News: October 2009 Archives

Remember when we reported earlier this month that the intrepid Joe Pantalone was on the case to help save the Annex from itself? Well, he failed, and now Ici is getting its liquor licence after all. “It's fantastic—it finally gives this incredible business the ability to open,” said area resident John Bowker. “Everybody seems just ecstatic.” Ecstatic to start boozing it up all over the place, John? That Ontario pinot grigio you're sucking back with your Melba of Maritime lobster is one daintily held pinky finger away from complete and utter iniquity. Sheesh. Well, there goes the neighbourhood...

What is this? Is it: a. an underground moon base; b. a strange Japanese children's TV programme; c. two vacuum-cleaner attachments in a pistol duel, or; d. the new design for Steeles West Station on the Spadina subway extension?

For the second year in a row, readers of the alt-weekly that we have never written anything critical about, not even once, have voted Torontoist Toronto's Best Blog. Aw shucks, NOW readers, thanks. We accept.

Wuh-hoa! Fans of top-notch investigative reporting need not look any further than the Star's front page, above the fold, today. The newspaper has apparently managed to get its hands on a classified photo of Omar Khadr in Afghanistan that appears to exonerate the Guantanamo Bay detainee and former child soldier in the murder of American soldier Christopher Speer. The magic photo itself, however, is conspicuously missing from the Star's coverage, which might raise a few eyebrows. Will this be enough to change Ottawa's longstanding policy of being cool with letting Khadr rot in an inhumane prison and then go to hell? If today's story holds together, there's bound to be some heat on the government—but maybe Stephen can cool things down with another Beatles cover.

It's sick season again, but in the wake of scary-sounding names like swine flu and H1N1, there is increased skepticism around the subject of vaccination. Anti-vaccination activists claim that the materials used in vaccines may cause autism, Guillain-Barré syndrome, and even—in the case of the HPV vaccine—cervical cancer, and that their widespread promotion is motivated by corporate profiteering. Vaccination proponents say that the fear-mongering anti-vaccination campaigns are rooted in bad science and misinformation, and that the increasing hysteria is leaving schools and workplaces alarmingly vulnerable to serious, often life-threatening diseases. In some facilities, like hospitals, seasonal vaccination is mandatory, and while the vast majority of medical and science professionals say that the safety of vaccination is not even worth debating, there are still people who are convinced that vaccines are nothing but trouble.

There are many of you who have been following the whole illegal-signs debate raging though our (not so) newly amalgamated city on the edge of your seats. Really; it's terribly riveting. Okay, so for those of you who haven't, we covered it in quite some detail here. And here. And we even gave it a Nuit Blanche slant here, because that's just how we roll. Anyway, it looks as though City Hall has released the final draft of their new sign by-law and billboard tax. This basically means that all illegal signs (and billboards without permits) will enjoy some pretty hefty fines. Which, in theory, and like many by-laws, means that Toronto stands to make a serious killing if they'd only go after the myriad perps responsible for this blight upon our fair city. In theory, communism works. In theory.

So you spent tens of thousands of dollars on a journalism degree from a good school and now you're pulling espresso shots for suits like some kind of industry cliché. Well, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, kid. CTV's got a job that you are eminently qualified for!

As the Toronto Police Service prepares to expand CCTV coverage in the GTA, this security camera footage of a BMW SUV going alpha-dog on top of someone's hatchback, recorded last Thursday at an Extreme Fitness parking lot in Thornhill, has made us realize a few things:

Stop. Look outside for a second and breathe in deep. The morning news can wait just one more minute. Sip your coffee if you've got one and smile a little, because between pranksters blinding pilots and a cash-starved city blowing much-needed millions on garbage stunts, there's not much relief ahead.

Remember Giorgio Mammoliti? The guy who, according to previous Newsstands, names streets after people who contribute to his campaigns, traps cats and says that gays make bad parents, and is now running for mayor with a platform of red-light districts and casinos? Well, now he wants to shut down a bunch of Toronto spas! Sheesh, Giorgio, didn't you read in the Sun today that Torontonians are 4% more stressed than everyone else? Don't you think we could use a little "me time"? Wait...whut? What kind of spas, you say? Oh. Never mind...

It’s hard to know exactly what to make of the Toronto Maple Leafs' start to the 2009/10 hockey season. It's not just the lack of wins that's puzzling: it's how bad the team's looked in compiling its 0-6-1 record. Right now, the Leafs seem bereft of talent, ideas, leadership, and desire. Surely they won't be like this all year?

