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......

Government fires head of Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission Linda Keen. However, it is understandable, considering that Ms. Keen went public about government interference in her job and threats of being fired if she shut down the Chalk River reactor for being potentially unsafe. We mean, you can't say she wasn't warned that her bosses were mendacious assholes, is our point. Mitt Romney wins Michigan Republican primary. The former Massachusetts governor, thought to be made......

If there's anything Jesus loves more than flattery, it's porn stars. Well, technically, Jesus loves everyone—even those little teenage tramps and their HPV vaccines—but now, ol' JHC is adding some marketing pizzazz to that affection. Since deities also love acting all obscure and ambiguous, the Michigan-based XXX Church (savvy!) has taken it upon themselves to declare that Jesus wants you to stop looking at porn and instead find titillation in scripture. And they've set their......

Leaside—car manufacturing mecca? It was during our 60th anniversary as a Dominion, when Durant Motors of Canada called it home. William Crapo "Billy" Durant was the main force behind the formation of General Motors in 1908, when he brought together manufacturers such as Oldsmobile and Buick. After being forced out of GM twice, he founded Durant Motors in 1921. The company established itself as a full-line automaker, with economy (Star), mid-range (Durant, Flint) and......

Canadians are a wasteful people, and Torontonians are no exception. Though the Blue Box and Green Bin programs have been a success, drastically reducing the volume of what ends up in landfill, we still create millions of tonnes of trash each year with nowhere to put it. Well, Michigan. With the City's fresh, new taxation powers, Council is considering a "pay-as-you-throw" system, whereby Torontonians get charged for waste pickup on a separate invoice, similar......

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......

Torontoist Poetry Contest Reminder! At the beginning of the new year, Torontoist launched a poetry contest to encourage the penning of new poems about our fair city. To inspire you, we are presenting a series of previously published Toronto poems that will run until the contest closes March 15. Our third poem, "I Parked My Car Behind Loblaws and Knew I Would Never Die" is by writer, performer and composer Gary Barwin. The poem references......

Dust off your party shoes and break out your Canada-themed beer (no endorsements here), because Team Canada just beat the Russians 4-2 in the gold medal game at Leksand-Mora, Sweden to win the 2007 IIHF World Junior Hockey Championship! With goals by four different players, including Woodbridge's own Andrew Cogliano, Canada's decisive win sealed their third straight World Junior Championship, and their first in almost a decade not won on North American soil. The win......

Yesterday, the first in a series of public meetings with the United States Coast Guard resulted in the suspention of live-fire machine gun drills on the Great Lakes until greater safety and environmental inquiries are made. The live-fire drills have been operating on all five lakes since January, only recently gaining public attention and inciting outrage in the recreational boating, fishing and cottaging communities. The U.S. Coast Guard, a division of the Department of......

Jane Pitfield and David Miller are going to be seeing a lot of each other until November 13. The round of mayoral debates has started and both of them came out swinging for their first debate last night according to the Star. Incineration and David Miller's record were two of the big issues. Jane Pitfield's anti-panhandling bylaw stumbled yesterday when the Policy and Finance committee decided that the city should look into existing laws to......

A few nights ago, I was walking up Yonge Street in the rain as I passed by the Panasonic Theatre buzzing with its eerie Blue (Man) glow. As uneasy as it may have felt, the Blue Men reminds me of analyst/therapist Tobias Fünke so I laughed and laughed... until I stopped. Why stop laughing at thoughts of Frightened Inmate #2? Well, lining the street in front of the Panasonic Theatre were bags and bags......

First some bad news. Southern Ontario and Quebec are going to be affected by the remnants of Hurricane Ernesto. The storm will be downgraded to a tropical depression but it'll make this long weekend wet and windy. On the bright side, climatologists and most of us would agree that this summer was pretty good. Fewer smog days, heat waves and rain. It was a bit of a goldilocks summer. The Star covers yesterday's four year......

Torontoist has just heard on CBC that the Ontario and Michigan governments two Michigan senators have brokered a deal that will see Toronto stop shipping garbage to Michigan in four years. The amount of garbage shipped south of the border will be cut by 20% this year and every year following. We'll keep you updated on this story. The deal will force Toronto to look at options like incineration and shipping it to other places,......

Michigan, we used to love you. We Torontonians loved your 11,000 lakes, your 130 lighthouses, and the way you happily accepted all our garbage and made it go away. When we went to bed each Garbage Day Eve, our trash bags would be spilling over our curbs and filling the air with odours fishy enough to drive neighbourhood cats delirious. Then, when we woke up in the morning, it would all be gone. Nowadays, though,......

Three hit and runs in Etobicoke over the weekend has killed one and injured five others. Two of the hit and runs were possibly sparked by earlier disputes. Sgt. Cam Wooley, our favourite OPP officer, regales us with tales of idiotic drivers on Ontario's highways. Highlights include a man driving without a license with other adults in the car who did, and concerned citizens who told officers that the speeder they were ticketing was also......

Six men have been arrested for an early morning home invasion in a condo near the Rogers Centre. This is the first time we've heard of a home invasion in a condo building and hope that it isn't a new trend in crime. A motorcyclist in his early 20s died after slamming into a Gardiner Expressway off-ramp. The City has found two companies to take about half of Toronto's sludge. The Michigan landfill that took......

