news
Newsstand: July 29, 2010
Illustration by Matt Daley/Torontoist.
So, Scarborough stinks, Rob Ford didn’t get physical, and hydro users are in for a shock.
Get a whiff of that. Some Scarborough residents are being forced to stay inside due to a terrible stench, which smells like “soggy cardboard” on good days and like a delectable combination of “rotten eggs, sewage, and burnt rubber” on bad days. The culprits—two brown paper mills on Progress Avenue owned by Atlantic Packaging. The company has been looking into the ominous odour since March, but so far hasn’t found a solution.
Jonathan Gordon tells the Globe that mayoral candidate Rob Ford never hit him. The former high school football player, who is now a member of the Canadian Forces, denied a report that the mayoral candidate “shook” and “slapped” him during a game in 2001. Gordon says Ford lost his temper after the player mussed up a play and walked off the field, and the two engaged in a “screaming match,” but rather than Ford having to be held back, an assistant coach just stepped between the two. Earlier in July, the Star reported that Ford was dismissed from his coaching duties following the incident. Ford has since filed a notice of intent to sue the paper for libel. The Star also covered the story yesterday, but Gordon declined an interview.
Leave the lights off and get one of those large palm leaves for fanning, ’cause the cost of hydro utilities is about to take a jump. Utilities are trying to get that message out to consumers so they aren’t too shocked when their next bill rolls around. Users who haven’t locked in a rate with a retailer may see their power price tag climb by up to 16%. The higher price of power paid to generating companies along with the new HST and a summer heat wave are all to blame. More hikes are likely coming in 2011, thanks to the pricier power from renewable energy sources.
And while we’re on the subject, Toronto Hydro users might have to foot the bill for an eight million dollar settlement in a class-action lawsuit. With nearly seven hundred thousand customers, the cost is about eleven bucks a pop. The settlement, which won’t be finalized until September, includes illegal interest charges on late payments.
Frank Gehry’s back in the news, and now he’s clearing up the stories surrounding his childhood days at 15 Beverly Street. Gehry’s grandmother kept live carp in the bathtub, which supposedly inspired the world-renowned architect’s “shimmering, shape-shifting” designs. The City of Toronto has played up this tidbit in reports about the house, and officials hoped to find said bathtub to display as a Gehry tribute. Turns out, his designs had “nothing to do with that house, nothing to do with the fish in the bathtub,” but came from a criticism of post-modernist architecture, which he believed relied too heavily on the past. He remembers saying, “Well, if you need to go back, why don’t you go back three hundred million years before man, to fish?” and so began the drawing of fish in his notebook, which eventually led to his fishy structures.