This summer should be fairly average by Canadian standards, according to meteorologists at AccuWeather.com. The summer won’t be as hot as last year’s, our warmest on record, but will still have warmer periods. And even an average summer these days is expected to be among Canada’s 10 hottest on record. What’s that about climate myths?

Brampton actor Rob Stewart probably didn’t expect that his early-90s role as Nick Slaughter on Global’s Tropical Heat would make him a star in Serbia under the rule of Slobodan Milošević. But it did.

And finally, a look at what’s open and closed across Toronto for the last day of the long weekend.

Curious about how the much-discussed Rob Ford crack video came to be viewed by the Toronto Star‘s Robyn Doolittle and Kevin Donovan? Wonder no more! They’ve captured the adventure in an article that ran in the Star today.

Well, it seems that if Mayor Rob Ford does have a drug problem, he may already have a solution in mind. In 2005, the then-city councillor told the National Post that problems in his own family have taught him “tough love” is the only way to battle drug use. Rather than focus on harm-reduction strategies, Ford at the time advocated for enforcement and rehabilitation measures, saying if drug users had to dry out in jail, great! We wonder if he’s still singing the same tune today? We could try asking him at his next press conferen…never mind.

Here’s a bit of good news for Team Ford: The Magnetgate scandal isn’t likely to stick. Sure, the jokes may continue, but city officials have dropped the complaint as, according to the City’s acting director of licensing, “Mayor Ford did not commit a breach of the bylaw, as he is not in the business of being a bill distributor within the meaning of the licensing bylaw.” Nope. That he is not.

Were you lucky enough to catch Kanye West’s video debut last night? If you were outside the ROM between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m., The Bay between 10:15 p.m. and 11:15 p.m., TIFF Bell Lightbox between 11:30 p.m. and 12:30 a.m., or Much Music from 12:30 a.m. to 2:45 a.m., you may have caught a glimpse of the new video for his latest song, “New Slaves,” on the walls. In total, the video was projected on 66 buildings across the world. Toronto thanks you, Kanye, for including us, and gifting us with your video presence.

The GTA’s Marineland, which has received quite a bit of bad press this year, will open its doors for the season today. To mark the opening, a group of protesters—and police—are expected to attend following a rough off-season of widely publicized claims of animal abuse and neglect with no charges laid. While protesting at Marineland is certainly nothing new, the way the park is dealing with it seems to be. It’s being reported that unlike years past, protesters will be kept on the other side of a fence erected around Marineland’s parking lot, rather than close to the entrance. Ah, yes. Protesters. Those most likely to stay where, and do what, they’re told.

Last night Gawker published a lengthy post by its editor, who wrote that he had seen a video that apparently showed Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack cocaine, and that said video was being offered for sale by those who shot it. A couple of hours later the Toronto Star published their own article, in which two reporters write that they saw the same video two weeks ago, and confirm the description of the tape outlined in Gawker. The mayor and his office have yet to respond publicly to the allegations.

Also yesterday, a strike at the LCBO was averted just a day before the start of the long weekend. A tentative deal between the LCBO and the Ontario Public Service Employees Union was announced at 10 p.m. last night, just two hours before the strike deadline; details of the deal have not yet been released as it awaits ratification. “Did we get everything we were asking for? No. Did the LCBO get everything they were demanding of our members? No,” said OPSEU president Warren “Smokey” Thomas.

Shortly after Mayor Ford called a deal for a Toronto casino “dead,” Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. chair Paul Godfrey was ousted and the corporation’s entire board resigned in protest, warning that Godfrey’s dismissal threatens the OLG’s planned modernization. Godfrey and Premier Kathleen Wynne had clashed over their differing visions for the corporation, including plans to build more casinos—in particular one in downtown Toronto. “I can totally understand why she would want someone she’s more comfortable with,” Godfrey said at a news conference last night. “I didn’t accept that there is a different direction, because I don’t think this government can afford to go in a different direction.”

