Haydain Neale, 1970–2009
Newsstand: November 23, 2009
The Making of a Medley
Transit City and Transit Cities
Rebuilding a Child's Paradise
Toronto is the second most expensive city in North America and fifty-fourth most expensive city in the world, according to the Mercer's annual cost of living survey. In the worldwide list, Toronto jumped twenty-eight spots and now ranks as more expensive than Los Angeles, a city known for its frugality.
How's tourism in Toronto doing? Depends on who you ask: the Globe says it's not going so hot across the board for the big Canadian cities, but the Star says things are going okay based on wisdom from "industry insiders" like the person at Tourism Toronto whose job as vice-president of communications is to make his company look good, and the manager of Hippo Tours. So, tough call.
According to the Globe, U of T will officially announce today that they have sold the David Dunlap Observatory property to Metrus Development. Good news, though! According to their sources, Metrus is "willing to try to keep the observatory and telescope running and is looking for proposals for future operation" and has no plans to demolish the Dunlap's farmhouse, either. Levelling the buildings at which proof of the existence of black holes was discovered would be a little too apropos.
Cyclists who've had their wheels stolen spent the weekend looking through two police-run warehouses packed with the 2,400 bikes recovered from raids in the wake of Bicycle Clinic owner Igor Kenk's arrest. The bikes are available for viewing at 35 Strachan Avenue (bike models beginning with "A" to "Q") and 30 Ordance Street ("R" to "Z") until at least Thursday; more information is available in the Toronto Police news release [PDF].
Three kids have been arrested for robbing apartment units in 2 Secord Avenue, the east-end building where an explosion last week forced 1,000 residents out of their homes for at least a month. Anti-graffiti folk take note: these last two news stories are far better examples of "contempt for private property" than this is.
Photo by News46 from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.
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Also: Toronto Police just sent out an e-mail saying that 250 people have gotten back their bikes so far.
David, when you say models do you mean brand or actual model? The PDF release doesn't say.
According to the Post article I linked to,
The two warehouses are right beside each other, though.Remember that the Mercer index is denominated in U.S. dollars, and the greenback has weakened significantly against other currencies. Toronto's rate is 88.1 where NYC is 100, so Toronto is still quite affordable I'd say.
Also, for Canadians earning Canadian dollars, the ranking doesn't really change their daily expenses. Still, the Mercer index is interesting to watch.
The Toronto Police just announced that they recovered 700 more bikes today thanks to three more search warrants. Wow.
I think you'll find the Globe article doesn't say much about Toronto specifically, and nothing that disagrees with the Star: