Chronicle - Spring 2006

Volume 26 Spring 2006 Liberty Village • King West • King West Central • Entertainment District • St. Lawrence Market Area • Queen Richmond East

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2 Hammam Spa Steams Things Up

Photo: Arthur Tress

3 Queen East Gallery Features Famed Skatepark Photos

6 Downtown Kids: Big and Bright Daycare

Plus: • Totum Running Tips • Picturing the Past – Liberty St. • King West CONTACT map

Japanese Goldsmith Apprentice, Roppongi Hills, 2003 by Marco Bohr

WORLD VIEW CONTACT’s 10th year offers Images of a Global Culture

King West Central

King West Central

Partners’ Sweat Equity Builds Steam Bath King West’s Hammam spa infuses old world treatments with new age services

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n the dimly lit confines of a grotto’s thermal bath on the Italian island of Ischia, Zark Fatah and four friends were tackling notions of life and change when they hatched an idea for a spa.

“It was just five guys talking about life. It could have been any century, any country, any culture. But we all thought: Where can we have an experience like this in Toronto?” says the co-founder of Hammam Spa, a holistic urban spa on King Street West that infuses traditional treatments with modern-day services, as much for men as for women.

But don’t be fooled by the large manicure-pedicure area, the restful tea lounge and the dozen treatment rooms, this is no ordinary spa. The heart of the matter here is a 600-square-foot co-ed steam room.

A “hammam” is a Turkish variant on a steam bath, and for the Ottoman culture, these played an important role, serving as places of social gathering, ritual cleansing and as architectural structures and institutions.

To some degree, Fatah, and his business partner, designer Antonio

Community Chronicle • Spring 2006

Tadrissi, hope to tap into the spirit of the traditional hammam for the 8,000-square-foot space they have built on the lower level of 602 King Street West, making it a place where local professionals and residents can drop in for a brief steam, or a prolonged hot stone massage.

Fatah, an entertainment and lifestyle entrepreneur who parlayed a stint as a bartender in South Beach Miami into a successful career that has spawned nightspots like the Century Room and Blowfish Restaurant, says the city lacks high-end spas.

“There’s also a lack of daytime retail on King West between Spadina and Bathurst and with all these people living and working in this area, they will need services. So Antonio and I started talking about spas,” he says.

The friends had long sought to collaborate on a business project but with Tadrissi developing a successful interior design studio and Fatah moving ahead with his projects, they were headed in opposite directions.

So, the duo formed Umbrella, a

concept development company that specializes in creating niche products and services. The firm operates businesses in design/build, marketing, food and beverage, health and wellness, and financial services industries.

As part of Umbrella, Tadrissi’s design firm, TDG, was charged with creating the spa’s visual character - something that would appeal as much to men as to women.

It chose some darker woods and black marble tiles mixed with steel accents to give Hammam a masculine character, but infused it with softer details like the lobby’s water feature that can be decorated with petals and flowers.

Besides ten single treatment rooms, there are also two uniquely appointed spa suites for an exclusive experience for a guest or couple. There’s also a tea lounge.

“It gives clients a place to kick back relax and enjoy an environment where they can just be,” he says, harkening back to his experience in Italy. www.hammamspa.ca

I

n his 12 years in the art gallery business, Dennis O’Connor has seen the popularity of photography grow incrementally.

“Back in 1995 around when I first started, I carried photography. But I couldn’t sell it. And it was dirt cheap,” he recalls. But today, in the shadow of CONTACT’s 10th anniversary, he sees a real awakening as the public’s interest in this form of art reaches a new peak.

Now, his 4,000-square-foot gallery, which recently relocated to the Queen Street East area at 145 Berkeley Street, has six photo shows scheduled for this coming year. And the latest is part of CONTACT, for which O’Connor managed to net the only showing outside the U.S. of famed Californian photographer Arthur Tress’s Wheels on Waves.

“One thing that we gain from being one of the city’s first gay and lesbian focussed galleries is that we can choose from artists around the world,” says O’Connor. As the largest and oldest gay gallery in Canada, it has shown art from the likes of Judy Chicago, who is best known for her installation The Dinner Party, and Edward Lucie-Smith, a

photographer and arguably the most prolific art critic/writer in the world today.

O’Connor books 11 exhibitions a year showing work from a number of different mediums, including sculpture, oil painting, watercolours and photography. Both regional and international artists are shown, including, Tom Bianchi, Carlos Quiroz, James Huctwith, Daniel Barkley, Mark Reid,

John Borg, Lynette Richards, Kim Douglas Harrison, Sven Hennze, and Mary Dykstra.

The main space is on the ground floor, but the lower level also holds exhibition space, a framing shop (archival framing is available through co-owner John C. Fletcher, a master framer), and storage for as much as 600 pieces. www.oconnorgallery.com

TRESS’ WORLD OF WHEELS AND WAVES A visit to Mexican pyramid complex, Teotihuacan, inspires California artist to capture skatepark ethos.

