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Newsstand: March 1, 2010
The results are in and Canada won the Olympics! Sid Crosby shut down Toronto yesterday with his gold-winning overtime goal. We showed you a gallery of shots of mayhem, glee, and snow art in Toronto before, during, and after The Hockeying, and we called a foul on Jack Layton for apparently shoving a woman’s arm out of his way so he could smile directly at the CTV crowd-cam down at Gretzky’s.
In the wake of all this fun, we assume that the IOC will force all of Toronto to give a grovelling apology for its unseemly celebration—at least the ladies (yes, we’re reaching back to last Friday, but, then, Jacques Rogge is still all the way back in the fifties).
Oh yeah, and Obama owes us some beer.
So there’s your awesome stuff up front. But what about people who like feeling badly about the world? Read on and we’ll tell you about three young men who held up a liquor shop bank house corner store TTC ticket collector’s booth. We predict great things ahead for these up-and-coming violence entrepreneurs, one of whom tried to get away on the subway—oh, how we hope he was using a stolen metropass—and was arrested almost instantly. The two other armed suspects escaped on foot. Police will probably catch them soon.
As well as wanting that woman to please move her arm already, Jack Layton would also like the prime minister to lose the ability to call for a prorogue of parliament. The Sun seems a little confused on the PM’s role, though. Harper probably wouldn’t even prorogue his own dinner without first calling the governor general. She, of course, is the one with the undemocratic power in this situation, since her position as the monarch’s representative is, on some level, the near-opposite of democracy (on the downside, she also has to give cheesy book awards and eat any leftover seal hearts in the country). Maybe what Layton had in mind is what this U of T professor is suggesting: get parliament, and not just the PM, formally involved in prorogation requests.
While we’re talking about democracy…wow, razor wire and helicopters on Lower Simcoe Street, you say? This G20 thing is starting to sound like a big deal. The Integrated Security Unit hasn’t yet said how large a perimeter they’ll secure around the Metro Convention Centre for the June 26–27 meetings, but Councillor Adam Vaughn (Ward 20, Trinity-Spadina), who represents that part of the city, said he has a “sense” that security zones could reach as far as the Gardiner. At last year’s summit in Pittsburgh, “residents living within the perimeter had to undergo background checks, show ID and pass through metal detectors.”
Anyway, if we need a distraction from all this anxiety, at least TV should be back to normal now that the Games are over…oh, wait.