The city has Canada's highest proportion of transgender and non-binary residents, Statistics Canada finds

By: Derick Daily For the past 25 years, I’ve been the primary designer and creative steward behind DJShadow.com, working directly with Shadow (Josh Davis) and his team to build, evolve, and maintain the site as his primary digital home. What began in the early days of the web has grown alongside the internet itself, adapting to new technologies, new audiences, and a radically changing music industry, while staying rooted in the same core purpose: direct connection between artist and fans. When DJShadow.com first launched in 2001, artist websites were still a relatively new concept. Most were simple, label-controlled pages designed to support album releases: a bio, a few photos, tour dates, and links to buy records. They existed primarily as promotional tools, updated briefly around album release cycles and then left to stagnate. Josh wanted something different. Which is why he had no official online presence up until this point. From the beginning, the website was conceived as a tool for connection, a place where he could communicate directly with his audience, share context around his work, offer access to music and ideas, and maintain an ongoing relationship with fans that wasn’t dictated by labels or marketing timelines. Rather than treating the internet as a billboard, we approached it as an interactive experience, one that could mirror the exploratory, immersive qualities of Josh’s music. The goal wasn’t novelty for its own sake. It was to create a space that felt intentional, human, and alive—something fans could return to not just when an album dropped, but between releases, between tours, and across years. That philosophy shaped every version of DJShadow.com that followed. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the web was still finding its footing. Artist sites were mostly static HTML, and the idea that a browser could host rich, multimedia experiences was still emerging. At the same time, tools like Macromedia Flash were making it possible to combine sound, motion, interactivity, and narrative in a way that hadn’t existed before. Flash wasn’t perfect, it required a browser plug-in and broke many conventions, but it allowed artists and designers to treat the web as a creative medium rather than a filing cabinet. That mindset aligned closely with what was happening in the Bay Area music scene at the time. The Solesides collective (later Quannum Projects), was pushing hip-hop into new territory, emphasizing experimentation, texture, and identity over convention. An animated, interactive piece I created for Blackalicious’ “Alphabet Aerobics” brought those worlds together. That project led to a relationship with Isaac Bess at Quannum Projects, including the Quannum website itself, as well as Blackalicious.com and eventually put me on Josh’s radar. When Josh’s manager reached out in mid-2000 asking if I’d like to meet with Josh to discuss his website, I was floored. By that point, Endtroducing….. had already begun to define instrumental hip-hop and electronic music, and Josh was both deeply respected and intentionally private. When we finally sat down, it became immediately clear that he didn’t want a conventional artist website. No standard navigation. No label-driven structure. He wasn’t interested in translating marketing into pixels, he wanted to explore how the web could extend the relationship between himself and his audience. What followed was a conceptual conversation that became the backbone of DJShadow.com. Rather than organizing the site by categories, Josh proposed organizing it by time—the past, the present, and the future of his work. The Past housed his history: discography, archival photos, documentation of what had already happened. The Present functioned as the living core of the site with current news, active projects, and music you could listen to in real time. The Future was reserved for what was coming next: upcoming releases, tours, and ideas still taking shape. Navigation was inspired by music itself: rewind, play, and fast-forward. Each action slid the entire site through time—backgrounds shifted, colors changed, sounds triggered, and content transformed as users moved between eras. It wasn’t designed for efficiency. It was designed to be experiential. At the time, streaming music online barely existed. HTML couldn’t support it. Flash could. We built a custom Flash-based music player that allowed MP3s to be streamed directly through the browser, something that felt radical in the early 2000s. Josh embraced the idea and allowed select tracks, including material not easily accessible elsewhere, to live on the site. For many fans, DJShadow.com became one of the only places where they could hear this music digitally, in context, and as part of a larger experience. The site launched in 2001 and immediately drew attention. It received industry recognition, including various awards and was published in print design journals. Perhaps most tellingly, it was widely copied, a clear sign that it had struck a