Two trustees from the Toronto Catholic District School board are moving to have gay-straight alliances eliminated from the board’s schools in the city. Trustee Garry Tanuan (Ward 8, Scarborough), plans to introduce a motion at a May 23 board meeting that states that TCDSB schools are not allowed to have gay-straight alliances (GSAs) or similar clubs; trustee John Del Grande (Ward 7, Scarborough/North York) seconded the motion. Ontario law states that students can’t be prevented from setting up a GSA in any Ontario school.

Home sales in Toronto dropped 10 per cent in the first half of May, but prices in the city continue to rise. The 5.4 per cent jump in prices, compared to last year, was largely due to the sales of detached homes, though even condo sale prices rose by 1.1 per cent overall in the GTA despite a 13 per cent drop in sales. Price increases were highest in the 905—up 7.5 per cent—and held to just two percent in the 416 due to lower inventory.

A while back, Toronto Community Housing Corp. CEO Eugene Jones vowed to take action against contractors who could be bilking the company out of money. Well, we might just have our first winners. TCHC is looking to get police involved in two cases that have come out in a third-party review of its dealings with outside contractors.

If the recent lack of public complaints against Mayor Rob Ford has left you sitting around bored, twiddling your thumbs, perhaps devoting too many seconds to pondering when popsicle season will begin in earnest, consider the drought over. Some outraged citizen has launched a complaint with the City’s licensing department after Ford stuck magnets on cars at Tuesday’s Etobicoke community council meeting. Apparently someone takes littering by-laws very seriously. As do the #TOpoli folks, who have been calling it “Magnetgate.” Another thing that happened yesterday: the prime minister’s chief of staff bailed out a senator with a massive personal cheque.

It’s universally accepted among journalists that any story about traffic lights basically comes with a built-in pun lede, and this gem about the City’s public works committee giving the green light to a plan to better synchronize traffic signals is no exception. The decision came after some debate at committee, where it was revealed that, among other things, there is no red-light conspiracy out to get you when you’re driving and already late for work.

Less than a week away from the big city council casino showdown, one more councillor has made up her mind. Michelle Berardinetti (Ward 35, Scarborough Southwest) is adding herself to the “no” camp, at least when it comes to a casino downtown. As more councillors declare their opposition, the possibility of a casino downtown becomes more faint. Because after all, we know councillors prefer saying no to things.

The war on scooters and mopeds has begun. Police are now ticketing motorized two-wheeled vehicles parked on sidewalks, and apparently that’s not sitting too well with people who own those vehicles and park them on sidewalks. E-bikes are notably absent from the police crackdown, however, so they’re probably now your best bet if you want to have it both ways.

Nothing makes a great Saturday night out like a whole lot of muzak. Yeah, you on a sweat-soaked dance floor, getting really grimy to a soft organ and soprano sax version of “I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do).” Mmmm. It’s fun times like this that are probably why the leadership at Exhibition Place want so badly to extend the lease of the Horticultural Building to Muzik, the club currently operating in the space, as far as 2034 without giving anyone else the opportunity to bid. This proposed sole-source contract even has the endorsement of councillor Mark Grimes (Ward 6, Etobicoke-Lakeshore), the chair of the Exhibition Place board and a Ford-friendly councillor. Something Ford is not friendly to: sole-sourced leases. No, no can do.

SmartCenters, a company with a fetish for all things parking lot, is trying to make in-roads into Leslieville yet again. Years after having their plans kept out of the neighbourhood, the company is now hoping to build an 18-acre development that ostensibly wouldn’t be so big-boxy. No application has been submitted to the city as part of the plan yet, but their current idea includes existing buildings and some new retail space. Whatever could those possibly be? Probably a Wal-Mart.

