By André Bovee-Begun

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: the recession is definitely over forever! From here on in, it’s high-paying jobs and consumer spending for everyone! Well, that’s still not good enough for Toronto officials, who are citing recession-based fears to justify killing their support of the city’s plan to build a towering Toronto history museum inside the oddly futuristic abandoned silos of the Canada Malting complex, located at the foot of Bathurst. With the history museum’s future looking grim, the backup plan seems to be stuffing the whole thing inside of Old City Hall and mowing down the eerie silos except for a worse-than-nothing “symbolic outline.” Doing it that way would save the city just under eight and a half million dollars (but at what cost?).
Okay, so we’re probably not going to get our very own waterfront postmodern concrete history tubes and will have to settle for a city museum whose defining characteristic is that it looks…old. But at least we can all get new (er, make that “de-stolen”) bikes without going on a spending spree: The province wants to sell off all possessions seized from bike-thieving, drug-pushing Toronto dirtbag Igor Kenk, the man notorious for (probably) being the most absurdly prolific bike-snatch mastermind in the world, ever. Kenk—who, incidentally, is also facing assault charges for threatening a pregnant woman who threw out the stolen bikes and three pounds of pot he was storing in her rented-out garage—says he feels “helpless” to stop the province from confiscating and auctioning his repair shop and over two thousand impounded bikes, which he calls “my stock.” Aw, muffin.
Kenk obviously isn’t getting sympathy from much of anyone, but some might still find it unsettling that the province can sell off someone’s possessions on the mere suspicion that they were obtained through crime. Still, most of us don’t find it too hard to stay on the right side of the law. If you’re having trouble, just remember, it’s one thing to make your own luck, and quite another to run your own lottery.
Oh, also, don’t blow up the neighborhood. Sunrise Propane, whose North Toronto plant was the site of a massive early-morning explosion that lit up the sky and claimed two lives last August, is now facing new charges for failing to clean up after the blast. Considering that hazardous levels of asbestos were found almost immediately, it’s a wonder it’s taken the province this long to lay the charges.
And we wouldn’t normally bring you down with yet more news about cars hitting cyclists in our bike-at-your-own-risk city, but what happened last night at Bay and Bloor went so far beyond the limits of even the most jaded watcher that not mentioning it here would be borderline irresponsible. A cyclist was dragged to death along Bloor Street at around 9:45 p.m., while road crews and bystanders stood and gaped. The cyclist had grabbed onto the driver’s side door of a black Saab convertible, apparently getting into an argument with the driver, and held on while the driver yelled at him to let go, swerved into oncoming traffic, and hit phone poles and trees all along the wrong side of the road. The man was fatally injured after he lost his grip on the car which, according to some reports, ran over him. Police arrested the driver, after witnesses reported seeing the Saab pull into the Park Hyatt Hotel on Avenue Road.
It gets worse.
The news broke at 5:42 a.m. that the driver of the Saab convertible in the hit-and-run was likely former Ontario Attorney General and Economic Development Minister Michael Bryant, who stepped down in June to become CEO of the city-owned Invest Toronto corporation. (Bryant’s former St. Paul’s riding is gearing up for a provincial election.) Bryant, who seems to have called the police himself, remains in police custody at this time. It’s not often that Torontoist is left speechless, but, well, there you are.