toronto

Toronto Is Converting an Airport Into a Futuristic City Within a City

Developers wants to build an urban hub within Toronto's boundaries using a defunct span of runway and hangar space.

Van Attacker Who Allegedly Killed 10 in Toronto Says He Was Radicalized on Reddit and 4Chan

Alek Minassian, the 26-year-old man accused of killing 10 people with a rented Ryder van in Toronto on April 23, 2018, told police that he’s an involuntary celibate (incel) and that he was radicalized online through websites like Reddit and 4Chan, according to a police interrogation that took place shortly after the attack. Minassian, charged…

Uber Plans to Put Self-Driving Cars Back on the Road ‘Within the Next Few Months’ After Fatal Crash

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi says that the company plans to put self-driving cars back on the road “within the next few months.” The transportation company suspended tests in March after one of its vehicles struck and killed a pedestrian in Arizona. The incident is believed to be the first human death from an autonomous car.…

Facebook Post by Suspected Toronto Attacker Praises Elliot Rodger, Announces ‘Incel Rebellion’ Has Begun

Yesterday evening in Toronto, 10 people were killed and another 15 injured by a van driving erratically in the Canadian city. The driver, 25-year-old Alek Minassian, is being held on 10 counts of first-degree murder and 13 counts of attempted murder. Other than one former classmate’s descriptions of him as socially awkward and introverted, little…

Couple Claims They Ordered Pizza on UberEats But Received… Oh My God What Is That?!

For all I know, Uber’s food delivery service UberEats is a perfectly fine method of ordering food. But the stomach-turning product that a Canadian couple claims showed up at their door instead of pizza ensures that I’ll be thinking twice about placing an order. Anna Kotlikova and her boyfriend, Blake Weinzettl, live in the suburbs…

Toronto Tells Pedestrians to Fix Their Clothes Instead of Fixing Its Streets

Pedestrian shaming has long been a way for cities to prioritize cars over people, from the invention of jaywalking to blaming walkers for their smartphone use. In Toronto, an ad campaign telling pedestrians that their clothes make them more likely to get hit by cars is getting serious backlash—and rightly so. The “Stay Focused, Stay…

These Parks Are Reclaiming Ugly Urban Underpasses as Public Space

Manhattan’s rails-to-trails High Line sparked a global trend of turning old transit infrastructure into parks. But a new breed of public spaces aren’t waiting for the transportation around them to stop running—they’re transforming the ground below the still-active elevated tracks. Use the slider to navigate between before and after shots proposed for Miami’s Underline We’ve…

19th Century Schooner Uncovered At Toronto’s Historic Waterfront

In preparation for construction work, a routine archaeological dig at the site of Toronto’s former waterfront has resulted in the discovery of a 200-year-old schooner. It’s one of the oldest ships ever found in the city. The remains of the schooner, which may date back to the 1830s, were found at a Concord Adex construction…

The Historical Snub Hidden In Canada’s Map

Maps seem like the most utilitarian of objects, but hidden in between all that functional information there are some strange stories. Here’s how a 19th-century postal service bureaucrat hid a snub against France that’s still in Canada’s modern map. In a Kinja-discussion on underexposed local historical figures, commenter MS38 shared this history of how Agincourt,…

Secret Mystery Tunnel Discovered in Toronto — Is Drake Involved? 

A “large, sophisticated” tunnel was recently discovered near York University in Toronto. Unlike regular, non-spooky tunnels built for known reasons, the Toronto Mystery Tunnel was forged by hands unknown, for deeds unknown. Maybe it was Drake? The CBC reports that authorities have ruled out “drug lab” and “marijuana grow operation” as potential uses for the…

Good night, Toronto

Canada. Hockey. Poutine. Maple Syrup. All such truly wonderful things! Also wonderful? Toronto. Here’s a hyperlapse from Ryan Emond that shows the sparkling skyline of the lovely city to our north. Emond writes: Toronto Skyline Porn is what its title implies — a full frontal visual journey through Toronto’s growing skyline. The scenes were shot…

Back Off Criminals, Toronto’s Neighborhood Watch Is Intense

A Toronto local is jazzing up the “Neighborhood Watch” placards of the city. Andrew Lamb’s affixing superheroes, action stars, and everything else under the sun to the signs. Who’d mess with the neighborhood protected by Buffy? Lamb (not his real name) says that he was just inspired by the signs, telling CBC: I walked by…

London’s plan to grow up might go down, Elon Musk’s quest to make electric cars cool, and funny anti-Rob Ford ads appear in Toronto. Plus: Learning from streets in Vietnam, Paris, and Manhattan. All this and more in this week’s Urban Reads. A large and influential group of Londoners have launched a campaign against 200…

These Time-Warp Photos Show Six Cities In the Past and Present

Cities change: skyscrapers go up, row houses are torn down, neighborhoods gentrify, earthquakes destroy. Vintage photographs of cities can be fascinating in and of themselves, but the familiar unfamiliarity of these time-warped photographs are especially intriguing. From San Francisco to St. Petersburg, here are how cities have changed—and not changed—over the years. See history peek…

Can you guess how this unique image of Toronto was put together?

We’ll give you a hint: The first of these 2,300 data points appeared at the intersection of Yonge and Bloor back in 1924. If you guessed traffic signals you’re absolutely correct. This beautiful map of Toronto was created by Redditor William Davis by using information from the city’s open data portal. You can find a…

December 21, 1936: People dressed as robots at a Toronto children’s festival. Photo by Arthur Goss via the City of Toronto Archives.

The CN Tower crumbles in a future Toronto

Toronto was one of the first cities to be reclaimed, and while the CN Tower no longer dominated the skyline, it served a new purpose, to separate the commercial harbor from the overgrown residential district. Artwork by Mathew Borrett. Borrett has also made a daytime version of this image. Prints are available at the Torontopia…

This Mesmerizing Ai Weiwei Installation Is Made From 3,144 Bicycles

Last night in Toronto, Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei presented a new version of his incredible Forever Bicycles installation. As the centerpiece of this year’s Scotiabank Nuit Blanche, the all-night contemporary art event that takes over city streets, 3,144 bicycles, the most Weiwei has used of this work to date, were stacked 100 feet…

Cops Knew About Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s Crack Video

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, part of a family of drug dealers, smoked crack cocaine while one of his young pals recorded video. Since then, Gawker and a Toronto newspaper have confirmed the video shows Ford smoking a crack pipe, and Ford has denied the video exists. But Toronto vice cops knew about it before the…

Watch This Army of 21 Snow Plows Team Up to Clear a Canadian Highway

You’d imagine that it would take quite a few plows to clear a snow-covered highway, but not quite this many. Keep count as they go through and you’ll see a whole 21 plows in formation (and a couple of sand trucks) painstaking passing piles of grey road-sludge to the right and to the right again…