Arthur Tress's sepia-toned prints document California skateparks’ landscapes and riders. Intended as a glimpse of the socio-economic cross-section of America’s inner cities as seen through the skateboarding subculture, Tress came to the idea after a trip to Mexico visiting the pyramids at Teotihuacan. The skatepark, he writes, held the same sense of ritual. “The park’s challenging ramps and deep bowls of flowing concrete seemed to become similar sites for the archetypal dramas of adolescent self initiation.” Tress’s work has ranged from landscape photography of Appalachia, People and Places, to the intricately staged photographs of the Teapot Opera, to the nudes of his Male of the Species.

Part of CONTACT 2006, Tress’ images capture the speed and grace of skateboarding.

Community Chronicle • Spring 2006

Queen Street East Queen Street East

Queen East Gallery Features Arthur Tress’ Celebrated Skatepark Photos

City-wide May photo fest offers 18 shows at King and Spadina

Queen Street West

Richmond Street West

80 510

King Street West

461

King Street West

Condé + Beveridge’s Street Banners

401

Adelaide Street West

Spadina Ave.

While Toronto’s annual celebration of the photographic image is a citywide affair with 187 venues showing work from as many as 500 participants, King Street West remains the festival’s headquarters with 18 shows in a two-block radius.

Here’s a look at what’s on nearby.

For more venues and info, grab a program or a pocket-sized passport/ map or check www.contactphoto.com

Bathurst Street

King West Central

King West Central

CONTACT-ing in King West Central

451

510 King Street West 510

Exploring the lives and roles of working women from 1908 to 1979, the six banners from Work in Progress represent various decades using a different woman posed in a kitchen where the props change with every period.

Work In Progress, 2006 (Iraq), 1980-2006

HP Gallery

Carole Condé & Karl Beveridge

Community Chronicle • Spring 2006

CONTACT invites photographers from across Canada to submit photos based on this year’s Imaging a Global Culture theme. A selection of these are printed during the festival and hung in the temporary gallery space, with old work coming down as new work arrives. At the end of May, an expert panel will judge images and distribute over $10,000 in prizes to winners. Submit photos in person at 510 King Street West or online at www.hp.ca.

451 King Street West 451

This venue hosts five shows, including…

The Entire City Project

Urban Fiction, an exhibition at Gallery TPW where Chinese artist Xing Danwen transports viewers to her homeland, uses images of architectural structures, photographed from real estate development maquettes.

Xing creates spaces in which she appears playing imaginary roles such as a white-collar office worker, or material girl enjoying her life of pleasure.

Toronto artist and architect Michael Awad’s The Entire City Project at the Nicholas Metiver Gallery, examines the richness of the urban landscape. Common experiences such as a cab ride or a visit to a shopping mall yield the same dynamic energy as a parade or carnival.

Urban Fiction Image 4 from the series, 2004-2005 Xing Danwen

Boxing Day, Eaton Centre, Toronto, 2005 Michael Awad

401 Richmond

461 King Street West

401

461

This venue hosts eight shows, including…

The son of Holocaust survivors, Montreal’s Matei Glass attempts to redefine the other side in his photographic travel journal The Other in Palestine at Gallery 44.

Untitled, from The Other in Palestine, 1997-2003

Brassaii (Interior)

First Light: Humankind These images, from some of Canada's most talented photographers, were gathered from all corners of the globe, highlighting their visions of global culture by focusing on the personal interactions all of us have in common. Each image speaks of a unique and personal reaction to encounters with world culture.

Paris 2005

Matei Glass

Huy Lam/First Light

At the Wynick/Tuck Gallery, Diane Bos mediates the complexities of traveling between cultures with her pinhole box, capturing the essence of places from the foothills of the Rockies to the banks of the river Seine.

Château de Gudanes, France, 2004 Diane Bos

Brassaii Courtyard

The Exactitudes This large-scale photo series speaks to the contradiction of “exact” and “attitudes” and is inspired by the multicultural street scenes found in urban centers around the world.

The Rotterdam-based duo photographed subjects identical in attire, pose and even hairstyle.

Exactitudes, 25. Grannies – Rotterdam 1998 Ari Versluis & Ellie Uyttenbroek

Community Chronicle • Spring 2006

King W est Central King West Central

80 Spadina Ave. 80

King Street West

King Street West

Daycare a “Stop-Drop ‘n’ Hop” Centre Kids Academy ideally located for westend professionals

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ig, bright space. That’s the first thing you notice when you walk into Downtown Kids Academy, a professional childcare centre that opened less than half a year ago in the 3,000-square-foot space on the ground floor of 905 King Street West.

An office building in the King and Strachan area might not be the first place one imagines a daycare to be, but this center, which encompasses two large open rooms with ceiling-height windows that cover close to half the space’s perimeter and an outdoor courtyard (a Ministry requirement for daycares), is located strategically to meet the needs of growing downtown families.

“We call it the stop, drop and hop concept,” says Downtown Kids co-founder, Libby Lund-Pedersen of the building, which also houses the offices of online dating service Lavalife.

She says parents who work downtown often have to seek daycare that isn’t on the way to work, or anywhere along their regular TTC route. But with the

Community Chronicle • Spring 2006

Dufferin bus around the corner and the King streetcar trundling past the daycare’s front door every few minutes, the center is ideally placed for professionals who live nearby and work downtown.

