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Category Archives: Toronto

Notebook on Cities and Culture S4E61: Publishing Crushing with Alana Wilcox

Near the University of Toronto, Colin Marshall talks to Alana Wilcox, Editorial Director of Coach House Books and author of the novel A Grammar of Endings. They discuss the past twenty years’ boom in Toronto writing; what factors, including an embarrassing mayor in the nineties, made “mythologizing our own city” possible; why Coach House prints […]

Notebook on Cities and Culture S4E60: Having the City for Dinner with Corey Mintz

In Toronto’s Kensington Market, Colin Marshall talks to Corey Mintz, author of the Toronto Star column “Fed” and the book How to Host a Dinner Party. They discuss what makes a dinner party a Torontonian dinner party; the city’s “uptight” reputation; how he bottomed out in his initial cooking career, winding up working the kitchen at a dinner […]

Notebook on Cities and Culture S4E59: Walk, Don’t Brunch with Shawn Micallef

In Toronto’s Church-Wellesley Village, Colin Marshall talks to Shawn Micallef, editor and co-owner of Spacing magazine, Toronto Star columnist, and author of such books as Stroll: Psychogeographic Walking Tours of Toronto and The Trouble with Brunch. They discuss his first “long, deliberate” walk in Toronto, which happened by accident; what, exactly, caused this trouble with brunch; his youth in […]

Notebook on Cities and Culture S4E58: Things Truly Torontonian with Denise Balkissoon

At Toronto’s Queen and Logan, Colin Marshall talks with Denise Balkissoon, co-founder of The Ethnic Aisle and writer on a variety of Torontonian subjects from multiculturalism to real estate for publications like Toronto Life, the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, and The Grid. They discuss her reputation as an astute observer of the multiculture; what happens at the intersection of multiculturalism […]

Notebook on Cities and Culture S4E57: The Magnet with Russell Smith

In Toronto’s Bloordale, Colin Marshall talks with Russell Smith, author of such novels as How Insensitive, Noise, Muriella Pent, and Girl Crazy, as well as style and culture columns in The Globe and Mail, the book Men’s Style: The Thinking Man’s Guide to Dress, and the e-book Blindsided: How Twenty Years of Writing About Booze, Drugs and Sex Ended in the Blink […]

Notebook on Cities and Culture S4E56: All In with Dylan Reid

Near Toronto’s Danforth, Colin Marshall talks to Dylan Reid, senior editor at Spacing magazine, former co-chair of the Toronto Pedestrian Committee, and co-founder of Walk Toronto. They discuss whether the term “pedestrianism” has become as unappealing as the term “classical music”; the nature of the Danforth and its Greek roots; spatial ways to think about one’s walks; the quintessentially […]

Notebook on Cities and Culture S4E55: The Rules of the Game with Jaime Woo

Above Toronto’s Glad Day Bookshop, Colin Marshall talks to Jaime Woo, writer, game designer, co-founder of the Toronto video game festival Gamercamp (the next edition of which happens this month), and author of Meet Grindr: How One App Changed the Way We Connect. They discuss taking the measure of a city by firing up Grindr and […]