Apparently the kids at Northern don't really care all that much about the student from their school who was arrested for calling a police officer "bacon" and then charged with assault and resisting arrest. That at least is what the Post tells us, since only about one-tenth of the student body came out to protest the cops' patrolling the school. The protest organizers went all out, though, even sending out press releases to media outlets—press releases, real ones, for a high-school protest! Sure, only 150 students came, but everyone who went is gonna start an advocacy group when they grow up (or at least vote in city elections when they're old enough).

In the latest in our series of live online discussions co-hosted with our partners at the Globe and Mail, at 5 p.m. today, Thursday, Torontoist will be joined by the Toronto District School Board's new Education Director, Chris Spence—and he'll be taking your questions. Though Spence is proposing a whole host of changes ("more parental engagement in education, 'full-service schools' with facilities to support students' families, better digital technology in classrooms, green-energy initiatives, and a renewed effort to stem losses of 4,000 students a year by hiring a marketing director," as the Globe sums it up) he's most in the news for proposing an all-male elementary school.

Oshawa, you big, adorable, patriotic lug, your heart really is in the right place. But seriously, calm down or you're going to pull something.

Many of you have likely heard about this through one of your friends' outraged Facebook status updates (or yesterday's Newsstand), but here it is for the social-network challenged: the Toronto District School Board is toying with the idea of an all-boys' school. What makes it news again? Dalton McGuinty likes the idea! No kidding! He's like Mikey…you think he'll hate it, but he's just scarfing down the ideas lately. Really, though—are you surprised? First gays, then blacks…now boys are next in line for a school that caters to their unique needs. Because obviously, people just can't learn in settings where they are forced to interact with other people. What's next, a school for girls? Well, math is pretty hard…

Effective Monday, October 26, it will be illegal to operate any handheld device while operating a vehicle in Ontario. Following years of studies demonstrating that holding a phone to your ear while driving shows a similar level of impairment as driving drunk [PDF], the province has banned any handheld electronic device that takes a driver's attention away from the road: no dialling, no talking, and—we can't believe we have to say this—no texting or emailing. And this should be obvious, but if you're behind the wheel and need to call 911, call 911. Tickets won't be issued during a three-month education period (though police can still lay charges if talking on your beloved BlackBerry leads to other violations), but after that, it's handsfree or hands off. Recent evidence seems to show that even taking a call on a Bluetooth headset might pose a similar risk to holding a device, so expect to be entirely incommunicado on wheels some day.

At a preview, on Monday afternoon, of City Hall's new green roof, Chris Pommer stood in council chambers and explained some of the thinking behind the multicoloured carpet of vegetation that will soon engulf the podium area underneath Nathan Phillips Square's iconic concave towers. Pommer is a partner at PLANT Architects, the firm that designed the new roof. The project was conceived as "an elaborate series of plantings," he said, gesturing at a large architectural illustration full of minute detail. Elaborate plans are one thing, but we had to wonder just who was doing all this planting.

Clean diesel trains for all, public schools for boys only, and the RCMP’s very own giant terrorist bomb blows up in a huge "test blast" released on video for you. All this and more from a city that hit the ground running this Wednesday.

If you've spent today warding off swarms of insects that don't look quite like regular ladybugs, don't be alarmed: they're just Asian ladybird beetles, and they're trying to make the most of an atypically warm fall day.

What was advertised as a civic rally looked more like a mid-afternoon coffee break. On October 19, friends, colleagues, and supporters of Darcy Allan Sheppard—the cyclist who died after an altercation on August 31 with former Ontario Attorney General Michael Bryant—mingled on the lower steps of Old City Hall at 2:30 p.m. with their coffee mugs and lunch boxes, but did little else.

Despite the fact that Mayor Miller promised to divert 70% of waste from landfills by 2010 as part of his 2006 election campaign, he will be well out of office before his dream is realized. But why should he worry? Experts are saying that his goal, though lofty, was a noble one. “The faster we got to 70 per cent, the longer that landfill is going to last," says the man with the (failed) plan. "So that was why I [set] an ambitious date." I don't know, Davey. The fact that it was an election campaign promise, by virtue of name alone, kinda indicates that you set the "ambitious date" to get elected. But what do we know of such things?

Ever since a conference of "gay delegates" picked Toronto to host the World Pride 2014 festivities yesterday, one thing has been clear: the bar is now high. If Toronto is going to step up as the proudest city in the world and finally show those punks in Stockholm, we need to start gathering an unprecedented amount of self-esteem right now. And what better way is there to build ourselves up than to go over what else we've accomplished lately, and how it makes us, as a city, look good. Think of the following as talking points to bring out when interviewing for the job of being awesome.

