The Making of a Medley
Newsstand: November 23, 2009
Transit City and Transit Cities
The Daily Photoist: November 23, 2009
The TTC says that they plan to improve service on the 501 Queen streetcar route, which has been the object of much complaint over unpredictable service and frequent delays. The good news story here is that National Geographic recently declared the route one of the top ten streetcar trips in the world, so next time you're standing out in the freezing sleet desperately scanning the horizon for a glimpse of that red rocket, make sure you smile at a tourist.
An email from a prosecutor in Texas has revealed that the term "Canadian" is used among U.S. racists as a code word referring to African-Americans. Hard to know what to do with that.
The Bloc Québecois have emerged from their underground bunkers near Montreal to announce that they'll support the upcoming Conservative budget, as long the Tories allocate around $15 billion to various deserving causes around la belle province. Torontoist would like to go on record as saying that we're also willing to consider supporting the budget in return for a few beers and a ride home.
French bank Société Générale SA yesterday revealed that it has taken losses of over $7 billion due to the malfeasance of a single "rogue trader." A spokesperson for SocGen said that they would be reconsidering their rogue trader hiring policy.
Scientists at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Maryland may have created artificial life by recreating the genetic structure of a bacterium from bits and pieces of DNA. At present the micro-organism just sits in a petri dish, but it's hoped that within several weeks it will be the size of a fifty-storey building and excreting radioactive sludge.
Photo by SirCharlie from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.
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I'm a Canadian? Now that kicks ass guess I don't have to wait for my citizenship now. Living in Atlanta, I never heard the term but when I go back I'll make sure to listen for it. That's still pretty f'ed up though.
Canadians unite! Together we can overthrow the Yank crackers!
I live in New York and I've actually heard of this use of the word "Canadian" in parts of the US, though I've never heard it used that way firsthard. It's not a new thing.
Note that the linked National Post article includes the following paragraph:
A University of Kansas linguist said that a waitress friend reported that "fellow workers used to use a name for inner-city families that were known to not leave a tip: Canadians. ‘Hey, we have a table of Canadians.... They're all yours.' "
So it's ok to use "inner-city" as a masked codeword for African-Americans but not "Canadian"? How quickly we become used to such terrible stereotyping. The words "inner-city youth" are also used in the Toronto press all the time as well to imply minorities or low-income persons, and in Toronto that usage is both morally and geographically wrong (since the "inner city" of Toronto in that sense is mostly the "outer city" of Scarborough, Jane-Finch, etc.)
I think we vote to take 'em. Hey, if they want to give us hard-working minority families...
"In the long term, (Adam Giambrone) says, dramatic improvements to the (Queen streetcar) service can only come with dramatic changes, such as a dedicated lane for streetcars along the entire route."
Queen St. has a limited width, if we have a dedicated streetcar lane then street parking needs to be eliminated. That sounds good but it also means no bicycles will fit either, unless they ride in the same lane as the cars.
You can't narrow the sidewalk either, so how the hell can this be done?
They should eliminate cars on Queen, really.
Cars should be banished from King and Queen and be sentenced to wander the lost highways of Richmond and Adelaide.