“I took over my mother’s laundry room, and put up a red bulb.” So shares “Lou D,” one of Toronto’s original shutterbugs, as he reflects on his path to photography, and about a new pop-up exhibition he’s mounting called “Top Touring Concerts from 1980s Ontario.” Showing now at Toronto’s historic Thornton Smith-Building at 340 Yonge, the…

Upon hearing the news that Dolly Parton died on Aug. 25, at 80, only a year after her husband of close to 60 years, Carl Dean, passed away, everyone likely had their own image of Dolly come to mind. And, inevitably, she would have been smiling. In 2016, the brightest light of Tennessee was named…

Ma, Pa and the entire Ingalls family are back in the zeitgeist once again as Netflix’s modern take on Laura Ingalls Wilder’s autobiographical children's book series continues to draw high praise and strong ratings. Meanwhile, for those of us who fell in love with that wholesome Little House on the Prairie magic in the ’70s,…

Are you ready for the summer? Are you ready for the sunshine? Are you ready for the birds and bees, the apple trees, and a whole lotta foolin' around?   That catchy refrain from June 1979 introduced cinemagoers to the little Canadian summer camp movie that could: Meatballs, which grossed $70 million (all numbers in…

Family stories are a way of capturing important historical events and they pass this knowledge on to future generations. As memoirist Nancy K Miller says, family stories are not just personal but an “aid or a spur to keep cultural memory alive.” Hazel Barrett’s grandfather came to England on the HMT Empire Windrush in 1948.…

It should come as no surprise that writing stories with a nostaglic approach is one of Zoomer’s specialties. This doesn’t mean we’re rooted in the past. Instead, we look back on historical events, personalities and celebrities and provide fresh perspectives through the lens of the present. So whether we’re writing about the creative reunion of…