Stephan Marinoiu, the frustrated father of a 15 year-old autistic boy, began a hunger strike outside the Legislative Assembly of Ontario at Queen’s Park last Sunday, May 4. Six days later, he’s still hanging in there, and although he’s reportedly beginning to show signs of weight loss, he appears to be in good health. Marinoiu’s son Simon is one of an ever-growing number of children on the waiting list for a government program called......

Snappy Answers runs every Saturday afternoon, except when Ms. Snappy Answers is in New York City, as she was last weekend—sorry! Send your questions, be they tough or trivial, to snappyanswers@torontoist.com. I want to work on getting in shape this summer, and that means signing up for a gym. Any recommendations for a good gym in Toronto? Something not too intimidating to us common folk would be nice. —Kyle......

The fear over bisphenol A is understandable. That something as innocuous as feeding infants from baby bottles could cause irreparable harm to their development is scary, and preemptive measures are worth taking if there is sound science to back it up. Concern over the danger of bisphenol A has picked up steam as researchers look at the effects of low concentrations, which had previously been assumed harmless. The decision by the Canadian government to......

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. Controversial city......

Today's ad proves that hair dye has been available for purchase at Yonge and Carlton for over a century, even if going to "Armand's" sounds classier than a quick run to Shoppers Drug Mart. The 1 Carlton Street address shifted north in 1931 due to a street reconfiguration that directly connected Carlton with College Street. The project was partly initiated by Eaton's, who had just opened their new store on the southwest corner of......

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." A devout Sikh man has lost his bid to overturn the law......

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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......

Ontario Health Minister George Smitherman has caused a furor with his comment that he'd be willing to test-drive an adult diaper to see if being left in soiled diapers for hours on end is really all that bad. Critics say he isn't taking the issue of sub-standard care in nursing homes seriously, which seems a bit harsh, since there can't be too many politicians who'd be willing to spend a day crouched in their own......

Photo of Owen Pallett by Heidi Slimane from his MySpace. News of Owen Pallett's OHIP being revoked has been quickly met with a reaction: an open letter sent today to George Smitherman, the Minister of Health and Long-Term Care, from France Gélinas and Rosario Marchese, NDP MPPs who insist that Pallett is "an award winning artist who deserves our support" but who has instead been "unfairly treated." The letter takes issue both with the......

Vintage postcard of the Toronto General Hospital (1913) from Mars Discovery District. Encounters with government bureaucracy can be stressful ordeals at the best of times; at the worst, when things don’t go your way, they can be incredibly frustrating. Apparently, this is true even if you’re a Polaris Music Prize–winning musician. Former Torontoist contributor Carly Beath pointed us toward Owen Pallett recounting his recent travails with the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care......

There are tons of great shows for all you concertgoers this week, including a particularly time-sensitive one tonight. Apparently a sold-out Wrong Bar for Crystal Castles last Thursday was not enough for the electro-punk duo. A last-minute show has been booked at the Wrong Bar tonight (alongside LA’s Health) before they continue on with their extensive North American tour. With no tickets to be purchased in advance, you better drop what you’re doing and immediately......

No Country For Old Men cleans up at the Oscars. The Coen Brothers finally got some big-time recognition with nods for best picture, best directing, best adapted screenplay, and best husband of Frances McDormand. In other news, a bunch of Canadians got nominated for stuff and didn't win any of it. (There! We could totally write entertainment news for any major Canadian newspaper now!) Visa IPO expected to be worth nineteen billion smackers. MasterCard responded......

At first we assumed it was Scientology. After all, who else has the money to produce and purchase space for such glossy anti-pharmaceutical ads, which have been popping up all over transit shelters and buses in Ontario and Montreal? Google wasn't much help, and their Blog Search just pointed us to other people as perplexed as we were. And poor spellers with domination fantasies. Searches of domain registrations weren't particularly fruitful, especially after the......

Last February, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene released the NYC Condom, with packaging echoing the city's iconic subway signage and distributed for free by street teams in heavily-trafficked areas. In time for Valentine's Day this year, the rebranded LifeStyles condoms have been redesigned, accompanied by a multimedia campaign under the slogan "Get Some." But one of the campaign's new banner ads will look strangely familiar to Torontonians—it features a......

National Non-Smoking Week starts January 20—as most New Year's resolutions to quit go up in smoke. It's a shame that the National Non-Smoking Week website sucks. The layout is plain, the links aren't updated frequently, and the only materials up for 2008 are a few fact sheets and posters with this year's theme, "Taking My Life Back From Tobacco." (The artsier French version is better: "Ma nouvelle vie sans tabac" or "My new life......

Apparently 6% GST is still being charged in parking lots at Pearson airport, in spite of the fact that the tax was lowered to 5% on January 1. The overpricing is being blamed on a system glitch that is being "worked on," but in the meantime, the GTAA plans to keep the extra cash for themselves. A spokesperson explained, "If you don't like it, then you can fly out of another international airport in......

