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Weekend Newsstand: September 11, 2010
Illustration by Matt Daley/Torontoist.
In weekend news: the voice of Rudolph passes, Sarah Thomson has a decent idea, and the Olympics cause a takeover.
The yearly tradition of watching crappy, albeit heartwarming, Christmas classics on TV will be bittersweet this time around. The voice of that lovable, antlered misfit in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer has died. Billie Mae Richards died in Burlington, ON, her family said. She was a well-known voice personality at the CBC and became famous for her reindeer role in the holiday special. She was eighty-nine years old.
Following the multi-alarm blaze on College and Bathurst on Monday, local record store She Said Boom! has undertaken the task of finding one of the families who used to live there a new home. A notice for donations is up on Facebook and at the store. Just over four hundred dollars have been collected, as well as clothing and a slew of gift cards adding up to the same amount. The owner of Boom! said the mother and her two kids, originally from China, need enough money for first and last month’s rent for a new apartment.
Mayoral candidate Sarah Thomson wants to see bike lanes down the middle of University Avenue and along Richmond and Adelaide streets. She’s also looking to synchronize traffic signals to reduce gridlock. Council voted down the idea of a trial project of separate bike lanes along the median lanes of University, but Thomson said the safety issue will encourage councillors to come around on the plan. “I think I can bring people together on the idea of safety,” she said. “At the end of the day, everybody wants a safe route.”
Wondering what brought on the Bell mega-purchase we told you about here? For George Cope, the turning point which led to the takeover of Canada’s largest private TV network was the Olympics. The CEO of BCE Inc. realized the Games were being watched, shared, and downloaded on mobile devices. “The penny dropped at the Olympics,” Cope said. “The Olympics was a real important moment because it was really the first time we started to see these new technologies.” The drop of the penny led to talks, and the talks led to a 1.3 billion dollar deal.
Hordes of star-gazers were out in full force outside of downtown hotels hoping to catch a glimpse of celebs yesterday. But one celeb stood with the people. That’s right, Martin Sheen—of West Wing, father of Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez—joined Royal York hotel workers on the picket line. He was wearing a sign draped about him reading, “On strike for justice, Unite Here.” Sheen is in town for The Way, directed by Estevez.