HOME February 10, 2012 The Magazine | Digital Edition | Subscribe | Newsletters
Advertisement
The comprehensive index of every blog post, magazine story and restaurant review that appears on Torontolife.com
ADDRESS: 1420 Birchview Drive
NEIGHBOURHOOD: Lorne Park, Mississauga
AGENT: Jennifer Rebecca Labrecque, Royal LePage Credit Valley Real Estate, Brokerage
PRICE: $2,950,000
THE PLACE: A massive, contemporary stunner in Mississauga’s ritzy Lorne Park neighbourhood (an area so Beemer- and Botox-filled it has its own housewives reality show).
Read the rest of this entry »
Read the rest of this entry »
After living through decades of delicious but pretty much uniform street meat, followed by a city-backed pilot program that ended up a complete fiasco, Torontonians finally got a glimpse of the street food promised land in 2011, thanks mostly to a clutch of feisty entrepreneurs. A selective and entirely arbitrary roundup of the highs and lows of Toronto ephemeral eating in 2011, after the jump.
Paramount’s manakeesh, a sort of Lebanese pizza
Mohamad Fakih’s family has run Paramount for three generations, starting in 1918. With two locations in Mississauga and another in Thornhill, the Middle Eastern restaurant finally expanded into Toronto proper with a spot across from the Eaton Centre late last year. While the downstairs can feel like a boisterous cafeteria, the upstairs is almost serene, with the exposed bricks and beams under the towering ceiling of the heritage building (for years it housed Superior Restaurant).
Read the rest of this entry »
Back in October, Mississauga beat Toronto to the punch in banning the sale of shark fins, and on Wednesday, it beat Toronto to the punch in repealing that ban. According to a bylaw passed by council, the ban is no longer in force “until June 30, 2012” so that officials can meet with the federal government and allow business owners to adjust. “It gives us time to do our homework,” Pat Mullin, the ban’s biggest champion on council, told the Toronto Star. However, she wasn’t sure whether the bylaw would apply immediately in June or whether it would require a new vote. Stephen Chu, president of the Mississauga Chinese Business Association, believes the delay it is the first step toward a permanent repeal. “They listened to us,” he said. Toronto banned fin products just two weeks after Mississauga; hopefully for the sharks, a repeal isn’t already in the works here, too. Read the entire story [Toronto Star] »
Recognizing the financial realities of a city that needs improved public transit and smooth roads, Mississauga is hoping to introduce something called a “vehicle registration tax.” It’s a newfangled idea, but apparently it has the potential to generate “revenue.” Who would’ve thunk it? Read the entire story [Globe and Mail] »
While Toronto is still busy making Ferris wheel jokes, the city’s neighbour to the west is looking to create a single agency that would oversee its waterfront development. Mississauga’s city council unanimously approved the creation of a waterfront development corporation, in hopes of expediting progress and shedding bureaucratic weight. Plans even include building a mixed-use neighbourhood. So just like Waterfront Toronto—only presumably more effective. Read the entire story [Globe and Mail] »
Toronto’s right-wing councillors will soon have one fewer reason to be jealous of Mississauga (although ’sauga does have the Big Smoke beat in the charismatic mayor category): the city will soon begin borrowing money to help fix crumbling infrastructure, a move that ends Mayor Hazel McCallion’s debt-free streak. Not to mention that the Toronto Star reports the city is considering a nearly 11 per cent property tax increase (a number the City of Mississauga disputes, stating that the figure was never actually under consideration), along with approving a transit fare hike and “substantial transit service cuts.” This all sounds pretty familiar. And it (somehow) gets worse: the planned $450 million in loans still leaves Mississauga with a more than $1 billion funding gap for infrastructure renewal over the next two decades. The Star quotes Mississauga’s director of finance, Patti Elliott-Spencer, as saying, “Every city that matures finds itself in this situation.” That may be true. So to Mississauga, we offer a friendly welcome to the big leagues. UPDATE: Read the entire story [Toronto Star] »
For members of traditional South Asian communities, marriage—in Hindi and Urdu, shaadi—is the single most important event in life. To help unmarried South Asians find a suitable partner, Anupam Mittal, a Mumbai entrepreneur, launched the dating website shaadi.com, and it became so popular in the GTA that the company chose to open a satellite office in Mississauga last year.
Like Lavalife, match.com and other dating sites, Shaadi contains pages and pages of users’ profile pictures, interests and hobbies. But Shaadi bills itself as a site for people who want to marry, not a hangout for promiscuous daters, and it requires that its members indicate skin complexion and religion and caste—decidedly old-fashioned ideas that have created something of an image problem. Many of its members deny they use it out of embarrassment. And yet that hasn’t diminished the site’s popularity; 24,000 of the GTA’s 684,000 South Asians now use Shaadi’s services, including parents who set up profiles for their eligible children—a computer-age variation on the arranged marriage.
