Results tagged “torontopublichealth”

They were greeted with less fanfare than the initial four, but nevertheless almost all of the remaining Toronto a la Cart street food vendors are now open for business—just in time for summer (and, sadly, the garbage strike). Torontoist hunted high and low, tracking down the new proprietors—and reconnecting with some old ones—to see how everyone is faring one month into the pilot project. What some of these business owners had to tell us about the program turned out to be slightly more bitter than sweet.

At long last, four of the eight food vendors who survived the City's rigorous multi-stage selection process for the pilot "Toronto a la Cart" project took to the streets on Victoria Day. Torontoist had the pleasure of visiting with all four proprietors who graciously spoke with us about their new businesses—even while in the middle of frantically setting up their stations for the very first time.

Anyone who’s read a newspaper or magazine in the last few months can verify: recession chic is the new black. The only thing more irritating than regularly seeing a decline in the figures on your RRSP statement, though, is the spate of sanctimonious and insulting articles on frugal living being churned out in economy-sized quantities in almost every Canadian publication. Every journalist around seems eager to strike the pose of the poverty-stricken: Eye’s Kate Carraway bravely survived on $60 for a whole week. Macleans’ Chris Johns and his girlfriend cut their food budget from $300 a week (!) to a meagre $50 (with recipes courtesy of "some of the country’s best chefs" that spawned a collection of $5 recipes designed to feed families of four, flying directly in the face of Agriculture and Agrifood Canada’s "nutritious food basket" which costs at least $137 a week for a family of four).

Many are up in arms over the anonymous, dramatic posters about Laila being plastered on hydro poles and mailboxes, even in neighbourhoods far away from the actual restaurant on Bloor Street West. Each and every one reads:

LAILA'S KILLS

Continue reading "Laila, Darling, Won't You Ease My Worried Mind?"

ART: Still looking for the perfect picture to fit into that eight-by-eight inch frame you got last Christmas? Head on down to the opening of the Love Show and pick up one of the many eight-by-eight inch pieces of art on sale, starting at $100. Proceeds go to a selection of youth outreach programs, so you can feel morally cleansed after making that crass joke about "something else eight-by-eight inches" that we've tastefully declined to print here, you filthy animals. Gallery 1313 (1313 Queen Street West), Opens tonight at 7 p.m. and runs until November 9, FREE.

Get little Timmy and Cindy-Lou on the horn, stat! Health Canada has contradicted last week's warnings from Toronto Public Health that children should reduce cell phone use, saying that the science doesn't support the conclusion that your kids' brains will mangled and cancerfied by cell phone heat and radiation. Well, except for this study. And this one. Oh, and these ones.

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 furniture pick-up system similar to the one used in Cincinnati, where city employees collect infested furniture if it's covered in plastic. And it looks like Fletcher's getting somewhere because an "expert panel discussion" is being held tonight at the WoodGreen Community Centre.

First the OPP, and now the Toronto Public Health department—everyone's getting Facebook! A few weeks ago, a woman went to the Toronto Wildlife Centre to drop off a bat that (unbeknownst to her) was infested with rabies. The health department wanted to warn her, so they tried all their top-secret official government methods of tracking people down (apparently consisting of the "telephone book" and "Google") but nothing panned out. So they did what any reasonable person would do and turned to Facebook (though they had to get special permission to use it, thanks to Gerry Phillips). They quickly found her.

Toronto has an unusual problem: too many mayors' offices. After the dying years of the last century saw Metro's five cities and one borough reduced into a single bureaucratic mess, the city was left with the prickly issue of what to do with the palatial digs of Alan Tonks and six mayors left sitting barren in the far-flung civic centres and City Halls throughout the megacity (which, when pronounced with the proper cynical inflection, rhymes with mendacity).

Although numerous studies link good health and good teeth, dentistry is not yet covered by OHIP (unless it requires dental surgery that takes place in a hospital). Rumours abound about places in the GTA that offer inexpensive and even free dentistry. It turns out that these inexpensive dental options actually exist—and Torontoist has looked them up for you.

It seems to us that everybody we know has been under the weather lately. So we called Dr. Herveen Sachdeva, Associate Medical Officer of Health for Toronto Public Health to find out what diseases are out there and how we can avoid them.

Happy December Torontoist readers!

You can play for Toronto FC next year. They are holding open tryouts at the end of December as long as you're willing to pony up $115. And if you don't make it, you also get a T-shirt and two free tickets to a game in their first season.

We know those nights are getting longer and colder and it's only natural that some of us will go out on Friday night looking for that special someone right now to warm up those frigid fall nights but we thought we'd point out these little health notes from the people at Toronto Public Health.

The OPP report that 800 traffic tickets were given out on this province's busy highways. The worst offenders included a woman not wearing a seatbelt to be able to play with her chihuahua, and a driver in his underwear holding a bottle of vodka.