By André Bovee-Begun

Illustration by Roxanne Ignatius/Torontoist.

A pedestrian was hit by a police cruiser in front of a hospital last night. You can’t make this stuff up. The forty-one-year-old woman did not suffer life-threatening injuries but is hospitalized while her condition is being assessed. The provincial Special Investigations Unit may step in to investigate the incident, depending on how badly injured she turns out to be.
It looks like federal transportation minister John Baird just got outed by a PC candidate who’s a little shaky on what the phrase “openly gay” is supposed to mean. The slip came from Pamela Taylor, who is vying with Glen Murray for the seat in provincial parliament that George Smitherman left to run for mayor. In an interview on Metro Morning, Taylor and host Andy Barrie were sparring about PC stances on gay issues…but we’ll let her speak for herself (and Baird):

ANDY BARRIE: Can you think of a single openly gay Conservative politician, either provincially or federally, who is gay?
TAYLOR: Openly gay? John Baird.
BARRIE: [Stunned] Thank you. You got me.

Easiest scoop of Barrie’s life. We’ll miss him sorely when he leaves Metro Morning.
And in case you missed it, yesterday Torontoist broke the news of the launch of the TTC’s official trip planner, as opposed to the earlier version that popped up intermittently this past week. As you can see from the feedback we’ve received after asking for your impressions, it definitely has a few bugs to fix before it can leave beta. Among them are a habit of advising you to get off the bus a stop too late and backtrack to your destination on foot, giving bus routes even when you tell it not to, and steering you towards slow surface vehicles instead of zippy subways. Seeing any patterns?
Remember the giant condo tower that was planned for 1 Bloor East, until the economy went over a cliff and suddenly an eighty-storey tower with million-dollar suites didn’t seem like such a good idea? After a bit of a lull, the plan could soon be back in a more modest form, as a luxury condo of approximately sixty-seven storeys. The architectural drawings haven’t been unveiled yet, but units are supposed to go up for pre-sale in as little as sixty days.
Some of Toronto’s tourism numbers are in, and it looks like they were way down in 2009. It might be easy to blame the urban filthification of the civic workers’ strike for the hit we took, but tourism was down worldwide because of the recession, and Toronto held its standing among North America’s most-visited overnight destinations. It’s tenth, in case you were wondering, and those chumps in New York have no idea what they’re missing. Now go have the best Wednesday ever.