Results tagged “corrections”

Our pets are catching the swine flu! And not just our pet swine! Confirmed cases of housepets gettin' sick with H1N1 are giving us some kibble for thought today. Maybe it's time to make some new flu-naming rules, though, because this is pretty complicated. While humans can't get equine flu from a horse, apparently we might be able to catch swine flu from a parrot and then give it to our cat. Dogs are virtually people-flu proof, but humans deliberately infect ferrets with our influenza germs. Rabbits are just a total wild card. And don't even get us started on the iguanas. People are being cautioned to take steps to protect their pets from the Pig, but the vaccine is still for humans only—felix no can haz.

Shall we begin today's Newsstand in the gutter? (Were you expecting anything less?) Yesterday, the Executive Committee approved the application of the savings gleaned from this summer's city strike to offset a 2% rate hike in our garbage fees. Sounds good, right? Well, the mayor doesn't think so. "I thought they were taking a short-term gain for long-term pain," he lamented. "I thought cancelling the rate increase this year means that the increase next year will have to be over 4%." Councillor Pam McConnell, on the other hand, is lamenting the fact that the green-bin program will now take longer to implement, citing "pent up desire on behalf of residents...to be able to participate." And with that quote, you know in what direction today's news is going to go...

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...

We have to admit we kind of like Fever Pitch. Sure, it's a formulaic rom-com, but it's a lot better than what we typically have to sit through. More to the point, it makes such great use of its Boston locations (particularly the stuff in and around Fenway Park) that you would hardly know how much of it was shot here.

In 1993, CPG (Community Programs Group) began publishing The New Jr. Jays Magazine, an eclectic mix of baseball, sci-fi, health and safety tips, and overt product placement. The magazine was designed to develop the Jays’ younger fan base, and featured comics, baseball articles, interviews with fans and players, and movie, book, and video game reviews. For only five dollars a year, Jr. Jays club members received four issues, a personalized membership card, and several Topps baseball cards. In the words of Ed Conroy, the publisher of The Magazine, a monthly magazine for kids, and a former Jr. Jays writer, "You couldn’t make something like this today."

ART: The Metropolitan United Church donated a thirty-by-sixty-foot exterior wall of its own building to a handful of international graffiti artists (Chor Boogie, Siloette, Elicser, and Mediah) so that they may paint a collaborative interpretation of faith. The United Church of Canada’s website, WonderCafe.ca, hosts the wall’s "Paint Your Faith" unveiling today. Various faith and art activities accompany the reveal, including fresh blank canvases for the inspired. Oh, and there’s music, refreshments, and a barbecue, too. Metropolitan United Church (56 Queen Street East), Saturday, 12–4:30 p.m., FREE.

Maple Leaf Gardens may yet be filled with the crash and clatter of rival hockey teams going head to head, if Ryerson and Loblaws reach a hyped deal. The arena was bought in 2004 by the grocery magnate, who reckoned on turning it into a "flagship" grocery store but soon found themselves in too much of an economic bind to follow through with those fresh ideas in a timely manner. Enter the up-and-coming downtown university, who has been eyeing the Gardens as a setting for their men's hockey team for some time, now. The notion being chattered about would put the hockey rink back to regular use as a student centre and Ryerson Rams home ice, while a Loblaws grocery store might open as close as right upstairs. At this very moment, word on the deal amounts to no more, and no less, than an email sent out by Loblaw senior VP, corporate affairs, directly to Toronto media outlets. Generally, though, that sort of thing is referred to as a "public announcement."

When Chris Adams and Hugh Evans talk about the rewards in producing their film, there's a remarkable sincerity in their words. Amidst all the TIFF buzz, it's a relief to see such a lineup outside the door for a work that's about the real world, with an audience engaged in the contents of the presentation rather than the contents of the star's dress (we're looking at you, Megan Fox fans). At this event, no one's talking about what anyone's wearing, nor do they really care—in fact, someone showing up in Valentino might be downright embarrassed by the presentation's end.

