Where to go to get your haunt on

For many Torontonians, Thanksgiving weekend means one last trip north to board up the cottage. But while kayaks, life jackets and other summer accoutrements are laid to rest, some things in Muskoka aren't. They are ghosts, legions of them, if you believe Terry Boyle, a ''haunted'' historian who leads tours and who has written several books on the hidden weirdness of cottage country. ''I believe that ghosts are entities from another time who have crossed over into ours. And so it doesn't mean, when we see a ghost, that we are seeing a dead person. It's a living being, and its residence is elsewhere.'' Mr. Boyle's latest, Haunted Ontario Revisited, describes in eerie detail the presence of apparitions

Is the Mint pinching pennies for political gain?

A penny for your thoughts?Oops, make that $47,680, if you are the Royal Canadian Mint bent on slicing a pound of flesh from Toronto. That's the price named by the Mint for the city's use of the penny icon for its $150,000 ''one cent now'' campaign, launched last February by Mayor David Miller to snag for municipalities one cent out of every six cents collected on the federal GST.

How to get your firefighting fix

Finding out where Toronto firefighters are battling the latest five-alarm blaze is now as easy as logging onto your Facebook profile.Local broadcasting manager and Facebook fan Iain Grant, 44, has created a tool that lets users of the social network site post on their profile page a chart showing all the incidents that the Toronto Fire Services are attending in the city.

Known for high living, but at whose expense?

His father repaired office equipment and his mother was a cashier at Honest Ed's, but Walter Garrick had left that world far behind. His resume included a medical degree from Columbia, a dot-com fortune, and a bid for the ownership of the Toronto Argonauts. Mr. Garrick drove a BMW X5 and kept a $16-million Hawker corporate jet at Pearson Airport.

Don't blame gridlock on AGO reconstruction

If snarled traffic around Dundas Street West held you up last week, don't blame the Art Gallery of Ontario, said Antonietta Mirabelli, a gallery representative.A portion of Dundas on the AGO's doorstep was closed to vehicles for about a week while Toronto Transit Commission crews laid down new streetcar tracks.

The centre of the party universe, Circa 2007

It was a circus at Circa on Thursday night, bursting with plumage and sparkle and painted eyelashes. It was as if all of Toronto was attending the long-anticipated comeback of club king Peter Gatien. But the evening also included Mena Suvari, an old friend of Mr. Gatien from his I'll-take-Manhattan days, who flew in for the premiere.

Paris and the hippie chick

Paris Hilton may be making a stop at the Toronto Islands bingo night if Hanne Whitfield gets her way. That's because the lifelong island girl - complete with arty hippie parents, ''Peace on Earth'' button on her lapel, a mop of curls that hasn't met a comb in 20 years and not a scrap of makeup - has just been named head designer for Hilton's new eponymous clothing line.

Banned, but on a shelf near you

It kills ''virtually any plant that is green and growing,'' says the label on a bottle of Total WipeOut, a thorough-sounding herbicide found on shelves at Canadian Tire and the gardening sections of other stores. With products like this, and other brands like Roundup, Lawn WeedOut and Killex, there's no reason for a Toronto homeowner to suffer the indignity of crabgrass or dandelions - except that the use of such products is banned in the city.

Service standards set for condo managers

The first 20 companies have been certified under a new set of standards for condominium managers in Ontario.As the construction of new condo suites booms in the Greater Toronto Area, the Association of Condominium Managers of Ontario has set up what it calls its ACMO 2000 certification to promote service excellence, professionalism and expertise among building property managers.

Sales and prices continue their record-setting climb

Is there any direction but up for housing prices in the Greater Toronto Area? The housing experts keep saying the market is going to cool ''soon'', but ''soon'' never comes. The Toronto Real Estate Board said August was its fifth record-setting month in a row, with 8,059 sales reported, up 15 per cent over August, 2006. ''Summer of 2007 has been hands-down the most active holiday season for the resale market in the history of the Toronto Real Estate Board,'' said TREB president Donald Bentley. Sales of newly constructed homes also experience an unprecedented summer surge as sales of high-rise condos look set to overtake sales of new low rise homes for the first time.

Les Pyette photo

The Sun chain and countless current and former Sun employees should be forever thankful to Les for his 28 years working the newsrooms in Toronto, Calgary and the London Free Press. The Kid From the Soo, looking trim and fit in the ...

Pam Anderson weds again

After just over a month of dating, Pamela Anderson, 40, and Rick Salomon, 39, have tied the knot. The couple exchanged vows shortly after 9 pm, in front of sixty friends and family members in a private villa at the Mirage Hotel and ...

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