The Devil is in the Details

Backwards art

By Shawn Micallef

From 1968 to 1975, the “Senator David A. Croll Apartments” building at Bloor and Huron Streets was known as Rochdale College, Toronto's “vertical Haight-Ashbury.”

A bridge too high

By Shawn Micallef

A big bump in the planned rail link from Union Station to Pearson Airport has emerged where the line crosses Strachan Avenue, south of King.

A chorus of [murmur]s

By

We first encountered EYE WEEKLY contributor Shawn Micallef in 2004, when our then associate editor (now City editor) Edward Keenan was working on a story about the absence of historical plaques in Toronto. For a city with a then-severe (and still lingering) identity...

A garrison with potential

By Shawn Micallef

In between Fort York and the CNE’s Princes’ Gates is the Fort York Armoury. In 1932, the city of Toronto signed a 99-year lease with the Government of Canada — the land is part of the city-owned Fort York National Historic Site — who built the Armoury in 1935...

A place to grow

Ontario Place needs a new wardrobe, but let’s keep the hot pants

By Shawn Micallef

Ontario Place needs a near-complete rethink. We should bring back the park, make it free and turn it into a great Toronto public space. Build housing in and around it, so it’s a 24-hour neighbourhood. Yet whatever we do to this place, we must retain the pod and the...

A tale of four corners

By Shawn Micallef

Queen and Spadina is one of Toronto’s most recognizable intersections but half of it needs a facelift.

Airport Not-Rocket

By Shawn Micallef

Travellers arriving at and leaving Pearson Airport must contend with a missing link in our transit system. Unlike many major cities around the world, Toronto is without a rail connection to its airport. The “Airport Rocket” bus that connects to Kipling Station is...

Alexandra’s doughnut hole

By Shawn Micallef

Alexandra Park is 16 acres of public and co-operative housing in between some of Toronto’s most visited neighbourhoods — Kensington Market, Chinatown and Queen West — but it’s a psychological hole on most of our mental maps of Toronto.

An open letter to George Smitherman

We need you to be more like Wendel Clark, not Tie Domi

By Shawn Micallef

We need you to be more like Wendel Clark, not Tie Domi

Anarchy at the Bright Pearl

By Shawn Micallef

The Bright Pearl Restaurant on Spadina at St. Andrew is one of Chinatown’s more recognizable buildings, but behind the Chinese façade and luggage store is what was once Toronto’s Labour Lyceum.