the architect was.

BIG SELLING POINT: The backyard. Complete with integrated automated lighting, a bubble-rock fountain, two separate sitting areas—one with Nova Scotia slate—and a custom-designed garden by Mark Cullen, it’s the kind of space that makes any of the local patios seem completely redundant.

POSSIBLE DEAL BREAKER: The busy, fun-filled locale isn’t for everybody. The house is an urban oasis in so many ways—but the nearby College, Dundas and Ossington strips don’t exactly promise quiet, restful nights.

BY THE NUMBERS:

• $4,095 in taxes
• 3 bathrooms
• 2 bedrooms
• 2 backyard sitting areas
• 1 ensuite study
• 1 private front balcony
• 1 bubble-rock fountain

This year’s crop of restaurants, from a million-dollar dining room to a brazen burger joint, pushed Toronto’s culinary culture in creative, comforting and blessedly cheap directions. Here, the 10 new spots that are redefining the way we eat, drink and play in the city By Chris Nuttall-Smith | Photography by Ryan Szulc

See the list »

Inside Briscola Trattoria (Image: Gizelle Lau)

Briscola, the new rustic Italian restaurant from Ink Entertainment’s Charles Khabouth and Amber’s Toufik Sarwa, opened last Friday to the packed crowds one would expect from a collaboration between the two nightlife vets. After taking over the space of Sarwa’s short-lived Cinq 01 restaurant, Briscola apparently saw visits from Ben Mulroney and Galen Weston Jr. on its first weekend.

The menu at Briscola is divided up into Antipasti, Primi Piatti, Pizze and Secondi Piatti. Chef Sean Reeve (formerly of Via Allegro) aims to create traditional Italian dishes that let ingredients shine, but with modern twists. For starters, there are fried olives ($6), tuna carpaccio ($14) and deep-fried artichokes ($8). Primi dishes include modern takes on eggplant parmigiana ($11) and spaghetti pomodoro ($10/$16). Pizzas come in seven styles, including a classic Neapolitan-style margherita ($12), made in the restaurant’s stone-bottom oven in the pizza kitchen next to the bar. Mains range from $21–24, with dishes like osso buco ($21) and seared branzino ($24).

Cinq 01’s loungey interior was refreshed by Commute Home (of Nyood and Colborne Lane) to create a rustic yet whimsical environment. At the front of the restaurant, one wall shows off a flat, life-sized, candy apple–red Citroën DS sculpture, modelled after the Italian-designed car from the 1950s. Custom wire-framed chandeliers hang over lounge tables at the front—perfect for playing briscola, the Italian card game after which the restaurant is named—as well as in the back, over plush white booths. A long communal table made of Canadian walnut with cushioned benches offers additional family-style seating.

Meanwhile, Khabouth’s Ink Entertainment is already busy with its next project. Look for La Société, a new bistro, to open in Dynasty’s old space in the Colonnade on Bloor in June, and a new resto-lounge project along King Street West sometime afterward.

Briscola, 501 College St., 416-964-1555, briscola.ca.

A gravy boat around City Hall

Who’s the awesomest of them all? According to the Toronto branch of the Awesome Foundation, it’s Stephanie Avery, who was named the recipient of its first grant last night. A self-described “totally rad” artist, Avery was awarded $1,000 for her Connect the T-Dots pitch, a project that aims to turn aerial satellite views of Toronto into a giant connect-the-dots number puzzle.

As we reported in January, the Awesome Foundation made its Toronto debut with the goal of awarding a grand to particularly brilliant projects that improve the city through fun and, well, awesomeness. While the short list for the prize included a Rob Ford Batman signal and a Jesus Machine, the trustees of Awesome chose Avery’s proposal because of its potential for wide-scale participation and international recognition through Google Maps.

The project itself involves placing white numbered dots, three to four metres in diameter, on various rooftops across Toronto. When connected, the dots will form shapes particular to each city neighbourhood—a cabbage in Cabbagetown, say. Avery’s implementation strategy is simple enough: ask nicely and, hopefully, people will respond well. She told the Star:

I think at first people might think it’s a bit of a joke. But once they see how much fun it will be, hopefully they’ll be offering up their rooftops.

