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Newsstand: May 20, 2010
lllustration by Clayton Hanmer/Torontoist.
You can have the CN Tower back when Ottawa is sure you won’t do anything to embarrass them. Like the neighbouring Skydome, the tower will be ceasing normal operations during the G20 summit—although, why a lousy summit should overrule the tallest tower in the world is beyond us.
For the first time in seven years, the city has denied a permit to Pedestrian Sundays in Kensington Market, also over G20 security fears. Event organizer Yvonne Bambrick, also of the Toronto Cyclist’s Union, took the refusal in stride, but said that the people would gather there with or without a road closure permit, regardless of security concerns.
And, on one last summit tangent, Malawi, which joins Ethiopia, the Netherlands, and Spain to attend the Toronto G20 as Canada’s collective plus-one, just sentenced two men to fourteen years with hard labour for getting engaged.
Rocco Rossi has claimed he will create 250,000 jobs over the next four years for Toronto’s growing population. He didn’t explain what formula he may have used to reach that figure, but he did outline the six ways he thinks he can achieve it. Those are: consolidating and centralizing various economic growth agencies, partnering with U of T, expanding or renaming Invest Toronto to Invest GTA, promoting Toronto financial institutions, encouraging construction, and lowering regulation on small businesses.
If you want a glimpse of the TTC’s lost Lower Bay station, and from aboard a real moving train, no less, then this weekend is your chance. The transit commission explained yesterday that it will divert subways to Museum station by routing the trains through the “ghost” subway station, which was closed in 1966 after just six months of operation, due to lack of use. Be careful, though: during the three-day route change, the same platform at Museum will be servicing both northbound and westbound trains, so you might have to double-check that you’re not getting on the wrong one.
News outlets across the city got a free gift yesterday, when the opening of Toronto’s first automated pay toilet gave them temporary permission to print whatever bathroom jokes they wanted. We’re pretty sure there’s a little more to the story…maybe if you checked back here later today?
Toronto’s proposed amalgamated zoning bylaw may be discriminatory, and even run afoul of the Ontario Human Right’s Commission, because it stipulates a minimum distance between group homes and other residences for people in need of shared, supportive housing due to their “emotional, mental, social or physical condition or legal status.” The bylaw would require group homes to be separated from one another by no less than 250 metres, because no one wants two of them in the neighborhood, apparently. The bylaw is intended to unify hundreds of disparate regulations inherited by the city during amalgamation in 1998.
Canadians have told a World Wildlife Fund poll that they would rather give up sex, coffee, and cellphones than driving. Before you pack your bags and head elsewhere, though, consider that while ninety-nine percent of respondents said they’d rather give up something else and keep driving, only one percent chose sex, and fourteen percent chose coffee—as if they could follow through with that plan.
And finally, the Toronto Board of Trade has mentioned using road tolls to fund transit expansion. The idea was put on the map by mayoral candidate Sarah Thomson, whose admittedly starry-eyed notion was to build a gigantic subway system on a fast timeline. Road tolls were among sixteen ideas included in the report, along with gas taxes and transit fares, that reflect the full, unsubsidized cost of a ride on the TTC [PDF].