Toronto Life July 2023

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Edifice Complex In our guide to the near-future of Toronto real estate, we rounded up a series of planned projects that are smart, sustainable and relatively affordable. Readers responded with a mix of applause and skepticism. “Finally! Interesting and earth-friendly architecture in Toronto! Not just another glass skyscraper.” —caseychowe, Instagram “It’s really exciting to see the changes happening in East Bayfront as you walk around. Can’t wait to see the finished neighbourhood.” —sophiepipilas, Instagram “Nice architecture, but all that green foliage is BS. Looks great in renderings, but the odds of it actually happening once the project is complete are very unlikely.” —derek.ism, Instagram “We’ve seen urban greenery done like this around the world, but not so much in Toronto. The plans look pretty amazing, but as everyone in Toronto…

A Train Bound for Nowhere The London Underground features 272 stations. New York’s system has 472. Both cities have problems, but getting people from point A to B isn’t foremost among them. Toronto’s feeble yellow U and green slash, by contrast, are dotted with 75 stops plus a smattering of above-ground stations, many of them in various states of decrepitude. If a city overflows with great restaurants, museums, parks and concert halls, but you can’t get to them without tearing your hair out, what’s the point? In this politically polarizing era, few issues find public consensus. Bad transit is one of them. The woeful state of affairs holds Toronto back in just about every category: economic activity, tourism, productivity, quality of life, reputation and more. Torontonians have become inured to…

At nearly 50 years old, Niki Grace understood her body well enough to know something wasn’t right. Having spent the last eight years grappling with the excruciating effects of endometriosis, the Australian expat and rehabilitation personal trainer knew pain, but in March 2021, her condition became unbearable. “I had nerve pain running all down my legs,” she says. “It was like someone was trying to rip my pubic bone out.” She was at her wit’s end by the time she met Dr. Yoav Brill, a highly regarded obstetrician/gynecologist (OB/GYN) specializing in complex endometriosis at Oak Valley Health’s Markham Stouffville Hospital (MSH). She begged him to perform laparoscopic surgery to remove her ovaries. “I was just bawling my eyes out,” Grace recounts. “I said to him, ‘I have no quality of…

“If you’re not selling out the house at Stratford, you’re not doing your job”—Paul Gross, p. 26 If all goes to plan, the Canadian Pacific Building—one of the city’s grandest old office towers—will soon be converted into 127 condo units. It makes sense: 15 per cent of downtown offices are empty, and housing supply is at an all-time low. So why aren’t more property owners getting in on the action? It’s true that upgrading workspaces with sufficient plumbing, electrical and natural light is expensive. But the real problem lies in outdated policies: the city’s 25-year Downtown Plan mandates that any lost office space in the Financial District be replaced, an edict conceived when vacancies were almost non-existent. With a potential treasure trove of apartments and condos out there, opportunity is…

The Royal Treatment After more than two decades, Paul Gross is back at Stratford, this time playing theatre’s most conflicted retiree, King Lear. He’s never been more ready It’s been a while since audiences have seen you on screens. What have you been up to? I was writing a play when Covid hit. My wife, Martha, and I have a place outside the city. Once we got there, we realized how many of our friends, particularly young people in the industry, were stuck indoors. We ended up building an artists’ retreat on our property, with all these tiny houses for people to live in and work on their scripts. That’s cool! This is the first I’ve heard about it. This year has been a bit complicated. I’ve been in Stratford…