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Newsstand: May 25, 2010
Illustration by Clayton Hanmer/Torontoist.
AAAAAAAGGGGHHHHH!!!!! THE EARTH IS FALLING INTO THE SUN!!!! Just kidding, but it is pretty warm out there and you should know that Toronto’s medical officer of health has issued a heat alert, which started yesterday and will continue until it’s not so hot anymore. Things to do: stay inside as much as possible during peak sunshine hours, stay hydrated. Things to avoid: frying eggs on the sidewalk, staring straight into the sun and saying, “Why is that thing so damn hot?”
Higher education is the latest casualty of the G20 summit, with University of Toronto announcing that its downtown campus will be off-limits to staff and students during the summit period, from Thursday, June 24 through Sunday, June 27. Officials made the decision after the protest area was moved to Queen’s Park from Trinity Bellwoods Park. While no classes are planned for the affected days, scheduled exams will be moved. Think of it as a snow day, only with politicians instead of snow and a huge police presence instead of fun.
Toronto police are working with their Montreal counterparts in the case of the body pulled out of Lake Ontario encased in concrete, fuelling speculation that the remains may be those of prominent Montreal Mafioso Paolo Renda, who disappeared last Thursday. Suicide has been ruled out as a cause of death.
Prime Minister Harper is getting flak from the opposition over a new government policy that forbids political staffers from answering questions before parliamentary committees. The government says that only ministers will be allowed to act as witnesses, as they are the ones ultimately accountable for actions taken by their departments. The PM’s director of communications, Dimitri Soudas, explained his expected absence at a meeting of the House of Commons access to information, privacy and ethics committee: “Witnesses have appeared at this committee, political staff. They have been intimidated, they’ve been humiliated.” A possible compromise would see the staffers permitted to bring their moms with them to committee.
In what will almost certainly prove a Pyrrhic victory, noted trencherman Pat “Deep Dish” Bertoletti of Chicago inhaled a cool thirteen pounds of poutine to win the World Poutine-Eating Competition held outside BMO Field on Saturday. But professional eating isn’t all gluttony and bad table manners—when Bertoletti dies (which, let’s face it, could be any minute), his body will be donated to a Chicago food bank where it’s expected to feed the poor of the city for approximately four months. (Before complaining that the preceding joke is in poor taste, understand that Torontoist finds the whole concept of professional eating competitions grotesque on so many levels that garden variety mockery is insufficient to the task).