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Populist: April 21–27
We publish a lot of articles on Torontoist, and sometimes it’s hard to keep up. Populist is a weekly recap, appearing every Sunday night, that features some of the coolest, most interesting, most commented, and most recommended posts from our past week.
- The big news—and the big surprise—this week was the TTC union’s midnight strike on Friday, with only one hour of official warning. Torontoist provided continual coverage throughout the weekend in our strike status post, beginning just before 10:30 p.m. on Friday night of the strike (this week’s most commented-on post). Elsewhere in our strike coverage, Jonathan Goldsbie caught some early-morning graffiti on the walls of Spadina station and spotted a too-perfect coincidence in the Post; and Kevin Bracken suggested some do-it-yourself transit alternatives.
- Miles Storey chronicled the voyage of Streets Are For People’s petition car in the Reclaim Earth Day parade, and Todd Aalgaard and David Topping followed up when the car was delivered to Queen’s Park (and, defeated, back to Kensington Market).
- Patrick Metzger discovered an abandoned house’s pleas for help.
- Cate Simpson and John Beebe interviewed Julie Petruzzellis and Stacey Hannah, two female firefighters, in a series of posts called Women in the Hot Seat (this week’s most-recommended posts).
- Jonathan Goldsbie wrote about Toronto’s anachronistic police force. And really, if there’s any bad word to call cops, it’s “anachronistic”; they hate it when you imply that they’re temporally inharmonious.
- Ashley Carter wrote about an airport dude, who seems pretty chill as far as airport dudes go.
- Karen Whaley and Miles Storey checked out a sort-of disappointing shrunken ship—and elaborate media launch—in the Don.
- David Topping polled readers to determine what OCAD’s new name should be. Currently in the lead: OCAD!
- Stephen Johns wrote about the Jays’ decision to drop Frank Thomas. Could this be the year that the Jays win that thing that’s like a Stanley Cup, but for baseball?
- Readers’ favourite photo of the past week (by recommends) was Wednesday’s photo of a historic room at Fort York, by missyv110.
- In columns this week, John Beebe launched Lights, Camera, Spin, a new photo feature looking at the city’s laundromats, with Laundry Lounge. There were also new editions of Historicist (Palmerston Boulevard), Vintage Toronto Ads (bread), Reel Toronto (Strange Brew), Snappy Answers (workin’ on your fitness), Vandalist (hospital wait times), Portrait Project (arrivals and departures), and Illustration Sunday (the vanishing TTC).
You can keep track of our most popular posts by checking out Favourites, or browse past Populist posts by visiting its tag.