news
Newsstand: July 9, 2010
Illustration by Matt Daley/Torontoist.
In today’s news, Rob Ford is mad again, Lloyd Robertson will finally take a break, and you may soon be able to call home from the subway. Happy Friday!
Immediately after being deemed the most eco-indifferent mayoral candidate by the Toronto Environmental Alliance, Rob Ford looked to secure the crown of environmental unconciousness by railing against City Hall plant-watering. The veteran councillor said that the approximately seventy-seven thousand dollars spent annually on having a Parks Division employee water municipal greenery could be saved if employees took care of their own plants. Ford noted that staff were also failing to pull their weight on toilet cleaning, photocopier repair, and cafeteria food preparation and went on to describe a Ford City Hall, a post-Apocalyptic dystopia populated by bureaucratic slave-zombies and managed by telepathic rats the size of German shepherds.
Veteran anchorman and Canadian institution Lloyd Robertson has announced that he plans to retire next year after thirty-five years at the helm of CTV News. Robertson is seventy-six and began his broadcasting career in 1952. To put that into perspective, in 1952 Winston Churchill was prime minister of the UK, the first KFC restaurant had just opened, and a gallon of gas cost a quarter. Robertson’s replacement will be announced next week.
You know how sometimes you’re on the streetcar and the person next to you is yelling into his cellphone like it’s a tin can on a string, and you can only hear half the conversation but it’s really stupid, and you know if you could hear the other half it would be even worse but you can’t punch them in the face because it’s illegal? Soon you’ll be able to have that experience in subway stations! The day after the TTC launched an application allowing users to get streetcar arrival info via text, staff are recommending that bids be taken to install cell phone service in all sixty-seven subway stations. The selected bidders will be Bell Mobility, as well as companies partnered with Rogers and Telus, and all costs will be paid for by the vendor who secures the contract. Originally the TTC had hoped to install capacity across the entire system, but for now resource constraints will limit service to the stations.
Bad news if you were shortlisted to be the next Governor General of Canada and you’re not David Johnston. The Ontario academic, currently president of the University of Waterloo, will replace Michaëlle Jean in that role when her term ends on October 1. Sixty-nine-year-old Johnston has a lengthy and impressive resume which includes captaining the Harvard hockey team, although not recently.
How much karma does a professional con artist have to buy to avoid getting reincarnated as a cockroach? Hang on, we’re going somewhere with this. Wealthy Toronto businessman Robert Mander donated more than three hundred and twenty thousand dollars to a Buddhist charitable organization called Soka Gakkai International over a four year period. However, when Mander was found dead in March of this year, it emerged that his lavish lifestyle and charitable contributions were financed by a Ponzi scheme that bilked investors to the tune of some forty-three million dollars. Talks are now underway with the receiver of Mander’s company, and it’s possible that the Buddhist organization may have to pay back some or all of the money received. So it goes.