Premier Kathleen Wynne and provincial NDP leader Andrea Horwath are meeting this afternoon to try and iron out a few more details of the most recent provincial budget. One point that the New Democrats are not too fond of is the Liberal plan to allow carpool lanes to be used by single drivers, if those drivers pay a voluntary toll—thus undermining the purpose of the lanes currently restricted to vehicles with multiple occupants and vehicles with green plates. The PC party has already stated that they will not support the budget, so without the help of the NDP, the minority Liberal government will fall. Maybe Wynne and Horwath should drive over to the meeting together—see what that feels like?

A new poll shows that the majority of Torontonians support the city taking over Bixi’s bike-sharing operations in Toronto. Bixi is currently facing mounting financial problems, but even though people want to see the service continue, they also want to see it pay for itself.

The TTC needs more money from Toronto’s city council if it’s going to reach its expansion goals, commission CEO Andy Byford said Monday in a speech to the Empire Club. “The TTC simply cannot continue to accommodate millions more rides without an affordable increase in subsidy,” Byford said. His comments come just a few days after council voted to reject implementing fundraising taxes and tolls to support transit infrastructure.

Toronto is expanding its Afrocentric high-school program this fall. The Toronto District School Board will launch a second location for the program at Downsview Secondary School in the city’s west end; enrolled students will receive teaching with an Afrocentric focus in math, English, French, and geography.

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield returned safely to Earth last night, landing in Kazakhstan after the end of his stint as commander of the International Space Station. Here’s hoping he didn’t immediately ask for the scores in the Leafs game, because that’d be a downer of a way to return to the planet.

That’s because the Maple Leafs lost a heartbreaker last night, giving up a three-goal lead and then losing in overtime to the Boston Bruins. The loss eliminated them from the Stanley Cup Playoffs. The city has a sad.

Often cross the road at Sheppard Avenue East and Ambrose Road, near Leslie station? Then you’re using Toronto’s most dangerous intersection for pedestrians, according to a report to city council. One intersection on the list of the 10 most dangerous has already been redesigned to make it safer, and council is promising “immediate” action on the nine others included in the report. One of the listed intersections is downtown and another is at the border of Etobicoke and old Toronto, with others in North York, Scarborough, and Etobicoke. The study also found that 39 per cent of car-pedestrian collisions at intersections occurred when a car making a left turn struck a pedestrian crossing with the right of way; 20 per cent were between cars making right turns and pedestrians with the right of way, and 13 per cent between cars driving straight through or pedestrians crossing without the right of way. Stay safe out there, everyone.

Awesome Canadian spaceman Chris Hadfield is set to return to Earth from the International Space Station tonight, after a two-month stint as the station’s commander. During that time, Hadfield has participated in Music Monday, posted dozens of photos to social media, and, to cap his mission off, released a cover of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” produced with the help of Ontario musician Emm Gryner. Here’s hoping for an uneventful return trip.

Despite yesterday’s chilly weather and rain, 27,000 runners and walkers hit Yonge Street in the morning for the Sporting Life 10K, raising at least $2 million for Camp Oochigeas, which sends kids with cancer to camp in Muskoka. If you ran, you may be able to find yourself in this hi-res photo from the Toronto Star.

And the Maple Leafs’ return to the ACC for Game six of the first round of the Stanley Cup Finals proved to be a good one for Toronto fans, as the boys in blue beat the Boston Bruins 2-1 and staved off elimination. The Leafs headed right back to Boston after the game, where they’ll play Boston at TD Garden tonight—a win will send them to the second round of the playoffs. The Leafs have only once come back after trailing 3-1 in a best-of-seven series–in 1942, a year they won the Stanley Cup.

The Maple Leafs have staved off elimination and this city will live to see another day of streets flooded with blue and white fans and oh so very much yelling. The Leafs beat the Bruins 2-1 in Friday night’s Game 5. The next game is Sunday night in Toronto.

