Toronto Reference Library Blog

Help for Newcomers at Toronto Reference Library

February 25, 2017 | Fiona | Comments (0)

Are you new to Canada, and plan to settle here? Welcome! Come to the library to meet with a settlement worker who can help get you started in Toronto and Canada.  It's free! Come to a Newcomer Information Desk at one of our Library Settlement Partnerships locations. They are in library branches across Toronto. Find out how to: get […]

New Steps to Justice Website Gives Step-by-Step Legal Information

February 24, 2017 | Claire B. | Comments (0)

 This guest post is one in a series providing practical, easy to understand legal information from CLEO (Community Legal Information Ontario / Éducation juridique communautaire Ontario). Having problems with your landlord? Worried that you are being treated unfairly at work? Getting separated or divorced? These are some of the issues that people in Ontario face […]

Celebrate Black History Month with Music by Black Composers on Naxos

February 15, 2017 | Beau | Comments (0)

What's a celebration without music? Celebrate Black History Month with music by Black composers streamed directly to your computer or mobile device using Naxos Music Library. Check out these selections from their Black Composers Playlist: "Virginia Polka" from John Davis Plays Blind Tom. Thomas "Blind Tom" Bethune (1849-1908) was born into slavery in Georgia, began playing the […]

Booze, Broads & Sunday Laws: New Exhibit Looks at Toronto’s History of Vice & Virtue

February 6, 2017 | Peggy | Comments (2)

Ever wonder where the nickname "Toronto the Good" comes from? Opening this Saturday, February 11, our new exhibit Vice & Virtue takes a look back at the moral reformers and the moral panics that shaped Toronto's reputation as a strait-laced city in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century. Admission is free. The exhibit is on display in Toronto […]

TRL Program Calendar February 2017

January 31, 2017 | Claire B. | Comments (0)

Come celebrate Black History Month at Yonge and Bloor! Click on each image to enlarge or Download February 2017 @ TRL as a pdf file. For a full list of programs to browse or search, visit our Programs, Classes and Exhibits page.

Power Games: Politics in Speculative Fiction

January 20, 2017 | Peggy | Comments (2)

A billionaire founds his own spacecraft development company when NASA stalls. Is it Elon Musk? No; his name is Laurence Poubelle, and he’s a character in Victor Koman’s novel Kings of the High Frontier. A young ruler attempts to navigate the Machiavellian intrigues designed to sabotage their reign. Is it Queen Elizabeth the First’s cut-throat […]

Last Chance: Once Upon a Time Exhibit Closes January 22

January 16, 2017 | Peggy | Comments (0)

Snip, snap, snout, this tale's (almost) told out.  Our delightful fairy tale exhibit, Once Upon a Time, is ending soon! You have until Sunday, January 22 to see it at the Toronto Reference Library's TD Gallery. From Little Red Riding Hood, to Beauty and the Beast, to the Anansi tales of West African and Caribbean folklore, the exhibit […]

Toronto’s Poor: A Rebellious History

January 10, 2017 | Angjelin | Comments (0)

"In the Shadow of Poverty", 1983 Toronto Star Archive Photo As headlines scream “CEO salaries soar to new heights” (Toronto Star); “Top Canadian CEOs will earn more today than average working person does in 2017” (Global News); and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives kicks off 2017 with economist Hugh Mackenzie's "Throwing Money at the […]

Favourite Fairy Tale Shoe Stories

January 5, 2017 | Peggy | Comments (6)

Excerpted and abridged from an article by Leslie McGrath.   There are currently two beautiful exhibits of fairy tales at Toronto Public Library. The first, at the Toronto Reference Library's TD Gallery (held over to January 22), “Once Upon A Time,”  features early and modern retellings of fairy tales that have delighted generations of young […]

Happy 232nd Birthday, Jacob Grimm!

January 4, 2017 | Peggy | Comments (0)

Today, January 4, marks what would have been Jacob Grimm's 232nd birthday. What better day to celebrate the magic, and often gory, fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. A number of the Grimm's best-loved tales — Little Red Cap, Snow White, Rapunzel, Hansel & Gretel — are featured in our free exhibit, Once Upon a Time. […]