Indholdsfortegnelse for May 2022 i Toronto Life

DIGITAL EDITION FREE FOR PRINT SUBSCRIBERS Your Toronto Life subscription now includes free access to the Toronto Life and FASHION digital editions. In your digital newsstand store, search “toronto life” and “fashion magazine,” download/open the apps and follow the prompts. SUBSCRIPTION EXPIRY To find out when your current subscription expires, check the mailing label. BILLING AND RENEWAL NOTICE Invoice and renewal notices are printed one week before they are mailed to you. With delivery time, it’s possible that your payment or renewal order will cross in the mail with our invoice or renewal notice. FRAGRANCE-FREE ISSUES Some issues of Toronto Life include perfume strips. If you prefer to receive your copy of the magazine without perfume strips, please write to us at the address listed below. MAIL PREFERENCE On occasion,…

Coming to Toronto There were three traffic lights in the town I grew up in, and when a fourth was installed, it was something of an event. So for a certain wide-eyed pre-teen, trips to Toronto were like an odyssey to another dimension. I remember being dazzled by the electric-green SkyDome field, the lights of Bloor Street at night, and the crowds, noise and powdered doughnuts of the CNE. Later, when I was studying at U of T, Toronto meant sushi platters at the student newspaper office, the sticky-floored dive bars of College Street, and the quiet grandeur of the ROM. Today, as a father of three, it’s the street festivals, open-air concerts, and parks and playgrounds that give my kids so much joy. Though I have known Toronto from…

EGO BOOST EGO BRUISE START The discovery of a new coronavirus mutation in Ontario’s white-tailed deer makes international headlines. The good news: there’s no evidence the strain poses a risk to humans. The city renames a stretch of St. Clair near the Russian consulate “Free Ukraine Square,” raising a big middle finger to Putin and his cronies. Timbit-hawking pop star Justin Bieber and Snoop Dogg’s BFF Martha Stewart inadvertently leak the Leafs new reversible jersey in an Instagram post. Walmart announces plans for a tech hub in Toronto, potentially creating hundreds of jobs. A pandemic-battered workforce rejoices. Responding to a call about a possible drunk driver, Durham police pursue a Hyundai traveling 150 kilometres per hour on the wrong side of the road and discover an 11-year-old at the wheel.…

MASSEY HALL has been Toronto’s sonic paradise for more than a century, a hallowed sanctuary for homegrown acts like Gordon Lightfoot, the Tragically Hip and Broken Social Scene. But by 2018, even the venue’s most diehard fans had to admit that it felt fatigued. The mostly wooden building was a colossal fire hazard, the creaky gallery seats were less ergonomic than a church pew, and the once-magnificent ceiling had fallen into such disrepair that it had to be wrapped in chicken wire lest pieces plummet onto concert-goers below. After a three-year, $184-million restoration, Massey is back and more beautiful than ever. With help from a team of design and acoustic experts, veteran architect Marianne McKenna and her firm, KPMB, repaired the ornate ceiling, restored and soundproofed 100 boarded-up stained-glass windows,…

DURING CHRIS BOSH’S mid-2000s stint with the Raptors, the all-star helped open and refurbish a handful of basketball courts across Toronto, hoping to inspire a new generation to get into the game. One of those kids was Dalano Banton, who fantasized about making it to the NBA as he honed his crossover and jumper on a Bosh-backed court in Rexdale. That dream came true last summer, when Banton became the Raptors’ first Canadian draft pick. His love for Toronto is so unabashed that he makes Drake look like a tourist. He wears number 45 as an homage to the Kipling bus he used to ride, he regularly rocks the local streetwear brand In Your City, and—because it’s 2022—he even partnered with a Toronto crypto company to release an NFT of…

