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Five things you didn’t know about Nina Dobrev, the star of the teen fangst phenomenon The Vampire Diaries

The Perks of Being Nina: Nina Dobrev The Vampire Diaries

(Image: Getty Images)

1. She’s a little rusty on her hometown hot spots
“I realized how much I missed Toronto when I came to TIFF for The Perks of Being a Wallflower last September. The whole cast kept saying, ‘You’re the Toronto girl—show us around!’ I didn’t know if everything I loved was still here. I mean, the Drake Hotel used to be cool—is it still? So it was exciting to rediscover the city. Soho House is incredible. And I had a great time going to Spin with a bunch of friends and playing ping-pong all night.”

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Politics

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The Top 10 Most Amazing Things About the Rob Ford Crack-Smoking Story (Assuming All Allegations Are True and All Videos Are Fully Authenticated)

Crack-Smoker?

Below, a countdown of the 10 craziest things about the Rob Ford crack-smoking brouhaha.

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The Informer

Real Estate

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Condo of the Week: $850,000 for a two-level unit in the Boiler Factory Lofts on Queen Street East

Condo of the Week: 189 Queen Street East, Unit 2

Address: 189 Queen Street East, Unit 2
Neighbourhood: Moss Park
Agent: Erica Reddy, Royal LePage Signature Realty, Brokerage
Price: $849,000

The Place: A one-bedroom unit on two levels with original oak floors, brick walls and exposed wooden beams. It’s one of 11 condos in the Boiler Factory Lofts on Queen Street East.

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The Informer

Events

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Five things to do in Toronto on the long weekend May 18-20

Five Things To Do in Toronto

Fireworks at Ashbridges Bay (Image: Deejay D)

In this edition of The Long Weekender, Ashbridge’s Bay fireworks, Bugs Bunny at the Symphony and three more things to do in Toronto.

EVENT
Victoria Day Fireworks at Ashbridge’s Bay (FREE!)

The annual fireworks display in the city’s east end lights up the sky with over 2000 pyrotechnic wonders. The night is supposed to be clear and the temperature could hit 20 degrees Celsius. One tip: walk or take the TTC (big crowds make traffic and parking a nightmare). May 20. Ashbridges Bay Park, 30 Ashbridges Bay Park Road

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The Informer

Real Estate

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The Chase: long-distance lovers win a bidding war on the perfect house near Queen and Broadview

The Chase: long-distance lovers find the perfect house for a life together near Queen and Broadview

The buyers: Sarah Greer, 33, and Scott Perfonic, 34, who both work at the financial services firm Raymond James.

The story: Greer and Perfonic met at a conference in Lake Louise in 2005. She was living just north of Toronto in Bradford, he in Vancouver. They hit it off and dated long distance—for almost seven years—until he moved to Toronto last year. The couple rented a townhouse in Riverside, which they liked for its proximity to the beach, and to restaurants and pubs. Before their year-long lease was up, the couple was married and looking to buy in the neighbourhood. They wanted a place with room for kids, a front porch for relaxing on summer evenings and a large backyard for their two cocker spaniels. And they wanted that dream home for no more than $600,000. They looked at 20 houses before they made their first—and only—offer.

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The Informer

Features

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Watch Toronto Life editor Sarah Fulford discuss our fifth annual edition of Reasons to Love Toronto Now

Feel giddy about your city? Us too! We love that the Jays are back in the swing of things, we love that our new premier isn’t full of it, we love that Torontonians love to walk to work, that night markets are multiplying, that a swimming pool can change a neighbourhood, and that Chris Hadfield, the coolest person in the world, is out of this world. Those, and other odes in our fifth annual mash note to Toronto. Get the June issue—on newsstands now!

The Informer

Columns

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Dear Urban Diplomat: Our neighbours’ barbecue fills our backyard with unpleasant smoke. Can we complain?

Urban Diplomat: Hamstrung

(Image: Emilian Robert Vicol)

Dear Urban Diplomat,
My wife and I have new neighbours who love to barbecue, which is fine, except that it’s almost always pork, which is not fine, because we don’t eat it for religious reasons. The heavy smell wafts into our backyard and makes my wife feel nauseated. I don’t want to tell them what they can and can’t eat, but I want my family to be able to enjoy our space. What’s the best way to deal with this?
—Hamstrung, The Junction

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The Informer

Real Estate

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Humber Valley Village residents enlist an architect—and Rob Ford— to fight a condo development 

A proposal from First Capital Realty to build a 65,000-square-foot mixed-used development on the site of the Humbertown strip mall in Etobicoke has local residents, including mayor Rob Ford and his brother Doug, concerned for the neighbourhood’s suburban character. The proposal comprises five buildings containing 576 apartment units, 28 townhouses, 21,000 square metres of commercial space and underground parking. Councillor Gloria Lindsay-Luby and neighbours say it will bring traffic congestion and an unwelcome spike in population density, and the mayor himself showed up at a Etobicoke Community Council meeting last night to put magnets on the cars in the parking lot slam the scheme and remind developers that “this isn’t downtown, this Etobicoke.” Meanwhile, the residents’ association has hired an architect to draw up a proposal for the kind of development they might support, which has 202 residential units, a town square and a maximum building height of six stories rather than 12. First Capital, however, says it’s not planning to adjust its plans before city council considers them at a June 11 meeting. [Globe and Mail]

The Informer

Real Estate

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House of the Week: $2.1 million for a Summerhill semi with a tranquil sunken living room

House of the Week: 125 MacPherson Avenue Address: 125 MacPherson Avenue
Neighbourhood: Yorkville
Agent: Allan Consky, Royal LePage/J & D Division, Brokerage
Price: $2,095,000

The Place: A two-bedroom brick semi on a pretty, tree-lined street in Summerhill.

