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Newsstand: October 23, 2009
Apparently the kids at Northern don’t really care all that much about the student from their school who was arrested for calling a police officer “bacon” and then charged with assault and resisting arrest. That at least is what the Post tells us, since only about one-tenth of the student body came out to protest the cops’ patrolling the school. The protest organizers went all out, though, even sending out press releases to media outlets—press releases, real ones, for a high-school protest! Sure, only 150 students came, but everyone who went is gonna start an advocacy group when they grow up (or at least vote in city elections when they’re old enough).
On the subject of controversial arrests, one generating considerably less sympathy is the alleged kidnapping of a thief by a vigilante grocer who went a little far in detaining the other man. The problem with making citizen’s arrests in Canada is that, when you see a man who shoplifted from you earlier, and you want to tie him up and lock him in a truck until police show up, the quote-unquote “law” has a problem with that. Well, David Chen and his lawyer are out to change that law, even if they have to bind and gag every single Supreme Court justice and throw them in the back of Chen’s truck to get the job done.
So, maybe you’ve lost a cell phone charger before and endured headaches and price-gouging to find a replacement. Or maybe you forgot it in another city, had it mailed to you but at the wrong address, and then when you finally got it back you were so excited that you took scissors to the package and accidentally cut through the cable. Just hypothetically. We’re not saying that happened to…this friend of ours. And hey, maybe you’d just like there to be something about cell phones in Canada that doesn’t screw you. Rejoice! Or plan to, anyway, because an international plan for a universal standard for phone chargers has just been agreed upon. Nothing is forcing phone makers to build compliant devices (though the European Union recently convinced them to do just that), but the prospect will certainly be a lot closer to reality within the next few years. Maybe you’ll have gotten out of your phone contract by then.
What if we all just wrote “fragile” on our garbage bins? That might soothe the smashed-can panic of a pair of city councillors tsking at trash collectors for, they accuse, being carelessly smashy with our costly new curb-filling muck-buckets. Councillors Howard Moscoe and Cliff Jenkins say that the treatment of our garbage cans like junk shortens the bins’ lifespan and uglifies neighbourhoods by littering sidewalks with the waste containers.
Toronto wins in a lot of categories: the CN Tower is still the tallest under an ever-narrowing definition (It’s safe to say “tallest freestanding building with under 50% usable floorspace”), and during the summer strike we were crowned Canada’s smelliest city—though we still haven’t received the medal for that one. But the CBC today is covering our latest win, which is good news for us in general but great news for a bunch of babies. As a part of World Breastfeeding Week, 372 mothers breastfed 373 infants simultaneously, more than any other city taking part in this year’s WBW. Way to go, Toronto moms and babies…especially the one woman who gave it her all.
We know we keep telling you this, Toronto, but not everything is a car bomb.
Hey! The Vancouver Sun is collecting Maple Leafs jokes from readers! And some of them are actually kind of funny (if unintentionally so). Pretty smug, considering their glorious Stanley Cup record.
It’s not exactly local news, but have you heard about the Balloon Boy Halloween costume they’re making in Saskatoon? Watch the shelves, and the skies. Happy thoughts, Toronto, to pick you up and carry you to the weekend.