In an ad for a recycling campaign, it seems appropriate, clever even, to recycle elements of an old image. But when the ad is for Belgian beer, and the logo belongs to someone else, it doesn't make much sense—particularly when the designer fails to ask permission for its use.

If there's one thing people agree about, it's that they hate politicians a lot more than they hate prostitutes. Everything else is up for grabs.

Who let the dogs out? Toronto's Parks and Environment Committee, that's who! The group has decided that dog owners can allow their furry friends to let their freak flag fly south of the snow fence on the Kew, Balmy, and Woodbine beaches between November 1 and March 31. We at Torontoist think it's an excellent excuse to provide those of you without canine companions with a photo of a shaky wet dog to start your day. You're welcome.

The Toronto Police Service issued a press release this afternoon alerting the public to "increased theft of baby strollers," to the tune of six incidents in the past ten months, in the vicinity of 11 Divison, located near the intersection of Dundas and Keele streets. Apparently, these dastardly stroller thieves have been fencing their haul online. Constable Wendy Drummond writes, in the release [PDF], that police have already arrested and charged a man and a woman, who were caught hawking purloined prams on the web. There is no mention of twirly mustaches or throaty cackling, but we assume these details were left out for brevity. The police are advising area residents to write down the serial numbers of their strollers and store them out of sight, to which we add: maybe forego the deluxe model.

Say, what would you do with a free domain name from none other than Raptors' power forward Chris Bosh? Okay, you probably aren't on the list of Bosh's beneficiaries, but here it is just in case you want to check [PDF]. If you are among the roughly eight-hundred athletes and celebrities whose names Bosh just rescued from internet infamy at the hands of cybersquatters, you'll probably want to start by scrubbing out all the tacky ads and XXX links. Then again, if Bryan Colangelo or Scarlett Johansson can't find a more profitable use for their new domain names, we hear that marketing cheap Cialis online (no Rx needed!) is a reliable way to make a living.

It turns out that technology once only dreamed about in the back of comic books is now a reality: T-ray scanners may soon be deployed at an airport near you, and they know what you look like naked. Transport Canada is now reviewing a six-month trial of the security scanners, which are currently only voluntary and are used only when someone has set off the metal detector. The subject's body is scattered with terahertz radiation, which—unlike X-rays—are believed to be harmless to human tissue. A technician reviews the scanner results in a windowless room, and the resulting images are anonymous, incredibly unflattering, and decidedly unerotic. Images can't be stored, faces are obscured, and cameras aren't allowed in the viewing room. Still, opponents say that peering at nude bodies is even too extreme for already-excessive security theatre, and may even run afoul of child porn laws. According to a spokesperson from the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority, however, 95% of travellers in the Kelowna, B.C., trial preferred it. If approved by Transport Canada and the Canadian privacy commissioner, the high-tech peepshow could be coming to Toronto airports soon.

Has anyone actually seen a TTC special constable hand out one of those newfangled citations this week? Apparently, they've been in effect since Monday. The bylaw changes include new fines for injustices like hogging more than one seat, but old offenses are getting a hefty increase as well. Adding a hundred bucks to the fine for smoking on TTC property? Fine. Throwing in a thirty-five-dollar victim surcharge? Do it. But charging $345 (plus a victim surcharge of $75) for drawing Sharpie dongs in the hands of respected Canadian authors on subway advertisements? Dude, that's just not cool. You should be paying us for that special brand of seventh-grade comedy gold.

If you Google "Fire Queen's Park" right now, odds are good you'll get hits about an actual fire. In a city where knee-jerk abuse of politicians is the norm, that's sort of neat. For an eerie moment last Sunday while flames shot from the top of the Ontario Legislature, it looked like history was repeating itself—it had been almost precisely a century since a tinsmith mending the roof there had sprayed sparks in the wrong direction and started a blaze that consumed the building's west wing and decimated its hundred-thousand-book library. In the year 2009, though, humanity has humbled fire, and the blaze was snuffed out almost before we could take a picture to remember it by.

At 10:01 a.m. this morning, one of the five green-jacketed police officers standing on the corners of Yonge and Bloor walked confidently but carefully into the middle of the road. The traffic lights at the intersection had just been deactivated, and were now blank, and, after stopping cars in all directions, he waved one direction of cars through, then stopped it, then waved through the other. It was a brief moment of forced acclimatization for the drivers and reassurance for the pedestrians waiting on the tips of the corners: another officer a few minutes earlier had joked to pedestrians that "you don't want to be the first one to be hit by a car." A second later, the traffic lights were all back on, a solid red for all drivers in all directions, and the little stickmen beamed white from every pedestrian signal box. Inside a stopped van, one male driver gestured to his female passenger back and forth across the intersection in front of him, explaining what this all was, and the pedestrians followed his lead.

