Toronto’s Twitter-happy celebrity set supplies a constant stream of bon mots, feuds and photo scandals, so choosing our favourite social media mavens meant scrolling through thousands of tweets. We settled on 10 notables whose 140-character missives are both funny and revealing. Some are native Torontonians, others have moved here more recently and one or two have only a tenuous tie to the city (but are just too good to pass up). Here, a list of 10 Twitter virtuosos, and why we chose them.
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Toronto’s Best Tweeters: top Twitter feeds from local entertainers, athletes and media personalities
The Weekender: The Penelopiad, Canada’s Top Ten and five more events on our to-do list
Megan Follows stars in Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad (Image: Robert Popkin)
1. THE PENELOPIAD
Following last year’s acclaimed run, Nightwood Theatre’s production of The Penelopiad is back at Buddies in Bad Times. Written by Margaret Atwood as a response to Homer’s The Odyssey, this play’s all-female cast is led by Megan Follows (yes, of Anne of Green Gables fame), who stars as Odysseus’s wife Penelope as she waits for her husband to return home (an absence that stretches decades). Joining Follows is her Anne co-star, Patricia Hamilton, as well as a flock of actresses who form a dazzling Greek chorus. January 8–February 10. $37–$45. Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, 12 Alexander St., 416-975-8555, buddiesinbadtimes.com
50 Most Influential 2012: a ranking of Toronto’s top tycoons, backroom operators and supersize egos
The people driving the agenda for the city are more likely to come from outside local government than inside. This was the year our premier, rendered virtually impotent by a minority legislature, up and quit without warning. And our mayor, who listens to no one and refuses to build consensus on council, has created a city hall power vacuum.
What follows is Toronto Life’s list of the real influence peddlers—the people who, either publicly or behind the scenes, have had the greatest impact on the city. We looked for people whose power was broad enough to be felt across different sectors, or else so palpable in their immediate field that it somehow changed things for the rest of us. We looked for people whose ability to alter public opinion, raise money, rally troops or simply get stuff done was both formidable and undeniable. The result is a carefully calculated and highly opinionated look at power in the city in 2012.
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The 10 best Toronto Halloween costumes this year (including what Karen Stintz and Margaret Atwood wore)
Karen Stintz (yes, that Karen Stintz) as Elvira, a CBC listener as Jian Ghomeshi and a very creative man as the OCADU building
Although one Maple Leaf had trouble finding an appropriate Halloween costume, there were still plenty of great disguises this year. We rounded up the best of those donned by local politicians and celebrities, as well as our favourite Toronto-centric costumes from Twitter (including a baby dressed up in a Toronto Life–approved get-up).
Party Pages: Artists, philanthropists and Margaret Atwood at the Art of Time Ensemble Salon
We’re fairly sure that having a piano quartet playing in the living room is a normal after-supper digestive for many Rosedale households. Having Gemini award-winner Nicholas Campbell read a monologue from the War of the Worlds, is likely more of a rarity. That experience, however, was part of the fifth annual Art of Time Ensemble Salon this past Wednesday night. Held at a private mansion (the kind with a lion-shaped door knocker and a tennis court-sized kitchen), the fundraiser for the venerable music ensemble drew creative types (painter Rundi Phelan, actor and Paul Gross sweetheart Martha Burns, director Daniel Brooks), philanthropists (Jim Fleck, CAMH chair Ana Lopes, Donald and Gretchen Ross) and the generally fabulous (James Stewart, the mathematician/text book writer who built possibly the most opulent residence in Toronto).
Money Talks: 10 Toronto celebrities who command five-figure speaking fees
Earlier this week, Wayne Gretzky was in town talking, oddly enough, about investment strategy. Apparently, The Great One isn’t only adept at stickhandling behind the net (his office, so to speak); he can also manage your stock portfolio. After all, in this age of Ted Talks and corporate retreats, one of the quickest and easiest ways for the famous and voluble to get even richer is through speaking engagements—and the topics they cover don’t even have to be married with the reason they’re famous in the first place. Gretzky, for example, clocks a $50,000-a-pop speaking fee and a staggering $1 million per annum from TD Bank to talk about money management. And he’s not alone. Here, Gretzky and nine other Toronto notables who are cashing in on the speaking circuit.
What are the odds a Torontonian will win the Nobel Prize in Literature? Not great
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This year’s winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature doesn’t get announced until October, but London oddsmaker Ladbrokes is already setting off speculation in the book world as to which lucky scribbler will be heading to Oslo in the late fall to collect a medal. Yesterday, Ladbrokes released its list of likely candidates, and Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami is the clear favourite, with odds of 10:1.
Into the (Not So) Wild: our look at the summer camps of Toronto’s rich and famous
A sojourn to Northern Ontario used to mean grabbing a sleeping bag and a can of beans and roughing it in the woods, all in the name of character building. Today, high-end camps offer perks that sound like something out of a brochure for a four-star resort. Here, a glimpse at life as a modern-day camp kid.
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A T-shirt emblazoned with Rob Ford flipping the bird sells for $7,100 on eBay
(Image: screenshot from eBay)
Last week, we told you about a T-shirt printed with a Rob Ford caricature and signed by Margaret Atwood that was up for sale on eBay. (It was a ploy to raise funds and attract attention to Fanado, a start-up Atwood founded that helps fans connect with artists). In the final hours of the auction yesterday, the bidding jumped from $85 (US) to several thousand dollars—in the end the T-shirt ended up selling for a staggering $7,100 (US). Atwood may not be a big fan of the mayor, but it looks like she’s found a way to benefit from his hijinks. [eBay]
For sale: a T-shirt with Rob Ford flipping the finger, signed by Margaret Atwood
(Image: screenshot from eBay)
Ever dream of sporting a caricature of Rob Ford flipping the bird, autographed by Margaret Atwood? The opportunity to do just that has arrived, thanks to an eBay user working on behalf of Atwood who is selling a T-shirt signed by the author and frequent Ford critic. The one-of-a-kind shirt is emblazoned with a striking image of the mayor (which we recognize from Atomic Toybot’s Ford-themed art show this spring), and the sale is a ploy to get attention and cash for Fanado, a start-up Atwood founded that helps fans connect to their favourite artists. The shirt has already attracted at least a few interested bidders and currently stands at $255 (US). Unfortunately, most people—including Ford himself—will not be able to sport the rare design, as it only comes in small. [eBay]
Party Pages: The Trillium Awards, a rowdy affair for beflowered Ontario authors
The Trillium Awards, the annual ceremony for Ontario-based authors, took place, fittingly, at the Toronto Reference Library last week. The awards have honoured some of Canada’s most famous writers, like Michael Ondaatje, Alice Munro and Margaret Atwood, and this was an extra-special night in celebration of the event’s 25th year. Nominees wore pink flowers, while past winners wore white to differentiate themselves in the massive crowd of literati (we guess wearing trilliums would be a little premature for the pink-flowered crowd). As it has since 1994, the event also fêted French- speaking nominees, so hosts Heather Hiscox of CBC News and Karen Thorn-Stone, president of the Ontario Media Development Agency, jumped between French and English (it becomes a rather long night when you hear everything twice). Though Hiscox sounded fluent, Thorn-Stone’s delivery seemed a touch forced—she even quipped, after her first French foray received a round of applause, “Now you’re just making fun of me.”
Luminato 2012 guide: 20 must-see events at this year’s arts festival
Einstein on the Beach (Image: courtesy of Luminato)
Luminato begins this Friday, and it can be a bit of a whirlwind. Everything from a Philip Glass opera about Einstein’s life to a gigantic food festival are on the card from June 8 to June 17, so both mind and body will be nourished. There’s even a huge cast of international guests coming through Toronto, like New York artist Terence Koh and New Yorker editor Deborah Treisman. But there’s so much to do, and we couldn’t possibly see everything, so we’ve created an easy-to-use guide that lists all of Luminato’s best bets.
The weirdest mayoralty ever—the inside story of Rob Ford’s city hall
Loyal councillors have defied him. His approval ratings have plummeted. And his powerful Conservative backers are nervous. How did it all go so wrong? The strange story of Rob Ford’s city hall
On Newstalk 1010, the sly strains of the Hollies hit “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother” offered the first clue. Then morning host Jerry Agar burst on the air with a surprise announcement: Rob Ford and his councillor sibling Doug were taking over the station’s Sunday afternoon talk-fest, The City. For the once-staid CFRB, landing the boisterous brother act that Margaret Atwood had puckishly dubbed the “twin Ford mayors” was clearly a coup, but that didn’t answer the more obvious question: why on earth would the Fords want to spend two more hours a week in front of an open microphone when they were hardly suffering from a lack of media exposure?
Rob Ford, after all, ranks as one of the most compelling and exhaustively chronicled figures in Canadian politics, adored and despised with equal gusto. His every pronouncement seems to turn into front-page fodder, his every grimace and belly scratch catalogued by rapt photographers. And who could forget the YouTube footage of comedian Mary Walsh arriving in his driveway, decked out with a velvet breastplate and a plastic sword?
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The Moment: Conrad Black’s artfully orchestrated return
There was plenty of hand-wringing among politicians and pundits over His Lordship’s homecoming, but the rest of us collectively shrugged. Maybe that’s because he’d never really left. From his Miami jail cell, Black was more engaged in Canadian public life than he had been before he famously gave up his citizenship a decade ago. He wrote a regular newspaper column and a juicy tell-all, befriended Margaret Atwood and became an outspoken critic of the Harper government. So when the Lord and Lady emerged from their Bridle Path home and shamelessly snogged before the cameras, we weren’t surprised. The Conrad Black reputation restoration campaign had, after all, been 37 months in the making.
(Image: CP images)
Shocking news: Rob and Doug Ford sort of don’t agree on something
(Image: Christopher Drost)
Rob and Doug Ford seem to be the same person agree on most things: the war on cars, a love of subway-building and notions that Cut the Waist was a sound idea. But the Globe and Mail has found a mini-rift between the two on the topic of property taxes. Doug, the vice-chair of Toronto’s budget committee, says he’s “absolutely, 100 per cent” in favour of freezing property taxes, while Rob is more reticent, saying he campaigned on holding tax increases to the rate of inflation, not freezing them entirely. It would seem the mayor’s “not quite sure” about keeping property taxes as is for the next few years (and, incidentally, hasn’t entirely ruled out chucking the land transfer if the budget numbers support it). A difference of opinion, sure—but nothing to make Margaret Atwood change her mind about Toronto’s “twin Ford Mayors.” [Globe and Mail]
