Globe and Mail staff photographer Fernando Morales with one of his images from Haiti.

During the weeks after the earthquake struck Haiti on January 12, shocking images and stories flooded news outlets. Hundreds of journalists from around the world were sent to the devastated nation to record the aftermath, raising a number of professional and ethical quandaries. Tuesday night at Innis Town Hall, the Canadian Journalism Foundation brought together a panel of reporters to discuss these issues. One fundamental question dominated the discussion: how do you balance responsible journalism with humanity?

Moderated by author and journalist Sally Armstrong, “Stories from Haiti: A Round Table Discussion with Reporters Who Were There” gathered Maclean’s foreign correspondent Michael Petrou, Toronto Star reporter and columnist Catherine Porter, Globe and Mail reporter Anna Mehler Paperny, and Globe and Mail photographer Fernando Morales—all of whom were on the ground in Haiti.
The journalists spoke about their experiences and some of the decisions they faced while reporting. Petrou told a story about coming across a Spanish rescue team digging a Haitian woman out of the rubble. The team was guarded by half a dozen UN Peacekeepers armed with rifles. Just as she was about to be extricated, pistol shots rang out a few streets over. The UN workers immediately ordered the rescue workers and Petrou to leave the scene. “It bothered me a lot,” said Petrou. So he went back. “Godamnit! If I’m unarmed, and willing and able to walk through these streets, why can’t twenty of these international helpers with assault riffles do it?”
Porter said that she had brought along to Haiti just enough power bars and granola bars for herself and others working with her, but would find herself talking to people who hadn’t eaten for days. If there were fifty hungry people in the surrounding area, would giving away two granola bars—those she’d brought for herself and her translator—make a difference? “I’d rather have forty-eight hungry people than fifty,” she would tell her translator. And he’d reply, “There’s going to be forty-eight hungry people and two dead journalists.” Nevertheless, she “crossed the line” several times, and handed out the bars. “I was there to do a job, but I was also there as a human to help people,” she reasoned.
These stories bring up all sorts of questions: what is the role of journalists in these situations? Are they supposed to merely report the facts? Are they expected to offer their help? Can they really separate their professional role from the natural compassionate human reaction?
“It’s impossible to be objective when you’re faced with this kind of situation,” said Paperny. “Objectivity doesn’t exist because you’re talking to people who are dying or who are in horrific situations.”

Left to right: Fernando Morales, Michael Petrou, and Catherine Porter.

“I err on the side of being a human rather than a journalist,” said Petrou. But, he added, “However you feel emotionally or subjectively, your job as a journalist is to tell the truth—full stop, whether it hurts or helps, or affects or negatively affects.”
The panel also discussed sensationalism. The term “disaster porn” started to circulate after Bill Maher criticized much of the coverage on Haiti (though he directed his comments mostly at the American television news networks). “Did I see that coverage?” Paperny said. “Absolutely. Was I consciously trying to avoid that in my own writing? Yeah. But I don’t think it diminished in any way the importance of covering that situation. I would never say you shouldn’t go there or shouldn’t be covering this because of the danger of reducing it to disaster porn.”
Porter mentioned that journalism changes in these instances too—it becomes much more raw. You can no longer depend on talking to experts (professors, policy makers) because they’re simply too hard to contact. So you just dive in and write about what you see throughout the day.
Morales, a photographer on the scene, said he never really knew what he was going to shoot. Even though he would have an assignment, he would get so distracted by the images he encountered throughout the day.
The discussion highlighted that this wasn’t your average journalism: the reporters were not only confronted with unimaginable devastation and fear, but also with ethical questions not often raised in their routine professional lives. Perhaps Porter said it best: “Comparatively for me, being there felt like the most important journalism I’ve ever done because I was telling stories that could change people’s lives.”
Torontoist’s Nick Kozak’s was one of the photographers in Haiti after the quake. His photos from the ground are here.
Photos by Nick Kozak/Torontoist.

CORRECTION: MARCH 19, 2010 This article was originally less clear than it could have been in describing Catherine Porter’s story about food in Haiti. We originally wrote that Porter “would interview people who hadn’t eaten for days. Meanwhile, she had a backpack filled with power bars and granola bars.” While it is true, Porter clarified in an email to Torontoist, that she “brought granola bars and power bars…in my luggage,” our article did not make it clear that those supplies were rations for two weeks, and that when Porter left her room for the day she would only bring just enough food for her and her translator. (“I ate them for breakfast and lunch for at least a week,” she says, “before the grocery stores opened again.”) Torontoist regrets causing any confusion.

