Our Home and Native Blogs

Illustration by Jillian Tamaki.

At last count, Technorati, the planet’s leading authority on Internet logorrhea, is keeping tabs on 31.9 million blogs (a.k.a. weblogs, basically defined as online journals or diaries). The total, however, won’t sit still: Technorati says the blogosphere is growing by 70,000 new sites per day. That might seem like a staggering amount, until you consider that 69,997 of them aren’t worth more than a moment of your time. A good blog — about any topic — is hard to find. A good blog about the things that we actually care about, harder still.

But not impossible, even if we limit the search to Canadian cyberspace. During the past few years, a small crop of top-quality, homegrown arts blogs have taken root online. Here, we present 10 of the very best. These are blogs that deliver a depth of knowledge, degree of passion and quality of writing that rival — or, dare we admit, sometimes surpass — the efforts of mainstream media and their fancy-pants journalists. And while this is not intended as an exhaustive summary, these selections have been leading the pack for a while, and earned the respect. Another caveat: Toronto has Canada’s greatest number of blogs, and thus the largest presence on this list. If your corner of the country got shorted on love, well, you can always do something about it.

BlogTO
Who: A 14-blogger writing and editing team, plus publisher Tim Shore.
Day jobs: Freelance writing and photography, filmmaking, radio production and other fun stuff.
Online since: December 2004.
Content: “We cover music, film, the arts, bars, restaurants, people, places and an assortment of random but hopefully interesting things happening in the city we call TO.” BlogTO is the Toronto arm of Freshdaily, “Canada’s first national blog network.” It competes with
Torontoist, which belongs to New York City’s Gothamist empire — although everyone should pay royalties to Gawker Media for establishing city-specific, ad-supported blogging as a viable business model.
Typical post: “Over the past couple days we’ve been hearing a lot about the upcoming
Nuit Blanche set to take place in Toronto this September. The free event would run from dusk to dawn, with art & culture events and open galleries, shops, libraries, etc etc (possibilities are endless) all night long. Mayor [David] Miller, in the announcement this week, described it as a ‘fitting’ and ‘essential’ addition to the ‘artistic explosion and creative renaissance’ already happening in the city (fancy superlatives — I hope he’ll put his funding where his vocab is).”

Bookninja
Who: George Murray and Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer, both of Toronto. Vancouver novelist Peter Darbyshire was Bookninja’s third blogger, but recently
stepped down to focus on his writing projects.
Day jobs: Murray is a poet and editor; Kuitenbrouwer is the author of Way Up and The Nettle Spinner and a former fiction editor for the Literary Review of Canada.
Online since: August 2003.
Blogs about: All things literary. The
Bookninja Magazine offers excerpts, original essays and discussions from homegrown lit stars including Derek McCormack, Seth and Patrick Lane. It is the site’s Hearsay blog (available on Bookninja’s front page), though, that attracts thousands of daily readers. There, Murray and Kuitenbrouwer deliver witty reports on international writers and their craft.
Typical post: “There is the news to cover, folks. More Da Vinci [Code] trial shockers, including [Dan]
Brown’s beaten up copy of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, and Kate Mosse takes time out from her busy modeling schedule to tell us about
the history of recycling the works of others. In fact, it looks as if Brown may have very studiously followed the three Rs: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.”

Chromewaves
Who: Toronto’s Frank Yang, an indie rock obsessive and self-confessed “megalomaniac,” although he’s probably kidding about that.
Day job: Web developer.
Online since: September 2002.
Blogs about: “The mandate of this site has always been, and will remain, to be about whatever tickles my fancy. Nothing more, nothing less. My interests are pretty much indie rock, movies, television, comic books and pop culture in general, so that’s what you’ll find here. If I someday develop a fascination for needlepoint or chinchillas, that’s what you’ll find here.”
Typical post: Typical? A comprehensive, 1,000-word summary of live performances by the likes of Belle & Sebastian, The Subways, Low, etc. Also typical: capsule critiques of 24 episodes, posted in white type to avoid spoilers. (Highlight the text to read it.) “I rather like how they’re involving the president far more in this season’s storyline, making him and his decisions more integral to the plot. But I still want to punch him in the face.” But wait, there’s more: Yang reviews albums and films, posts concert photos and offers weekly MP3 downloads.

[daily dose of imagery]
Who: Sam Javanrouh, a.k.a. WVS (“a 180° rotation of my first name”), an Iranian photography buff who immigrated to Canada in 1999.
Day job: Creative director of a visual effects and animation company.
Online since: July 2003.
Blogs about: Daily dose is a “photoblog,” which is just what it sounds like — a blog that emphasizes pictures over text. Its title is also literal. Each day, every day, Javanrouh serves up supersized pictures from his life and travels. There is usually one image, but sometimes more. They are usually shot in Toronto (where Javanrouh lives), but sometimes elsewhere.
Typical post: Javanrouh organizes his
archives by date and topic (architecture, landscape, macro, people, etc.). Among his latest greats: looking north on Yonge St., inside the Don Valley Brickworks and “citytv, old man and the dog.”

Drawn! The Illustration Blog
Who: An international squad of seven bloggers who really, really like illustrated arts. The Canadian contingent (who each maintain separate, compelling blogs of their own) comprises John Martz, Patricia Storms, Matt Forsythe and Jay Stephens.
Day jobs: Martz is a freelance illustrator and designer/animator; Storms is a freelance cartoonist, illustrator and designer; Forsythe is a writer, illustrator and comic book creator; Stephens is a children’s magazine cartoonist.
Online since: March 2005
Blogs about: Drawn!’s bloggers scour the web to find the world’s finest illustrations, cartoons and graphic novels, then post sample images with brief critiques and links to their creators’ websites. They also point to interviews with some of their favourite artists. Consider Drawn! a public service in the name of beauty.
Typical post: “Wowzers. The most difficult thing with posting a link to Igor Olejnikov is choosing which image to use here. Each piece is [a] lush, expressive masterpiece. Don’t miss the little ‘previous’ link on the bottom of the pages — they lead to more and more illustrations.”

