Results tagged “torontosun”

When voters go to the ballot box in St. Paul’s on Thursday their choices will include the latest in a long line of Toronto Sun columnists who have attempted to parlay their print personas into elected office, usually for parties that have matched the paper’s right-wing tilt.

Eye just beat us to it, but the unfortunate juxtaposition on today's Toronto Sun cover—a huge ad of a shocked-looking Bruno beside the Sun's usual blood and gore headline, this time about a "City councillor's ex-lover" found murdered—is, well, too unfortunate not to post.

On the same night that their magazine counterparts were feeding on a chocolate fountain at the Carlu, the scrappy newspapermen and women of Toronto's major dailies were knocking back bottles of Molson and rocking out at the Opera House: Newzapalooza V, the city's fifth annual Battle of the Media Bands, went down last Friday, raising close to eight thousand dollars for the Children's Aid Foundation. And far from strumming as Rome burns, the event served—intentionally or not—as a defiant celebration of the romantically proletarian spirit that somehow still manages to underpin the culture of the broadsheets.

Did you know that boner means more than one thing? It's true! According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it can be both "a mistake, a blunder" or—the usage that has become far more common over the past few decades—"An erection of the penis" (or, figuratively, "a strong attraction to or state of excitement about something specified"). Did you also know that the latter half of Adam Giambrone's last name sounds sorta like "boner"? And that he made a pretty big mistake recently? And that, because the Sun has a boner for embarrassingly bad headlines, that the photo above is of the actual cover of today's paper?

One day—one day—there's a chance Torontoist will make an error so embarrassing that it will give the media outlets we have intermittently mocked the chance to revel in our embarrassment.

Toronto residents, take heart: crime in your city is less severe than you have been led to believe. That's the word from Statistics Canada, which yesterday released the first edition of the Police-Reported Crime Severity Index, a new ranking created at the request of the police community that takes into account both the volume and seriousness of criminal acts. According to the index, police-reported crime across Canada declined in severity between 1998 and 2007, the last year for which data is available. The index also pegs Toronto as the metropolitan area with the lowest crime severity, well below the national average and that of other major cities such as Montreal and Vancouver.

Every single one of the 107,000 copies of Now Magazine published each week is read by (on average) three different people. Sure, PMB, whatever you say. Perhaps that's not surprising when your annual studies—used to determine readership numbers and thus a year's worth of ad rates—are based largely on how recognizable a publication's logo is [PDF].

Subtlety is not something that the Toronto Sun does particularly well, so it's only fitting that a blog devoted to ruthlessly criticizing them on a day-to-day basis is called, well, Toronto Sun Sucks.

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).

To err is human. To point out the erring may not be divine, but somebody's got to do it.

Toronto gave scramble intersections their first shot on city streets in more than fifty years, as one launched yesterday at Yonge and Dundas. NOW had a video of it yesterday, Spacing's Wire will have a timelapse video shot by Sam Javanrouh later today (here's a preview), and we might have something extra-special on Torontoist this weekend. Never has legally crossing a street been so exciting.

Photo by David Topping.

Well, it's a slight improvement over "LIES." Someone has been placing homemade warning labels on newspaper boxes—only Toronto Sun newspaper boxes, as far as we know—that caution: "Contents may cause ignorance, cynicism, and distrust in public institutions. Repeated exposure may impair intellect." The stuck-on Sun box pictured above was spotted by Ron Miyanishi around Jones and Danforth.

If you're reading this and it's between the hours of 7-9:30pm EST, do yourself a favour and tune into Hockey Night in Canada. You might be witnessing the end of an era in Toronto sports.

Photo by Joe Lee (London, via Londonist).

Hey! Torontoist just got ripped off by The Sun.

City Council is going to be crazy today. We highly recommend you watch. (Click here for the online feed.) The chambers are going to be packed to capacity, with the overflow relegated to watching the proceedings on the screen in the rotunda. This does not happen often. It will be loud. It will be hectic. It will be exciting.

The debate between mixed-member representation and first-past-the-post representation has been a spirited one, assuming that you're one of the twelve percent of the public who knows what the hell that first half of the sentence just meant there. Friday night at the MaRS Centre, the Centre for the Study of Democracy held a debate, with Andrew Coyne of the National Post and former NDP cabinet member Marilyn Churley arguing for MMP, and Christina Blizzard of the Toronto Sun and former PC attorney-general Mike Hernick arguing for the FTFP system.

Photo by Little Dragon.

You've probably heard by now that Ontarians will be asked to cast a second ballot on election day. That is, unless you're among the 47% of Ontarians who, according to a recent poll, are completely unaware of the upcoming referendum question on whether to replace the existing first-past-the-post (FPTP) electoral system with a proposed mixed-member proportional (MMP) system. Whether this is the first you've heard about it—which seems unlikely since Torontoist has mentioned it numerous times—or you've been doggedly campaigning on the issue for months, here's an event that'll pique your interest.

Right now, if you turn on your TV to channels 2, 3, 6, 8, 15, 24, 62, or 104 (presuming you have cable), you will see the leaders of the provincial political parties having at each other. Or, more accurately, you will see Dalton McGuinty, John Tory, and Howard Hampton having at each other. You will not see Green Party of Ontario leader Frank de Jong having at anyone.

Thousands of people came from far and wide to Dundas Square this weekend in an attempt to nab a spot on Canadian Idol.

It was one of the wildest final weekends in NHL history. The Toronto Maple Leafs delivered a knockout blow to the Montreal Canadiens in one of the most electric matches in recent memory, only to have the New York Islanders break our hearts and take the final playoff spot in a shootout against the New Jersey Devils the following day.

Recently, the Toronto Sun reported that over 500 pit bulls have been killed since the breed was banned sixteen months ago. With temperatures in Toronto well below freezing, those still lucky enough to be alive are suffering due to their salt-ridden and frozen paws, unable to lick them because of the muzzles on their faces.

A body that was discovered in 1968 north of Toronto has been identified as a 17-year-old New Brunswick teen. Richard Hovey moved here to take part in Toronto's thriving counterculture scene but sadly met a tragic end.

Torontoist realizes that in some cases there's no point adding another concert review to the pile. But since we love concerts and our over-educated minds can't turn off their on-going critical evaluations, we present a review of the reviews. This post: last night's Bob Dylan concert at the Air Canada Centre.

The City is paying over $28 million to make sure we get bigger recycling bins. The plan is to make recycling easier for Torontonians. We think the Sun's headline spells it out best "Recycling now 4 times the fun." Who could hate that?

City election officials are having a hard time figuring out whether lots of people on the voting list are actually eligible to vote. This may have a direct affect on municipal campaign financing.

Turns out that the union was actually ready to walkout again yesterday. Fortunately a few last minute desperate phone calls prevented what would've been a disastrous second wildcat strike in as many weeks. The TTC and the union are still in intense negotiations. Hopefully they can avoid any future job actions.