nerve. The site remained largely intact as launched for several years, with updates layered onto the original structure. The first major visual update coincided with the release of The Private Press in 2002. By the mid-2000s, the web itself was changing. Flash was falling out of favor, browser standards were evolving, and expectations around usability were shifting. In 2005, we began work on a full rebuild, moving away from Flash toward a custom site with a custom content management system, while preserving the sense of exploration that had defined the original. This site relaunch included the first, full-fledged e-commerce site at djshadow.com, built on Miva Merchant, an early pioneer of small business direct-to-consumer (D2C) technology. It was at this time that we began to take data acquisition seriously, collecting email addresses to directly market music, tours, and merchandise to Josh’s fanbase. This period marked the site’s evolution from an experience into a platform. One of the most important aspects of DJShadow.com has always been Josh’s commitment to direct fan connection. Where labels treated websites as promotional tools tied to release cycles, Josh saw the site as an ongoing conversation. He wrote blog posts. He read emails. He paid attention to feedback. In the early 2000s the site also had an active forum, enabling fans to connect with each other, and, at times, directly with Shadow himself. Merchandise grew out of the same impulse. Josh wanted to create things for fans that weren’t dictated by album releases or tours. The operation was self-funded, margins were lean, and the intent was always to give something back rather than maximize profit. In 2006, Mike Fiebach joined Josh’s team and became instrumental in building the merchandise and D2C operation in a serious, sustainable way, helping shape the direct-to-fan infrastructure that still exists today. Mike was also Shadow’s first social media and digital marketing manager, building a robust following across the emerging platforms, starting with MySpace, then to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and so forth. Through Mike’s connections, in 2008, DJ Shadow was actually one of the first 20 artists on Facebook ever (as a part of a since shuttered “Facebook Music”). Shadow was also an early adopter of the D2C movement in the music industry, offering unique merchandise bundles and music capsules exclusively through the site, and marketed through social media, email marketing, SMS, and emerging music tech platforms. Mike and I always collaborated on how to best integrate these emerging platforms and offerings into the DJShadow.com homebase, and as we all lived in the Bay Area in the midst of a full-on music-tech and social media disruption, we were constantly working hard to be on the cusp of the next breakthrough capability. In 2008, Mike and I began working on the most ambitious re-design and re-development of DJShadow.com yet. Built on Drupal, a leader at the time in the emerging movement of content management platforms that made website customization and management more accessible than ever before, we took the foundation of the platform and pushed it to its boundaries, building a full-fledged, multi-faceted DJ Shadow digital platform, complete with a full discography (every single shadow release ever), a robust photos section via an integration with Flickr (which at the time, was the leading photo-driven social media platform with an Application Programming Interface - or “API” - a set of rules and protocols that enables different software to communicate and exchange functionality and data), media and video pulled from YouTube, SoundCloud, and Vimeo, and social media comments and other API implementations. The site included a customized header with a Flash animation that would load when possible and stay static when not, due to emerging limitations of Flash on mobile devices, a burgeoning way for fans to interact with artists with the release of the iPhone. But perhaps most importantly, as a part of the commerce section of the site revamp, Mike Fiebach, Josh, Josh’s manager at the time, Jamal Chalabi, Josh’s attorney, Jamie Young, and his business manager Tony Peyrot, were able to go to Universal Music, and contract to license all of Josh’s digital music catalog back from the label to be able to sell the DJ Shadow catalog via digital downloads, direct to consumer. This was a time before on-demand streaming music had been fully adopted, and this was the first known time ever that a major label artist had licensed digital music back from a major to sell it D2C. This massive site relaunch went live in 2009, and despite robust servers, crashed on launch day due to the demand. The traffic eventually normalized and the site Shortly after the ‘09 website relaunch, Shadow became an early adopter of mobile application technology and launched a dedicated DJ Shadow mobile app for iPhone and Android phones. The app was designed by me, and built by Mike, working with an up and coming mobile D2C platform, Mobile Roadie. We integrated the app into the website, enabling fans to