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." More snow......

Extreme cold alert! Be forewarned that this extreme cold is not extreme in the sense of "it is totally radical like Doritos and Mountain Dew," but rather extreme in the sense of "it can kill you if you stay out in it too long." Environment Canada will discuss the prospects of the extreme cold's effect on totally shredding slopes with your snowboard later today. Barack Obama thumps Hillary Clinton over the weekend, with impressively......

Former Pakistani PM Benazir Bhutto was assassinated yesterday in a bloody suicide attack that killled at least 20 other other people. Anyone thinking that this news isn't sufficiently Toronto-centric should hope that the destabilization of this nuclear-armed extremist-incubator state doesn't have much direct impact on Toronto, because if it does it's likely to be in ways that are not at all fun. Climate change remains in the news––Environment Canada have declared the dramatic and......

According to Environment Canada, this winter will be the coldest in fifteen years. That news should send us all running for the comforts of indoors, but once again Harbourfront Centre provides the perfect reason to play outside. DJ Skating Nights return for a third year, providing those who brave the cold to skate under the glittering skyline with a soundtrack from local DJs. The five Friday nights of the series will feature five different......

David Hughes, a senior geoscientist at Natural Resources Canada, is to energy security as David Suzuki is to the environment or Al Gore is to Global Warming. The fact that he has yet to receive the same level of attention is an unfortunate oversight, since our energy security (or lack thereof) is an increasingly urgent issue that we must learn more about and begin to address. Mr. Hughes' message regarding dwindling energy supplies is......

Environment Canada reports that this has been the driest summer in fifty years for Toronto, with the city only receiving around half of its usual rainfall. Short-term predictions suggest that fall will be equally dry, with the the long-range forecast calling for global warming followed by drought, famine, plague and societal collapse. Sounds like great picnic weather! Provincial NDP leader Howard Hampton has said that, if elected, he will roll back college and university......

City council says up to 2,500 tonnes of dog poop are deposited in park trash bins every year. This is problematic since our garbage dumps in Michigan refuse to take it. So where should we put our growing heap of canine feces? Councillor Pam McConnell (Ward 28, Toronto Centre-Rosedale) thinks the city should provide green bins in parks, while Councillor Paula Fletcher (Ward 30, Toronto-Danforth) doesn't think it's a big deal for dog owners......

Tomorrow kick-starts the Canadian Wildlife Federation’s annual National Wildlife Week. Proclaimed in 1947, the festival is about reminding us humans that we must maintain a sustainable ecosystem to preserve what little wildlife we have left. This year’s theme is Canada’s North. It seems like every small city, town, and county in Ontario will be recognizing NWW, but shamefully not Toronto. Because wildlife doesn’t matter in our urban centre, right? To celebrate squirrels and polar......

In the not-so-far-off future, we’ll be able to dial 511 to get told that it’s hot outside and that the Gardiner Expressway is backed up. The CRTC has assigned 511 as the new telephone number for weather and traveller information services. The 24-hour, cross-Canada phone service should be in full operation in 2007: “Once Canada's 511 service is in place, Environment Canada, one of the partners in the Canada 511 Consortium, will provide current weather......

Now, I'm no meteorologist, but that, my friends, is hail. Environment Canada has issued a severe thunderstorm watch for Toronto. It looks like the worst of it is over, but it's been going quite cyclically since last night. Environment Canada says that the thunderstorms could escalate to torrential downpours with large hail, but should die down a bit by the evening. Here is the Environment Canada forecast for Toronto. Read up on hail formation......

Despite criticism from the media, many councillors and Rick Ducharme's public admission that his actions as TTC chair made him quit, Howard Moscoe made it clear he won't be stepping down from the Chair. That is until he talked to his wife. Gloria Moscoe, his wife of 46-years, would like him to spend more time with his family which means Moscoe might step out of the TTC Chair's role but not until after the November......

The TPSC's Guerrilla Gardening posse will be doing their first planting of the year tomorrow afternoon. They'll be meeting at the N.E. Corner of Queen and Parliament at 2:00. Guerrilla Gardening, for those of you who don't know, is an urban intervention where you spruce up neglected parts of the city with flowers, plants and other green things. Sadly the weather sages at Environment Canada are predicting rain. On the other hand we've gardened......

Lest you somehow forget it’s Earth Day (Earth Week, Earth Year, whatever) and Mayor Miller gives you a hall pass on the 20-Minute Toronto Makeover, you still have some spring cleaning to do. And so, the good environmentally-friendly folks at ECOgent have developed a residential version of their industrial cleaning product, which contains 100% natural ingredients and is free of phosphates, dyes, perfumes and pesticides. It's so safe, you can practically drink it - though......