If you're all good commuters, we're sure you'll shrug off the news that the increased TTC fines quietly approved last January will come into effect this Monday. Alongside whopping increases for smoking or making fraudulent passes (duh), people will now start getting fined for hogging priority seats. Though the fines are set by TTC's by-laws, the money collected doesn't just go down the tubes—all the funds go to the city itself, not its cash-strapped transit commission.

Just to prove that we here at Torontoist don't entirely believe that the universe revolves around Toronto (it's true—we looked it up!), we shift our focus from our fair city to the heavens for this paragraph (and this paragraph only): in case you haven't noticed, it's almost the end of World Space Week. To celebrate, NASA's going to bomb the moon. Wait, what? Indeed, a missile fired at twice the speed of a bullet will hit our nighttime friend tomorrow morning, its impact being televised for all to see at approximately 6:15 a.m. The intention of this mission is far from sinister—they're looking for water—but who the hell cares? Bombs? Space? Yes, please! (However, if you're tuning in and the man in the moon gets shot in the eye, you're likely watching an earlier broadcast.)

At long last, Google Street View has gone live for Toronto as of this morning. We're gonna be perusing the sights today, but if you spot anything great, email it to tips@torontoist.com.

If you were driving yesterday, or just happened to be walking near a car-traffic hotspot, you may have noticed small groups of dressed-up ladies holding placards bearing messages like "Police lurk here" along with an unfamiliar logo. The women were hired by the men's website DailyXY (get it?) for an event the site called "Ticket-Free Tuesday," a bid to drive up the site's readership by helping motorist dodge fines, either by checking bad driving or simply avoiding police.

Yesterday, Ontario's minister of the environment gave his approval to Metrolinx's Georgetown South Service Expansion/Union-Pearson Rail Link (GSSE/UPRL) project. The minister's decision is the final step in the project's provincial environmental assessment process. The project will be a boon to transit in the GTA, but not everyone is pleased.

Love the iPhone but the big red giant, not so much? Apple fanboys (and girls), rejoice—the monopoly is OVAH! Bell and Telus have been in cahoots in a joint effort to get their 3G network up and running ahead of schedule and will begin selling the Jesus phone as early as next month, effectively breaking the stranglehold that Rogers has been getting off on having on us for more than a year (not that there's anything wrong with that…). What's that you hear? A busy signal, you say? And with that, Torontoist has effectively broken the Rogers wireless retention queue. Good luck getting through, kids!

You gotta credit the Toronto Blue Jays: for once, they're actually treating their fans to a meaningful September.

What a weekend! Floating four-letter words, Fun Slides, and a Stephen Harper look-alike who staunchly tickled the ivories and sang out a tune from Sgt. Pepper's—wait, that wasn't a look-alike? Hm, well, "With a Little Help From My Friends" (go ahead and rub it in, by the way) was on the Blue Album. Bonus points go to the artsy gala crowd if it's true they shouted back "we want a grant!" after the performance. Dare we admit it, though...Harper actually does a decent Ringo impression.

Though they only last for three hundred metres so far, this is no small victory for cyclists. Bloor Street East, between just west of Yonge and just east of Church, has just gained freshly painted sharrows on both sides of the street. From what we saw today on the recently renovated roadway, they seem to be doing their jobs already: motorists are giving cyclists a bit more space than usual, and cyclists have moved a bit more into the road rather than towards the curb. That the painted-on sharrows literally impress cyclists' place on the road will, as they spread around the city and along Bloor, hopefully go a long way towards changing everyone's attitudes towards who our streets belong to—the correct answer being everyone.

The world's cutest mayor is embroiled in as controversial a scandal as an eighty-eight-year-old politician can be (without things getting too sexy all up in here, that is). Ward 6 Councillor Carolyn Parrish, who has been gunning for the mayor of Mississauga with a zeal that has only been matched by last night's episode of The Office (oh, that Dwight), claims that Mayor McCallion committed a gross conflict of interest by not disclosing her son's involvement in a land deal in a council meeting. "Hurricane" Hazel, on the other hand, is defending her position and welcoming all who challenge her to the contrary. Ever wanted to kick a grandma? Neither have we. Way to boost the old popularity ratings there, Carolyn!

On Nuit Blanche, Torontoist'll be lucky enough to claim a spot on one of the biggest canvases of all: the Art Gallery of Ontario's walls. And we want to share it with you.