take photos at shows and sync the photos to dedicated show pages on the site and app. We leveraged geo-specific push notifications from the app, and also expanded upon SMS marketing capabilities, something very few artists were doing at the time. Around this time, Shadow also became one of the first artists ever to use Square, the digital card reader, on an artist tour, also making him one of the first artists to bridge the gap between fan data at shows and online, boosting the ability to drive fans back to djshadow.com. Mike, who was on the road with Shadow implementing the use of Square, reflected that it was such an early version of the Square technology, that the Square team trained him on how to get a successful swipe. It took multiple swipes each time to get a card to go through. From 2000 through roughly 2009, I handled the day-to-day technical side of the site—hosting, servers, and back-end systems, alongside its creative direction, while Mike Fiebach handled all site content management, merchandise, d2c, independent music distribution, and digital and social marketing and strategy. As life circumstances shifted, the site’s technical responsibility transitioned to Mike Fiebach and his team at the time at Fame House (a company Mike founded in 2010, which Shadow was the first client of, and was perhaps the first company to combine social media marketing and merchandising and e-commerce services in the music industry. This company would go on to become acquired by Universal Music Group and remains its e-commerce division today). Since then, my role has evolved into one of creative stewardship. I’ve remained involved in the art direction, layouts, templates, photography, and overall visual identity of the site. The updates since the major 2009 relaunch have included additional large and notable projects that I collaborated on with Mike, including a move from Miva Merchant to TopSpin commerce in 2010, a relaunch on Wordpress for the site and Shopify for the commerce in 2014, and multiple design updates on top of Wordpress. Most recently, working with Mike and his new company Mainfactor, we implemented a complete overhaul, moving the site and store to Shopify, the first time the content and commerce have been married under a single technical architecture. As has been usual for DJ Shadow throughout his career, he was also one of the first to implement such a single site plus store technology stack on top of Shopify in 2020. Over the span of 25 years, the music industry has changed completely. The economics are different. The web is different. The site itself is different. But the intent has never changed. What does the future behold for artist websites, stores and DjShadow.com? All signs point to it being more important than ever for an artist to have a direct connection to their fans, and I am sure as he always has, Josh and his team will stay on the cutting edge. DJShadow.com has always been a labor of love—a place to connect directly with fans, to offer something beyond what labels provide, and to maintain an ongoing relationship rather than a transactional one. That, more than any specific technology or design trend, is why it has endured. And I’m honored to have been a part of it for so long.

Some web feeds, especially those published on news websites, are updated several times a day with new entries. Websites that publish so regularly can be distracting in your web reader when you want to skim your feed for new posts from all the websites you follow. With this in mind, I have been building a feature for Artemis, the calm web reader I maintain, to reduce the overwhelm associated with high-volume feeds: roll-up. When enabled for an author, the roll-up feature creates a page that lists all posts published by a given author over the last seven days. Every seven days – on whatever weekday you choose – a single entry will be added to your feed that shows a roll-up is available for you to view. Posts from the author will not show in your main feed. When a roll-up is available, a dedicated entry will appear in your feed with a title like this: > Roll-up for The Guardian Culture on 2026-01-19 This post will appear at the bottom of your feed for the day on which your roll-up is available (i.e. every Monday, Tuesday, etc.). When clicked, the post will show all the posts published by the author in the last seven days: ALT A list of posts published by The Guardian Culture web feed over the last seven days. To enable roll-up on a feed, click “Authors” in your Artemis reader, select an author, then check the “Enable Roll Up” checkbox. Next, choose a “Roll Up Cadence”, which is the day of the week on which you want the roll-up for the feed to be available. Finally, click the “Save” button at the bottom of the page to save your settings for the author. ALT The settings page for The Guardian Culture web feed with the checkbox to enable the roll-up feature enabled. Your next roll-up for the author will be available on the chosen day of the week. If you have any questions about this feature, please feel free to email me at readers [at] jamesg [dot] blog.

