Stroll

by Shawn Micallef

Coach House Books

Stroll

by Shawn Micallef

Coach House Books

Synopsis

The updated edition of a Toronto favourite meanders around some of the city’s unique neighborhoods and considers what makes a city walkable

What is the ‘Toronto look’? Glass skyscrapers rise beside Victorian homes, and Brutalist apartment buildings often mark the edge of leafy ravines, creating a city of contrasts whose architectural look can only be defined by telling the story of how it came together and how it works, today, as an imperfect machine.

Shawn Micallef has been examining Toronto’s streetscapes for decades. His psychogeographic reportages situate Toronto’s buildings and streets in living, breathing detail, and tell us about the people who use them; the ways, intended or otherwise, that they are being used; and how they are evolving.

Stroll celebrates Toronto’s details – some subtle, others grand – at the speed of walking and, in so doing, helps us to better get to know its many neighbourhoods, taking us from well-known spots like the CN Tower and Pearson Airport to the overlooked corners of Scarborough and all the way to the end of the Leslie Street Spit in Lake Ontario.

This book may also be available at the TIFA Festival Bookstore.

About the Author

Shawn Micallef is the author of Frontier City: Toronto on the Verge of Greatness, Full Frontal TO: Exploring Toronto’s Vernacular Architecture and The Trouble With Brunch: Work, Class and the Pursuit of Leisure. He’s a Toronto Star columnist, instructor at University of Toronto, a Senior Fellow at Massey College and a co-founder of Spacing magazine. An updated edition of his 2010 book, Stroll: Psychogeographic Walking Tours of Toronto was released in May, 2024.

Read more about Shawn Micallef

Photo credit: Dewey Chang.

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