Okay, first John Cartwright kicks David Miller out of his parade, and now George Smitherman wants his job. We can only assume that Stephen Harper is about to burn down Miller's house and shoot his dog. Anyway, Smitherman, Ontario's deputy premier, looks ready to step out of Dalton McGuinty's shadow and into City Hall next year, depriving Queen's Park of a major cabinet minister in the process. "I think there is a bit of a consensus forming in the city that the status quo is not getting the job done," Smitherman told the Star. Hmm, wonder where he got that line?

Newspaper pages are filled with chatter and even a bit of hard news in the wake of Darcy Allan Sheppard's death and the resulting arrest of Michael Bryant, who was once Ontario's Attorney General. Bryant is now facing criminal negligence and reckless driving charges, and the courts are having a hard time giving the former AG a fair trial.

The province appointed a new supervisor for the Toronto Catholic District School Board after everyone took their toys and went home instead of playing nicely (read: resigned instead of attending a rogue meeting) yesterday. In response to the recent change, new RC Board Supervisor Richard Alway says, "A lot of the heavy lifting has been done." That had better not have been a fat joke, Rick—apparently the board is not known for their maturity.

Suaad Hagi Mohamud, the 31-year-old Toronto woman who was stranded in Kenya for three months due to a dustup with customs officials, is now suing the Canadian government for $2.5 million and asking for an inquiry and public apology. After allegedly denying a request for a bribe by an airline official on her way home from the Nairobi airport, Mohamud was tossed into Langata Women's Prison for a week on the charge of passport fraud, because the officer claimed her lips looked different than in her four-year-old passport photo. Trapped in immigration limbo, it took the Canada Border Services Agency a staggering two-and-a-half months to confirm her identity using a DNA test, even though Mohamud had been vouched for by her family, volunteered a cross-check on her fingerprints, and was carrying at least five pieces of valid identification, including an Ontario health card and driver's licence. (CORRECTION: A previous version of the story incorrectly indicated that it was an immigration official that solicited a bribe; it was a KLM airline official.)

Yesterday's two thunderstorms toppled trees, grounded planes at Pearson, and dotted the city with power outages. Torontoist readers would have been wise to hunker down somewhere dry and warm, but those who ventured out thinking the worst was over after a morning deluge shouldn't feel too bad—Environment Canada declared the threat over at 1 p.m. Only seven hours later, the weather was uglier than ever. (The proof is in our photo gallery of storm photos from last night.) Winds of up to 100 km/h were recorded, and the city was flooded with roughly five centimetres of water in under an hour. Environment Canada, if they still have any credibility left, are playing it safe and warning you to expect the nasty weather to continue today, though (maybe) not quite as bad as before.

We've been following Metrolinx's Georgetown South Service Expansion and Union Pearson Rail Link project (GSSE/UPRL) since the beginning of the summer. For those unfamiliar, GSSE/UPRL is a major transit initiative that will result in the addition of several new sets of tracks to the rail corridor between Union Station and Malton for freight and commuter use. That's the GSSE part. The other part of the project, the UPRL, is exactly what it sounds like: a new rail link between Union Station and Pearson Airport (to be operated for profit by a private carrier). The reason we've been paying so much attention to this project is that it has been fraught with controversy for months—controversy that is now poised to come to a head.

Want to pack it all in and move to the islands? Someone's written about that already. Want to pack it all in and move to the Toronto Islands? We can write about that. All you need is luck, patience, and money.

Each week, Torontoist examines the upcoming TV listings and makes note of programs that are entertaining, informative, and of quality. Or, alternately, none of those. The result: Televisualist.

If you happen to look up, just slightly above eye level, at hydro poles and streetlights around Toronto lately, you might notice some misplaced Trans-Canada highway signs. No, Yonge Street isn’t becoming a part of the Trans-Canada, and yes, the Spadina Expressway is still dead. These are not the work of some signage installer for the city who has gone rogue, but a project called Art + Identity created by Toronto’s own Ella Cooper.

Well, kind of.

Phil Pick does not enjoy being called a villain. Wait, which Toronto publication was it that described him that way, again? Oh, right. It was us.

