News: March 2008 Archives

The above video—not safe for work unless you're using headphones—was shot by the late Peter Walker and is a clip from Min Sook Lee's documentary Hogtown: The Politics of Policing (winner of the best Canadian feature prize at Hot Docs 2005). Uploaded to YouTube fewer than three weeks ago, it's been passed around online over the last few days, since being linked to by Toronto Life's Philip Preville in a Friday blog post.

Get your bathing suits out people—spring may finally be here, with the temperature expected to hit 9° today and a sub-tropical 15° tomorrow. (Disclaimer: the phrase "get your bathing suits out" is not intended to recommend or endorse the practice of swimming in Lake Ontario. Residents should always consult with their toxicologist before bathing at beaches in or around the GTA.)

Photo by concep007.

Well, it sure is classier than the Scotiabank. For one thing, the AMC Yonge & Dundas 24, opening today, isn't called the "Scotiabank." And its interior design scheme (seen above) is premised on the role that movies play in the popular imagination, rather than the role that you play in Taco Bell's quarterly profits. And the music selections playing in the lobby (Soundgarden, Nirvana, and The Who during Tuesday's press preview) don't seem to be the product of deals with record labels. AMC goes out of its way to make known its interest in movies. Too bad it couldn't give a crap about film.

Robot surgeon at St. Michael's proving extremely successful. Our future robot overlords approve of the surgeon's actions, as he gathers critical data about the obsolete meat sacks who, through the accident called evolution, have dominated the planet until now.

The Toronto Maple Leafs have been mathematically eliminated from playoff contention.

Good news for all those who get mild motion sickness when they stare at the seventies-style, geometric orange carpet in the atrium of the Toronto Reference Library—it was announced earlier today that the Provincial government will be contributing 10 million dollars to the campaign to renovate and expand it. The total cost of the project, which will take place over the next five years, is estimated at 30 million dollars—the other two thirds coming from the City of Toronto and the private sector.

TTC workers may opt for a work-to-rule or slowdown campaign rather than an out-and-out strike—moves which could include actions such as refusing to collect fares, adhering to rules of the road, and not wearing uniforms. Union President Bob Kinnear's comments indicate that they'd prefer the less drastic action so as not to antagonize the public. Hmmmm, let's see...empty pier...tearful relatives waving goodbye from the wharf...yep, sorry, Bob, that ship has definitely sailed.

When we named councillor Rob Ford as one of 2007's Villains for his consistent insensitivity, political grandstanding, and outright idiocy (witness statements like, "I can't support bike lanes. Roads are built for buses, cars, and trucks. My heart bleeds when someone gets killed, but it's their own fault at the end of the day," and, "If you are not doing needles and you are not gay, you won't get AIDS probably"), we couldn't have possibly imagined that he would up the ante in 2008. But in February, he proposed that every new street in Toronto be named after dead Canadian soldiers, a symbolic but entirely empty gesture that completely missed the point; and then, earlier this month, said that "Oriental people" are "slowly taking over" because they "work like dogs," comments he later refused to apologize for. All this, while rumours had been swirling that Ford was planning to run for mayor.

Last week, undergraduate students at UTSC (University of Toronto Scarborough) rejected the U-Pass by a stunning margin, with full-time students voting against it 1674 to 622, and part-time students spurning it 53 to 16. Minus the abstentions and spoiled ballots, that worked out to 73% No for for full-timers and 77% No for part-timers. When last we wrote about the proposed offer—a compulsory $60-a-month transit pass for all students, with no potential to opt out—we proffered a qualified endorsement, believing that the goal of discouraging future car ownership was sufficiently noble for us to be able to overlook the scheme's inherent unfairness. But we later recanted "after reading all of the comments here and on the Spacing Wire....and after seeing that even Adam CF doesn't yet endorse it for St. George, AND after finding out that the passes won't be swipeable."

The day after the CBC announced its plans to release the finale of Canada's Next Great Prime Minister through BitTorrent, Bell Canada has moved quietly to throttle its services—including peer-to-peer filesharing—outraging both its customers and wholesale clients.

TTC does end-run around Toronto Preservation Board. The TTC wants the right to redesign 63 of its 69 stations. Heh. We have 69 TTC stations. Never noticed that before. Heh.

TTC union reps walked away from the bargaining table yesterday, meaning you could be walking to work as early as next Tuesday. Much like everyone else on the planet, the union is looking for more money and better benefits, but unlike everybody else on the planet, they can force the city into shutdown if they don't get it. As Clint Eastwood famously said in Unforgiven, "Deserves got nothin' to do with it."

