{"id":2437,"date":"2014-10-11T12:03:44","date_gmt":"2014-10-11T19:03:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=2437"},"modified":"2014-10-11T12:03:44","modified_gmt":"2014-10-11T19:03:44","slug":"notebook-on-cities-and-culture-s4e58-things-truly-torontonian-with-denise-balkissoon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=2437","title":{"rendered":"Notebook on Cities and Culture S4E58: Things Truly Torontonian with Denise Balkissoon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-2438\" style=\"border: 0;\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/DeniseBalkissoon-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"DeniseBalkissoon-300x300\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/DeniseBalkissoon-300x300.jpg 300w, http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/DeniseBalkissoon-300x300-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>At Toronto&#8217;s Queen and Logan, Colin Marshall talks with <a href=\"http:\/\/balkissoon.com\/site\/\">Denise Balkissoon<\/a>, co-founder of <a href=\"http:\/\/ethnicaisle.wordpress.com\/about\/\">The Ethnic Aisle<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0writer on a variety of Torontonian subjects from multiculturalism to real estate for publications like\u00a0<em>Toronto Life<\/em>, the\u00a0<em>Toronto Star<\/em>, the\u00a0<em>Globe and Mail<\/em>, and\u00a0<em>The Grid.\u00a0<\/em>They discuss her reputation as an astute observer of the multiculture; what happens at the intersection of multiculturalism and real estate; the wealth flowing into downtown, and the resulting push of &#8220;racialized communities&#8221; toward the periphery; the formerly working class neighborhood around Queen and Logan and its current, rapid gentrification; the appeal of &#8220;tiny little backyards&#8221;; how the real estate market&#8217;s &#8220;ferocious competition&#8221; made it an interesting beat, but may yet make it boring; on what levels Toronto has lived up to its multicultural promise, and on what levels it hasn&#8217;t; what her Trinidadian family of engineers, lawyers, and medical professionals thought of her choice to go into journalism; exploring neighborhoods through one&#8217;s own social links to them, or, alternatively, through the oft-joked about &#8220;festival every weekend&#8221; Toronto offers; the city&#8217;s reputation for a lack of physical beauty, and what preservation problems have to do with it; what you find &#8220;out there&#8221; in the suburbs, an essential part of modern Toronto&#8217;s multicultural experience; the nature of &#8220;Toronto&#8217;s moment,&#8221; including but not limited to residents&#8217; newfound happiness living there and their enjoyment of the Malaysian, Uighur, and Tamil cuisine on offer; what count as things truly Torontonian, if anything does; the always-personal nature of Toronto&#8217;s appeal, and what a moment like her husband not eating the heads of shrimp and getting made fun of for it says about that; the Toronto articles she fantasizes about writing, such as studies of housing as a whole, a look at the emergence of &#8220;generation rent&#8221; as a political force, and the interactions between different waves of immigrants; and whether, after the election, people will still feel like they live between &#8220;two Torontos.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Download the interview\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/traffic.libsyn.com\/colinmarshall\/NCC_S4E58_Denise_Balkissoon.output.mp3\">here as an MP3<\/a><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u00a0or on\u00a0<\/span><a style=\"color: #555555;\" href=\"http:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/notebook-on-cities-culture\/id266539442\">iTunes<\/a><span style=\"color: #000000;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At Toronto&#8217;s Queen and Logan, Colin Marshall talks with Denise Balkissoon, co-founder of The Ethnic Aisle\u00a0and\u00a0writer on a variety of Torontonian subjects from multiculturalism to real estate for publications like\u00a0Toronto Life, the\u00a0Toronto Star, the\u00a0Globe and Mail, and\u00a0The Grid.\u00a0They discuss her reputation as an astute observer of the multiculture; what happens at the intersection of multiculturalism [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-notebook-on-cities-and-culture","category-toronto"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2437"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2441,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2437\/revisions\/2441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}