By Caitlin Orr — Rye Here, Rye Now
Normally, someone walking through St. James Town encounters a bouquet of scents from diverse residents’ cooking. Two months ago, the acrid smell of smoke overwhelmed all else within blocks of the neighbourhood, in every direction. A six-alarm blaze spread to at least two apartments in 200 Wellesley on September 24, a high-rise managed by Toronto Community Housing.
Authorities have still not determined the cause of the fire, but it was very difficult to put out because of a lot of “combustible debris” in the …

By Josh Hume, NOW Magazine

An incumbent councillor is harder to get rid of than a pool shark hogging a pub’s lone billiard table, dispatching all comers before they have a chance to sink a single shot.
To …

By Mike Adler, InsideToronto
Underdogs and also-rans take heart: more change than usual is coming to city council, a gathering of non-incumbent candidates heard Monday, Sept. 13.
It’s normally “near impossible” to defeat a city councillor, and some can be with us for decades, but on Oct. 25 nine of 44 council seats have no incumbent running, said Himy Syed, a mayoral candidate who called council challengers to a Bloor Street church to help shorten their odds of winning.
In the front row was Daniel Murton, running to unseat Pam McConnell in Ward …

Now, we don’t want anybody to finish this post and walk away thinking it’s an out-and-out endorsement of Mr. SYeD. It’s too early for that. Questions still remain that need to be answered. But we will confess to having somewhat of a crush on the candidate, politically speaking of course. So consider what follows to be an unapologetic endorsement of HiMY SYeD being taken very, very seriously as a candidate for mayor of Toronto in 2010.

By M. Monastyrsky, CampbellPark.ca, CELOS
On Thursday evening residents who live near Campbell Park protested against the City’s decision to use the site as a temporary garbage dump. It was a bit of a circus.
When I got there at 5:15 pm, police and media were already on the scene. There were TV trucks with high antennas parked on the grass next to the wading pool. There were handmade protest signs attached to the fence. There were also two wreaths by a sign that said McGuinty and Miller ‘have blood on your …

By Sunir Shah, Fresh Thinking
FreshBooks has been out in force in our lovely hometown, Toronto, in the past few days. We’ve sponsored PodCamp Toronto and DemoCamp, and Mike and Saul spoke at Third Tuesday last night. We’ve also done a couple fun things with customers.
Toronto Marlies hockey game
On Sunday, in conjunction with Yahoo! Search Marketing Canada and PodCamp Toronto, we held a contest to take folks out to the good ol’ hockey game. We also brought along a few of our customers. It was a sell out game, and …

KarolynCoorsh joined the wiki and wrote about Torontopedia in the September 2007 editions of the Bloor-Bay Town Crier (page 5) and Midtown Town Crier (page 8 ) community newspapers.
http://towncrieronline.ca

By Marc Lostracco, Torontoist
Whilst performing our pre-read ritual of tearing out Toronto Life‘s 8,000 annoying snot-glued ad inserts and heavy stock subscription cards, we suddenly came across Torontoist’s name in the mag’s “Roundup” feature. The chart compares Toronto’s four major city blogs: Torontoist, Spacing Wire (now Spacing Toronto), BlogTO, and the newish Torontopedia.
Torontoist’s raison d’être is listed as “news, arts, culture, snark”—and we won’t argue with that—while BlogTO is like “your geeky friend who’s always in the know.” Author Dave McGinn accurately lists Spacing Toronto as “civically engaged and proudly earnest” and lauds Torontopedia for …

By Carrie Brunet, InsideToronto
The Internet may be the last refuge of anonymity for many, but two local Toronto-boosters are hoping to make their site a place where neighbours meet and neighbourhoods grow.
Annex residents Himy Syed and Karen Sun have created Torontopedia.ca. The site, using similar technology to Wikipedia, allows users to add to or edit existing content online. The content is, of course, Toronto-centric.
“We ask that people use their real names,” said Syed. “You wouldn’t introduce yourself to a neighbour by saying ‘Hi, I’m CoolDude123.’”
Instead, Syed would like to see …

The National Post’s Dave McGinn writes about Torontopedia.ca, a wiki started by two Torontonians aiming to share stories & secrets about the city

Torontopedia makes page 2 of the June edition of The Annex Gleaner community newspaper.
This is a shorter version which first appeared in The Liberty Gleaner.

Torontopedia written up on the front page of the May/June edition of The Liberty Gleaner community newspaper.

From Toronto Star, Page B8, Monday April, 30 2007.
Joyous self-absorption. A dead giveaway that a city has come of age.
Two baby websites show Toronto is ready to spend time poring over its own stuff rather than nymag and Parisist postings.
One-week-old tomorrow, ourfaves.com lets Torontophiles list, rate and cross-index their favourite people, places and things in the city. (Full disclosure: the startup was incubated in Torstar Digital). If the new online community thinks someone has the best urban wisdom, the community can make that person a star.
BlogTO spilled the news about Torontopedia, the city’s …

By Ian, BlogTO
Just when you thought there weren’t enough Toronto-archiving websites, along comes Torontopedia to add another layer of Toronto-discovering and -learning to cyberspace. Torontopedia is a city wiki that is open to any and all Torontonians to edit.
There’s a useful introduction page if this whole city wiki thing is new to you:
What this wiki contains and means is up to you. As a general rule you should contribute content you think will be helpful or insightful to others, but even this rule can be broken at times. Interesting things will stay, …