Over a thousand demonstrators marched through downtown Toronto Sunday in an emotional protest to demand freedom for Tibet and to draw attention to recent crackdowns by Chinese forces that have reportedly resulted in the deaths of over 100 Tibetans. With international attention focused on China and the upcoming Olympics in Beijing organizers called for Canadian politicians to boycott the opening ceremonies.

Photo by Jordan Roberts from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

Man stabs himself with katana. People may wonder how such a ridiculous accident came to occur, and our response is "he lived in Scarborough, what else is there to do?"

Yesterday afternoon, a group named AlwaysQuestion organized a "day of action" protesting a fee increase for New College residence students at the University of Toronto. The day was to end with a sit-in at Simcoe Hall intended to garner the group a meeting with U of T President David Naylor, to get "the proposed fee increase removed from the University Affairs Board meeting," and to get fifteen minutes at that meeting for a "presentation and discussion on broader issues of access to education and the impacts of high tuition." Instead, the day ended with two different narratives: one, from the protestors, of "police brutality"; and the other, from the university, of harassment and provocation on the part of the protestors.

One of the four cattle that escaped on the QEW yesterday morning was shot by police after making a suicidal charge at armed officers. Friends of the dead steer were baffled, saying that he had his whole life ahead of him and was looking forward to weeks of close confinement before having a bolt fired through his forehead.

Jarvis Street, circa 1910. (City of Toronto Archives)

Cows cause traffic tie-ups on the QEW. Best line of story: "We have someone en route with rodeo experience." Rodeo experience. To get a cow to move off the damn road. (Did nobody just try waving food in front of the cow's face?)

It was announced earlier today that Michael Cera is in final negotiations to play Scott Pilgrim in the film adaptation of Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life, the hit comic by ex-Torontonian Bryan Lee O'Malley. Not that anyone should be particularly surprised by the casting choice: Cera is pretty much Hollywood's go-to guy for likable underdog characters nowadays.

University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist is reporting that the nation's public broadcaster is about to take a hugely progressive step in media distribution. On Monday, the day after Canada's Next Great Prime Minister (the political fantasy reality show filled with keeners and bored ex-prime ministers) airs, the CBC is going to release a high-quality copy of the episode via BitTorrent, without any digital rights management (DRM) protection.

Immediately after the goal, CTV Sportsnet analyst Nik Kypreos declared it to be a career-altering gaffe. We respectfully disagree: ultimately, it was little more than a fluke, and Toskala at least had the benefit of making his mistake in a relatively meaningless late-season game (unlike, say, Tommy Salo). Plus, he got the last laugh: the Leafs ended up winning 3-1, and Toskala made a crucial last-minute save on Mike Comrie which led to the third Toronto goal. Still, in what’s been a forgettable year for the Maple Leafs, his blunder gave fans something to remember—even if it was for all the wrong reasons. We can take pleasure in that...right?

Duke's Cycle has just announced on their web site that their new location (until they rebuild on Queen Street) is going to be at 452 Richmond Street near Spadina Avenue, just a few blocks away from the store that burned down last month in the massive Queen West fire. They join National Sound in quickly re-establishing themselves in the neighbourhood.

Bob Rae and Martha Hall-Findlay win seats for the Liberals in federal by-elections. Downside: oh, God, Bob Rae. Upside: commenters will have to wait until the next federal election to bitch and moan about Torontoist contributor and Green Party candidate Chris Tindal's column (Chris finished in third place, with only thirty-six fewer votes than NDP candidate El-Farouk Khaki in the Toronto Centre riding).

Photo by exMOHAX

It's long been clear that the TTC would never spend taxpayer dollars on such frills as copy editors or proofreaders (the recent "Transit Security Tips" brochure implores you to inform the authorities "if you are the victum of a crime"), but given that each of their members is Worth a Million—and the fact that their ads are four feet by six feet—we really expected ATU Local 113 to splurge for a second set of eyeballs, or at least an application with a spell-check function.

"Stop the torture—end the war," read one colourful placard at Queen's Park. "End the siege of Gaza," read another.

Four federal byelections are being held today, including two in the Toronto ridings of Willowdale and Toronto Centre. The Liberals are considered to have the edge locally, where the Conservative "We Loathe Toronto" campaign of the last two years hasn't been as well-received as hoped. Happy St. Paddy's Day and remember to get voting before you get drinking.

Well, it's that time of year again: time to hate the TTC! This time, it's the threat of a distant strike and the Star's devotion of its usually excellent Fixer feature to all things TTC (and broken) leading the charge. When Eye's Dale Duncan recapped the past week, she remarked: "Maybe it’s just me, but rage against the TTC seems to be growing."