Since Avery plans to solicit shape suggestions from the community, we decided to offer up a few of our own: a rose in Rosedale and a boot shape in Little Italy are obvious, but cute. A heart in the downtown core, a beer mug in the Annex, a giant sun in the Beach and a koi fish in Chinatown are fun options as well. Is a big gravy boat at Queen and Bay too obvious?

• Awesome Foundation’s first Toronto winner will turn the city into a number puzzle [Toronto Star]

(Image: Gravy boat, Naval History & Heritage Command)

Two neighbourhood restaurants serve up light-handed renditions of our rib-sticking favourites By Chris Nuttall-Smith

(Image: Vanessa Heins)

The comfort food revolution has brought us much to be thankful for, including cheaper, more casual restaurants, and the glories of deep-fried mac-and-cheese, but it hasn’t exactly delivered a surge of culinary innovation. Spurred on by a sputtering economy, the comfort trend spawned a wave of barbecue joints, gourmet burger shops, neighbourhood pubs and by-the-book bistros, and it introduced childhood-evoking staples like cookies and milk to scores of restaurant menus where the “licorice root, three ways” used to be. It offered certainty when everything else around us seemed ready to collapse, not only for diners but for restaurateurs, too.

Comfort eating, like love and psychotherapy, is driven by equal measures of longing (for simpler times) and industrial-grade denial (s’mores are less fattening when they’re made with single-estate chocolate from São Tomé), powerful motivators both. So most chefs have been happy to feed our cravings without letting their own high-minded notions get in the way.

Yet even the most cliché-ridden genres eventually spawn a few subversives: the smart, free-thinking innovators who can transform the familiar into something new and individualized. The comfort revolution spun off two such restaurants this fall: one north-woods urban, one French, both run by smart, sophisticated cooks who aren’t afraid to take risks.

Woodlot, a cozy, northern-themed new bakery and restaurant at College and Palmer­ston, specializes in weighty, kidney-warming dishes, many of which are cooked in a roaring wood-fired oven at the heart of the room. The place is run by boyhood friends Robyn Donio, who owned a chain of noodle restaurants in Vancouver, and David Haman, a talented chef who opened Czehoski on Queen Street West with Nathan Isberg in 2005 before moving on to work the lines at Senses, Noce and Lucien. Haman also spent 18 months running the farm operations at Cookstown Greens, the boutique produce supplier. From the looks of Woodlot, the simple life got into his blood.

As the name suggests, Woodlot is as rustic a place as you’ll find in Little Italy. There’s a woodshed and chopping block out front, where Haman’s staff split a cord of maple logs each month. Inside the two-storey room, there are Ojibwa spirit prints on the walls; a conspicuously decorative jug of birch syrup sits on one of the wine racks, and there’s a communal harvest table in front of the open kitchen. Most of the restaurant’s 40 seats are upstairs in the tiny loft overlooking the action at the stoves. The feeling up here, jammed into this cheery space, warmed by the rising heat of the fire, is instantly mellow, even amid all the west-enders finally looking apropos in their trapper beards and red plaid shirts.

Haman does two menus—one meaty, one vegetarian—both of them seasonal and local and stocked with nouveau lumberjack fare. His braised duck cabbage rolls are a prime example of what he can do with the usual dishes: he wraps wild rice, prunes, chestnuts and orange zest in delicate savoy cabbage, beautifully transforming the freezer-aisle staple into its hyper-ideal. Though his rolls are original, they taste almost proto-Canadian; eating one feels like seeing Lake Superior for the first time.

He also serves an enormous chop of whey-fed pork swaddled in milky, buttery fat, roasted to medium, sliced into thick medallions and interleaved with soft-fried sage, Niagara black walnuts and gently candied apple; it’s like Sunday dinner at the home of a Mennonite farmer who misspent his youth in a kitchen in France. (The portions here are nonsensically huge; order three courses at your peril.)

Haman’s vegetables are generally impeccable: perfect brussels sprouts tossed with sweet butter or autumn roots (parsnips, potatoes, turnips and cipolline) under a light, shimmering semi-sweet glaze of butter and honey. And the bone marrow–enriched mashed potatoes, should those five words somehow need any further elaboration, are deeply inspired, though your second thought while eating them will be of a life spent in StairMaster penance. Even the bread, from ex–St. John’s Bakery whiz Jeff Connell, is brilliant; his crunchy red fife and sourdough baguettes, available for take-away between noon and 5 p.m. every day, are some of the finest loaves in town.