City service fees to increase? Toronto's recreation department wants to increase user fees by 21 percent this year and a total of 81 percent over seven years. Because you know who doesn't pay their fair share? Poor people! Barack Obama, John McCain surging in polls as New Hampshire primaries take place. In related news, Obama and McCain both won the small villages of Dixville Notch and Hart's Location, both of which had their complete......

Photo by natmeister from Flickr. With all the readily accessible gourmet-quality food on offer here in Toronto, we have quickly become a city of foodies, expounding the joys of this boîte, this bar, and that beanery. Unfortunately, as travel season gets into its fullest swing, we urban folk may find ourselves in an airport lounge or even somewhere outside of Trenton on the 401, at a service centre, hungry, and with limited choices. The......

"Upper Canada Lower Bowel Clinic Inc." Greatest thing ever? Photo taken by Jonathan Goldsbie at U of T's Jackman Humanities Building (formerly the Medical Arts Building). Thanks to J.D. McGregor of the English Department for the tip.......

The half-wit OCAD student who planted a fake bomb at the ROM on Wednesday has turned himself in to police and been charged with mischief and common nuisance. Ha, closing a major thoroughfare, wasting the time of hundreds of police and emergency service personnel, and forcing the cancellation of an AIDS gala—what a lovable scamp. The death rates at Canadian Hospitals have now been made public in a report from the Canadian Institute for......

Road rage in the city is nothing new. Torontoist covered incidents of road rage violence between motorists and cyclists in 2006 and 2007, and the Sun reported on Monday that a cab driver was shot at in a road rage incident. Most coverage focuses on road rage and adults, but new research from Ontario suggests that adolescents are more likely to be victims of road rage. In a study recently published in the Journal......

It’s an exciting time to get sick in Brampton. With the opening of the highly hyped Brampton Civic Hospital, Canada’s first “superhospital,” people living in the Peel Region can go through dialysis, give birth, and get a biopsy (though hopefully not all at once) with greater ease and comfort than before. What makes this place so special? According to Gillian Williams McClean, the Director of Communications and Marketing, this is the most technologically integrated......

In the opening line from 28: Stories of AIDS in Africa, author Stephanie Nolen illustrates a feeling many of us understand. "I looked at AIDS in Africa for a long time before I understood what I was seeing," she writes. Nolen is an award-winning journalist who has spent the past several years as our eyes and ears on the AIDS pandemic in Africa. As the Africa correspondent for the Globe and Mail, Nolen has written......

This what a bioterrorist looks like, according to the FBI. Dr. Steven Kurtz (right) is a Professor of Art at SUNY Buffalo and member of Critical Art Ensemble (CAE), an art and theatre collective co-founded by Kurtz and his late wife, Hope. In May 2004, the Kurtzes were preparing a piece called Free Range Grains, which allowed participants to test food for the presence of genetically modified organisms, when Hope died of heart failure......

Self-control is difficult. If you've ever been on a diet, then you know how hard it is to stay on track. You try to be good but at some point the voice saying "no" gives up. That's when eating just one cookie becomes the whole bag and a bucket of fried chicken. It's disheartening to try not doing something, but then end up doing it anyway. New research from the University of Toronto suggests the......

Toronto councillor Paula Fletcher wants Toronto Public Health to officially categorize bedbugs as a "health hazard," as opposed to their current status, "nuisance,"—that's not a joke; "nuisance" is apparently the official term—after our dear city has seen a recent upsurge in the pests. And for all you folks living in highrises, don't get too smug, because it seems "there is no community that hasn't been affected." Fletcher is also urging officials to implement a bedbug......

This Friday's Steam Whistle Unsigned is already the fourth in a series of independent music showcases at the Roundhouse, but it's the first we're really excited about. Really excited. Check out this lineup: The Carps are the best thing to come out of Scarborough since... er... hmm. Right. Anyway, the punk-soul duo recently opened for MIA at the Kool Haus, and if they're good enough for Maya, they're good enough for you. Opopo sound like......

Poor OCAP. They can't even complain about the police watching them without the police watching them. At noon on Wednesday, the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty held a press conference (not a rally or an action or a march but a press conference) at the northeast corner of Dundas and Sherbourne, and there was about one police officer for each person in attendance (around twenty). As eight or so cops casually observed the conference from......

Starting today and going until Sunday November 11 is the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair at The Direct Energy Centre at Exhibition Place. Tickets are $18, but $14 for seniors and youth (5-17) and free for kids under 5. It's a great place to take your kids to see horses and cows, and they can learn all about corporate sponsorship—I mean, agriculture!—with activities including the Toyota Dealers Royal Rodeo, the Toronto Star horse demonstrations, and the......