news
A Thousand Shining Pamphlets Waiting Just To Rain Down On You
As you may have read, Blue Rodeo played a series of free concerts around the city yesterday. As you also may have read, there’s a provincial election going on. Reader Matt Kim sent us the following story of a rather odd intersection of the two:
Me and some of my co-workers left early today to see Blue Rodeo, who were playing various spots around Toronto, promoting their new album. By the time we’d arrived, a sizeable crowd had convened on the patio of the Black Bull, and a couple of stragglers and curious passers-by milled about its perimeter.
We were talking with Jim Cuddy when we were distracted by a disturbance nearby. A patron and an elderly woman with Liberal pamphlets were in some sort of unpleasant exchange. I came in at the middle of it, but what I did see was her attempting to strike the man on the head (he was sitting) with the pamphlets. She then moved closer to where we were standing, continuing her now verbal battle.
While she was hurling invectives, her bike fell. I leaned over to pick it up, only to have her then curse at me. Jim Cuddy, observing that the pamphlets were for George Smitherman, remarked that she was doing him no favours; she then got very hostile with him, eventually spitting at him before riding away.
Anyway, I’m pretty sure someone got pictures of the whole thing. Just wondering if you could put out a general call because me and my co-workers would like to see them (I imagine some other people would too). The photographer was there, I’m assuming, to cover the show. He definitely got one.
Fun Fact #1: The Black Bull is at located at Queen and Soho, in the electoral district of Trinity-Spadina. Minister of Health George Smitherman is the incumbent in Toronto Centre, one district over, on the other side of Yonge Street. In other words, on top of everything else, this woman was campaigning in the wrong riding.
Fun Fact #2: Jim Cuddy’s older brother, Loftus Cuddy, ran as the Conservative candidate for Toronto-Danforth in the 2004 federal election. Jim, disagreeing with the Conservatives’ politics, refused to endorse his brother, who finished third with just over 6% of the vote.
But back to Matt’s question: Does anyone out there have photos of this incident? We’d all love to see them. Upload them to the Torontoist Flickr pool and/or send an email to [email protected].
Photo of the Black Bull patio by tbridge on Flickr.