Gordon Lightfoot Book, Music and More!

Some of the best rock ’n’ roll—from Lou Reed to the Rolling Stones—has strutted through the grim realism of the street. Unlike many pretenders to that turf, Vancouver’s Art Bergmann has actually walked on the wild side, living with prostitutes and drug addicts in the city’s seedy east end while writing some of the grittiest, most literate material in Canadian rock. “Guns and Heroin,” one song from his latest album, What Fresh Hell Is This?, is a case in point. It arose out of an experience Bergmann had in the early 1980s, when he was a member of the Vancouver band Los Popularos. A man who invested $10,000 in one of the group’s recordings turned out to be a drug dealer looking to launder...

Toronto’s Doug Riley was a gifted pianist and arranger. He began on his instrument at the age of three, graduated in music at the University of Toronto and went on to study at the Royal Conservatory of Music (interestingly, doing his postgraduate work on the music of the Iroquois).  In his teens, Riley played with the Silhouettes, a popular Toronto rhythm & blues group that became the red-hot house band at Yonge Street’s Bluenote club, backing top singers like Dianne Brooks and Jack Hardin. In 1969, before he was given the title Dr. Music and formed a formidable jazz group of the same name, Riley’s reputation had travelled beyond Toronto and earned him a call from one of his biggest...

For over 80 years, Fran’s restaurants have enjoyed a warm and cozy relationship with Toronto. Like the comfort food in which they specialize, the chain of family-style eateries won fans with their affordable, unpretentious offerings, from bottomless cups of coffee and belly-busting all-day breakfasts to the world’s first banquet burger, a burger served with bacon and cheese. Fran’s restaurants were the brainchild of Francis “Fran” Deck, who shuffled here from Buffalo in 1940. He opened his first restaurant the following year—a diner at 21 St. Clair Avenue West that originally had just 10 seats. His second location, at 20 College Street, opened in 1950, and quickly became popular with Eaton’s...