In The News

The design community can't get enough of Grotto, a unique sauna designed by the small, experimental Toronto firm, Partisans, and perched on water's edge at a private island on the Georgan Bay. The outside is minimalistic and sharp, while the inside curves and winds with an almost otherwordly mien.  

Wallpaper magazine writes: 

The stunning edifice is a sharp compliment to the view it offers, which National Geographic has proclaimed among the world's top sunset vantage points. Not too shabby, indeed. 

Read the full article here. 
Source: Wallpaper Magazine

Housing affordability is on the verge of full-out crisis in Toronto, but that's of little concern to the New York Times. 

The tony publication accurately pointed out this week that, for deep-pocketed investors, Toronto's real estate market is worth a trip across the border. 

The article explains that a lack of inventory in the Greater Toronto Area has driven the price of an average detached single-family home significantly over the past decade, leading to a predicted 3.6 percent increase to 870,000 Canadian dollars, or about $766,000, by 2015.

The report continues: 

Advertising automation giant Rubicon has picked up the Toronto start-up, Shiny Ads, along with San Francisco-based iSocket, for the combined tune of just under $30 Million USD. 

The Wall Street Journal reports:
 
Shiny Ads' website describes the company a provider of "end-to-end programmatic direct advertising platform for digital publishers to sell more premium inventory for increased revenues and profits. By automating the process for advertisers of all sizes, Shiny Ads allows the direct sales team to focus on more complex ad buys and close more deals."


Read the full story here. 
Source: The Wall Street Journal




 

This week's wintery conditions brought travel delays and early do-we-or-don't-we? shovelling dilemmas. But they also brought along this lovely – nay, adorable – treat, broadcast by the venerable Washington Post itself: video of Da Mao, one of the Toronto Zoo's two giant pandas, playing in the cold white fluff.

The video isn't just a feel-good reminder of the cuteness our world has to offer, though. The Toronto Zoo is one of only six in North America to currently claim the winsome bamboo chomping east Asian bears among its menagerie. As it happens, one of the other six zoos is located in Washington D.C.


Catch the full video here. 
Source: Washington Post
 

Toronto's “multicultural snacking and molecular cocktail” scene got love from influential alt weekly The Village Voice last week. It shouldn't be a huge surprise; the city's diverse and eclectic neighbourhoods have drawn plenty of international attention in the past.


King and Queen Streets West get a shoutout, as do a number of Kensington Market hotspots including Italian-Jamaican fusion joint Rasta Pasta, taqueria Seven Lives, and people-watching patio, Ronnie's. As the article states, “Ontario's capital is anything but provincial.” We couldn't agree more.


Read the full article here.
Source: The Village Voice.  

Kentucky whiskey distilleries are behind a nasty "whiskey fungus" that's covering houses, cars, and street signs in the Louisville suburb of Shively, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in property damage.

Munchies reports:
 
Scott's findings have led to a class-action lawsuit filed against the three major distilleries in the area – and possibly, as the piece points out, the booze industry's answer to the Erin Brokovich story. 



Read the full story here. 
Source: Munchies
 

A local biotech startup, Encycle Therapeutics, is the recipient of a generous grant to further research its development of an oral treatment for inflammatory bowel disease, or IBD--the first of its kind.

Encycle was founded by Dr. Andrei Yudin of the University of Toronto in partnership with MaRS Innovation, who are working from a $4 million public-private funding partnership with Merck Canada. 

As Dr. Raphael Hofstein, president and CEO of MaRS Innovation, told Drug Discovery and Development: "Encycle Therapeutics has spent the last 18 months demonstrating the significant potential of its innovative macrocyle chemistry platform to generate small-cell permeable systems. This achievement has resulted in multiple partnership opportunities, affirming its position as one of Canada's emerging biotechnology companies to watch."



Read more here.
Source: Drug Discovery and Development magazine

Chefs de Mission from 27 National Paralympic Committees were in Toronto last week for a final meeting in anticipation of August's Parapan Am Games. As the event's Chief Executive Officer of TO2015, Saäd Rafi, told the German-based International Paralympic Committee, the games are poised to "leave a legacy in the Americas." 

The Toronto-hosted Games are set to be history-making, thanks to a few key additions. Among these: a National Paralympic Committee support grant developed to help cover travel costs to and from the Games, and a Parapan American Development Programme to build capacity in sport management, coaching, and developing the capacity of physically and visually impaired  athletes. 

“We continue to be impressed by the preparations for the TORONTO 2015 Parapan Am Games and the efforts by Canada to create a real legacy from these Games that benefits the entire region of the Americas,” said American Paralympic Committee President Jose Luis Campo.

Among the 15 sports included in the Games will be archery, judo, powerlifiting, wheelchair basketball, wheelchair rugby and sitting volleyball.


Source: International Paralympic Committee

Following a crowdfunded production campaign, local startup KnowRoaming has made its product available for purchase. Already, techies and travellers have taken note. 

The reason for the fanfare: KnowRoaming promises to reduce pricey mobile roaming charges. It's an exciting prospect, even for mobile customers not subject to Canada's astronomical fees. 

The company's sticker SIMs get placed onto a phone's regular SIM, which then lie dormant until a person leaves their home network. At that point, the sticker enables the SIM card to pick up whatever happens to be the local network. Once a sticker kit has been purchased directly from the company's website and installed onto a phone, users can buy credits through an accompanying Android, iOS or web app to reap their savings. 

As the Globe and Mail reported earlier this year, KnowRoaming isn't an entirely novel concept; it essentially offers to step in as a low-hassle roaming provider. But it might just stick.

