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Newsstand: February 5, 2010
Illustration by Roxanne Ignatius/Torontoist.
Despite busting out her savviest political moves, such as attacking a popular opponent as a fake Torontonian and using airtime on CBC to speculate on the gayness [Video] of a federal cabinet minister (as you might recall from here), PC candidate Pamela Taylor still got trampled in the race to fill George Smitherman’s old seat in Ontario parliament. The win went to Glen Murray by a landslide, maintaining the Liberals’ control of a riding they’ve dominated for over a decade. No big surprise, but still a very good night for that party.
A gas explosion at Caplansky’s Delicatessen yesterday sent a singed technician fleeing the scene after a fireball erupted in the popular smoked meatery’s kitchen. The man was replacing a deep-fryer when natural gas in the room ignited, though he had reportedly shut off the pipe before starting work. The deli had to be closed for the day and was stuck with some hefty additional bills, and the technician’s boss seems to have gotten himself arrested for obstruction after showing up and trying to impersonate his employee.
Don’t listen to the hordes of YouTube commenters who can’t wrap their mind around Ontario’s milk-bagging ways. Plastic jugs are nothing but a compromise for the faint of heart. Storing milk in a bag is a clever, civilized, and, if you think about it, kind of obvious thing to do. And we like it just fine.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper found time during his well-earned break to sit down with some political journal called Sports Illustrated and discuss Canadian interests. Specifically, Canadian interest in hockey, which is fun to discuss, unlike not-fun things, such as the Afghan detainee inquiry. Hearing people talk about that is practically torture. Harper knows that politics bore regular Canadians to sleep, and sleeping people don’t vote. Killer strategy like that is how he got to be the king of Canada.
The National Post put on its New Media hat and live-blogged a bus driver’s coffee run. According to the Post, the TTC driver parked his in-service vehicle across both a carpool lane and a bike lane for at least nine minutes, leaving the doors open with a passenger inside. The driver, when he returned from Timmies, responded to having his picture taken by whipping out his cell phone and snapping a few retaliatory shots of the reporter, who naturally took a picture of that. For all we know, the two of them are still there.
Yesterday, we told you about a suspected arson that destroyed the Mississauga office of a Conservative MP and forced employees trapped in the multi-storey building to barricade themselves in to keep heavy smoke at bay. In a quick update to that case, you can now cross out the word “suspected.” Only minor injuries were reported.
Councillor “Beware of” Doug Holyday (Ward 3, Etobicoke Centre) was right in his element yesterday, demanding “firm and swift” justice for municipal employees and contractors whose fraudulent or abusive expenses sucked almost $600,000 from city revenues this year. That sounds steep, but it’s nothing compared to the $103 million in unpaid parking tickets on Toronto’s books. We can’t imagine what Holyday would do to those offenders.
The murder trial of two men accused of shooting fifteen-year-old Jordan Manners dead in the stairwell of a Toronto high school has just heard from one of Manners’ former teachers. Tracey Galbraith was among the last people who saw Manners before he was fatally shot in the chest. Galbraith testified about seeing one of the accused, seventeen at the time, standing in the hallways with some youths she didn’t recognize a few minutes before Manners was killed.
And finally, a fifty-year-old woman is the latest pedestrian victim of a traffic collision. Her name and condition aren’t currently known. She was struck by a vehicle yesterday at Jane and Sheppard.