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Newsstand: June 25, 2010
Illustration by Matt Daley/Torontoist.
Hey did you know? Probably not, because it’s a secret. Police can arrest anyone within five metres of the security zone if they refuse to show identification. Along with arrest, there’s the possibility of spending two months in jail or a five hundred dollar maximum fine. Provincial cabinet passed the regulation on June 2, under what government lawyers call a “covering” order-in-council. “It was just done surreptitiously, like a mushroom growing under a rock at night,” said Howard Morton, the lawyer representing the first arrestee, who spent several hours in a wire cage outside the makeshift detention centre. The regulation is news to most people, considering the it won’t even be officially published until July 3, nearly a week after it expires on June 28. It came into effect on Monday.
And in case you missed it yesterday, police also arrested a man who thought entering the G20 zone with a crossbow, arrows, a sledgehammer, a pickaxe, a chainsaw, and a baseball bat was a good idea. Fifty-three-year-old Gary McCullough has been charged for his dangerous weaponry and will appear in court today. The items were found in McCullough’s car, which not only had its bumper tied on with a string, but also had a very sketchy homemade storage unit sitting on the roof. Police say the arrest was not related to the summit.
Cyclists will be happy to know that they can leave their bike at a shelter before hopping on the subway, at one station anyway. The TTC installed its first official bike shelter at St. Clair West near the Wells Hill entrance. It resembles those at GO Transit stations. The price tag was thirty-five thousand dollars, funded by Toronto’s Clean and Beautiful initiative. Councillor Joe Mihevc (Ward 21, St. Paul’s) hopes this is just the beginning, and would like to see bike lockers and Bixi integrated into public transit.
The Peter Street shelter is drawing criticism once again, this time from the city’s auditor-general. A report released yesterday questions whether the shelter is even needed because the beds the shelter would offer as well as the assessment centre have been made available elsewhere in the system. The conversion of the Fez Batik nightclub into a forty-bed shelter was supposed to take a year and cost five-and-a-half million dollars. Two years later, and the project has more than doubled in cost. Still, advocates of the shelter say it is needed to get the “hardcore homeless” off the streets.
A couple living in a century-old house in the Beaches have won the right to tear it down. After much contestation from some neighbours, a former resident, and Councillor Sandra Bussin (Ward 32, Beaches-East York), Geoff and Melissa Teehan will demolish the house on Beech Avenue, which some wanted preserved as a historic property. The Teehans want to build a modern, accessible home because Melissa is a quadriplegic who uses a wheelchair. The couple wants to start construction on their new home before September.
Alright everybody, have a good weekend! Well try, anyway. Lots of stuff is closed, (obviously) ‘cos of our favourite summit.