Fishing from the series Hunting and Fishing was taken by Toronto-based photographer Angus Rowe MacPherson.

For all of those young photographers who struggle to get their work noticed in Toronto and around the world, things may just have gotten a bit easier. Eye Buy Art, launched last December, is an online art gallery that represents photographers from Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. So far, it’s sold and shipped high-quality prints to as far away as Switzerland.

The site is the sister organization to Flash Forward, an annual competition showcasing the future of photography from these three countries. The list of winners for each country is extensive, and all photographers selected for Eye Buy Art are drawn from that pool: the works are carefully chosen by a jury of photography and art experts from each country. (The 2009 Canadian jury consisted of Liz Ikiriko, photo editor of Toronto Life; Daniel Espeset of photo-eye; and Sara Knelman of the Art Gallery of Hamilton.) Six of the artists they feature currently live in Toronto, including Eamon Mac Mahon, Robyn McCallum, Marshall Byrd Sterling, Mark Kasumovic, and Becky Comber, and their newest member, Angus Rowe MacPherson, was just added this week.

Plume by Eamon Mac Mahon, a Toronto-based photographer.

Eye Buy Art is another building block on an already flourishing artistic community here in Toronto that includes the aforementioned Flash Forward Competition and major collections like Ryerson’s Black Star. Emily McInnes, founder of Eye Buy Art and former director of creative development at Contact, said, “Eye Buy Art doesn’t stand alone—we are adding to an important growing movement in this city by bringing Canadian culture to an international audience.”
“Art is important on so many levels, and emerging artists are our future, so we want to be the vehicle that builds heretofore non-art buyers into passionate collectors, and to democratize the current elitist experience into something more people can enjoy.”
You don’t have to be a Mercedes-driving investment banker to own beautiful art—those with just a few bucks to spare can get their hands into the game as well. High-quality 8″x10″ prints are available for as little as twenty-five dollars. For those with a keen eye and deeper pockets, you can drop two thousand dollars on 30″x40″ prints; there are also pieces available at a range of price-points in between.

Sacred and Profane Love by Robyn McCallum.

There’s another notable caveat for the site: you have to be under thirty-five to win the Flash Forward competition and be featured on Eye Buy Art. The goal is to support up-and-coming young artists. According to McInnes, the “mission is to create opportunity for young people as they graduate from school, are looking to build relationships, and who need to be encouraged at this critical stage to continue their path.”
Because of this youth, there’s a lot of innovation involved with the photography. For example, Robyn McCallum of Bau-Xi Photo on Dundas West combines handmade objects, collage, and photos which she then re-photographs as a single image.
This is what makes the site so exciting—we can see where photography is going. McInnes added, “The ideas are fresh, and [the artists] don’t feel locked down by any particular demands that may emerge as a late-stage artist.”

An Olympic-goer controls the lights on the CN Tower from halfway across the country.

If you’re in the mood to feel an overwhelming sense of power, hop on a plane and go to the Ontario Pavilion at the Olympics in Vancouver. There, you can control the lights on the CN Tower with your mind. Yes, that’s right: with your mind.
Interaxon, a Toronto-based company that makes products and experiences using brain-computer interface technology, developed a product specifically for the Olympics that allows users to change how fast the lights spin around Toronto’s most famous landmark with their brain—from about three thousand kilometres away.
We were able to test the sci-fi contraption, and man, is it ever cool.

After waiting in line for about forty minutes, we were escorted to a high-tech chair that faces a huge screen with a live shot of downtown Toronto projected on it. A very large set of headphones were placed on our head with a wraparound sensor that made contact with the front of our forehead. As the person giving instructions described, humans have two types of brain waves—beta and alpha. The more focussed and concentrated our brain is, the more beta waves we produce, and the more relaxed our brain is, the more alpha waves we produce. The contraption converts those waves into light patterns which are then beamed across the country: the beta waves make the lights spin faster, and the alpha waves tell them to slow down.

