Swiss menswear manufacturer Strellson built its first North American store on the northwest corner of Avenue and Bloor, on the fringe of the strip boasting heavyweights Hermes, Louis Vuitton and Holt Renfrew. The location is probably appropriate, given that the brand positions itself just short of high-end luxury—think Zara on a really good day, or Hugo Boss taking it easy.
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Introducing: Strellson, a Yorkville menswear and suiting store from the Swiss mega-retailer
The Find: 10 eclectic alternatives to the bare Edison bulb
Although people have been complaining about the omnipresence of the bare Edison bulb for more than a year, its industrial-hipster charm means it remains a fixture of cool new restaurants and eclectic apartments—which is a shame, given the range of beautifully designed lighting available in this city. We searched far and wide to find a selection of alternative pendants and chandeliers—and some of them even manage to evoke the industrial look or simplicity of a naked bulb, minus the hipster cliché. Check out these 10 options (which should come in handy as patio dinners give way to evenings spent cozying up at home).
The Find: a giant bear for your home (that’s also a table)
It’s really no surprise that Canadiana is a fairly ubiquitous trend in homes, restaurants and cottages. If it is a surprise to you, you probably don’t get out very much (and your home is obviously not outfitted with reclaimed barn wood, Hudson’s Bay Company blankets and antlers). That said, as dull as the trend has become, we found this incredible Deborah Moss-designed table at Avenue Road in the shape of a very porcine bear, that evokes the pride in nature Canada is known for. (Canada is home to three species of bear, after all. Four, if you include the gay variety.) $3,080.
Avenue Road, 415 Eastern Ave., 416-548-7788, avenue-road.com.
The Backstory: Scott Speedman stars in a new biopic about Edwin Boyd, Toronto’s most notorious stick-up artist
On September 9, 1949, Edwin Boyd—a war veteran and the son of a respected Toronto cop—got drunk and robbed a Bank of Montreal branch on Avenue Road near Wilson. It was the first bank he’d ever robbed. Over the next three years, he held up 10 more, becoming a national folk hero in the process.
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The Four Seasons has closed and will become—you guessed it—a condo tower
The new Four Seasons in Yorkville, set to open this summer (Image: screen grab from Yorkville Residences website)
Luxury-loving Torontonians should brace themselves for a spring of deprivation: for the next four months, the city will be without a Four Seasons Hotel (horrors!). The iconic old Four Seasons, which has stood at the corner of Yorkville Avenue and Avenue Road since 1978, officially closed yesterday when its last guest checked out. Comrost-Felcorp Inc. has bought the building, with plans to gut it, add a glass base with restaurants and shops and turn the 380 former hotel rooms into 490 condos (which makes it sound like the condos will be rather small). Meanwhile, the hotel’s successor, a 55-storey tower nearby with a $28-million penthouse, isn’t slated to open until August. No word on where Colin Farrell and the Jonas Brothers will hang out until then. Read the entire story [Toronto Star] »
Holiday Gift Guide 2011: 30 fantastic presents for homebodies everywhere
By Fraser Abe, Karolyne Ellacott, Kevin Naulls and Mark Teo | Photography by Carlo Mendoza
For friends and family just moving into a new place or on the lookout for their next apartment, it’s nice to pick out gifts that will make those places feel like home. We scoured the city and found a fantastic hand-carved deer for a dose of Canadiana (it says, “Hey, I know I don’t live in a log cabin, but I can try”), a cord chair that beats those schoolhouse ones we used to think were cool and a selection of tchotchkes that aren’t likely to be re-gifted or simply tossed in the garbage.
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Holiday Gift Guide 2011: 90 of the best presents money can buy
By Fraser Abe, Karolyne Ellacott, Kevin Naulls and Mark Teo | Photography by Carlo Mendoza
The holiday season is rapidly approaching, and we’ve tackled the ever-difficult task of narrowing down a list of items that would be perfect for the men, women and children in your life. We find it is always a big to-do finding that special something for the wine snob who likes to aerate his or her wine, but we’ve got it covered, and to spare moms, dads, uncles, aunts and friends from waiting in line for this year’s Tickle Me Elmo, we’ve found some cool options for rug rats that won’t break down and send a greedy child into a tantrum.
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Holiday Gift Guide 2011: 11 top-tier treats for over $500
By Fraser Abe, Karolyne Ellacott, Kevin Naulls and Mark Teo | Photography by Carlo Mendoza
The big-ticket items are what we’re all hoping to get for the holidays, and sometimes we’re special enough to be the recipient of one or two. So in the spirit of giving, we take a look at the high end of giving (no boats or cars to be found): a beautiful handbag for a fashionista, a great shoreman’s jacket for a stylish dude and a synth keyboard for an aspiring (or professional) musician.
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Ontario continues not to care about how Toronto looks
Soon the Pink Palace’s vista may not be so pretty (Image: Sam)
One of the sleepiest of sleepy controversies in this city surrounds (almost literally) the legislature at Queen’s Park. The issue at hand is the north-facing vista of the parliament buildings, and the problem is that the more condo towers are erected along Bloor Street, the more the Ontario legislature’s scenic backdrop looks cluttered and unsightly. Local activists—namely, the Ontario Capital Precinct Working Group (OCPWG)—have been trying to bring the matter to the province’s attention ever since the Ontario Municipal Board permitted another set of vista-sullying high-rises at 21 Avenue Road, but so far their efforts have yielded basically bupkis.
