news
Newsstand: January 20, 2010
Illustration by Roxanne Ignatius/Torontoist.
As you may have heard, Canadian folk music icon Kate McGarrigle, one-half of the legendary McGarrigle Sisters, has died after battling a rare form of cancer for three and a half years. The Montreal native was the mother of singers Rufus and Martha Wainwright. In addition to her musical and family legacy, McGarrigle leaves behind a fund for the research of rare cancers. She was sixty-three years old.
Many Torontonians are pained for an additional reason today, with the announcement that Citytv has laid-off sixty employees as part of the company’s ongoing “restructuring” under Rogers. Citytv’s stations were acquired by Rogers after the CRTC, fearful of media consolidation, ordered CTVglobemedia to divest itself of some of its stations. As we and others have reported, the flagship programs Breakfast Television, CityLine, and the CityNews broadcasts will stay on the air in Toronto, albeit with some familiar faces conspicuously absent.
Since nobody has ever been frustrated by airlines’ customer service, we’re sure you’re wondering why the TTC doesn’t parachute in one of their reps to help with its customer-relations image problem. Relax: Chair Adam Giambrone is way ahead of you. He’s suggested that at least one seasoned airline rep could help bring a valuable “fresh perspective” to a new committee tasked with improving (in his words) “the attitude and behaviour of some of our employees.” Who’s looking forward to having to take off our shoes and turn our laptops on and off before getting waved through the turnstile?
On a related note, only a couple of weeks after the government was forced to remind overzealous security agents that it’s legal for air passengers to carry books into the U.S., we’re now being told that, as you might expect, it’s also okay to take a carry-on bag. After the attempted underwear-bombing on December 25, Canadians were hit with an ungenerous carry-on limit of zero items, an emergency move meant to combat terror, or tourism, or neck pillows, or something. Fortunately, Transport Minister John Baird has bumped us up to Economy Class and given back our carry-on, effective today.
Brace yourself, we’ve got some shocking news. According to a sure-to-shock headline in the Sun, “Pot tempts teens!” And that’s not all! The piece is really about a recent study which found that drinking and taking drugs can lead to sexual activity by high school–aged kids. Despite the study’s shaky grasp of how statistics works, we’re sure we can take it at face value—it did, after all, come straight from the top minds at the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada. Among the report’s other findings: Jesus and man-woman marriage both cause increased unicorn activity in heaven!
A junior-high teacher at Joseph Howe Senior Public School in Scarborough is under arrest, facing charges of sexual assault and exploitation over an alleged relationship with a child she used to teach. Police haven’t revealed how old the minor is, or any other details, except that it has been “more than a year” since the accused taught the child. Mary Gowan, 40, has been placed on home assignment (basically a paid leave).
Weirdly enough, there’s some good news out today, too: the past year has been a fantastic time for the Toronto Public Library! First, you elected them official superheroes, and now they’ve just reported their busiest year ever, with over thirty-one million items borrowed. The Globe, for one, thinks this is a fine time to step back and look at what the TPL has achieved. For one thing, after 126 years, it’s finally reached drinking age. Which should help us deal with the rest of today’s breaking stories while we keep up with our reading.
This article originally suggested that Kate McGarrigle had written “Heart Like a Wheel”; in fact, it was Anne, the other half of the McGarrigle sisters, who did.