Participants watch a (somewhat blurry) live shot of downtown Toronto as they manipulate the speed of the lights.

We were having trouble getting the beta waves going, so the trainer suggested that we count the window lights on the surrounding high-rises. Almost instantly, the beta waves on the little monitor screen attached to the chair shot up, and sure enough, the lights started to spin faster.
In two more chairs, two other Olympic-goers were doing the exact same thing for the lights on the Parliament Buildings and Niagara Falls.
The attraction goes live at the pavilion every day at three in the afternoon, when it’s dark back here in Toronto. So for the next two weeks, keep your eye on downtown, and imagine what somebody halfway across the country is thinking.
Photos by Alixandra Gould/Torontoist.

The About Face Collective is trying to bring together community artists and green enthusiasts to create Toronto’s first solar-powered laundromat. Illustration by Oivind Hovland/Torontoist.

Ever wish you could do your laundry, look at a painting, have a latté, and pick up some organic produce all at the same place? Lauren Pirie and Natalie Boustead are trying to bring such a place to fruition. Their pet project, the About Face Collective, would be Toronto’s first non-profit solar-powered laundromat, organic café, and gallery space—that is, if they can get it up and running.

For a lot of people living in downtown Toronto, cleaning clothes at a laundromat is a necessity, explains Pirie. “It’s an opportunity to have a social interaction and do something more creative than just sit around and wait for you laundry to dry.” In addition to the spaces already mentioned, the plan is to have a rooftop garden, a community kitchen, affordable housing, and storefronts for like-minded small businesses.
Pirie first came up with the idea as her creative thesis when studying communication design at Ryerson a few years ago. The initial partnership she had with a school friend fell through, but she held onto the idea of making it happen. A mutual acquaintance then introduced her to Boustead about a year ago, who brought a group of people involved with the Dupont and Spadina Corner Collective into the fold, and it all snowballed from there.
Pirie says the group involved in starting up the collective come from an incredibly wide range of backgrounds. Urban farmers, artists, university professors, builders, and many more have been working towards getting the project off the ground. “They’re passionate about all the same things we both are,” she says.
“Finding the perfect location is a challenge,” she adds. “We’re very passionate about salvaging an older building. It rips my heart out every time I see another one of those turn-of-the-century brick buildings torn down for some cookie-cutter glass thing. That’s part of our whole initiative—making use of old things in new, creative ways.”
Right now, they’re working with a lawyer to become incorporated as a non-profit business and collaborating with a green real-estate agent to find the perfect spot downtown.
The biggest challenge is still raising enough funds. “It’s really overwhelming,” says Pirie. Retro-fitting alone could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars; then there are the costs of the laundry machines, the solar-panels, and the café equipment. Because they’re adopting the non-profit model, they’re not going to attract a whole lot of investors, so they’ve tried their hand at garnering grants. Their proposal made it to the semi-final round of the Aviva Community Fund competition, which would have given them a share in the $500,000 grant. Now, it’s just a matter of continuing to apply for others and developing more fundraising ideas.
If the stars align, this imagined space could inspire the local community and businesses to get serious about environmental issues and sustainable practices. Plus, we here at Torontoist sure would enjoy some java while drying our undies.

Michael Bryant speaks at the Green Energy Act Finance Forum at the MaRS Centre. Photo by Alixandra Gould/Torontoist.

For the first time in months since the altercation that led to the death of bike courier Darcy Allan Sheppard on August 31 last year, and since he was charged with criminal negligence causing death and dangerous operation of a motor vehicle for it, former Ontario Attorney General Michael Bryant spoke semi-publicly today—but not about that.