On a bright morning in August, Judi Lloyd drove through Twin Pines with the air of a visiting dignitary. The preternaturally cheerful 57-year-old real estate broker was on her way to list a home. The Mississauga trailer park is located just off Dundas, one of the city’s main arteries. Like all of Lloyd’s visits to the park, the trip quickly turned into a mixture of socializing and networking as she waved to and chatted with residents from the driver’s seat of her black Ford Escape. She gestured at the mobiles we passed, noting the histories and special features of each. “You wouldn’t even know that’s a trailer,” she said, pointing at a 48-by-24-foot mobile on a spacious, pie-shaped lot. “If someone dropped you in there and you didn’t see the outside, I swear you’d think it was a little bungalow.”
1| Bob and Ena Barclay, paid $8,000 for their mobile home 45 years ago
2| Stephen Plume, paid $125,900 for his mobile home in 2007
3| Debi Little, paid $105,000 for her mobile home in 2011
4| Patrick Rostant, paid $140,000 for his mobile home in 2009
Read the rest of this entry »
It’s not particularly polite to ask rich people what they earn. But tact is overrated, and we wanted to know, so we asked anyway. When they told us to get lost, we got sneaky. We dug up disclosure documents, annual reports and the tax filings of charitable organizations. When those trails went dry, we surveyed industry insiders who know what other people make—headhunters and consultants and analysts and colleagues—and asked for an educated guess. After hundreds of calls and emails and deep-throat meetings in dark alleys, we phoned the high earners back and told them what we found. Again, with feeling, they told us to piss off.
What follows is our shamelessly gawking, as-precise-as-possible examination of the highest-paid people in the city’s top industries. When the information was available, we included bonuses and perks and, in some cases, exercised stock options. Our findings verified that a high earner in finance is almost always on a different plane (a private jet, usually) than a high earner in, for example, the lowly arts. One major discovery: Heather Reisman took a pay cut. One truth reconfirmed: no matter how rich you are, there’s always someone who makes a helluva lot more.
CLICK HERE TO START THE STORY »
VIEW BY INDUSTRY » GOLD ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT FUND MANAGERS SPORTS SHOP OWNERS MEDIA LANDLORDS BAY STREET PUBLIC SERVANTS
VIEW BY SALARY » SEE 69 OF THE RICHEST PEOPLE IN THE CITY’S TOP INDUSTRIES, SORTED BY SALARY FROM HIGHEST TO LOWEST
ADDRESS: 195 Harborn Trail
NEIGHBOURHOOD: Cooksville, Mississauga
AGENT: Hamish John Gordon, RE/MAX Realty Enterprises Inc., Brokerage
PRICE: $3,499,000
THE PLACE: Located in the heart of Mississauga, the luxurious Provençal-inspired house is a custom built by Hallmark Homes and designed by Oakville’s Gren Weis Architect and Associates.
Read the rest of this entry »
Hazel “Haters Gonna Hate” McCallion once voted in favour of a motion that could have cut the fees charged to developers—and netted her son $11 million in savings. The vote happened while McCallion was already scheming on behalf of her son, behaviour that led to an inquiry into her conduct. Although McCallion moved the motion herself and declared no conflict of interest, the incident somehow escaped the inquiry’s report. But while McCallion has avoided any legal ramifications, it’s been suggested that she basically got off on a technicality (the laws governing conflicts of interest are exceedingly narrow). Though, as we’ve said before, it’s likely none of this matters for McCallion anyway. Read the entire story [Toronto Star] »
It’s official: Mississauga has beaten Toronto to the punch. While city council here has been having a hard time banning shark fin products, Mississauga councillors unanimously adopted a bylaw this morning that prohibits the possession and sale of shark fins in the city, jurisdictional issues be damned. The move makes Mississauga the largest city in Canada to outlaw the controversial seafood. Brantford made a similar decision earlier this year, and Oakville banned shark fins back in July, effectively cornering the city of Toronto from the west (of course, more shark fins are probably served north of the city). Toronto city council meets tomorrow to address the issue. Mississauga councillor Pat Mullin told the Toronto Star she hopes the city’s move will create momentum for a ban in other cities across Canada. “I hope Toronto, tomorrow, uses Mississauga as an example,” she said, which we believe would officially turn this week into no-shark week. Read the entire story [Toronto Star] »
The Blue Donkey Streatery, currently parked at Mississauga’s new Celebration Square (Image: Gizelle Lau)
The Blue Donkey Streatery, Missisauga’s newest food truck, is decked out in blue and white, with a big cartoon donkey on the side. Like most things about this operation, it’s a gloriously unsubtle reference to owners Tony Vastis, Elias Vastis, Dimitri Velonis and Manny Tsouvalas’s Greek heritage. The foursome—after assorted experience in the food industry (Sneaky Dee’s, Caffe Demetre, the Drake Hotel Café) and traditional hot dog stands across the city—got their big break when they were turned down by the notorious Toronto A La Cart program, only to be offered a vendor space in Mississauga’s new Celebration Square.
Read the rest of this entry »
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
© 2012. All Rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part strictly prohibited. Toronto Life is a registered trademark of Toronto Life Publishing Company Limited
Follow Toronto Life on Twitter, Facebook and via RSS