The Women of Winter are a Toronto Women's shinny organization with some exciting plans underway.

There will be a shinny tournament in February, and registration for this is on November 25, 2009. Forms can be downloaded from The Women of Winter's website

Also, TWOW is organizing a road trip to a Canadian Women's Hockey League game at the Icelands Arena in Mississauga on Sunday, December 13, 2009, at 11 am. Go to the CWHL website for more details. If you want to possibly obtain free tix, email me at schodos@anduhyaun.org

Full-priced tickets are $7

Finally, look up skating at Dufferin Park for information on shinny and skills clinics. Or go to your neighbourhood rink, wherever that is. It does not look like Dufferin's page is updated yet but it surely will be soon.

happy shinnying!!

Meet Me in St. Louis

Turns out St. Louis, Missouri, is a family-friendly sort of place. You can travel up the Gateway Arch, go on a Riverboat cruise, or just walk down by the Mississipi River. On the other side, it's Illinois (wow)!!



The City Museum is brilliant, I was prepared to tell my daughter not to climb on the elaborate structures, as is usually the case with museums, but I noticed that other kids were climbing on the structures, which extended up several stories, wound around the outside of the building, and included more than one slide and a ball-pit.

The zoo is great, a bit smaller than the one in Toronto, but that makes it walkable, and, also, admission is free. However, there are extra things, like a dinosaur simulator ride, that cost a little extra money if you choose to do them.

Hammerstone's on Soulard is a great Blues joint, a little smoky, perhaps, as there is no Smoke-Free Ontario Act, but it would seem as though this may be happening in Missouri at some point down the road. In any case, the people are friendly and kids are welcome, as we learned.

If we had stayed longer, we might have checked out Flamingo Bowl, or taken in a hockey, baseball, or football game, depending on the season.

St. Louis is not too close and not too far in terms of a vacation from Southern Ontario, and it's very friendly. I look forward to returning sometime in the future.

Something Strange in the Neighbourhood

Image source here.

Bunch has been noticing something strange happening in the neighbourhood:

Ghosts showing up on doorsteps!!

It's a new tradition, called "Ghosting" or "Boo'ing."

Wanna be a part of this?

It's Easy!!

Here's how:

You need:

two paper bags filled with treats,
two pictures of ghosts

and,

directions to make two similar treat bags and two similar pictures of ghosts, along with directions to hang the ghost picture up in the window to indicate you have already been "ghosted"

The idea is to drop the bags on the doorsteps of two unsuspecting neighbours after dark. (Kids should bring and adult with them.) Ring the doorbell and run away before they come to answer. Then, each neighbour does the same to two other neighbours.

I Got Ghosted allows you to track your ghosting.

Diana's Legacy says "What a fabulous way to be neighbourly...It's such a great thing to drive around the neghbourhood and see the kindness spread."
Image source here"

Alpha Mom says "I love this tradition so much I wanted to share it with you."

Southern Living has a discussion forum on "Boo'ing."

You can include a poem in your package. Either write your own or find one on one of the websites above.

This one goes to the tune of "Black Magic Woman" by Santana.

You've got a ghost on your doorstep
You've got a ghost on your doorstep
You've got a ghost on your doorstep
Dropped off by me
And you're gonna find out how much fun this
Ghost on the doorstep's gonna be

Don't turn your back on me neighbour
Don't turn your back on me neighbour
Don't turn your back on me neighbour
Please go along with my tricks
Because this ghost is gonna visit two more neighbours
your picks!!

Take Over The World

Stacey is a friend from my hometown. I always see pictures of her amazing cakes. I recently asked her what her secrets were.



"...for almost all of my vegan cakes and cupcakes, I use the recipes in 'Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World,'

The pond cake and construction cake are both easy-to-do, and you don't need any special skills or equipment.


For the construction cake I took a chocolate layer cake, and I 'excavated' a hole in the top layer. I iced it with chocolate icing, and then I covered the whole thing with "dirt"

(mostly chocolate cookie crumbs, but it looks more like real dirt if you add some other stuff like graham crumbs, coarse sugar, skor toffee bits, brown sugar, etc.)

Then I added chocolate candy 'rocks' (from Bulk Barn), construction toys, and some little paper signs I made.

The pond cake is also a simple layer cake that has a hole excavated in it, and iced to 'seal' the cake.



Then I used green shoestring licorice, cut on steep diagonals for the reeds.

Some of them I dipped in melted chocolate for cat-tails; others I dipped in yellow or purple candy melts (Bulk Barn) and then in yellow or purple crystal sugar (also BB) to make the flowers.

I arranged these around one side of the hollow.

The water was extra-concentrated blue jello (I think I used 3pkgs of blue jello with only 1c of hot water and 1/2c of cold), allowed it to cool to room temp, poured it in the hollow and put it in the fridge to set.

Just before serving it, I put on the 'lilypad' (which was a green gumdrop I flattened) -- don't put it on in advance because the sugar on it will 'melt' the jello! Then added the frog.

The baby bird cupcakes are pretty easy to do, but require you to use piping bags and specialty decorating tips. You can take a 4-evening decorating course at most Bulk Barns or Michaels stores, and you would learn everything you needed to know to make these cakes! Having a couple of inexpensive tools and a little guidance about technique is all you really need to be able to make these basic kinds of things!"

Thanks, Stacey!!

postscript: obviously not all of the recipes are completely vegan but they could certainly be modified thus. See the recipe for vegetarian jello.

Yes, You Can Do That....

One of the most influential actors of my childhood has left us.



Les Lye 1924-2009

Best known for playing all of the male adult roles in You Can't Do That on Television.