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The Informer

Columns

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Editor’s Letter: Regent Park proves that big, visionary projects can get off the ground

Editor's Letter: Sarah FulfordWe all have places in Toronto we like to show off to guests from out of town. In the summer, I take my visiting friends to Kensington Market or the Brick Works. If they have young kids, I take them to Centre Island. When it’s cold or rainy, I take them to the AGO. Now there’s a new destination on my list: Regent Park. The $1-billion transformation won’t be complete until 2019 (or thereabouts), but big swaths are already built. It’s not just a fascinating and unique experiment in mixed-use housing, it’s also a surprisingly fun place to hang out.

This year, in our fifth annual Reasons to Love Toronto package, we feature two buildings in the new Regent Park development—the ultra-modern, light-filled public pool (page 58) and the Daniels Spectrum cultural complex (page 72), which has, astonishingly, 10 performance spaces. The fact that the Regent Park revamp appears twice on our list is fitting: no municipal project quite as ambitious has happened in Toronto in my lifetime, and this is the year it has started to bloom.

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The Informer

Sports

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Slideshow: the Internet reacts to the Maple Leafs’ crushing loss

Toronto had such high hopes for the Maple Leafs, which made it all the more painful to watch as they blew a 4-1 lead over the Boston Bruins in game seven of their first playoff series in years. Today, while editors invented punny headlines (sample: “Keep Calm and Bergeron”) and local sports pundits waxed on about scaling mountains and coming back down to earth, gobsmacked Leafs fans mourned en masse and took refuge in humour. Below, a slideshow of the most agonized and hilarious reactions to the big loss.

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The Informer

Random Stuff

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The eight coolest things Chris Hadfield did from space

(Image: Chris Hadfield)

As if being the first Canadian to walk in space wasn’t enough, astronaut Chris Hadfield has become a social media phenomenon, amassing over 912,000 followers on Twitter and over 311,000 Facebook fans, all while making the Magnum P.I. moustache cool again. To celebrate his return to earth last night after 144 days on the International Space Station, we count down the eight coolest, weirdest and awesomely-nerdiest things Hadfield did while in orbit.

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The Informer

Politics

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Reaction Roundup: council’s petty and ultimately useless transit debate

(Image: Christopher Drost)

As soon as Karen Stintz opened the Pandora’s Box of taxes to fund transit—a discussion Ford had fought to put off—last week’s council meeting turned sideways. Ford waltzed in and out of the chamber, councillors began proposing new subway routes, Giorgio Mammoliti accused 80 per cent of Finch Avenue riders of not paying their fares and Scarborough councillor Chin Lee told recalcitrant colleagues to “shut up and go home.” After more than two hours of voting, council didn’t endorse any specific taxes or fees, rejecting roughly a dozen options, and left a sales tax, development charges and a corporate tax cut rollback on the table. Ford and Stintz each tried to claim victory, while several other councillors deemed the outcome a total disaster. Below, the city’s columnists try to make sense of it all.

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The Informer

Events

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Gallery: The one thing you should know before you die, according to Olivia Chow, Maestro Fresh Wes and more

Gallery: Olivia Chow, Romeo A. Dallaire, Maestro Fresh Wes and others share the one thing you should know before you diePolitician Olivia Chow, Love It or List It’Hilary Farr, rapper Maestro Fresh Wes and seven other famous notables each took 10 minutes last Thursday to talk about the one thing everyone should know before they die. The stacked speaker lineup (and promise of wisdom distilled into soundbites) drew a huge crowd to the Winter Garden Theatre for the third annual Top Ten Event benefitting Autism Ontario. Abiding by the TED Talk-like time limit proved difficult, however—comedian Ron James and a few others ran over their time, while humanitarian Roméo Dallaire joked that “brevity is not a strength of generals.” Below, we round up all 10 key messages.

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The Informer

Real Estate

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Condo of the Week: $3.3 million for a suite with its own mini art gallery at Avenue and St. Clair

Condo of the Week: 155 St. Clair Avenue WestAddress:155 St. Clair Avenue West, Unit 1401
Neighbourhood: Casa Loma
Agent: Leslie Lyons and Jamie Sarner, Royal LePage Johnston & Daniel Division, Brokerage
Price: $3,260,000

The Place: A two-bedroom suite on the 14th floor of The Avenue, a high-end building at Avenue and St. Clair.

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