Memoirs of the Beach: Reflections on a Toronto Childhood

Glenn and Jean Cochrane have lived in Toronto?s Beach area for thirty-eight years ? which sounds like a lifetime but really leaves them as a relative newcomers. Like many of the area?s residents, the Cochranes are convinced that once someone moves to the Beach, they?ll never leave.

Unbuilt Toronto explores never-realized building projects in and around Toronto, from the citys founding to the twenty-first century. Delving into unfulfilled and largely forgotten visions for grand public buildings, landmark skyscrapers, highways, subways, and arts and recreation venues, it outlines such ambitious schemes as St. Alban's Cathedral, the Queen subway line and early city plans that would have resulted in a Paris-by-the-Lake.

In the Skin of a Lion is a love story and an irresistible mystery set in the turbulent, muscular new world of Toronto in the 20s and 30s. Michael Ondaatje entwines adventure, romance and history, real and invented, enmeshing us in the lives of the immigrants who built the city and those who dreamed it into being: the politically powerful, the anarchists, bridge builders and tunnellers, a vanished millionaire and his mistress, a rescued nun and a thief who leads a charmed life.

In Margaret Avison?s new poems, little pleasures are bound up with larger ones. Her slightest subjects ? beloved Toronto parks with their population of oaks, firs, squirrels, dogs, kids, even ants, and the minutest sighs of her contemporary urban soundscape ? all have their being within an immense composition that calls and hauls us to a largeness, a category-breaking ?always unthinkable? beyond.

For a quarter century, Glenn Cochrane, of CFTO's six o'clock news, left viewers with a smile by scouring the city for the genuine eccentrics and landmark fests that put Hogtown on the map.

On December 22, 2022 as eastern Canadians were getting ready for the holidays, a bizarre weather system brought crippling freezing rain to central and eastern Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick. Over 300,000 people lost power in Toronto alone and 70,000 were still without it on Christmas morning. Officials estimate that 40% of power lines in the GTA were affected and more than 20% of Toronto?s tree canopy was destroyed.

Along the Shore examines the Toronto waterfront, past and present, through the lens of four lakefront communities and districts ? the Scarborough shore (including the Bluffs), the Beach, the Island, and the Lakeshore (New Toronto, Mimico, Humber Bay, and Long Branch). Each retains a direct and immediate connection with Lake Ontario and the natural world.

Rifke (Rosalie Wise Sharp) grew up in North Toronto in a household very different from those of her peers. Her family's traditional Yiddish customs and hard life style made her feel like she was born into the wrong family. Over the course of her life - and its many experiences that range from despair to incredible wealth - Rifke realized the spartan lifestyle of her parents did wonders to stretch her mind, her creativity, and the importance of remember one's roots. 

Mike Filey?s column ?The Way We Were? first appeared in the Toronto Sunday Sun not long after the first edition of the paper hit the newsstands on September 16, 1973. Now, almost four decades later, Filey?s column has enjoyed an uninterrupted stretch as one of the newspaper?s most widely read features. In 1992 a number of his columns were reprinted in Toronto Sketches: ?The Way We Were.? Since then another nine volumes have been published, each of which has attained great success.