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Newsstand: December 14, 2009
Oh, hey, Downtown Toronto. We’re heading out early—Could you remember to turn the lights off and lock up before we all head out to Vaughan for the day? You know, since we’re a dull “bedroom community,” according to the developing George Smitherman campaign. Is that label just part of Smitherman’s attempt to define himself against a growing field of left-wing mayoral hopefuls? Surely we can’t really have dried out into a bleak workers’ hive, right? Even the phrase “bedroom community” is so inescapably bland, Urban Dictionary itself can only shrug. Until Smitherman starts campaigning in earnest, we’re stuck speculating as to his vision of Toronto’s future. Maybe we can develop into a vibrant kitchen enclave. Or a whimsical veranda colony. Or anything, as long as there are treehouses.
Just for today, though, we vote to stay cozily in bed, swaddled in warm blankets with the heat cranked up. You see, we’re still trying to get over the chill from yesterday’s polar bear swim. Not from the frigid lake water, of course. We’d like to think we’re made of tougher stuff than that. No, it was the vaguely Bond-Villain monologue delivered at the event, by none other than Smitherman himself. Acting as a “celebrity swim marshall” (something we hope will also find its way into his campaign platform), he let CP24 in on his plan to, in their words, give Ontario’s polar bears “all the ice they need not just to survive but to thrive.” Yes, and then we shall move on to Phase Two!
The Star has the city’s finest fuming over its exposé on how off-duty cops make a lot of extra money from private companies, who hire them through the police department to work security-type jobs in uniform. Since the original article came out last week, Police Chief Bill Blair has called the story “nonsense,” and said that paid duty puts roughly 180 police officers on the streets, working for the public at the expense of private corporations. Ah-ha! So it’s all a clever scheme to trick big business into giving back to the community, is that it? Geez, why is Bill so miffed over a few harmless comments by the free press? “Overpaid flagmen,” “cops as props,” and an aside about how one officer on paid duty barked a muffled non-answer at a reporter “through a mouthful of breakfast sandwich” are just some of the article’s good-natured barbs! Not unlike how Mike McCormack, the new head of the police union, wrote in to suggest the Star’s editors be replaced with monkeys. All in good time, Mike.
Attention, hockey fans: A prominent neurosurgeon says that Don Cherry is probably causing brain damage (insert witty joke about his suits here). No, seriously though, we had no idea head injuries were contagious, but according to one Dr. Charles Tator, Cherry is at least partially to blame for many of the hockey-related injuries that send kids to Tator’s brain-doctorin’ office every week. The CBC, not about to let Tator dish out abuse to the man they call “the most famous television personality in Canada,” countered by saying that “everyone” knows Cherry is an advocate of on-ice safety and that whiners like Tator must be spreading baseless complaints that are “misguided and a short-sighted misrepresentation of the facts.” Now that’s a dirty hit if I ever saw one. Rock ’em and sock ’em, Toronto, now let’s cue up the theme music and hit the ice, er, slush. That’s just as good!