By André Bovee-Begun

Toronto District School Board Chair John Campbell is in favour of shutting down “twenty-five to thirty” schools with low enrolment. That number is in scare quotes because no actual proposal is on the table yet, but mothballing half-full schools could save the TDSB as much as fifteen million dollars per year. It’s still a bitter pill to swallow while the province is still shelling out thirty-two million dollars annually to sustain the controversial EQAO “literacy tests” set in place by the Harris government.
An elderly couple have been relieved of their house near Yonge and Finch by the city as part of a plan to make way for a road Toronto promised to build…twenty-five years ago! The city is busily buying up properties in the area, and expects to finally finish the road by year’s end. The long-awaited road was originally meant to serve nearby condominiums. Christina and Michael Simeon say they feel cheated because the city assessed the value of their house when the market was at a low point. “We can’t buy the same kind of house for that kind of money,” Michael, 79, told the Star. Maybe there’s room in one of those twenty-five-year-old condos.
And the next four weekends might be your last chance to go to jail! If you’re one of the lucky few, that is. Photographers, voyeurs, and the generally tour-loving are among the many to have taken guided walks through the Old Don Jail’s gloomy corridors, but now a legal dispute with the province has forced the facility’s operators, Bridgepoint Health, to cancel the popular Ghost Tours, as well as all events and parties, and restrict the historical tours of the jail to the next four weekends.
Possibly following Vancouver’s lead, Toronto has been quietly examining the feasibility of opening its own safe injection site as part of a strategy to fight drug addiction. Proponents of a safe injection site say that non-judgemental supervision and counselling can help drug addicts more than outright bans. The team behind the ongoing study has been understandably cautious about talking to the media, but stressed that they were just taking a first look at the possibility. The study is part of the city’s official drug strategy [PDF], approved by council in 2005.