Category: Toronto

Step into Ted’s Restaurant on Old Kingston Road in Scarborough (part of the Greater Toronto Area) and you will have that retro feeling. It’s a diner; it’s rustic; and it’s in a light industrial spot with a collision repair shop out back; and it’s two minutes from a church. It’s really a place to go for the all-day breakfast. It was a cold day just before Christmas and had what was needed in the bacon and eggs and hashbrowns department. Obscure fact: the film Pushing Tin with John Cusak, Bill Bob Thornton, Angelina Jolie and Cate Blanchett uses Ted’s as […]

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Durham Region in Ontario is big (about 2500 sq km) and diverse as it covers truly rural areas as well as the cities of Pickering, Ajax, Whitby, Oshawa and Bowmanville. I can see why this region merits its own police force. I had the opportunity, for sad reasons, to drive the countryside between Ajax and Keswick. I could have taken the big highways (401, 404, etc.) but I wasn’t exactly in a big rush to head to a memorial service and Google Maps suggested that the highway route was the almost the same duration as the rural roads. If you […]

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If you are planning on driving in Southern Ontario, I have three tips for improved driving pleasure. If you are travelling from almost anywhere else in Canada (except maybe Montreal) the massive series of “400” highways in Southern Ontario, particularly around Toronto, will make you wonder if you should have taken fighter pilot training. Seriously, the way some folks weave through traffic at high speeds without signalling makes me think they are folks who never recovered from watching Top Gun. So, quick, memorize these. 400, 401, 402, 403, 404, 405, 406, 407, 409, 410, 412, 416, 417, 420, 427. The […]

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In the lull between Christmas and New Year’s you can still shop until you drop at many increasingly illogically named Boxing Week/month/year sales or you can do something better. In my case, meet with friends you have not seen in years at Joey’s on Dundas West right near Yonge Street. If you grew up in Toronto and then moved away, Yonge and Dundas is an alien place. The streets curve in ways they used not to and the whole faux New York Times Square attempt seems forced. Joey’s as a chain I associate with the west coast as it is […]

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When someone wants to change the subject, especially in the work place, some people will say “what about those [insert major league team name here]?” I don’t live in Toronto, nor in a major league baseball market. To make the banal statement more comic in a meeting in Calgary or Vancouver, and to break some tension, I’ll say “what about those Jays?” When I had the chance to see a real Blue Jays baseball game, it was all a bit surreal. The group of us heading to the Skydome, which I learned has been renamed to the Rogers Centre, were […]

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I dropped through the ROM on Monday January 6 with my 12-year-old daughter — the Monday after the holidays is a nearly perfect time to go; everyone else is back at work or school so we had the place to ourselves. We missed the Mesopotamia exhibit by a day but saw the spectacular Wildlife Photographer of the year show (an extra $5 for adults unless you’re a member, but well worth it) and of course the dinosaurs. Since the gallery was so empty we watched many of the short and excellent videos displayed on touch-screens throughout the dinosaur gallery. Looking […]

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Southern Ontario took a hit the night of December 21 with a freezing rain storm that put a weight of ice on trees which promptly decided that it was time to break … onto power lines. At time of writing there were still people without power in Ajax, Pickering and Scarborough. However, on Boxing Day night, we took to two neighbourhoods of Pickering in order to witness some inspired Christmas lights. Both sites were taking donations for local food banks or other charities. On Rigby Drive (see www.rigbylights.ca) which has a soundtrack to their lights broadcast on a local 104.9 […]

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I had a chance to return to Bloor West Village for another meal out. Dr Generosity’s (AKA Dr G’s) was chosen for proximity and kids menu. Of course the night we went was a little different than a normal Monday night. Starting around 5 PM, Toronto received a record breaking deluge from the skies which clobbered transit, and knocked out a lot of people’s power. Except Dr G’s. For a while — apart from the request not to use the downstairs bathroom — we hardly knew that there was a major weather event in progress. However, the restaurant filled up […]

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A recent visit to Ontario required time in Ajax, which is one of Toronto’s eastern bedroom communities. I’m afraid like most North American cities, small towns that are near major centres tend to expand with subdivisions creating new suburbs. In Toronto’s case, North York and Scarborough used to be suburbs. Now they are part of Toronto and towns like Ajax, which used to be way out of town forty years ago, are now taking on the new role of suburb. Sadly continent-wide there is a lot more sameness in architecture and style of subdivision design that tends to make you […]

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The Works Gourmet Burger Bistro has four locations in Toronto including on The Danforth (Danforth Ave between Pape and Greenwood), St. Lawrence Market, The Beaches and — the one we went to — Bloor West Village. Bloor West Village does still have a hint of the small town to it as there are fewer high rises in the area and is right near High Park. You can walk the stretch of Bloor West between Jane and Runnymede Streets and poke your nose in and out of shops and restaurants. The Works does try to take the basic hamburger concept and […]

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