If you're interested in pursuing a career in crime here in Canada, it looks like your best bet is to pack up and move to Regina. According to an article published in Maclean's, Regina (aka "The Other Other Queen City") has the dubious distinction of being the most dangerous city in Canada, followed closely by Saskatoon and Winnipeg. The rankings, based on per-capita crime rates published by the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, paint a dark picture of the West as a crime-ridden, scary place where unsuspecting rubes from Toronto are lured into dark alleys and robbed of their vintage t-shirts. All of the cities in the top 10 (save Halifax at #10) are located in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia.

NDP charges Liberals "deceptive" over nuclear energy plans. Apparently the nuclear energy commitments the provincial government has made require almost four times the nuclear energy generation capability that their promised plant could deliver, unless the plant itself was four times larger than the Darlington plant. This is all part of the current clever government plan to get ahead of everybody else and be massively involved in the next energy crisis when the world runs out of readily refineable uranium.

Not content to let America have all the schadenfreude fun, Ashley Madison—Toronto-based online dating company intended for people looking to cheat on their spouses, whose slogan is "when monogamy becomes monotony" and who is responsible for TV ads like these—took out a full-page ad in today's New York Post.

Photo by Jonathan Goldsbie.

Plagued by complaints, the City of Toronto has finally gotten around to ticketing some homeowners who don't clear the snow in front of their property. A city spokesperson said they prefer not to send out inspectors in the winter because it's so difficult to get around.

Toronto principal in controversial controversy over explicit poems he wrote and posted to his website. This is of course the first recorded case ever of somebody getting in trouble for something they wrote on the Internet, and the scandal has sent shock waves through the online community. "Wait, somebody actually this shit?" said Patrick Metzger. "Dammit, I better re-emphasize that my erotic snuff story about Geri Halliwell is purely a work of fiction!"

Seriously?

Hope is a cruel thing for a sports fan: no matter how bleak the situation, as long as there's a straw in sight we'll happily clutch at it. Case in point: Leafs Nation, of which we're proud, occasionally defiant members. We've been flip-flopping over the Leafs all season long. A few weeks ago we'd written them off, then watched as the team put together an impressive run (which included comprehensive victories over the Ottawa Senators and the Boston Bruins). Suddenly, they were back in the thick of things—and hope, suddenly, sprung eternal once more.

Gas prices in Toronto are at $1.09 or more a litre today, reflecting all-time record oil prices of over US$108 per barrel. For all our driving readers, it might cheer you up to consider that it's still cheaper to fill up your car with gas than say, orange juice or Diet Pepsi. By the way, if you do decide to go with orange juice, remember that the pulp-free kind is less likely to gum up your engine.

So, you may have noticed it snowed this weekend. If you don't believe us, go check out the Toronto Star's website, where nine out of ten local stories are about the snow, people dealing with the snow, and celebrities talking about the snow. Notably absent among them: the probable cause for all of this snow.

City councillor, unintentional humourist, and Torontoist favourite Councillor Rob Ford has grabbed himself some headlines again. He refuses to apologize for his comments on Wednesday, "the Oriental people, they're slowly taking over...they're hard, hard workers," because his sweeping generalization was intended as "a compliment." However, a spokesperson for the Canadian Council of Lazy Asians has said that the remarks were "deeply offensive."

City sells "the McDonald's site" on Bloor for a fairly low price. However, Adam Vaughan insists there are upsides to the deal, such as being able to limit the height of the condo development that will take its place, because who would want tall buildings in the downtown core?

Photo by jpghouse.

It snowed again last night, so if you're going anywhere, it'll probably take you a long time. However, we're getting another storm on the weekend so you might as well wait before you start shovelling. Actually, it'll be spring in a couple of weeks anyway so if you have enough cans of SpaghettiO's, it's probably best to just stay home til then.

You'd think it would be common practice these days for everyone to regularly wash their hands, especially if they work in the health-care profession. Ontario's Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care advises that frequent handwashing is "the single most effective way to prevent the spread of communicable diseases." (Cooties are the obvious exception here, since they can only be prevented by administering a cootie shot.) Unfortunately, the statistics indicate that health-care workers aren't very diligent about soaping up.

New glass recycling program will save local municipalities millions of dollars. It turns out that you can turn used glass into other things than smaller bits of broken glass!

A line of high-fiving cyclists paraded along the city's newest bike lane Monday morning. Then, without warning, a gust of wind tangled the whole thing, nearly sending every set of pedals flying.

Premier Dalton McGuinty has fired off a whiny letter to the PM complaining about Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's public criticism of Ontario and its tax laws. Flaherty, who apparently counts all time lost when he's not psychologically bitch-slapping his governmental inferiors, responded by calling McGuinty a "big stupid crybaby."