Hello and welcome! We are here once more with a roundup of stories, upcoming events, general happenings, and updates from WEP HQ! All the important details from our neighbourhood that we want to share, it’s your Weekly WEP.
if YOU would like to have your event featured in the Weekly WEP, just send me an email! niko@westendphoenix.com
xo
WEP
From the pages of WEP:
A Tree Grows in Bloordale
by Michael Winter
from the December 2023 issue of WEP
I find it jarring when, walking down Bloor, my foot steps on what I thought was a solid sidewalk but turns out to be a hollow concrete panel next to a young tree in an iron fence. When the concrete panel tips with a thunk, you realize a city’s infrastructure is a built carapace over the natural world.
Read the whole thing by clicking the button below
Upcoming Community Events:
Echo Women's Choir Spring Fundraiser
with Turkwaz & more! Join us!
Thurs. February 22, Tranzac Club 7-10pm
Tickets: $30. Silent Auction, snacks, cash bar
Wavelength Music goes “East to West” across downtown Toronto for the 24th edition of its annual Wavelength Winter Festival.
the Toronto-based fest is celebrating it’s 24th anniversary, and excited to bring together the local music community for one cozy weekend of programming — championing diverse, emerging artists while animating new and innovative music spaces across the city!
more details HERE
Toronto author Melodie Edwards in support of her Feb. 27 book release ONCE PERSUADED, TWICE SHY.
This modern reimagining of Jane Austen’s Persuasion is a slow-burning, second chance romance set in beautiful Niagara-on-the-Lake, and full of witty banter, romantic angst and compelling characters.
Melodie will be hosting a launch celebration on Tuesday, February 27th at 7:00pm at Type Books (888 Queen St. W Toronto, ON M6J 1G5), with an in-conversation event with Hannah Mary McKinnon moderated by Kayleigh Platz.
Ruth Adler / Barbara Astman / Shabnam K. Ghazi / Vid Ingelevics
Gillian Iles / Carolyn Murphy / Midi Onodera / Matthew Schofield
Curated by David Liss
In a building designed by architect C. H. Bishop, the Shaw Street Public School opened in 1914 and was closed by the Toronto District School Board in 2000. After a transformation of the interior by Teeple Architects, the building re-opened in 2014 as Artscape Youngplace, named in honour of a lead donation from The Michael Young Family Foundation. Over the past 10 years 180 Shaw St. has become a crucial community hub for artists, arts groups, and engaged audiences.
To acknowledge and celebrate the role the building and its tenants have played within the cultural ecology of Toronto over these past 10 years, Koffler Arts is excited to present DECADE, a group exhibition by eight contemporary artists currently or recently working in the building.
While the building itself is significant to Toronto’s architectural heritage, it is ultimately the human activity that is the heart and soul of a place. Over the past 10 years, 180 Shaw St. has had nearly 100 artists and cultural groups practicing a diverse range of media and forms, solidifying its purpose and value.
The exhibition also comes at a time of economic challenges in Toronto that demands consideration of how artists and cultural groups can inhabit the city, contribute to its growth and vitality, and achieve greater security for the future of this and other cultural spaces across Toronto.
DECADE opens on February 22nd and runs until May 12th.
BLOORDALE BEACH PARK could be the name of Croatia Street's new park.
Sign the petition to help make this happen: www.change.org/bloordalebeachpark
Paper petitions are available in Bloordale at B-Side Barbers, Nuthouse, and TOWN, in case you'd prefer to sign with pen on paper—if you don't see the petition there, just ask.
Upcoming at WEP Central
Poetry At The Phoenix rebooked for February 20th!
Our poets for this month: Linda Besner and A. F. Moritz!
Linda Besner’s second poetry collection, Feel Happier in Nine Seconds, was a finalist for the A.M. Klein Award. Her first book, The Id Kid, was named as one of the National Post’s Best Poetry Books of the Year. Her poetry has appeared in The New York Times Magazine and The Boston Review, and her award-winning nonfiction has appeared in The Guardian, the Atlantic, and The Globe & Mail. She has been a Fellow at the MacDowell Colony, and was selected as one of the Writers’ Trust of Canada’s best emerging artists. Her work has been anthologized in The Next Wave: 21st Century Canadian Poetry, What the Poets Are Doing: Canadian Poets in Conversation, and Best Canadian Poetry 2012.
A. F. Moritz’s most recent books of poems are The Garden: a poem and an essay (2021), As Far As You Know (2020), and The Sparrow: Selected Poems (2018). His book forthcoming in spring 2024 is entitled Great Silent Ballad. He has published 20 books of poems and his poetry has received various recognitions: among others, the Guggenheim Fellowship; inclusion in the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets; the Ingram Merrill Fellowship; the Award in Literature of the American Academy of Arts and Letters; the Beth Hokin Prize of Poetry magazine; the Elizabeth Matchett Stover Prize of the Southwest Review; the ReLit Award; the Griffin Poetry Prize; the Raymond Souster Award of the League of Canadian Poets, selection to the Colleción Legítima Defensa of the Universidad Autónomo de Zacatecas (Mexico; distinguished foreign authors in translation); etc. He is a three-time finalist for the Governor General’s Award for English language poetry, for his books Rest on the Flight into Egypt (1999), The Sentinel (2008) and The New Measures (2012); his book As Far As You Know (2020 was a finalist for the Ontario Trillium Award. In January 2019 he was selected poet laureate of the City of Toronto and served in that role until May 2023.
We are blessed to be able to host poets of such immense talent at our lovely space at 3 Bartlett, we hope you’ll join us!
Show starts at 7 PM, tickets are Pay What You Can at the door, no one turned away for lack of funds! All funds raised will be split between the poets and the house.
Please RSVP to reserve a seat as there is limited space available: hello@westendphoenix.com
Thrilled to host a once-in-a-lifetime show at WEP Central this month: an evening of acoustic tunes from local faves the Golden Dogs AND an unforgettable collection of hits from Beatlejuice, the Beatles cover band feat members of the Golden Dogs and Zeus!
Come hear the band that caused Dave Bidini to write “this album is so good I believe it should be heard by all of my friends and some of my enemies” in his review of their self-titled record!
Read Dave’s review HERE
It's all going down at WEP Central (3 Bartlett) on Saturday, February 24th at 7:00 PM
limited space available, tickets $25/person
This year, at WEP Central, we wanted to build on a foundation that we started to pour when we opened our doors to mayoral candidates for town hall discussions ahead of the 2023 mayoral election. Bricks were added when we hosted scores of supporters standing up for public spaces at our telethon for Ontario Place. The guiding question was: Together, what can we do to repair, maintain and hold onto the city we love?
It’s with that spirit that we’re embarking on a series of conversations with great thinkers in our city, to ask them what they think we can do to put the pieces of the city back together.
To launch this series of conversations, we have a one-of-a-kind kickoff event: the journalist and 26th Governor General of Canada Adrienne Clarkson sitting in conversation with her partner, writer and philosopher John Ralston Saul, moderated by city columnist Edward Keenan.
Keenan will talk to Clarkson and Saul about their lives as Torontonians, where this city has been, where it’s going and how it can become the best Toronto possible.
We hope that you’ll join us as we sit and work together on a vision for the city’s future.
Join us on Sunday, February 25th at 11 AM
Seating for this event will be limited. Tickets $40 +HST / person.
An ongoing fundraising series for the West End Phoenix, Sponsored by BMO