news
Newsstand: January 18, 2010
Illustration by Roxanne Ignatius/Torontoist.
A few months back, we polled you on airport body scanners that let agents stare through your clothes, a development that brings flight security just one step shy of literally annoying the pants off you. The results we got were fairly close, but in the wake of the underwear bombing, it now seems that a landslide majority of Canadians think the scanners are just great! Good thing, too, because forty-four of the devices are slated to be installed nationwide. Minors won’t be put through the machines, but don’t go nuts over that exemption—the alternative option is an old-fashioned pat-down.
On the subject of things that will never have any effect on your safety, a set of “extremely realistic props” drew a bomb squad to the dumpsters of a Burlington apartment building and triggered a partial evacuation of the building. No charges were laid in the matter. The props were used in bomb-response training programs that teach local businesses how to react if they suddenly find themselves trapped in a season of 24.
Yesterday afternoon near the collector’s booth in Dufferin station, a man was stabbed in the neck by an attacker who got away. The victim was taken to hospital, and at press time his condition is not known and police have not made any arrests. Subway trains skipped the Dufferin platform in the immediate aftermath of the attack, but were back to their normal route by 5:45 p.m.
You’ve probably heard the old saying that journalists get to write the first draft of history. Not bad, for a rule of thumb, but it doesn’t say much about the staggering amount of revision and bickering that goes into negotiating the final document. Then again, this grousing list of the major edits wrought by a panel of twenty-six expert Canadians on Canada’s citizenship guide was compiled by reporters, so maybe these things come back full circle. In case you’re wondering what parts of Canadian history are considered too outrageous for the government to print, they range from the names of our astronauts (sorry, Payette) to the role of the church in the residential school system (despite their own apology). On the plus side, George-Etienne Cartier got an unexpected upgrade from “rebel” to “reformer.” And about time.
Now, speaking of parts of our distant heritage that have been hacked to pieces and reassembled, who knew that the Maid of the Mist boats in Niagara Falls were built near the top of the falls, chopped up, lowered into the basin, and then patched back together? That’s a tough act to follow—or so the ferry’s operator is hoping. The Maid of the Mist’s Steamboat Company’s contract to run the iconic tour is in danger of being nabbed by a competitor in a round of provincially ordered opening bidding. They say that, should they lose their contract, the new guys won’t be allowed to use their boats, period.