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3 weeks ago | 
spacing.ca | John Lorinc |Peter MacCallum |Ian Darragh
Though it seems like an eternity ago, Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives circa 2023 and 2024 desperately wanted this election to be about the ruinous cost of housing (and Justin Trudeau, of course). Poilievre starred in numerous extended and compelling effective videos — e.g., “Housing hell: how we got there and how we get out”‘ — dramatizing the myriad ways in which the housing approvals system had gone off the rails.
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1 month ago | 
spacing.ca | Ian Darragh |John Lorinc |Cheryl Thompson
The lack of housing was so acute in Toronto in 1944 that the acting mayor, Robert H. Saunders, posted notices in newspapers warning families not to move to Toronto. This newspaper ad is included in an eye-opening exhibit at the City of Toronto Archives until March 27, 2025. The exhibit includes photos taken by Globe & Mail photographers of a trailer park that sprang up in the 1930s and 1940s on a vacant lot on University Avenue and Gerrard Street within sight of Queen’s Park.
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Jan 24, 2025 | 
spacing.ca | Steven Evans |Sarah B. Hood |Peter MacCallum |Ian Darragh
Like Toronto’s winding ravine system, the Toronto waterfront is a significant and defining geographical feature. Before the arrival of Europeans, Indigenous peoples flourished on the land that would much later become the City of Toronto.
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Jan 10, 2025 | 
spacing.ca | Michel Nayrouz |Ian Darragh |Dylan Reid |Peter MacCallum
Whether it is the scouring of Ontario Place or the war against bikers, it seems the Ford government is getting away with just about everything it sets out to do, and that is no coincidence. In 2023, the Ontario government and the City of Toronto trumpeted an intergovernmental effort, dubbed the New Deal, and the enabling legislation, Bill 154, which received Royal Assent just over a year ago.
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Nov 13, 2024 | 
spacing.ca | Steven Evans |Cheryl Thompson |Ian Darragh
Between 2021 and 2023 architectural and documentary photographer Steven Evans trained his eye and camera on Ontario Place as plans for its future were unfolding. That work culminated in his book As It Is: A Precarious Moment in the Life of Ontario Place. On October 31, 2024, Evans returned to Ontario Place after hundreds trees were destroyed and removed from the site and as bulldozers began working the landscaping and buildings. This is what he found. – Shawn Micallef
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Oct 23, 2024 | 
spacing.ca | Peter MacCallum |Ian Darragh |John Lorinc |Shiri Yeung
Kensington Market: Heart of the City is a neighbourhood documentary that’s been in the making since 2016. “It’s really a look into the heart of the city of Toronto, how it came to be, the state that it is today and what it will become in the future,” says director Stuart Clarfield, a Toronto resident and community advocate. The film’s lengthy production reflects the challenges that come with being self-produced and self-funded.
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Sep 6, 2024 | 
spacing.ca | Ian Darragh |Sinead Doherty-Grant |John Lorinc |Don Snyder
A documentary about Ontario Place featuring Francesca Bouaoun of Ontario Place For All, as well as Steve Mann and many other members of SwimOP, will have its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) with screenings for the public on Sept. 12, 13, and 14.
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Aug 29, 2024 | 
spacing.ca | Ian Darragh |Nathan Abraha |John Lorinc
Every week this summer Francesca Bouaoun has launched her kayak at Ontario Place to check on the trees. They’re a stand of 850 trees planted 54 years ago by landscape architect Michael Hough on the West Island of Ontario Place that has become a mature forest, home to birds, foxes and rabbits, and 12 species endangered or at risk. A birder and supporter of Ontario Place for All, Bouaoun likes to kayak on Lake Ontario in the evening when the water is calm.
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Aug 21, 2024 | 
spacing.ca | Trent Weston |Lorraine Johnson |Ian Darragh
When Douglas Counter heads out the front door of his Etobicoke home to appreciate the day’s new blooms, he doesn’t have to go far. The flowers are waiting for him right in his yard, including the city-owned boulevard beside the road. Like many in Etobicoke, his boulevard is a drainage ditch. But in his, native wildflowers, sedges, and grasses have replaced the traditional sloped turf lawn. They’re not there by happenstance.
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Jul 4, 2024 | 
spacing.ca | John Lorinc |Nathan Abraha |Ian Darragh
In a city that loves to make, but not execute, plans and then overthink, but not solve, problems, there’s surely no better illustration of this twin-set of frustrating civic habits than the recently released 25-year Toronto Island Master Plan, which has done an absolutely masterful job of missing the proverbial forest for the trees. The two-volume plan took four years to gestate, clocks in at 228 pages and has over 100 recommendations.
