“Irma is the new Divine” “What the world needs is more Irma” “VaVaVoom!!” “Irma was a godsend” "Hubba hubba" "Watatow! You are gorgeous!" "The sass was free" "STUNNING" (reactions from Ohana, Luau at the Lake, June 2025) and a "werq of art" says the Toronto Star (Sept 2025)!
Hey, honeybunnies!
Let me make you one of my favourite cocktails, a Mai Tai, so you can sit right back and hear a tale, the tale of a fateful trip...MINE! It's that old chestnut of a drag queen without a purpose, a sad sack, a husk even, until she found her true calling: architecture! While I'm not the kind of drag queen who does lip syncs and leg splits, I'll talk your ear off about architecture, our built environment, heritage buildings, Toronto Modernism, Palm Springs, Googie in Los Angeles, and a whole lotta other stuff, baby!
Irma's Story
Irma, 44, is new to Toronto. While she studied architecture briefly at Dalhousie, marriage to an up-and-coming, misogynist hockey player bodychecked her big plans. After five rocky years, Irma escaped to live with hippies in the North Mountain area of Nova Scotia. Unfortunately, while she enjoyed learning their ways, she also developed an allergic reaction to patchouli oil and had to leave (she much preferred the clothing of the immediate pre-hippie years anyhow). After working as receptionist in an established Halifax architectural firm for 15 years, Irma, like a moth to a flame, pointed her bright yellow Karmann Ghia towards the bright lights of Toronto, where the work of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, I.M. Pei, Edward Durrell Stone, Santiago Calatrava, Frank Gehry, Bjarke Ingels, Sir Norman Foster, and Jeanne Gang all live harmoniously together, just like the population (over 50% of Torontonians were born outside of Canada). She started “Irma on Architecture” to share her enthusiasm with the rest of Canada, and the world.