Source: Engadget

A Toronto man, Jordan Axani, bought a pair of discounted round-the-world plane tickets with his girlfriend and then they broke up. Now, Axani is looking for a woman – any woman – who shares her name: Elizabeth Gallagher. 

The story made international headlines after Axani crowdsourced for Elizabeth Gallaghers on the popular social messaging board, reddit. 

As quoted, by CNN, from Axani's original post:

"I am not looking for anything in return. I am not looking for companionship, romance, drugs, a trade, or to take selfies with you in front of the Christmas Market in Prague. If you feel compelled to toss me a couple hundred bucks, great. Really the only thing I ask for is that you enjoy this trip and that it bring you happiness."

He has since received thousands of emails from around the world. 


Source: CNN

Travel guide gurus Lonely Planet have anointed Toronto among the world's Top 10 Cities to visit in 2015.

"Two North American metropolises on the well-beaten path bracket Lonely Planet's Top 10 Cities list for 2015, one of an annual variety of best-of and trend-spotting rankings announced this week by the travel publisher, which also compiled them into the Best in 2015 book and travel planner," reports the San Francisco Gate.
 

The Fairmont Royal York Hotel has a new set of owners.

This week, InVest and KingSett Real Estate Growth LP partnered to buy an 80 percent share of the iconic downtown hotel for C$186.5million, leaving the remaining 20 percent to be held by current owners Ivanhoe Cambridge Inc. The news comes amidst a massive renovation initiative expected to be completed by the end of January 2015.

Bloomberg reports that the hotel was built by the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1929 across from Toronto's Union Station with the intent of becoming the largest hotel in the British Commonwealth.

In a statement published by Market Business News, Managing Director of InnVest, Ed Pitoniak, said:

"We are delighted to partner with KingSett and Ivanhoé Cambridge on what we believe is one of Canada's most prestigious hotel properties. We are also looking forward to extending our relationship with Fairmont.With the nearing completion of the Union Station enhancements, as well as the introduction of the Pearson Airport Rail Link, theFairmont Royal York's location places it at the commercial,cultural and transportation crossroads of Toronto."

Read the whole story here.

Source: Bloomberg.  

 

It turns out that a post-apocalyptic Toronto might just be a beautiful thing to behold. At least, it would be through the eyes of sci-fi author Jim Munroe.

The writer has teamed up with artists Matthew Borrett, Terry Lau and Sanford Kong to create images of a gorgeously grim future Toronto, which will be featured in a calendar given out to contributors to Munroe's latest crowdfunded story series. The resulting vignettes are both haunting and surreal: A collapsed CN Tower puffs black smoke over the Gardiner Expressway in one, while vinelike spider legs wind around downtown cityscapes in others.

io9 reports:

"Those of you familiar with Munroe's work may recognize a lot of these scenes from his last film, Ghostswith Shit Jobs,which features a segment about what happens to Toronto after the cityis invaded by giant spiders and its local internet cloud goes into foreclosure."

Giant spiders might be less-than-ideal, but even as an imagined dystopia, Toronto manages to look world-class. 

Read the full story here. 
Source: io9.
 

Kensington Market is a unique neighbourhood in Toronto revered by locals and tourists alike. Known for its garden car, graffiti and murals, the unique shops, and the hippy vibe, these eccentricities continue to inspire people around the world to tell its story.

"At its peak, the area was home to 60,000 Jews, worshipping in 60 synagogues. But when they moved on - only two synagogues remain - their place was taken in turn by Italians, Portuguese-speaking exiles from the Azores, West Indians, Koreans, Vietnamese and Latin Americans," wrote the Sydney Morning Herald.
 
"As each nationality became more affluent and moved on, they left behind a layer in the rich patina that coats Kensington Market."
 
In its profile on the neighbourhood, the Sydney Morning Herald points out that the market is only a short walk from downtown's staple, the CN Tower.
 
"Locals know it as the place to head to for superb produce, a tasty, inexpensive meal, or just somewhere to hang out and people-watch on a sunny Sunday afternoon," the article continues.
 
Toronto's street art has been getting a lot of attention lately. It was part of the reason West Queen West was recently named the second hippest neighbourhood in the world by Vogue, and now its cited as one of Kensington Market's must sees. 
 
"Yet although Kensington Market was the first Toronto neighbourhood to be declared one of Canada's national historic sites in 2006, it is constantly changing. These days, one of the market's drawcards is that it has some of the best street art in the city, with mural-sized work by recognised graffiti artists."
 
Read the full story here. 
Original Source: Sydney Morning Herald

"The need to retain public spaces in our cities as they develop and grow requires increasingly ingenuitive thinking. A new development in Toronto shows just that sort of thinking in action," writes Gizmag about Toronto's soon-to-be-developed new green space hovering above the train tracks down near Union Station. 

The park, which will be located at 45-141 Bay Street between two buildings, is the work of real estate company Ivanhoé Cambridge for Metrolinx and is "part of the ongoing development of Union Station. The plans include the addition of a new bus terminal, two office buildings to be constructed standing either side of the rail corridor, and the park area between the buildings," the article says. 

The park will not only connect the buildings, which are designed to achieve LEED Platinum certification, but will provide the city with a public space "for recreation and leisure" while also connecting them to the underground PATH. 

Another article in Bloomberg provides additional context. That article reports that the 2.7 million square foot office complex will cost around $2 billion, with construction set to begin in spring of 2015. 

Read the full story here. 
Original Source: Gizmag