THE MYSTERY MAN who goes by Orville Peck performs in rhinestone belts and colourful Nudie Suits, his face obscured by a tasselled bandit mask, like something the Lone Ranger would’ve worn if he’d attended theatre school. Peck did attend theatre school before moving to Toronto and self-producing his debut album, Pony. In a haunting baritone, Peck sang about drifters, truck drivers and cowboy lovers on the run, channelling the alienation he’d felt as a young gay man. The music—a mixture of rockabilly, outlaw country, post-punk and gospel—was dark and soulful and sexy, and it transformed Peck into an icon. He has since ventured where few country stars have gone, performing alongside Harry Styles at Madison Square Garden, recording a duet with Shania Twain and collaborating with celeb drag queen Trixie…

YES, HE’S FROM Vancouver, but lately Ryan Reynolds has been showering Toronto with a whole lot of love—and mountains of money. Last spring, he was part of the all-Canadian dream team—Drake, Michael J. Fox, a handful of pro athletes—that injected $750 million into Wealthsimple, the city’s buzziest fintech firm. He followed that up with a significant investment in the local cybersecurity start-up 1Password. The cash infusions could contribute to the creation of hundreds of local jobs, kicking our already fast-growing tech scene up to light speed. As if we needed another reason to fawn over the Deadpool dude, he’s raised more than $1 million for SickKids through an uproarious ugly-sweater campaign, and he and wife Blake Lively just donated another half million to Water First, a charity that educates young…

THE BUYERS: Saad Saigol, 37, owner of Engage Recruitment, a headhunting company; Taniya Ahmad, 31, operations manager for a health startup; with their one-year-old son, Salaar. THE STORY: In mid-2021, Saad and Taniya were living in an 882-square-foot condo near Queen and Yonge. With the couple working from home, and Salaar learning to walk, they were feeling the squeeze. So this past January, they set a $1.8-million budget for a three-bedroom home with more living space and a yard for Salaar to enjoy, ideally around the Danforth or midtown, close to their family and friends. Once they found a new place, they planned on selling their condo to help cover the mortgage. OPTION 1 WHISTLE POST STREET near Danforth and Main Listed at $1,549,000 Sold for $2,075,000 In late January,…

IN THE BEFORE TIMES, Reema Aviles worked full-time as an eyelash technician, but she made a hobby of sampling junk food from all over the world. Whether traveling IRL or scouring eBay, Aviles would search hither and yon for prepackaged treats she hadn’t tried before. Of course, do something enough and you’ll develop a knack for it. When the pandemic struck a blow to the personal care industry, Aviles started Snack Edition, a one-stop web shop for globally sourced goods that are difficult—or in many cases, impossible—to find at your local convenience or grocery store. “This feels like it was meant to be,” she says. So, what can snack aficionados score on her virtual shelves? We rounded up a few of her rarest finds.…

IS GOD IS THEATRE | May 3 to 22 | Berkeley Street Theatre Playwright Aleshea Harris’s funny, violent, rage-fuelled stage production is like Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill with twin protagonists. The audacious thriller nimbly juggles genres in its tale of two sisters sent on a vengeance quest into the California desert by their dying mother. As an off-Broadway show, it won three Obies, and its Canadian debut is led by Obsidian Theatre’s exciting new artistic director Mumbi Tindyebwa Otu.…

WHERE THE BLOOD MIXES THEATRE | May 26 to June 26 Marilyn and Charles Baillie Theatre Nlaka’pamux playwright Kevin Loring snagged a Governor General’s Award in 2009 for this play, one of the first to deal with the legacy of Canada’s residential school system. Fast forward to 2022, and Loring is now head of the National Arts Centre’s Indigenous Theatre. By turns richly comic and deeply moving, Loring’s intergenerational drama is set in his hometown of Lytton, B.C., where Floyd, a residential school survivor, is unexpectedly reunited with the adult daughter he lost to foster care when she was a child.…