Bryant was supposed to moderate a discussion scheduled for 1 p.m. at the Green Energy Act Finance Forum at MaRS. (Other notable speakers at the one-day summit included Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty; head of the Alliance for Renewable Energy Paul Gipe; and Saad Rafi, Ontario deputy minister of energy and infrastructure.) The discussion’s topic was the Ontario Green Energy Act—which was passed in September 2009 to foster renewable energy projects in the province—and how it can benefit investors, market players, and workers.
When his name was called by Tom Rand of MaRS at the beginning of the talk, though, there was no answer; Bryant was nowhere in sight, and the audience scanning the room could find no trace of him. Ten minutes in, after Uwe Rorper of Ortech Power was finishing speaking, Bryant came in through the room’s main doors, and quietly walked up to the stage, before introducing the next panellist, James Padwick of Ogilvy Renault, a Canadian law firm specializing in business law. No word on the reason for the delay, though Bryant half-joked that “the fact that I was late for this shows how tough the moderator job is.”
It was all business from then on. The panellists paid special attention to the Feed-In Tariff Program, which guarantees stable pricing for long-term contracts with renewable energy sources including water power, solar power, biomass, and wind power, all of which means big investors from around the world will be more inclined to invest in Ontario’s renewable energy projects. In December, the Ontario Power Authority announced they had received 2,200 FIT applications since the initiative was launched in September 2009.
Bryant, meanwhile, stayed mostly quiet, barely speaking over the course of the hour-long session except to introduce the other panellists. “A successful Ontario will lead to success elsewhere,” he noted at one point; it was the panel’s shared hope that these investments will extend to the rest of Canada with time. Bryant’s ambitiousness didn’t extend to himself: his first steps back into the public eye were quiet ones.

CORRECTION: JANUARY 29, 2010 Saad Rafi is Ontario’s deputy minister of energy and infrastructure—not, as this article originally said, its minister.

Moss Park. Photo by Erik Twight from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

Some of Toronto’s residents with disabilities may soon see their living standards improve thanks to a new partnership between Toronto Community Housing and OCAD. On January 19, the two groups, along with Mayor David Miller, announced that they will be collaborating to research ways Toronto housing can become more accessible through inclusive design. “Everyone will benefit when people with accessibility needs can live independently and with dignity,” Mitzie Hunter, chief administrative officer for TCH, told Torontoist. “This work is going to help to achieve that.”

The creative collaboration will see OCAD students do applied research in the Moss Park area, speaking to residents with disabilities about the challenges they face. Specifically, the students will be looking at approaches to wayfinding and navigation systems in common areas, according to Cheryl Giraudy, associate dean of OCAD’s Faculty of Design. Their findings will result in planning and implementation strategies that adhere to the Build Environment standards of the Accessibility for Ontario with Disabilities Act of 2005. It’s TCH’s hope that these strategies will apply to their broader portfolio of housing around the city, which includes more than 350 high- and low-rise apartment buildings.
The biggest challenges, according to Doreen Balabanoff, acting dean of the Faculty of Design, will be “making sure that inclusive design actually responds to the rich set of needs that a diverse community represents—who is being forgotten or left out? What abilities or disabilities are we missing in our considerations? And, as with all design challenges, are we asking the right questions?”

Mayor Miller, Toronto Community Housing tenant Tracy Izzard, and Toronto Community Housing Health Promotion Officer Penny Lamy spoke at the announcement of the partnership between Ontario Community Housing and OCAD on January 19. Photo by Lino Ragno.

Hunter said TCH opted to partner with the Faculty of Design at OCAD because of its rich history of innovative talent and emerging designers with fresh perspectives, and also because of its impressive curriculum in the area of universal and inclusive design—like the first-place winner of the 2008 OCAD Design Competition. The competition, which challenged students to develop inclusive/universal design solutions, was won by “Pathways,” an inclusive wayfinding concept designed by OCAD students Rizwan Ali, Lesley Look Hong, Emily Oppenheim, Finlay Paterson, and Steve Reaume.
“The work under the umbrella agreement,” Giraudy says, “will touch all levels of our design program offerings, including independent and field studies, courses with embedded research, paid research projects, and thesis work for students who want to specialize in universal and inclusive design as part of their major program or area of study.”
The students will make recommendations in the form of a design guideline in late 2010, to be followed by a prototype in 2011. It’s a start to making Toronto a more inclusive place to live.

Todd Fakowsky’s Tray Tables is at the Royal Ontario Museum’s Cut/Paste exhibit, open from January 20 to January 31.

Recycling and design collide as the new “Cut/Paste: Creative Reuse in Canadian Design” opened yesterday at the Royal Ontario Museum. In the exhibit Canadian creative design studio Motherbrand explores the way artists can create new designs from existing and salvaged products, illustrating the interplay between material history and contemporary design needs. The show has been installed in the Institute for Contemporary Culture display room, and coincides with the first annual Toronto International Design Festival.