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The Find: an outdoor furniture set that didn’t put us to sleep
When shopping for outdoor furniture in Toronto, we’ve noticed that there’s an abundance of beige, white and black, which appears to be a move by retailers to cater to Tom, Dick and Harry. So it pays to chat with the sales staff about the other colourful options, which are always available to custom-order (but may not necessarily be on display in a showroom). After seeing piles of cold, modern designs, we were pleased to find Tribu’s Mirthe line at Avenue Road—it has both shine and colour and adds a bit of extra warmth to what will likely be an already pleasant, sunny day. The deep purple accents take the simple white set-up from straight-lined, clean and stuffy to something unique and more fun. And each piece is sold separately so shoppers can customize their outdoor look, which means no two backyards will look the same (unless of course, they do). Mirthe sidechair $596 (Cushions $196), Mirthe bench starts at $996 (cushions $138), Mirthe table starts at $2,460.
Avenue Road, 415 Eastern Ave., 416-548-7788. www.avenue-road.com.
Vista-marring condos to go up behind Queen’s Park
Toronto’s thirst for condos proves unquenchable (Image: Ronnie Yip)
The pink palace that houses the Ontario Legislature is about to lose a bit of its charm. Yesterday, Dalton McGuinty said the construction of two high-rise condo towers behind the provincial legislature wouldn’t meet any further opposition from the provincial government, much to the dismay of legislative Speaker Steve Peters. The crusading Peters has been fighting the 44- and 48-storey towers tooth and nail recently, complaining the buildings would diminish the “grandeur and importance” of Queen’s Park by adding an unattractive touch to the otherwise regal view up University Avenue.
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Mismatched: how a couple of romantics reconciled their decorating divide
His serious antiques, her quirky contemporary finds. How a couple of romantics reconciled their divide
(All images by Michael Graydon)
He has a fondness for 18th-century French armoires and credenzas. She has a thing for unusual feather lamps and penguin-patterned loveseats. When Bernard Le Corre, born in Brittany, and Lesley Macmillan, an Ottawa expat, moved in together 10 years ago, their Candy Factory loft on Queen West became a melting pot for their disparate tastes. The result is eclectic but unmistakably French: a 2,700-square-foot space with an early 1900s wrought iron garden gate at the entrance (they bought the nine-foot-tall piece near Giverny) and a stash of 500 wines tucked away in a nook. All those bottles come in handy for the couple’s weekly dinner parties.
They met in 1989 at a mutual friend’s get-together in the south of France. Macmillan was an interior decorator; Le Corre had built a career in marketing for multinationals. An instant connection was followed by a long-distance courtship. Four years later, he was ready for a change and agreed to move to Toronto, where Macmillan lived. On the then-sparse retail strip of King Street East, the couple opened Trianon, an interior design and furniture store named after a palace at Versailles, where at the beginning of their relationship, Le Corre and Macmillan would ride their bikes. (In the store’s early days, his English not yet perfect, Le Corre put customers on hold by saying, “Can I hold you for a second?” Most people replied yes.) Read the rest of this entry »
Michael Bryant’s very bad year: his life on bail, how he got off, and his surprise comeback
A 28-second fight resulted in the death of a cyclist and almost ended the career of the cocky, ruthlessly ambitious Michael Bryant. Instead, his name has been cleared, and he’s set to return to politics. He swears he’s a changed man
On the last night of August 2009, Michael Bryant and his wife, Susan Abramovitch, celebrated their 12th wedding anniversary. As date nights go, it was cheap—a dinner of shawarma and iced tea on College Street and a dessert of baklava on the Danforth before heading home to midtown in their black Saab convertible with the top and windows down.
Driving west on Bloor, approaching Yonge, they noticed a cyclist tossing garbage and holding up traffic by doing figure eights on his bike. The cyclist, Darcy Allan Sheppard, was drunk and ranting. Bryant and Abramovitch passed Sheppard and kept driving. As they neared the pedestrian crossing between Bay and Avenue, where the street narrowed for construction, Sheppard pulled up in front of the Saab. Bryant hit the brakes, causing his car to stall. When he started it again, the car lurched forward and Sheppard shouted, possibly because the bumper nudged his back wheel. As Bryant later told police, it was at this point he had his first twinge of fear—a sense the situation could escalate beyond his control. In his rush to start the car and get out of there, he panicked, causing the vehicle to stall and surge forward again, this time hitting Sheppard hard enough that he toppled onto the hood. He wasn’t seriously injured, but he became enraged, throwing his bulky courier’s backpack at the car. When Bryant tried to drive away, Sheppard clung to the driver’s side door.
For Bryant, time seemed to speed up and slow down at once. Suddenly there was no car, no road, no traffic, pedestrians or buildings—only three people fighting for their lives, and one of them was about to lose. Sheppard reached inside the car and grabbed the wheel, and the car veered into the eastbound lanes. By a stroke of luck, the street was empty. According to forensic reports, Bryant never shifted out of first gear, his car staying around 34 kilometres an hour. But when the left side of Sheppard’s torso snagged on a fire hydrant in front of the Colonnade building, it was enough to send him flying to the ground. His head hit the pavement hard. Read the rest of this entry »
Spotted: Josh Brolin, Paul Haggis and Javier Bardem at Av and Dav
Click on the map to see all TIFF celebrity sightings
On our way home last night, we decided, on a lark, to check out the Toro After Dark space at Pears on Avenue Road. No official events were scheduled, but we thought it the perfect low-key come-down after the insanity of Slash’s appearance at Tattoo Rock Parlour. Imagine our surprise, then, to find Josh Brolin being escorted into the space with Paul Haggis. Smart phones lit up the room and tweets about the unlikely celeb sighting flooded the Internet. Little did the crowd know that the best was yet to come.
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