Michael specializes in creating advanced tax-efficient wealth accumulation and retirement income plans to help clients enjoy more of their wealth. How would you like to enjoy more of your wealth? Contact us today for a free tax-smart and performance evaluation of your plan. Michael Marcovitz MBA, LL.B. Senior Investment Advisor TD Wealth Private Investment Advice 79 Wellington Street West, 11th Floor, Toronto, ON M5K 1A1 T: 416 308 9084 | F: 416 982 8624 | E: michael.marcovitz@td.com The Marcovitz Group TD Wealth represents the products and services offered by TD Waterhouse Canada Inc., TD Waterhouse Private Investment Counsel Inc., TD Wealth Private Banking (offered by The Toronto-Dominion Bank) and TD Wealth Private Trust (offered by The Canada Trust Company). The Marcovitz Group is a part of TD Wealth Private Investment…

$15 Price of the Ice Cream Volcano ramen at Koi Sakana in Markham. The soup contains an entire vanilla soft serve cone, along with traditional ingredients like spicy bone broth, noodles and a soft-boiled egg. $100,000 Amount pledged by city council to fight Quebec’s Bill 21. In response, a Torontonian filed a lawsuit against the city, challenging whether it should be able to use municipal tax dollars to fund litigation. $2,381,000 Retail price of the bajillion-carat, Frank Ocean-designed, white-gold-and-diamond necklace that Drake sported courtside at a recent Raptros game. $10,000,000 Amount allegedly acquired by 23-year-old Yuansen Fu, in a mortgage scam targeting law firms in the Chinese community. Authorities recently issued a Canada-wide warrant for Fu, who is wanted for fraud, among other charges. $17,000,000 Final tally, according to a…

“You always think about one day needing to accommodate a shared space with your parents or other life changes that come your way.” Though they bought their home five years before Toronto approved its laneway suite bylaw, Christina and Jack Leonetti had big ideas for building on their property. “Jack and I both have backgrounds in construction so we had a lot of awareness of the bylaws and plans that were coming up. We knew the change to allow people to build suites in their yards could be a possibility,” says Christina. “You always think about one day needing to accommodate a shared space with your parents or other life changes that come your way. So when we were house hunting, we knew if we found the right property, we…

IN THE SPRING OF 2020, Satinder Kaur Grewal—a 22-year-old international student who was struggling to find work during the pandemic—applied for a job at Chat Hut, a South Asian restaurant in Brampton. The owners hired her and even offered to help with her permanent residency application. The next six months were a nightmare. Grewal alleged that she cooked, cleaned and served, 12-plus hours a day, for days on end without a break—all while earning less than minimum wage under the table. In December, she finally stood up to her bosses. They refused to change her working conditions, so she quit, teamed up with the Naujawan Support Network—an organization that protects international workers from exploitation—and filed a complaint with the Ontario Ministry of Labour. In a settlement this past February, Grewal…

AS A CHILD, Elizabeth Benn pitched at the diamonds in High Park, trying to emulate the intensity of her favourite Blue Jay, Roy Halladay. But when she tried out for the city’s youth leagues—the lone girl amid a gaggle of teenage boys—coaches told her to play softball instead. Rather than abandon her passion, Benn is revolutionizing it. In 2016, she became the first woman to play in New York’s semi-pro league. The following year, she delivered a startling presentation about baseball’s gender problem that earned her an internship with MLB. Then, this past February, the New York Mets hired the 28-year-old to run their major-league operations and manage their roster. It’s the highest post a woman has ever held at the franchise. Her appointment is noteworthy precisely because the upper…

JUST BECAUSE workers are returning to the office doesn’t mean they have to bid goodbye to that Covid-era comfort. These Toronto brands are offering outside-appropriate looks that are stretchy yet smart, comfy yet cool. For her latest collection, Emefa Kuadey, the designer behind Israella Kobla, traded her signature structured style for relaxed-fit garments like asymmetrical shift dresses and split-hem pants. “There’s an element of, ‘Yeah, we want to go back to normal, but dabbling in the comfort was nice, too,’” she says. “If we can keep some of that, let’s do it.” Local duo Kimberly Achim and Celeste Bouchard created La Leur in November of 2020 at the height of hygge sweatpant mania. Using sustainable, low-waste materials, like silky vegan ultrasuede, they offer soft, monochromatic basics: an on-trend asymmetrical knit…