John Ryan, co-curator of the exhibit and director of Motherbrand Toronto, said he and his partner, Michael Erdmann, selected many of the pieces from the four thousand items in the Canadian Design Resource, an online hub for artists, designers, and their work. “We began to notice a lot of threads,” said Ryan. Necessity, simplicity, and the “ironic play with prior products” are all trends in Canadian redesign.
Early Canadian design was born out of necessity, said Ryan. The minimalist design of Fred Moffat’s K42 Kettle was the result of manufacturing constraints during World War Two. More recently, reducing consumption is an issue that designers are addressing in myriad ways. Umbra’s Tie Clock reuses neckties found at Goodwill to create a functional and aesthetic timepiece.

This Tie Clock designed by Umbra uses upcycled neckties from Goodwill.

This is a Lamp by Tobias Wong illuminates a Philippe Stark arm chair.

Another interesting matter raised by the exhibit is democratic design. Reused and recycled objects are available to all, extending the creative process to those who may not have the resources to attain primary materials. Patty Johnson and Jean Paul Sylvaince’s Tobacco Vessels is one instance of this: for Onsite Carribean, Johnson designed vases made from paper machéd tobacco leaves, which the local craft community then produced. The pieces combine materials and techniques that are available to even the most impoverished.
It’s a fresh take on the Canadian penchant for resourcefulness, and a healthy reminder that resources can be easier to find than you think.
“Cut/Paste: Creative Reuse in Canadian Design” runs until January 31 at the Royal Ontario Museum.
Photos by Alixandra Gould/Torontoist

CORRECTION: JANUARY 22, 2010 This article originally suggested that Patty Johnson both designed, and produced, the designer vases made from paper machéd tobacco leaves; in fact, the local craft community followed her designs to produce them.

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The property at 224 Queen Street West was taken over by Juxta Productions last summer to promote movies.

The property at 224 Queen Street West, at the corner of Queen and McCaul, appears at first glance to be an ordinary neighbourhood coffee shop. That is, until you look closer. Inside, the glass fridges are filled with bags of fake blood, newspapers blaring “China to stop all blood exports” headlines line the windowsill, and the drink list looks like a vampire’s favourite meal. Stepping back, there’s a sign reading “Capture Humans” with Uncle Sam pointing at the passing pedestrians. And above that, a gigantic billboard advertising the new vampire thriller, Daybreakers. This isn’t a coffee shop at all: it’s one giant promotion.

Juxta Productions, an outdoor-advertising sign studio located on Front Street, has been renting the space since the summer, and is responsible for the Daybreakers Blood Café. It combines an art installation on the inside with large advertisements that wrap around the outside.

Fake packs of blood are just one of many props used to promote the new Maple Productions flick Daybreakers.

Maple Pictures, the company behind Daybreakers, contacted Juxta after seeing the success of previous advertisements at the location for Sherlock Holmes, Whiteout, and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
The installation is certainly a conversation piece, but part of it is also illegal. Rami Tabello of illegalsigns.ca, a organization dedicated to eradicating unlawful billboards around the city, said, “The signage is illegal because it violates the fire safety provisions on the Ontario Fire Code for obstructing windows required to be unobstructed under the code.” That means Juxta could face about one thousand dollars in fines right now, and that the number would increase when the new billboard bylaw that was passed by City Council on December 7, 2009, regulating and taxing outdoor advertising, comes into effect this April, said Tabello. Furthermore, the original Harry Potter display that adorned the property last summer was erected during the city workers’ strike, specifically to bypass normal licensing procedures.
But Patrick Little, executive producer of Juxta, says, “Why should I be fined for creating cultural jobs in the knowledge economy? Writers, designers, printers, scenic painters, set decorators, grips, actors, hair and makeup, wardrobe, projectionists and even a graffiti artist doing their own piece worked on those installations.” (The Toronto-based artists include Melissa Yang, who played the vampire, and also did everyone’s hair and makeup for their promotional day. Larry Saunders was the key scenic painter for the Daybreakers display, and Wen Xie was the ice sculptor for the Whiteout installation.)
Little also points out that they transformed the property from a “crack-house squat” into a respectable gateway attraction.

Vampire-themed menus and drink lists intrigue Queen West window shoppers.