Location, location, location is the old saying about what matters in real estate. But what if you combined location, with architecture, and terrific views, as Joseph (Joe) Medwecki did at 190 St. George St.? The building, at the corner with Lowther Ave. in Midtown Toronto (yes, it’s the one with the pointy balconies), has been featured in architectural books and was No. 7 on a National Post list of top ten condominiums in Toronto. Jack Batten, in his book _The Annex_ , called it “one of the winners in elegant appearance” among towers that from the 1950s onward marched up St. George St. from Bloor St. W. I once wrote that it is rare for the public to know the names of designers of apartment buildings (or condos, I’ll now add). “How many apartment-house architects, anywhere, can this be said of? Gaudi in Barcelona; maybe Friedensreich Hundertwasser?” Perhaps Uno Prii, in Toronto? Like many _Spacing_ readers, I like multiple-unit dwellings and think some are very good as architecture and as homes, including 190, which is why I live there. Its distinctive look may be familiar but it’s not likely you have heard of Joe Medwecki, who died in Toronto on Nov. 10, 2025, at age 98. Shy and reserved, Medwecki once told an interviewer, about 190, “The building speaks for itself,” insisting, “I have nothing more to contribute.” However, tempted to tea and cookies in an upper-floor suite by a group of residents, Medwecki told them all about their 12-storey, 70-unit “home,” erected 1970-1972 on the site of one or two Annex mansions. From the second floor up, balconies wrap around, with the apartments enclosed in double-pane floor-to-ceiling glass. The end posts are placed outside, letting window extend into the corners. See-through metal railings allow air, light and views through while giving privacy from below. The design added appeal, said Medwecki, while “simplifying construction considerably,” eliminating bricklaying and heavy masonry. The famously pointed balconies on the east and west sides gave middle units patios, with “a view towards the lake.” “Once you are in a high-rise building, you should take advantage of the view toward the city,” he said. At 190 — and I can vouch he’s right — “you can enjoy that view even if you are quite deep in the living room.” My well-thumbed copy of Patrica McHugh’s _Toronto Architecture: A City Guide_ calls 190 “A distinguished essay in Late-Modernism.” In East/West: A Guide to Where People Live in Downtown Toronto, Joe Panabaker suggested Medwecki one-upped Mies Van der Rohe by making the glass house private and habitable even in the big city, using “the great late-Modern trick of the continuous balcony.” Set back on its corner by the day’s zoning rules, and now sitting discreetly among mature trees, it also pulls off Le Corbusier’s “tower in the park” idea successfully. The architect told me the building was conceived in an extended “exchange of thoughts” about architecture with his fellow Polish emigré, the developer Tadeusz (Ted) Lempicki. At that time, the late 1960s, Medwecki was studying for a Master’s in urban design under the younger architect Jack Diamond, at the University of Toronto. “I was talking [to Lempecki] about what I was doing, a small sort of presentation of my thesis,” Medwecki recalled. “And he said, ‘you know what? I think I would like you to do that building for me.’” It was originally to be rental, like Lempicki’s earlier Irving Grossman-designed 50 Prince Arthur (look for a statue, “Rosalyn,” out front), but 190 was finally offered to the public as one of Toronto’s early condos. Medwecki was born in Poznan, Poland in 1927. He studied at Warsaw University of Technology and worked under the celebrated Bohdan Pniewski on the postwar rebuilding of the National Opera, whose mosaic floor of exotic woods is Joseph Medwecki’s design. Cold-war Poland mostly blocked emigration but, finding a loophole, the young architect came to Canada in 1956, joining his father, an aircraft designer who had been evacuated here in 1939. Accompanying him was his wife, Antonia “Tosia” Kajetanowicz, whom he married in 1953. Later, her Toronto dental practice became known for its background music of soothing Mozart symphonies. Medwecki’s practice was small, “the most I ever had in the office was five people,” adding “I did all the working drawings [for 190 St. George St.] myself.” He focused on commercial buildings, factories, and warehouses in greater Toronto but did some in the United States, plus an occasional house, “primarily for my industrial clients.” Among his other projects are the medical arts building at 600 Sherbourne St., also for Lempicki, and a mansion at 937 Whitter Cres. in Mississauga, recently on the market. Teaching at Humber College in the 1970s, the architect “always had a carnation on his lapel, that was his signature,” said Stan Kedzierski, a former student, now a resident in Medwecki’s building. During the 2000s the architect attended the Ontario College of Art and Design as a mature student, earning another diploma and creating a self-portrait featuring 190 St. George and the tools of his trade. Pedestrians walking by can often be seen looking up at the building, and that is how many of us who live there came to know of it. My spouse and I moved in during 1999, but the building “was cherished basically from the very beginning,” said resident Hanna Bartel. In the oft-times (but not always) tower-anxious Annex, opinions have evolved. The erection of 190 marked the end of tower-building on St. George street for quite some time. More recently, a member of the district’s famous residents association was heard to say, when visiting an 8th floor apartment, “THIS is where you move, when you sell your home in the Annex.” “You can’t beat the terraces, the windows,” said Royal LePage realtor David Fenster, who has sold countless units, and lives there too. Medwecki himself never resided at 190 St. George, but he could see it from his own condo at 284 Bloor W. _A shorter version of this story appeared in the e-newsletter of the Annex Residents Association._

I'm seeing posts on Facebook from people wondering why Chris Sheppard doesn't appear in the new CFNY: The Spirit of Radio documentary that aired earlier this week on TVO. I'm not referring to archival footage, I mean current-day Shep talking about his experience at CFNY. If you read my article