All this said, even a month after opening, Woodlot still had some problems to address. For every dish like those fabulous cabbage rolls, there was another that didn’t quite work. Haman’s spaghetti carbonara tasted more like cream than of eggs, cheese or cured pork. The chanterelle lasagna surrendered its finesse to a torrent of béchamel; the roasted haddock gratin one night smelled skanky (how does this happen?); and the boar ragoût was criminally oversalted.

These are all simple problems with simple solutions (I gather Haman didn’t staff up enough for the opening crowds), and given how great the food was here, I bet the place will become excellent with time.

What do our courtship rituals have in common with the mating habits of birds? Quite a bit, as it turns out. Take, for instance, the fact that male birds are expected to sing and strut for the females in their lives, or that lady birds have a thing for older feathered fellows. These tidbits, plus dramatic tales of avian betrayal, are unveiled in The Bird Detective: Investigating the Secret Lives of Birds, the second book by the biologist and York University prof Bridget Stutchbury (seated on the left). Claudia Dey, a novelist, playwright and former Globe and Mail relationship columnist, is equally adept at discussing the birds and the bees, though her oeuvre is restricted to the human realm. Her new self-help manual, How to Be a Bush Pilot: A Field Guide to Getting Luckier, gives would-be Casanovas the what’s-what on everything from the female anatomy to how to talk dirty in a way that will turn women on, not off. We introduced them, bought them a cup of tea and listened in.

Bridget: Female birds are in the driver’s seat when it comes to choosing a mate. They are looking for a particular trait, whether it’s the right colour (usually red), age or song. The boys are forced to play the girls’ game. It’s a dance, with the males trying to impress and the females being picky.

Claudia: Red plumage is the equivalent of an electric guitar. Men spend too much time worrying about their biceps and wall-mounted stereos. They should drop the posturing. Old-school qualities never fail: chivalry, curiosity, humour and Clark Gable confidence. Survival skills are a bonus.

The notion that males are the ones who do all the cheating is definitely a misconception. The numbers have changed; women are just as duplicitous as men. We’re conditioned to think of men as lotharios and women as buttoned-up, but that’s just not the case.

Bridget: When we first started doing DNA testing on birds and the young in the nest didn’t match the fathers that were caring for them, we assumed that the female birds were being raped. When we put radio transmitters on them, we discovered that they were sneaking out to visit the male next door.

I took my husband with me to do research in Panama. One day, we were swarmed by bees that sprang out of a dead tree. This was in the land of killer, Africanized bees. Luckily, I was kind of naive about the whole thing and it wasn’t until later that reality set in, but my husband had nightmares for weeks.

Claudia: My field work involved stepping into a confessional booth and listening to people. And then there was a ton of research. My mom was my assistant and shortly thereafter started wearing leather pants. I don’t think the two things are disconnected.

BOOKS
The Bird Detective
Bridget Stutchbury
On shelves now

How to Be a Bush Pilot
Claudia Dey
On shelves Oct. 26

(Image: Derek Shapton)

(Image: Incase.)

Dear Urban Diplomat,
I was cycling behind a father with a toddler in a rear bike seat, and he was weaving in and out of traffic, and even ran a red light. I was so angry that when I caught up to him at an intersection, I lit into him. He told me to mind my own business and sped off. I obviously didn’t get through to him. What should I have done?
—Good intentions, bad temper,
LITTLE ITALY

He may have been criminally careless, but it doesn’t sound like he’s out to intentionally endanger his child’s life. If there’s a next time, consider giving the cyclist the benefit of the doubt. You’ll have more success if your tone is less accusing and more concerned: “I was watching you zip through traffic, and it scared me.” Your subtle intervention may not change his behaviour, but he won’t be able to dismiss you as a ranting crazy person, and you’ll have planted the seed of safety in his head for when he comes to the next red light.

Send your questions to the Urban Diplomat at urbandiplomat@torontolife.com