Today, all over the downtown core, students were seen banding together to make a difference. Students from post-secondary schools from all over central Ontario congregated at various rendez-vous points such as OCAD, UofT, and Queen's Park. They then all met in and around the UofT campus all for one central and common goal - to lower tuition fees across the nation and to offer affordable education to all.

My adventure started at OCAD's welcoming Butterfield Park, where eager students held small pep rallies began, which began with students from the OCAD Student Union speaking about the issues that were inflicting their lives and lowering their quality of education.

This Halloween, parties will be packed with people wearing good costumes and bad costumes. There will be elaborate and expensive ones that make you wonder just how obsessed one is with All Hallow's Eve, along with frocks that leave you scratching your head as to what in blue hell they are supposed to be.

For the rest of us, there are only three letters that matter: D.I.Y.

While surfing the web for ideas I came across instructables.com, a do-it-yourself site for just about anything - including Halloween costumes.

So here, in random order, are a few of the ways you can save hundreds of thousands of dollars this year while still turning heads.

The ninth annual "Night Of Dread" parade and festival on Saturday October 25th was a raucous and colourful community event with fun for young and old alike. Giant Papier Mache puppets representing "Big Dreads" (War; Environmental disaster, Modern Art and a few more) were paraded through the streets around Dufferin Grove Park before being mocked and banished for the year.

Garage Collective founder Kathleen Reichelt will not be paying the big bucks to rent theatre space in downtown Toronto. Instead, the collective transforms her 400 square foot downtown garage into a performance space to explore new work that is experimental, feminist and immediate. Reichelt says, "It's the most studio space I have ever had in my ten years living in the city."

Walking down the laneway beside the house leads to the candle-lit box office. There's an outdoor seating area that can be used for pre- or post-theatre chat. Inside The Garage is brightly lit with the usual stage props scattered throughout, and a prelude video installation playing on the television screen. Two rows of folding chairs are set up along the back wall facing the double garage door, as patrons gather to experience something beyond the ordinary in theatreland.

Montreal foursome Beast returned to Toronto as the openers on the Canadian tour dates for You Say Party We Say Die. Formed as an experimental project at the beginning of this year, their previous appearance here in June at NXNE won them a glowing review in Chart Magazine.

Playing on a Sunday night in this city is a hard pull off for any band, established or not (with the exception of Madonna of course, but then who GAF). Arriving at Wrongbar around 10pm, the bar had a good size crowd on hand. It was a rather odd mix of local music scenesters, indie kidz, and college heads, so I was curious to see who was there to see who.

Beast took the stage, quickly grabbed everyone by the harmonic juggler, and didn't let go. The two core members Jean-Phi Goncalves and Beatrice (Betty) Bonifassi began this current project as something of an experiment. Goncalves approached Bonifassi after being mesmerized by her ethereal vocals while working with DJ Champion, as well as her contributions to the Oscar winning soundtrack for Les Triplettes de Belleville. They've since added guitarist Serge Nakauchi-Furrier and "keytar" playing bassist Jonathan Dauphinais.

Yesterday morning, several cyclists had to have biked east past a man lying on the bike path lane on Gerrard between Jarvis and Church. Not a single person stopped to call for assistance or even to return back to the police car sitting just seconds away on Jarvis.

Although it appeared that he was a drunk who had simply passed out all it would have taken was one car driver to abruptly change lanes and he would have been run over.