Ghost of a flea
Who: Nicholas Packwood.
Day job: He used to teach cultural studies and anthropology at Waterloo’s Wilfrid Laurier University and archaeology at the University of Toronto. Now he works as a writer and development consultant in the video-game industry. And you thought bloggers wear pajamas all day.
Online since: October 2002.
Blogs about: Pop culture of any flavour. Packwood’s areas of interest range from goths to Halo 3 to a whole lot of Kylie Minogue. He’s a charming commentator, but even better as a music video selector. A lot of his posts point towards outstanding sights and sounds.
Typical post: “Imagine it is 8 December, 1957 on the set of The Sound of Jazz... The Columbia Broadcasting System presents Billie Holiday with Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, Gerry Mulligan, Vic Dickenson and Roy Eldridge. You have a pack of Chesterfields and a bottle of bourbon. Now is the time at the Flea when we dance.” (A suggestion, dear reader: follow that link!)

i love radio.org
Who: Vancouver’s Tod Maffin, “an overcaffeinated public radio producer, author, podcaster and technology futurist.”
Day job: Maffin is the CBC’s resident tech expert. He hosts technology columns on CBC Radio’s /Nerd (and is a contributing producer to Definitely Not the Opera) and CBC Television’s Canada Now. During his free time, he
lectures about futurism.
Online since: September 2004.

Blogs about: Technology, radio industry news and analysis, product reviews and CBC internal politics. (During 2005’s labour lockout, Maffin organized his fellow employees’ myriad blogs and podcasts under the banner of cbcunplugged.com.)
Typical post: “I’ve been meaning to get to this forever. But now, the CanadaPodcasts.ca website [another Maffin internet project] has its own blog and RSS Feed where you can now stay up to date on all the latest Canadian podcasts as they get added to the directory. So you can sample the very latest ones as they show up! No other directory can give you this, and each podcast that’s added is added by hand.”

in over your head
Who: Montreal’s Julien Smith.
Day job: “Designer, entrepreneur, student and podcaster.”
Online since: February 2004.
Blogs about: Mostly hip-hop music and culture. Smith is one of Canada’s first podcasters. (Maffin is another.) In over your head presents his raptastic podcasts (he’s made 113 so far, but beware of potty mouth) alongside wry commentary on browser wars, flashmobs and other 21st-century diversions.
Typical post: “A great post that’s being spread around: 20 Ideas For a Great Podcast, which reads more like ‘20 mistakes most podcasts make.’ I’m probably still guilty of some, even after a year and a quarter of making them. I’m continually trying to tighten that stuff up.” Elsewhere, Smith gets bonus points for linking to this CBC highlight — plus a tip of the hat for his postscript: “It’s ok to like hip hop.” Word up, mon frère.

Said the Gramophone
Who: Two Montrealers (Jordan Himelfarb and Dan Beirne) and one Edinburgher (Sean Michaels).
Day jobs: Himelfarb plays in alt-rock band The Cay; Beirne is a filmmaker and comedian; Michaels writes fiction.
Online since: March 2003.
Blogs about: Music, music, music. STG professes to be one of the web’s first MP3 blogs — sites that post and discuss (typically rare, preferably special) audio files. Michaels, Himelfarb and Beirne trade turns adding content. All three write in the first person, although their posts are bylined to avoid confusion.
Typical post: “Mike Andrews makes me consider if music can have a purpose. Can it insulate your house? Can it feed the neighbourhood kitty? Can it keep a row of books from falling over? Absolutely not. Music is useless. And yet I use this song. I wear it sewn to my coat, I take a hot tray out of the oven with it, I lick it and stick it. Such is the contradiction of Mike Andrews; simultaneously played and playing, at once influenced and influential. I like it a lot.” The entry includes a link to download Andrews’ Before the Echo, but go find it (and blow out their bandwidth) yourself.

Zoilus
Who: Carl Wilson.
Day job: Editor and critic for the Globe and Mail.
Online since: October 2003.
Blogs about: Every smart thing that he can’t fit into his Globe columns. He maintains a live concert guide for Toronto, reviews most of the many shows that he sees (Wilson prefers indie rock, but dabbles in everything else) and promotes Trampoline Hall, a “non-idiomatic” lecture series that he helps organize.
Typical post: “Pardon my vanishing act. I have been consorting with showgirls in Vegas... if by consorting, one means walking past them in casinos. I didn’t mean to be absent so long, but the Internet connection in my bargoon hotel room was — what’s that word? oh yes — f---ed. Regular programming will resume this weekend, a weekend that features such events as the Destroyer show at Lee’s Palace, the Magik Markers show at the Oasis (ah, the Oasis, that brings me back — Frankie, Sammy, Dean...), both Saturday, and the Henry Kaiser/Lukas Ligeti/CCMC concert at the Music Gallery on Sunday. See youse theres? Oh, by the way: Vegas? Awfullest place I’ve ever been. (Sheltered, obviously.) The Celine show seemed positively benign by comparison. Now I must go download Veronica Mars.”

Matthew McKinnon writes about the arts for CBC.ca.

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