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Newsstand: January 27, 2010
Illustration by Roxanne Ignatius/Torontoist.
The death of thirty-eight-year-old Juliette Robinson on Monday brought the total number of pedestrian deaths due to road accidents in the GTA to fourteen, an unprecedented number less than a month into the new year. The Toronto Star has mapped out the locations of the deaths, including eight in the central Toronto area alone. Many reasons have been proposed for the spike in deaths, from media coverage to weather conditions, all of which will be debated by City Council on Wednesday. One option, says Councillor Bill Saundercook (Ward 13, Parkdale-High Park), the head of Toronto’s Pedestrian Committee, is to lower speed limits in each ward’s problem streets.
Toronto Police Services is doing its own part to curb pedestrian deaths this morning. Starting at 9 a.m., officers will be stationed at the intersection of Bay and Front streets to educate passersby, and any errant jaywalkers, on street safety. At 10:30 a.m. in front of Union Station’s clock tower, Superintendent Earl Witty of Traffic Services will hold a press conference on TPS’s plans to improve traffic-safety initiatives.
Media exec Sarah Thomson has entered Toronto’s Gentlemen’s Club mayoralty race! She’s the only female candidate so far, joining Deputy Premier George Smitherman, Deputy Mayor Joe Pantalone (Ward 19, Trinity-Spadina), ex-Liberal Party director Rocco Rossi, and Councillor Giorgio Mamolitti (Ward 7, York West). TTC Chair Adam Giambrone (Ward 18, Davenport) is expected to announce his candidacy on February 1. Torontoist’s Emily Shepard was at Thomson’s campaign launch last night, with her own opinions on the newest addition to the race.
While Thomson is just beginning her run, one of Toronto’s marathons will soon be ending its own. City staff is suggesting there be only one marathon next year, putting Toronto’s two fall runs in a race for the grand prize. Right now the Goodlife Fitness Marathon and the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon are just three weeks apart, and neither will voluntarily move to a spring date. Toronto Transportation services suggests each run submit a proposal to the City—with the winning marathon receiving a five-year contract (when the Pan Am Games will have its own). This is also in the hopes of having one super-hyped marathon that will put us on par with the famous races in New York and Boston.
The home of the founder of Maclean’s was saved from destruction Tuesday, when it was designated a heritage property by Toronto City Council. The beloved landmark’s current owner, an Ontario numbered company that made two applications to demolish the mansion in the Casa Loma neighbourhood, must stop all planned alterations to its architectural features. The house was designed in 1910 for John Maclean by John Lyle, the architect of the Royal Alexandria and Union Station. But the company still has thirty days to contest the decision.
If all the world’s a stage and we are merely players, then Tennessee parents must be the hecklers. The director of a Toronto production of Romeo and Juliet, which was performed in front of one thousand students and teachers in Nashville on Monday, wasn’t the only one giving out notes after their dress rehearsal. A group of the teens’ parents who found the Bard too bawdy requested the show “tone down” risqué hand gestures and sexual insinuations. Toronto’s Classical Theatre Project has performed this Dora Award–nominated production in front of an audience of one hundred thousand in Canada, with nary a wagging finger. Did we mention that another school in Southern California has banned the Merriam-Webster dictionary because a parent complained that it included the term “oral sex”? Rom and Juls didn’t stand a chance.
And meet Fredericton Liberal T.J. Burke, who got his fifteen minutes of fame for attacking his Conservative opponent rap-style. Who says Canadian politicians are old and stuffy? Check that beat, yo!
This article originally said that Maclean House “is now used as an event and wedding venue”—in fact, that’s McLean House at the Estates of Sunnybrook, not the Maclean House saved from demolition on Tuesday.