In 2019, you came out of nowhere to whup Serena Williams in the final of the U.S. Open. What was it like to become a household name overnight? At first it was amazing, because it was just about the tennis. It was before all of the attention, the sponsorships, the pressure. Expectations got higher and higher. I had two major injuries just a few months apart that really killed my momentum. And then, just as I was finally ready to come back again, Covid. You were about to defend your Indian Wells title when the pandemic hit— I was in California preparing for the tournament, and, suddenly, everyone had to go home. I was just like, come on. I remember placing a bet with one of my friends about how…

SPONSORED BY DRIVEN BY AN increasing environmentally and socially conscious generation, a new way of investing is emerging. With investing now more accessible than ever, investment services must adopt new strategies to attract an innovative generation of investors. While few investors paid attention to environmental, social and governance (ESG) data before the last decade—there’s now an increased awareness that a company’s carbon footprint may have an effect on their long-term profit potential and company value. This shift has influenced more and more investors to start considering ESG factors alongside more traditional financial metrics. In light of the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s clearer now that companies with effective governance structures and positive corporate cultures are more resilient to unprecedented disruptions. RBC’s 2021 Responsible Investment Survey concluded that the adoption of ESG integration…

CREATED FOR Living a luxury lifestyle is about more than extravagance and comfort—it’s a feeling. Luxury is an effortless way of life where every aspect fits together in perfect symbiosis. Luxury is living a worry-free life in a space that feels like home, only with more amenities! Nestled in Oakville’s most vibrant and sought-after waterfront neighbourhood is The Village at Bronte Harbour, a brand-new luxury community of 481 homes set at the perfect intersection between city life and the peaceful pleasures of suburban living. These luxury rental suites answer a need in Oakville, one of Ontario’s fastest-growing cities, thanks to its proximity to Toronto and its smaller town feel. The Village is the new home you’ve been searching for with intelligently designed homes, an on-site management team, 24/7 concierge service,…

LET’S BE HONEST. The past couple of years? Not super fun. Life in Toronto, normally an embarrassment of culinary and cultural riches, became an endless hamster wheel of work, Uber Eats and late-night doom-scrolling. Even as the city reopens, the lingering threat of Covid is making it hard to be unequivocally optimistic. Still, there are plenty of reasons to look on the bright side. Toronto is the most vaccinated major city in the world, and it’s ready to make up for lost time. Sidewalk patios are filling up. The High Park cherry blossoms are blooming (and we don’t mean on a livestream). Music is filling Massey Hall again. The Jays are the team to beat this season, and stupendous soccer players from the GTA are taking Canada to the World…

LAST NOVEMBER, a 61-year-old man in North Carolina abducted a 16-year-old girl. As he drove her through Kentucky, she held her hand up to passing cars, crossing her thumb over her palm, then covering it with her fingers, mimicking a closing trap. One savvy driver recognized the signal from TikTok and called 911, which led to her rescue. The life-saving gesture, known as the Signal for Help, was conceived by the Canadian Women’s Foundation in Toronto. We spoke to Andrea Gunraj, the foundation’s VP of public engagement, about the power of a helping hand. What prompted the foundation to develop the Signal for Help? Gender-based violence spikes in times of crisis and disaster, so we knew we’d see more of it during the pandemic. People were trapped at home with…

