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Newsstand: September 10, 2012
TIFF isn't the only hot ticket in town. We've got another wonderful entertainment option for you...Monday's news! Woo-hoo! Excited? So are we! Here goes: a new target on Mayor Ford's budget-cuts hit list; tailgating in Toronto; more disturbing news coming out of Marineland; a sweet story about a lost phone; and problems with the Port Lands plan.
Hope you enjoyed your summer, well-paid senior-level City Hall bureaucrats, as it looks like your gravy-filled trains are about to go off the tracks. Mayor Rob Ford said Friday that streamlining the ranks of senior staff will be at the top of his list when he’s looking for ways to cut spending this fall. Huh. He must be as surprised as we are to learn that targeting the middle-earners didn’t make the major dent he’d expected. Surely going after the unions and leaving the big(ger) earners alone seemed a solid plan. Too bad that didn’t work out.
Who says Mayor Ford doesn’t support taking sporting events to the streets? Though (in)famously opposed to city streets being shut down for marathons, Toronto’s top dog is in favour of hosting a tailgate party on Front Street in the lead-up to the Grey Cup on November 25. Because why shouldn’t Toronto be a part of America, too?
If sick and injured sea animals don’t tug at your heartstrings (and why not? What kind of a monster are you?!) maybe this will: Marineland is facing further allegations of mistreatment of animals, this time, of the furry, four-legged variety. It seems that deer, bears, and other land animals are also suffering at the Niagara-area facility, living on poor diets, in an unnatural setting, and with unresolved medical issues.
If you need a little proof to believe that the spirit of “Toronto the Good” is alive and well, perhaps this will do the trick. When nine-year-old Julian Kelly found an iPhone in the water at Ward Island Beach he thought he’d hit the $600 jackpot, as he planned to sell the phone to a friend (although we’ve got to ask, what kind of fourth-grade student has that kind of cash lying around?). Instead, after giving it the rice treatment, he and his parents were able to track down the owner, to whom they returned the phone 10 days after it had been lost.
Lafarge, the firm that has run a cement terminal on the Toronto Port Lands for more than 80 years, intends to stay firmly in place, despite the City’s plan to revitalize the area. Though plans for the Port Lands, which include the creation of a mixed-use neighbourhood and a riverside park, go before Mayor Rob Ford’s executive committee today, Lafarge has raised concerns that the new plans don’t take into account how the cement company does business. It’s also pointed out a seemingly obvious safety concern, which, in a pleasant euphemism, it describes as “truck/pedestrian conflicts.”