             

Well, it's over. We came, we saw, we didn't wait in line once (thanks, priority pass). But before we throw up our tattered white flags and rejoin society, it’s nigh time for some sort of festival wrap-up to prove we were actually there and weren't just telling you what to do. So here is a smattering of reviews and photos from our handsome reporters who we set loose into the night every night for however many nights it's been. Marvel as we run down our most memorable shows (thankfully limited to maybe one-quarter of what we saw) in hopes of helping you relive the magic. Or at least helping you fake like you were there if any of your cooler friends ask.

FILM: Has digital killed film? Definitely not, says the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers (LIFT) with tonight’s screening of nine beautiful stop-motion, 16mm films. Afterward, two of the filmmakers, Jonathan Amitav and Chris Gehman, speak about the challenges and rewards of working with film. This event is the first part of a six-part series entitled Strategies of the Medium, supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and running until Spring 2010. Cinecycle (129 Spadina Avenue), 7 p.m., $8, $5 for members.

Renting in Toronto is already a trying experience, what with landlords charging outrageous rents for their "bright, sunny" basement apartments. But renters with furry companions face another hassle: apartment ads that boldly state "No pets," and landlords who won't rent to someone with a pet.

ART: Communication | Environment, part of Luminato, features a series of eye-popping installations with the common theme of contemporary communications. Among them is David Rokeby’s installation at the Allen Lambert Galleria, which features sixty-four spheres suspended along the atrium in the form of a modified sine wave (the basic structure of wireless communication). Allen Lambert Galleria (181 Bay Street), all day, FREE.

We are all geeks now. It's seen in the massive popularity of the Star Trek reboot, in the adoption of instant messaging and Twitter (descended from the chat rooms and IRC channels we forever associate with old-school modem sounds), and in the way people soup up laptops or accessorize iPods. The gravitational pull of the social web is so strong it seems every and any company has dived in, racking up Twitter and Facebook accounts, hoping to capture a few seconds of attention span from the overstimulated millenials. The banks—often the most careful corporations in Canada about use of their image and brand—are no exception and have dived into the Wild Wild West of Web 2.0. Scotiabank, CIBC, RBC, TD, and ING Direct, for example, have all joined Twitter, the rapidly growing micro-blogging site.

Can a commercial printer invoke religion in order to refuse services?

The Dufferin Jog—that railway underpass at Dufferin and Queen—has long been considered a public art icon in Toronto. It's just that the public art it's displayed has been graffiti and paste-ups rather than municipally chosen sculpture.

This weekend, the Toronto Reference Library’s bespectacled old ladies of Saturday morning cartoon fame were replaced with another near-sighted crowd. Trading cat’s eye glasses for black horn rims, the Toronto Comic Arts Festival crowd, several thousand strong, dominated at least the first two floors of the behemoth library.

POLITICS: Toronto City Hall is hosting a town hall meeting tonight about the Beautifulcity.ca initiative, which would implement stricter billboard bylaws, and fees. The proposal, which will be voted on in a few weeks' time, will not only give a 53% increase to the current annual municipal funding for artists and art institutions, but will also provide, annually, three hundred thousand dollars for each of the thirteen identified "priority neighbourhoods" and one hundred thousand dollars for each of the city's forty-four wards, as well as the ability to hire "seventeen dedicated staff to enforce the new billboard bylaw, create a public inventory, direct removals, and collect fines," according to organizer Devon Ostrom. For more information on how to get involved, check out the Facebook event, and keep your eyes on Torontoist this week for further coverage. Toronto City Hall (100 Queen Street West, Council Chambers), 6:30–9 p.m., FREE.

When a band gets their start not by releasing their own material, but by remixing Toronto favourites such as The D'Urbervilles, Gentlemen Reg, and the Rural Alberta Advantage, the weight of expectation can be heavy. Borders, out today on Pheromone Recordings, is the debut full-length for Toronto/Guelph spaz quintet Green Go where indie rock meets electronica in the dark, and fight (dance?) to the death.

The TTC has announced that staff is recommending Bombardier—over Siemens—to manufacture more than two hundred new low-floor light rail vehicles, due to roll out across Toronto's existing streetcar network starting in 2012 (for "passenger service," after a prototype arrives in 2011), at a cost of $1.22 billion.