Danny Gallagher of TV Squad says "It was really the first show in my mind that created an "us vs. them" mentality between kids and adults and didn't worry about influencing children negatively by entertaining kids through things that kids actually found entertaining. Maybe that's why my parents refused to let me watch it. They saw it and thought it might lead to a children's revolution of Spartacan proportions. "

I think there was something revolutionary about You Can't Do That on Television. The kids were shown having all manner of injustice brought upon them by the adults.

However, the sheer ridicule of it all meant the kids had the last laugh and showed that those who misuse power deserve to be laughed at.

Old-Town Crawl

The Esplanade in Toronto is a wide street with a boulevard in the middle. It is so wide that the boulevard has playgrounds, fountains, soccer fields, and basketball courts.

The boulevard is one long park and the surrounding mix of condo and co-op leads to a vibrant blend of humankind.

Soccer teams practise, teenagers shoot baskets, dogs are walked, children play, and people of all ages enjoy a city that belongs to and is composed of each and every one.

This area is particularly beautiful just before sunset, and on a weekend afternoon. It is probably divine first thing in the morning but I may never know for sure.

Postscript: Before heading out on an Esplanade excursion, you might want to download Toronto artist Marlena Zuber's great map of the area, inspired by a local running group.

How can I describe the intersection of College and Bathurst?



Sneaky Dees? Bistro 422?



What about The Pink Flamingo, just east of Sneaky Dees? I always wondered what it was like, a friend of mine said;

"It's a unique disco bar- with a strong Latin American feel, I almost feel that I am partying the night away in a disco in Mexico or Ecuador. Very easy crowd, don't need to be a professional ballroom dancer."


If you are looking for a CD then Soundscapes is the place to go. It doesn't look very big but it's pretty stacked.

Back to Spadina, Rosemary Donegan wrote a book documenting the history of Spadina Avenue which have quotes from people who grew up in the neighbourhoods around Queen and College streets, early in the previous century. What is interesting is that this general area became known for housing some of the most well-known live music clubs;

“People who are not in the area think it’s fascinating, but people who are don’t think much of it. When you come up through it and you experience it, it’s nice to read about it, but it’s not nice to experience it. You have good moments but you have more bad. Sometimes you want to work and you can’t work. The economics are bad and in those days it was certain jobs for certain people. The Jews had the garment industry, local blacks worked in service jobs- an the trains and as domestics. I guess if you were an Orangeman or something you worked at City Hall...Around Queen and Bathurst, when I was a kid, everyone was Ukrainian, Jewish, Hungarian, Polish...The kids you hung out with, usually their mother could never speak English. You never really spoke correct English to them, you spoke a kind of funny English. That’s all they seemed to be able to understand. If you spoke correctly they didn’t really understand.” Interview with Ernie Richardson, May 27, 1984. (Donegan, 1985: 84)

“How I managed to grow up at College and Spadina, in that place at that time, I’ll never know. ...with my parents bootleggers, my aunt and my grandmothers’ bootleggers, one of my uncles also outside of the law working as a professionall gambler, a cousin having done time for what the law came within a whisker of calling murder, another in-law so mixed up with the criminal element (The Purple Gang, no less) that he spent a solid year in hiding, in fear of his life, and the street itself swarming with citizens of the most dubious legitimacy, each of them polishing up his own little corner of the action.” (Donegan, 1985:163)

Donegan, Rosemary. Spadina Avenue. with an introduction by Rick Salutin. Vancouver and Toronto: Douglas and McIntyre Ltd., 1985.

I spent two weeks this summer interning in Moss Park.

I love that neighbourhood. Of all the places listed at the link above, the Berkeley Cafe was my favourite.

I briefly went to Inglenook at King and Sackville and my father had an office at Queen and Sherbourne. Sometimes we met at The Mystic Muffin or Schnitzel Queen. Both of these places predate gentrification.

I went to school at King and Sackville when The Distillery District was a bunch of vacated buildings.

Okay so King and Sackville and the Distillery District are technically not in Moss Park. But they are close.

As for bars, my favourite pre-gentrification drinking spot in Moss Park would be Betty's.

There are a lot of cool pre-gentrification things in this area.

Images from torontoneighbourhoodguide.com and torontoist.com

Check out the Chicago Bar Project, created by Sean Parnell,

it has lots of information on bars in Chicago, including former speakeasies and "gone but not forgotten"

Some Toronto Spots

Here is the beginning of my Toronto bar project.

Please feel more than free to comment with any suggestions/corrections

“A working hotel and bar for 80 years, The Cameron began this most recent incarnation in 1981 when it morphed from a flophouse into a full-fledged arts community.” (www.thecameron.com). Just ever so slightly too far west to be considered a part of the trendy Queen St. strip that includes the Rivoli, the Horseshoe Tavern, and the CHUM City buildings, and just south of the Alexandra Park housing co-operative, it represents many elements of an urban arts community that could otherwise be seen to be incompatible.

Building on the success of The Cameron House, many more of this genre of bar would seem to be cropping up of late along Queen St. West. Of Parkdale’s relatively new Mitzi’s Sister restaurant, Toronto Life says, ‘The crowd here is much less Rosedale trust-fund baby than Parkdale loftier who sees glamour on the grittier side of Queen West.’ (see www.toronto.com) In its own website, the Drake Hotel at Queen and Beaconsfield, just west of Dovercourt, the same area that houses the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, is described as ‘Housing beautiful contradictions, where highs meet lows and the healthful coexist with the decadent, the Drake embodies urban wildness...By the 80’s, The Drake had fallen upon hard times - at times a punk bar, all night rave den and come-by-chance flophouse. The current owner purchased the property in late 2001 and undertook the extensive renovations that give the hotel its current form - a celebration of its fabulous history.’ (www.thedrakehotel.ca).

I took some photos in the rapidly-gentrifying area around the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto

I made a slideshow out of the same photos

click on the word to watch it, if you like