news
Newsstand: March 16, 2010
Illustration by Roxanne Ignatius/Torontoist.
The federal government is cutting the funds for public internet access at youth drop-ins, hospitals, and other community sites. Under new guidelines for the Community Access Program, sites within twenty-five kilometres of a public library won’t be eligible for funding—a criterion that would seem to eliminate just about every non-library CAP site in Toronto.
A TTC driver whose bus was pulled over on suspicion of drunk driving is off work without pay while the TTC conducts an investigation. Margaret Wilson also had her driver’s licence suspended for three days when she showed alcohol levels of 0.05–0.08 in a curbside breathalyzer test. The legal threshold for impaired driving is 0.08. Police stopped Wilson’s vehicle and took her aside after riders onboard called 911 and claimed that she had been driving erratically.
Are you waiting around for 504 King streetcar? Well, according to our computers, it no longer exists. Sorry! At least, that’s the what the satellite-based streetcar tracking system NextBus seems to be saying. Five of the seven streetcar lines being monitored by NextBus have been blank since Monday morning—though, oddly, MyTTC.ca still seems to be picking them up. The TTC was as surprised as anyone else to find the routes missing from NextBus and was looking into the problem yesterday.
City Hall has released a statement clarifying that Toronto will not pay for Corey Haim’s funeral after all, contrary to earlier statements Haim’s mother made to Access Hollywood. While Toronto does have a fund for funerals of extremely poor people, no application was made on Haim’s behalf. The rumour picked up strength when the city, following privacy rules that normally prohibit statements concerning applicants for funeral funds, did not issue a prompt denial.
An MPP from rural Ontario who has had it up to here with Toronto is calling for the city to split off from Ontario (except the conservative-held 905 area) and become a new province—we humbly suggest taking back the name Upper Canada. Bill Murdoch, a PC member from the Bruce-Grey-Owen-Sound riding, says that the province’s government is too Toronto-centric and leaves small-town Ontario struggling with the twin evils of overregulation and coyotes. Of course, why stop there when you could be pushing for us to leave Canada altogether? What’s wrong, Murdoch, are you losing your nerve, or do you really kind of like it in Queen’s Park?
And while we’re moving things around, how about taking a look at this bold proposal, from a Star blog, to rescue the vast boulevards on University Avenue from the four lanes of traffic hemming them in on either side. The idea is to shift the whole strip, which currently serves as Toronto’s nicest set of traffic islands, over to the sidewalk on either the left or the right side of the road, creating a huge pedestrian space for “cafés and small independent artisan-style booths.” Or, you know, maybe food carts, one of these days.