Downtown Kids Academy, recently touted in the National Post as one of the city’s best daycares, is the result of collaboration between two parents, Libby Lund-Pedersen (a former PR person with a psychology and theatre background) and her sister-in-law Tracy Lund-Pedersen (a former teacher with the Toronto board).

Rather than cramming the space with toys and play areas, the centre’s sea of blue carpet and cheerful red walls give the centre’s current mix of toddlers and pre-schoolers what they want, space to run and play.

“Our aim is to provide school readiness in a fun environment,” she says. “But it’s about giving them choices within that routine to be creative and allow

expression,” says Libby, adding that pre-schoolers might, for example, put on a puppet show for the younger kids.

Martial arts, dance, yoga and theatre are also part of the curriculum.

All Downtown Kids’ staff members hold early childhood education certificates and each brings a special talent or interest to the environment, one has a visual art background, another is a graduate of the Royal Conservatory of Music, and all speak more than one language (French, Spanish, Ukrainian and Greek are all spoken here).

While the space may have once been an ideal location for a restaurant and patio, it now serves clientele of a different sort. Of course snacks and lunch are still available here, but you can only get these at designated times, after which, you have to take a nap. www.downtownkids.com

ENOUGH ,

THIS CAN MAKE YOUR 2 YEAR OLD WELL ADJUSTED .

Be a Positive Parent.

Comfort, play with and teach your child every day. www.investinkids.ca

TOTUM

TIPS

HOW TO AVOID THE TOP TWO RUNNING INJURIES As sure as April showers and May flowers, Spring also yields the most running injuries, says Totum Life Science’s Registered Physiotherapist Zenia Martynkiw, explaining that many injuries are the result of doing too much mileage too soon or simply from running with old shoes.

“Running injury-free,” she says, “is a balance of stretching, strengthening and moderating your progress.”

HERE ARE TWO COMMON INJURIES AND HOW TO AVOID THEM. 1 Runner’s Knee, a.k.a. Illiotibial band syndrome, Patella femoral or Mal-tracking of the knee, often involves pain around the kneecap or on its inside edge, explains Martynkiw.

You can avoid it by: Strengthening your gluteals (butt muscles): with step downs (balance one foot on a step and the other foot forward. Use your stance leg to control squatting to about 45 degrees) or with bridging (lay on your back and raise your hips to the ceiling while squeezing your glutes.)

Stretching quads (thigh muscles) and hip flexors: To do quad stretches, stand on one leg pulling your free ankle back against your butt. For hip flexor stretches,

kneel on the floor with one knee bent and one leg behind you. Position your forward knee over your foot. Keep your other knee on the floor and push your hips forward until you feel the stretch in the upper thigh of the rear leg.

2 Shin Splints, a dull ache in the lower leg with tender areas in the front of the shin, comes from running too far too soon, wearing the wrong type of shoe, using an old shoe with less shock absorption, or running too often on hard surfaces, says Martynkiw.

You can avoid it by: Varying your route to include running on tracks, through golf courses or on a boardwalk.

Changing your shoes every six months (keep the receipt so you know when you bought the pair and can calculate mileage – shoes should last 500 - 800km).

Stretching your calves: To do this stretch, stand three feet from a wall and step toward it with one foot, bending that leg at the knee. Keeping the heel of the hind leg down on the ground, straighten your rear knee until you feel mild tension. Now bend the knee of this same rear leg to stretch the area near the Achilles tendon.

Call Totum’s King St. Studio at (416) 979-2449 to learn about their running group, or if you would like information on an injury you have. www.totum.ca Community Chronicle • Spring 2006

King W est Central King West central

ODDLY

Picturing the Past and Present City of Toronto Archives

Liberty Village served the war effort, but was also the site of Canada’s largest prison.

Liberty Street in 1915, east of Dufferin and south of King West.

Liberty Street, April 2006.

B Published four times a year by: Allied Properties REIT 602 King Street West, Main floor Toronto, ON M5V 1M6

Editor: Yvan Marston yvan@gravitydesign.ca

ombshells lined Liberty Street in 1915 when Toronto’s industrial sector kicked into high gear to support the war effort. “The Castle”, so named for its rampart-like roof edge, at 135 Liberty Street, can be seen just behind the water tower. It was built in 1912 by the E.W. Gillette Company for the manufacture of Magic Baking Powder.

With companies like Sunbeam Incandescent Lamps, Toronto Bedding and Canada Metal, this was an important part of industrial Toronto, but it also holds a dark past.

The brutal Central Prison for Men was at the very end of Liberty Street and operated from 1874 to 1915, after which it came to be used by the military as training and barracks facilities during the First World War. On the north side of Liberty Street, where Lamport Stadium now stands, was another grim structure, the Andrew Mercer Reformatory for Women, where harsh conditions were endured by inmates whose only crime, in some cases, was being pregnant and unwed.

Design/Layout: Gravity Design Inc. scott@gravitydesign.ca

Community Chronicle • Spring 2006

www.alliedpropertiesreit.com