But it doesn’t look like Juxta will be inhabiting the property for much longer. An application for a demolition permit was filed in 2008, and an application to build a new property is currently working its way through the planning process. Soon, fake blood and huge billboards will likely be replaced by a five-storey mixed use development that includes storefronts, parking, offices, and residences. Little adds, “Unfortunately, it is now the visual artists, like the film workers before them, who are at risk of losing their jobs due to the misguided and narrow-minded priorities of the current administration which has embraced condo development as the holy grail of city building.”
It’s prime real estate that a whole bunch of people are waiting to sink their teeth into.
All photos by Christopher Drost/Torontoist

Detail of Toronto’s skyline at present (at top) and Dickson’s rendering of what it might look in 2014 (bottom).

Wish you could see into the future? Well, now you can, sort of. Scott Dickson, the founder of advertising boutique Upside-Down, created a digital rendering of what the Toronto skyline will look like in 2014, as viewed from Marina Del Ray in the west end.

Additions to the skyline include the much-hyped Trump Tower at Bay and Adelaide, set to be finished later this year; Aura, a seventy-five-storey residence set to go up just south of College Park; and the Daniel Libeskind–designed L-Tower, an aptly named condo at Yonge and Front shaped like a glass L. Closer to the waterfront, a series of condos by Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, and the Water Park City phase-two tower, Atlantis, are set to be erected.
Dickson also included some updates to buildings, such as the recladding of the BMO building at Bay and King.

The full 2014 skyline in colour (at top), and in black and white, including Dickson’s “draft” copy of a legend for it (below). Click each image to view it full sized.

Dickson, who posted his creation on Urban Toronto, left out the twenty- to thirty-storey buildings expected to go up in Liberty Village because they would have obstructed the downtown view. (He also neglected to include the overwhelming developments in the Entertainment District out of sheer artistic weariness.)
If the real Toronto skyline ends up looking anything like Dickson’s image, we’re in for a good four years of construction. With all the jackhammers and bulldozers we’ll be hearing, perhaps those who live downtown should invest in a good pair of earplugs.
All images by Scott Dickson.

Toronto uses over 135,000 tonnes of road salt each year. Photo by BruceK from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

After an extended fall, Toronto is finally in the grips of the cold season. And like every winter before, the city’s streets are beginning to look like chalk boards as they become blanketed with road salt. Can anything be done to prevent those dreaded salt stains at the bottom of our pants, and protect our dogs from months of paw pain? Or are we doomed to live in a city saltier than a bag of Miss Vicky’s?

The drawbacks of salt have been well documented. In 2001, Environment Canada released a statement that said road salt was entering the environment via groundwater in large amounts and was posing a risk to plants, animals, soil, drinking water, and lake and stream ecosystems. Not to mention the number it does on our infrastructure each year, causing more potholes and cracks in the sidewalk every winter season. Environment Canada even concluded it should be labelled a toxic substance.
The Transportation Services Division of Works and Emergency Services—the body that manages road salt storage and distribution—states in its Salt Management Plan [PDF] that salt is the most effective de-icing agent for keeping Toronto’s drivers and pedestrians safe, despite the environmental damage it can do. Since there are no mandatory regulations for managing road salt storage or distribution, Transportation Services is under no obligation to cut down.
So, for now, the city uses 135,000 tonnes of the stuff each year, despite cries from the community to reduce our dependency on sodium chloride. Riversides, a non-profit organization dedicated to preventing water pollution, began its municipal Low Salt Diet campaign in 2000 to promote the reduction of road salts, the elimination of unregulated snow disposal, and use of road salt alternatives. They are particularly concerned with Ontario Regulation 339, which exempts road authorities’ use of materials that are classified as environmentally harmful under the provincial Environmental Protection Act. They have since disbanded the official campaign, but continue to create awareness about road salt.

Photo by Michael Chrisman/Torontoist.