IN 1986, Shaf Keshavjee was part of the surgical team at Toronto General Hospital that pulled off the world’s first successful double lung transplant. Now, he’s back with another life-saving innovation: delivering lungs by drone. Typically, when a pair of lungs becomes available, a hospital team hops in a car or on a jet to retrieve the organs. Keshavjee, the director of UHN’s Toronto lung transplant program, realized that drones could shave hours off the process by dodging traffic or time-consuming flight logistics. He partnered with the bioelectronics company Unither to build a drone with an organ chamber, capable of safely transporting lungs up to 30 kilometres, complete with temperature and vibration controls, its own GPS system and a ballistic parachute. This past September, Keshavjee used his invention to send…

HE WAS SIX YEARS OLD when he first saw Kurt Browning hit the ice in a clown costume. Alves knew then what he wanted to do with his life—not just to skate, but to act, too. At 16, he became the first male skater to compete internationally for Brazil, his mother’s native country. A few years later, he hung up his skates and landed roles on Degrassi and Netflix’s supernatural horror series Locke & Key. His true breakout moment arrived late last year with a role on the mystery hit Yellowjackets. The show follows a high school girls’ soccer team whose plane crashes in the middle of the Canadian wilderness. Alves’s character, Travis, the coach’s surly eldest son, would be easy to hate, but he lends tenderness to the bad-boy…

MUSTAFA AHMED grew up in Regent Park, and it was clear early on that he was destined for greatness. By the time he was 12, his prodigious poems about life in the projects were already earning standing ovations. Before long, he was writing lyrics and melodies for Justin Bieber, the Weeknd and Daniel Caesar. Last year, he stepped into the spotlight with When Smoke Rises, a tender folk album that showcased his musical ingenuity and gave voice to his neighbourhood’s pain. The record mourns the friends Mustafa has lost to gang violence—particularly Jahvante “Smoke Dawg” Smart, the Regent Park rapper who was murdered in 2018. Mustafa lays bare his heartbreak and interrupts the cycle of tragedy, singing, “Just put down that bottle, tell me your sorrows, I care about you…

NOT LONG AGO, cruise ships were vessels of super-spreading doom, anchored offshore in indefinite limbo. It’s no small feat, then, that tens of thousands of tourists will throw caution to the wind this summer and board boats bound not for the Bahamas or Hawaii, but for Toronto. That’s right—between May and October, the city expects to welcome a record 37 cruise ships. The thought of merry, unmasked throngs spilling onto our streets may be a bit disconcerting, but it’s terrific news for Toronto’s beleaguered bars, museums and tourist attractions. And we’ll admit that we can’t help but feel a little chuffed that, after two years trapped inside their homes, travellers have decided to dock at our shores.…

I WAS BORN IN 1987 in Sargodha, Pakistan, the same small city where my parents had met and wed in an arranged marriage the previous year. My father was a photographer and a painter, but work was scarce and low-paying, so he moved to Canada to carve out a better life for our family. When I was five months old he got a job at a men’s clothing factory in Montreal; four years later he sponsored my mother and me to join him. In Pakistan, I was one of the only kids I knew without siblings, and my mother promised me that would change once we got to Canada. When my father came to get us from the airport, I asked if we could stop and pick up my siblings…

Chill Swill Toronto beer company Ace Hill’s line of cannabis consumables, called ACE VALLEY, includes drinkables like Moonwave, a nocturnally oriented berry-lavender sparkling water that’s heavy on CBD—ideal for setting your mind to soothe after a long day. $4.95, acevalley.com 2 mg THC, 10 MG CBD Fantastic Fizz Slightly saccharine, breezy, juicy and bright, GREEN MONKÉ’s Tropical Citrus sparkling soda tastes like high-end Fanta. With more CBD than THC, it’s designed for socializing—it’ll pep you up and chill you out, without the morning-after hangover. $5, greenmonke.com 3 mg THC, 6 mg CBD Tea Time SUMMIT’s easy-drinking lemonade iced tea is juicy, refreshing and suitable for summertime porch sipping, with a barely-there taste of cannabis despite the maximal helping of THC. $6.95, ocs.ca 10 mg THC Tropical Bliss These cocktail-like cans…