Luminato and the Distillery District

Luminato was an incredible accomplishment for Toronto, a multi-disciplinary arts festival where all the major players contributed ideas in a big way. Especially impressive were the offerings at Harbourfront Centre (which I love), the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Distillery District. My boss and colleague Bruce Mau, and his wife Bisi Williams, were involved in the planning, as were a who's-who of the culture scene in Toronto. Check out their website for more information and a full itinerary of what was presented this year.

While at the Distillery, we did all the other usual stuff of course. Shopping at Lileo (well, window shopping - I didn't want to spend $80 on the John Lennon t-shirt); buying chocolate at SOMA (the best chocolate shop in the world); eating crepes (Shellie did); eating at a new restaurant called CafeUno; buying some coffee at Balzac's; checking out a few galleries, including the Atom Egoyan installation.

Oh, and most importantly, the girls had makeovers courtesy of L'Oreal and their Redken line. L'Oreal was the major sponsor of Luminato, breaking Canadian arts sponsorship records for amount pledged, as far as I understand. And in the cool loft space where the makeovers were happening, there was also a very fun art-making studio that captured Lily and Meredith's imagination.

I'm going to post more images later but thought I would get this preliminary group up and running to keep this damn site fresh!












We recently spent the better part of the day at the Distillery District again, as we do almost weekly. This particular occasion we were joined by Meredith's cousins, Amy and Lily, my sister Lisa, and her boyfriend Peter. Maureen and her daughter Grace also joined us for part of the festivities.

Going to the Movies at the Varsity

We love watching movies, whether at home on DVD or at movie theatres in Toronto or wherever we are. A couple of weeks ago, during a particularly nasty heat wave, Meredith and I spent most of the day inside watching movies. We saw Shrek the Third and Pirates of the Caribbean III. Meredith liked them both, preferring Pirates by a hair, whereas I only liked Shrek (though I wanted more of my favorite character, Puss in Boots, aka Antonio Banderas).

We saw Shrek in the Varsity VIP theatre. I'm used to going to the Rainbow Cinemas, a budget theatre in the St. Lawrence area where our admission price is around $10 for the two of us. It was $30 (!) for the two of us in the VIP theatre, but worth it.

The Varsity is located in the Manulife Centre, a 70s-era mixed residential/retail/etc. complex, a not-quite-comfortable-in-its-skin Brutalist concrete structure in the middle of the Bloor St. shopping area. It has one of the better Indigo bookstores in Toronto, so we also spend a lot of time there. Bay Bloor Radio is also a highlight and there are actually two liquor stores in it (but that's another story).

My apologies for the red eye photographs. I'll have to take some time one day to correct them. Meredith's fair skin makes it difficult to avoid these sometimes Satanic looking images.

Jim's now on Facebook

If you're a social networker, check out my new Facebook page. Just go to Facebook. You have to login or register as a new user. I'm also on Linkedin but it's not as interesting or dynamic.

Well, it's not exactly in Toronto but...

What could be more "Toronto" than going to Florida? We're at Disney World now (it's Sunday, May 20, 2007), and have been since Thursday night. Shellie, Meredith and I brought Meredith's cousins, Amy and Lily. And, like the last time we were here in November, 2002, we're having an incredible time. So far, we've been to Epcot twice and the Magic Kingdom. Today we're going to MGM and then, finally, Animal Kingdom. Tomorrow we'll just hang around the pool hotel and go shopping at the (huge) outlet mall adjacent to our hotel complex (the Hilton Grand Vacation Resort on International Drive). We'll try to make some notes later but, in the meantime, here are a bunch of photographs from our trip:

The Brickworks: Britney Spears for President

Last year we were in a video made by our neighbor, Ron, called Britney Spears for President. It was shot at the Brickworks site in Toronto and our housing complex, Olde York Village. Ron stars as Britney, his daughter is Nixon, and his wife is Clinton. And most of the others in the video are our neighbors and Ron's friends.

Link

The Ontario Science Centre

These pictures were taken at the Ontario Science Centre last summer (2006). This is outside in one of the courtyards, in the Science Centre's beautiful setting in the Don Valley.


This is one of the classic attractions at the Science Centre where you can line up to have electricity shot through your body such that it makes your hair stand on end. Meredith's hair was really long and heavy then so we didn't get the full effect, but we'll try again next time we go there, as she has shorter hair now.


And here we are waiting in line for the electro-hair trick. Meredith is trying to power a light bulb with her own energy (it's a bit of a challenge for kids). We'll get better photographs next time we're there!

The Dominion Tavern (Meredith's 9th Birthday, January, 2007)

The Dominion is our local pub and eatery, owned and run by a neighbor of ours, Sean, who recently moved to Leslieville. It was the oldest hotel in Toronto and, like many buildings in our Corktown neighborhood, once a brewery. These are images from Meredith's ninth birthday party, which had a hybrid 50s/60s theme, celebrating Archie Comics, Grease and Hairspray.


We had the cake made at Dufflet's, another great Toronto institution. When Meredith was quite young, she got a behind-the-scenes tour of the Dufflet's cake factory, with Dufflet herself. Dufflet is a friend of Bruce Mau Design where Jim works.


We hired a mad scientist to pretend he was Dilton Doiley from Archie Comics. Meredith was his assistant. Here she is taking the scientific vow.


One of the great tricks the scientist taught the kids to do was how to make cotton candy by blowing air into sugar. Here's the line-up. On the left is our neighbor Ian, next to him are Meredith's cousins Amy and and Lily...


...and Meredith...


...and Meredith's friend Misha.