After much righteous chest-thumping over fiscal responsibility and respect for the taxpayers, council barely decided to give itself a 9% pay raise. The vote passed 22-21, and the three interim councillors who won't be running in November's election, all voted in favour of the increase. Councillors' salaries have now been bumped up to $95,000 and the Mayor's salary will be hiked to $160,000. Jane Pitfield has vowed to make this a campaign issue so we......

For all time we spend slagging councillor Howard Moscoe even on the worst of days he doesn't come close to the Mouth of Etobicoke, Rob Ford. Many of us have been loud and boorish at a sporting event but only Rob would hand out his City Hall business card to the couple whose evening he ruined. Many councillors don't like the poor but only Rob goes out of his way to attack community grants of......

City council is debating a Sunday noise ban today but only in low-density residential neighbourhoods. Howard Moscoe, pointed out that this idea is discriminatory, "More than half the people in the city live in highrise buildings. People who have condos deserve as much right to noise protection as people wealthy enough to own a single-family home," he said to the Star. Howard we agree with you on this one. A 25-year old is clinging to......

Everyone goes wall-to-wall covering this weekend's arrest of 17 men on terrorism charges. The Globe plasters the fact that the alleged bombers targetted the Peace Tower in Ottawa. One of the other potential targets was the CN Tower and the Sun and CP points out that it would've been hard to topple the CN Tower. The TTC wasn't a target but the Transport minister assures us that we're all safe. More facts are also coming......

TTC Chair Howard Moscoe and injured TTC driver Bobby Lowe had a nice chat yesterday and cleared up a few things. Lowe actually said that his beef wasn't with the TTC but with the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board. They held up his cheque for five months and Lowe lost his apartment and had to break up his family because of that. Howard Moscoe also apologized for calling Lowe a liar on a radio show......

The Energy Minister has broached the controversial idea of burning instead of trucking away Toronto's garbage. Incineration would be able to power some 200,000 homes and would mean people in the city wouldn't be freaking out everytime politicians in Michigan get miffed about our trash. The Star goes into the debate in some detail. We wonder about the effect incineration would have on our oh-so-wonderful (readers this is sarcasm) air quality. It was a weekend......

Torontoist thinks that we've done a good job of showing people that Torontonians throw away some pretty good stuff. Which makes us wonder why Michigan doesn't want our trash? We're practically giving the stuff away and those ungrateful Americans are actually trying to ban it. Seriously though, the threat of Michigan banning Toronto's garbage has floated over our heads for a long time but this time it's closer than ever according to this Reuters story.......

Mayor Boom Boom may have a tough time stemming the flow of guns and revitalizing the waterfront during the short life of his mandate but the one problem he could conceivably tackle, if not solve, is the trashiest of them all. As folks from Ottawa to Napanee to Michigan ('We Don't Want to be Canada's Trash Can") angrily tell the big guy to keep his garbage on site, where is Mayor Dave's plan? Leaving Republic......

Tall Poppy Interview - Davy Rothbart...

This week features a pretty packed schedule of excellent shows for your club-hopping pleasure, all no doubt hoping to take a bite out of the back-to-school entertainment budget of returning students. One of the most anticipated of which is the arrival of Sufjan Stevens and his band of Illinoisemakers, at Trinity-St Paul's Centre on Saturday September 10 with their tribute to the Prairie State. The second entry in his ambitious plan to salute all fifty......

If CUPE local outside workers threaten to strike, you lose a valuable ally in the effort to send your garbage to Michigan. But if CBC employees strike, you lose not only the sound of Andy Barrie coughing you awake in the morning, but also the opportunity to purchase a retro CBC tshirt. That is, if CBC gift shop employees are unionized. We're not actually sure. The 5,500 unionized workers are voting today on whether to......

Don’t look now, but the Toronto Raptors are only 2 games out of third place in the Eastern Conference. Currently sitting 10th, and three and a half games back of the streaking Chicago Bulls for the final playoff spot, the Raps can thank the NBA playoff structure and their abysmal Atlantic division for their opportunity at a home court playoff series. Despite how poor a record, the division leader is guaranteed a top-three seed. With......

Forget no-assembly-required toy whistles and Dinky cars: classic cereals don’t want to have fun anymore. Currently enjoying prime placement in the local Canadian grocery aisle, boxes of Special K include not only cereal from the eccentric Dr. Kellogg (whose sanitarium in Michigan made for a tepid film), but also one of three 30-minute instructional Stott Pilates DVDs by Toronto’s own stretch and tone guru Moira Merrithew (née Stott). The promotional blitz is an endless loop......

Is it possible that John Kerry's election could actually have a negative impact for Torontonians? While it certainly wouldn't be drastic enough to convince locals to wish for Mr. Bush's reelection, there is one issue dear to the Junior Massachusetts Senator's heart that could impact in an adverse manner upon our own fair city. Earlier in September, the immaculate coif that straddles Kerry's head shook and bobbed with uncharacteristic vitality as the Democratic presidential......