If you’re one of those people who can’t ride in an elevator without thinking of that horrific scene from Mission Impossible, stop reading. An elevator maintenance worker has been charged with mischief after tampering with the controls of the elevators in a high-rise near Kipling and Finch avenues. Due to his tampering, the elevators stopped working. Okay, so this isn’t really anywhere near as bad as getting your face squished by an elevator. But still.

City Hall will be getting a shower station for cyclists, even though the mayor thinks it’s a weird idea. The showers come along with change rooms and 380 bike parking spaces. Mayor Rob Ford was no fan of the plan, proposing instead that the City look into building a splash pad in Nathan Phillips Square, you know, for the kids.

And here’s a shocker: Mayor Ford’s boasting is not always entirely factually accurate. The mayor proudly proclaimed that by rejecting tolls or taxes to pay for transit, council had saved each household $1,000. But it turns out that math is pretty wrong. The actual number, if one were to try to estimate, is closer to $450.

And the subway is closed Saturday between Bloor and Union stations due to signal maintenance.

Premier Kathleen Wynne doesn’t believe that a 15 per cent cut to auto insurance rates in the province can be completed within the one year deadline the NDP has requested. Finance Minister Charles Sousa incorporated the rate cut into the provincial budget he tabled on May 2, and NDP leader Andrea Horwath has said that implementing the cuts within a one year period is one condition of her party’s support of the budget. But Wynne said that the change is complicated and she isn’t willing to put a deadline on its completion. “It has to be a viable outcome because what I don’t want to do is create a situation where there are people who won’t be able to get insurance because the insurance industry says, ‘Well, you’re pushing us too hard, we just won’t write insurance for certain parts of the population,’ ” she said.

Hamilton police searching for a missing 32-year-old man think that the key to his mysterious disappearance lies in his truck. Two men showed up at Tim Bosma’s Ancaster home on Monday night, asking about a pickup truck he had listed for sale. Bosma has been missing since about 9:30 p.m. that evening, after telling his wife he was taking the men for a test drive, and police have turned up nothing in their investigation that would suggest why he would have disappeared.

More than a quarter of Canada’s millionaries—118,000 of them—live in the GTA, according to stats compiled by consulting firm WealthInsight. That figure includes 1,184 multimillionaires, defined as those with net assets of $30 million USD or more. That places us 15th in the world for millionaire concentration, with Tokyo coming in first. We’ve only got five lonely billionaires, though. Let’s all feel very badly for them.

And in sports news, the Leafs have a must-win game against the Bruins in Boston tonight—if they lose, they’re out of the playoffs. If they win, the series comes back to Toronto for Game 6. Provincial rivals, the Ottawa Senators, already clinched their spot in the second round with a rout of the Montreal Canadiens last night, just to add a little extra motivation for the boys in blue. Let’s not talk about how the Jays are doing.

A classic Monkey’s Paw situation is playing out at City Hall right now. So you want to open up a debate around paying for transit expansion in the region? Well, you’ll get that, but it’ll come with multiple days of debate, tangential arguments, and calls to modify the City’s agreement with Metrolinx to spend more non-existent money on subway expansions into Scarborough and elsewhere. Councillors spent yesterday debating various aspects of transit—against the city manager’s wishes—until they were blue in the face (seriously, they quit to watch the hockey game). And they’ll be back at it today.

Toronto isn’t the only city second-guessing the Metrolinx plan now that the time to put up or shut up is approaching. Brampton mayor Susan Fennell is suggesting an alternative to an LRT line that would connect her city with Mississauga, and which has been at the centre of Mississauga’s transit demands. Fennell is also criticizing the proposed fees and taxes on Metrolinx’s transit funding shortlist. Apparently it’s never too late to come out against a potentially unpopular political move.

Given the length of the transit debate at Toronto City Hall, maybe it’s for the best that councillors decided against also opening up a debate on whether Toronto should get a casino now, and instead waiting for the special meeting on it later this month. The situation at City Hall seems one step away from Lord of the Flies as it is. Adam Vaughan (Ward 20, Trinity-Spadina) isn’t giving up hope on a casino vote this week, though, so never say never.