Riversides suggests many possible alternatives, and calcium magnesium acetate is the most explored substitute. It doesn’t de-ice on its own, but if it’s applied ahead of a snowstorm, it breaks the bond between snow particles and the road surface, making plowing much easier. It also doesn’t contain any chlorides, and it is biodegradable.
Liquid potassium acetate is the most environmentally friendly de-icer, as it’s chloride-free, biodegradable, non-corrosive, and has a low toxicity. It’s best used in areas where corrosion or environmental damage is of greater concern. Sodium acetate, currently used on many airport runways, is also much less damaging.
Even sand, kitty litter, gravel, and ash can be used for traction, but they don’t actually melt ice.
Why not abandon salt in favour of these more environmentally favourable alternatives? It comes down to cost: non-saline alternatives can be up to ten times as expensive. Councillor Joe Mihevc (Ward 21, St. Paul’s), who has been tweeting about road salt, told us that “this is where I think we need to do some exploring, do some cost benefit analysis.” When it comes to alternatives, “Maybe at first you just do the sidewalks, and then you slowly build it into the budget. That way we don’t get wacked all at once.”
Mihevc points to a method the city is already using as a good start—a liquid brine. Although it doesn’t eliminate the use of salt altogether, combining salt with water can increase its efficiency and reduce the need for such copious amounts. Salt doesn’t work without water, so that’s why you see all those little chunks bouncing to the side of the road where they go wasted. A brine would help prevent that wastefulness, because the substance would stick to the road, and it would make salt work better in sub-zero temperatures when moisture is lacking. “We do this on the highways and some of the roads,” Mihevic says, “and it uses less than half the salt we would have otherwise. That’s what we should be doing everywhere.”
So for now, it looks like the brine is our best solution. When it comes to spending tax dollars, the city has higher priorities, and unless the community really mobilizes against salt, don’t expect to see kitty litter on your streets any time soon.
Thanks to reader Mark Jull for getting us thinking about salt.

Illustration by Brian McLachlan/Torontoist.

On Monday, just as hopefuls began filing their papers to run in the October 2010 municipal election, the Better Ballots Initiative launched its website. The initiative aims to spark a dialogue on how to make Toronto’s City Council elections more relevant, effective, fair, and participatory.

According to the group’s leader, long-time civic activist Dave Meslin, the city is not being properly represented by Council. In a recent blog post, Meslin wrote that “By any measure, our city elections are failing us. Voter turnout is astonishingly low, turnover of Councilors is extremely rare, and our Council is surprisingly white and male for a city that allegedly prides itself on its diversity.” Better Ballots wants to explore ways to more fairly reflect the city’s populace, starting with reform to the electoral system.
Like provincial and federal elections, Toronto uses the First Past the Post (FPTP) system, which rewards the candidate who has more votes than all the others. But Meslin told us that FPTP is a misleading term: “There actually is no post you have to pass. It should be called first to the post,” he said. Often, candidates for Council will win their seat with less than 30% of the total ballots cast—making the fact that they got more than the other hopefuls less than compelling.
Meslin says Better Ballots is not advocating for any one replacement of the FPTP system, but wants to get the discussion going on a variety of possible alternatives. One option the group is considering is ranked ballots, where voters rank their choices, and if no candidate achieves a majority then the candidate with the least votes is automatically dropped off and their votes are reallocated to the second choice listed on the ballot; this is called an Instant Runoff and continues until someone wins a majority. Another possibility is the Single Transferable Vote, a system that uses multi-member districts and ensures proportional results. It uses a ranked ballot and is similar to an Instant Runoff, except that it also has a mechanism where candidates can achieve a “surplus” vote that is proportionately transferred to other candidates, based on voters’ ranked choices.
Another interesting way to make representation fairer, Meslin explains, is to have Borough Councils as they do in cities like Montreal. In this system, Toronto would still have a mayor and council, but subdivisions—or boroughs—of the city would also have their own mayor and council, recognizing the diversity and autonomy of Toronto’s many regions. Meslin pointed out that the divisions could be based on pre-Megacity lines.
Implementing municipal term limits and having a local party system independent from the provincial or federal parties are other ideas involved in the dialogue.
Better Ballots came out of the Toronto City Summit Alliance, a multi-issue activist group, but has always maintained its independence. It prides itself on being bi-partisan, inclusive, and diverse; what unites the people behind it is their advocacy for change. While reform is unlikely by the time Torontonians go to the polls later this year, Meslin aims to keep the discussion around how we vote going in the years to come.
The Better Ballots Initiative will be hosting a series of public forums on voting reform across the city this spring. Sign up for updates here.