Now Toronto

As Ontario moves into Step 2 of its reopening, shady spots and curbside tables are in serious demand -- both for recreation and for re-entry into the world after months of keeping our distance from it. NOW staff writer Kelsey Adams joins Norm to talk about the city’s best new patios, where she’d be happiest sitting outside right now, and why people really need to be nicer to wait staff this year.

Tom Hiddleston’s trickster god Loki came out as bisexual last week on his Disney+ series, making him Marvel Studios’ first openly queer lead character ... although his sexuality arrives with an asterisk, as it does for the characters everything from Cruella and Luca to the Avengers and Star Wars movies. NOW associate entertainment editor Glenn Sumi and art director Daniel de Souza join Norm to talk about what is and isn’t achieved with this sort of representation, and how we’ll know when gay and lesbian characters are truly being seen in mainstream entertainment.

Pride weekend is here, and though there’s no parade Toronto is still finding ways to engage with its queer history. One of the projects in Buddies In Bad Times’ Pride In Place program, Return, Seek, Carry, collects the stories of 20 queer seniors as portraits and oral histories to create a connection between past and present generations. Creator Jocelyn Reynolds and her subject and facilitator leZlie Lee Kam, join Norm to discuss it.

NOW political editor Enzo DiMatteo joins Norm to talk about his weekly Hidden Toronto series, which illuminates the city’s contemporary landmarks. If you’ve been looking for a reason to visit a new neighbourhood now that we’re out of lockdown, this might be just the thing.

Bo Burnham’s Netflix special Inside turns his response to a year of lockdown into songs, bits and confessional monologues. And it got us wondering whether any pandemic entertainment could possibly do justice to the way we’ve all felt over the past fifteen months. NOW’s Radheyan Simonpillai and Richard Trapunski join Norm to hash it out.

With NOW’s Hot Summer Guide on the stands, Norm invites NOW’s writers Kevin Ritchie, Glenn Sumi and Radheyan Simonpillai to recommend some outdoor and at-home events everyone can enjoy over the next few months.

NOW’s Hot Summer Guide issue is out this week, and and once again the pandemic has forced us to recalibrate our expectations for entertainment. And no industry is dealing with that more than live theatre. This episode, NOW’s Glenn Sumi talks to Monica Esteves, executive director of the Canadian Stage Company, and Mitchell Marcus, artistic and managing director of the Musical Stage Company, about the challenges of trying to get things up and running in the face of constantly shifting pandemic protocols.

Last week, NOW music, technology and business editor Richard Trapunski reported on the recent announcement that the Rehearsal Factory would be closing its Richmond and Bathurst location at the end of July, and the subsequent buzzing about what might be happening to the company’s other spaces. Richard and Paul Ramirez, drummer for the Ontario punk band The Flatliners and founder of the Facebook group Save Artist Rehearsal Spaces Toronto, join Norm to talk it out.

This week, NOW celebrates the fact that we can all be outside for as long as we like. But as people pack the parks, another issue arises: some of us are going to need a bathroom. Norm talks to Lezlie Lowe, author of the book No Place To Go: How Public Toilets Fail Our Private Needs, about the issues that complicate washroom access, and to Toronto Parks, Forestry and Recreation department spokesperson Jane Arbour about the nuts and bolts of getting facilities to the people who need them the most.

For the very first time, both the opening night film and centrepiece gala of the Toronto Jewish Film Festival are the work of local filmmakers: Ron Chapman opens the festival with his documentary Shelter, and Aviva Armour-Ostroff fictionalizes her own family history for the psychological drama Lune, which she co-directed with her partner Arturo Perez Torres and in which she also stars. Ron and Aviva join Norm to discuss what it means to make a movie about the Jewish experience at this particularly loaded moment.

On the NOW site this week, staff writer Kelsey Adams interviewed local artists who submitted their work to the Art Gallery of Ontario’s Portraits Of Resilience project. For this episode, Kelsey and Norm are joined by Amanta Scott, Deborah Farquharson, Katy Catchpole, Keith Eager and Mariana Topfstedt for a conversation about their art.

NOW’s Richard Trapunski and Gig Workers United president Jennifer Scott join Norm to discuss Uber’s new Flexible Work+ proposal, which would allow independent contractors to qualify for benefits like health insurance and retirement plans. But on whose terms?

NOW culture editor Radheyan Simonpillai and staff writer Kelsey Adams join Norm to discuss the uneasy relationship between activism and the sharing of traumatic videos on social media -- and how, as a result, people of colour are bombarded with images of racial violence wherever they turn.

An Israeli military strike on Gaza escalates tensions in the Middle East, official and unofficial sources try to spin the story on social media and people find their existing biases amplified. What are our algorithms feeding us? Researcher and activist Jamil Fiorino-Habib digs into the complexity of online engagement, and why the usual narratives aren’t working this time.

NOW political editor Enzo Di Matteo talks to Toronto lawyer Caryma Sa’d about the dangers posed by the anti-lockdown demonstrations that have been happening across Canada.

Anishnawbe author, playwright and former NOW journalist Drew Hayden Taylor talks to Norm about Going Native, his new documentary series about the ways in which Indigenous people are shaping and reclaiming their culture. Going Native airs Saturdays at 8:30 pm on the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, and is available to stream on the APTN lumi service.

NOW’s Kelsey Adams and Kevin Ritchie share their interviews with Jeff Bierk and Esmond Lee, two of the artists participating in this year’s Contact Photography Festival. You can find NOW’s Contact coverage online at nowtoronto.com/culture .

NOW’s Kelsey Adams talks to filmmaker Jennifer Holness about her new documentary Subjects of Desire (screening at Hot Docs through Sunday), which uses the 50th anniversary of the Miss Black America pageant to explore how global standards of beauty have changed, and what it means to be a Black woman in North America today.

This year's Hot Docs film festival introduces Citizen Minutes, a collection of eight short documentaries aimed at “celebrating and inspiring civic engagement” that’s streaming free for the length of the fest. Producers Lisa Jackson and Lauren Grant tell Norm how it all came together.

Tanya Talaga’s Spirit To Soar and and Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers’s Kímmapiiyipitssini: The Meaning Of Empathy -- both premiering at Hot Docs this Thursday -- tell very personal stories about the systemic neglect and trauma of Indigenous communities in Canada. NOW culture editor Radheyan Simonpillai brings the two filmmakers together to discuss their films’ thematic and emotional connections.