Of course, all this talk about expanding transit to fight gridlock might be a load of bunk anyway. How else can you explain why three of the city’s 10 most clogged up intersections outside the downtown core are in areas covered by the Sheppard subway line? And don’t say, “Because nobody uses the Sheppard line,” because we’re sure if we ever went up there, we’d probably see some people riding those trains. The City’s Transportation Services division released the list as part of a report on how it plans to fight traffic congestion by improving traffic light systems, among other things.

A Malvern playground that was burned down the other day will be rebuilt with money from a bunch of corporate donations that have come in since news of the razing broke. Police are still looking for the person or people who burned the playground. If you know who did it, man, you’ve really got some jerk friends.

Turns out that it was McGuinty’s idea (according to McGuinty, now that he is no longer Premier) to move those gas plants from Mississauga and Oakville. Case closed. Now we can all stop worrying about the millions of dollars in lost money. Right, McGuinty?

Mathematics is an important part of any student experience. Most 13- and 14-year-olds, however, aren’t prepared to really get the full weight or context of advanced functions. For this reason, it is important that math be put in terms that they can understand. That said, those terms might not be best explained with the same diagrams intended for gay bars or bathhouses.

Despite RoFo’s hissy-fit-like objections (that’s how we picture them), Toronto City Council voted 27-to-13 in favour of debating a city manager’s report that Mayor Ford’s executive committee had previously decided to defer any consideration of. Debating other revenue tools, such as taxes or road tolls to help fund transit, of course does not mean implementing these things, but it does however (hopefully) mean people talking about pros and cons, looking at the issues, forming rational thoughts, and putting the best interests of constituents forward. Not debating issues usually means none of those thing.

The Scarborough Hospital is continuing a path of cuts to services and the most recent round is extending to nearly half a million dollars worth of diabetes education and palliative beds. To balance its budget, the hospital is currently looking for $19.6 million in savings. In addition to cutting services and enacting changes that will result in increased patient wait times, the hospital is in the process of eliminating nearly 200 positions.

Mayor Rob Ford said Monday that he’ll hold councillors “accountable” if they throw their support behind increased taxes and fees to pay for transit expansion in Toronto. “If 30 councillors want to put their name to implement taxes on the back of hardworking taxpayers in the city, I’ll hold them accountable in the next election,” Ford said. City council could vote to overrule the mayor and his executive committee by putting a debate on transit revenue tools on their agenda as early as today, after Ford and his executive committee voted last month to defer debate on Metrolinx’s request for advice on revenue tools for transit funding.

Former Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty testifies today before provincial MPPs, where he’ll answer questions about power plants set to be built in Oakville and Mississauga that his government cancelled before the 2011 election. The cost to taxpayers for the cancellations of the plants was $310 million for Oakville and $275 million for Mississauga, much higher than McGuinty’s often-stated figures of $40 million and $190 million, respectively. Premier Kathleen Wynne has admitted that the controversial cancellations were “politically motivated.”

The report on a proposal by Porter Airlines to bring jets to the Toronto Island airport is estimated to take up to six months and cost more than $1 million—and the city is asking Porter to pay the tab. City council will consider a report, which would examine the airline’s work plan to bring so-called quiet jets to Billy Bishop Airport, some time this week. Porter has agreed to pay for the first leg of the study, which will cost an estimated $225,000 to $275,000, and City staff indicated that they’ll ask the airline to cover the more expensive second stage as well.

One OCAD student claims to have found a solution to the problem of urban bike theft. Industrial design student Patrick Kroetsch developed a prototype for a new lock-station system after his own bike was stolen. His idea—created for his thesis project—is based in part on the Bixi bike stations, and would be built in such a way that locking your bike in properly is the only way to use it. Toronto police say that more than 3,000 bikes were stolen in the city in 2011.