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Weekend Newsstand: October 23, 2010
Illustration by Matt Daley/Torontoist.
What a weekend: closed roads, bad economy, children’s TV star dies, and the election is almost over. Good thing the Dalai Lama is in town!
Ah, it’s the last weekend of the mayoral race. In case you didn’t have any time during the ten-month-long campaign to find out a bit about the candidates, there’s a bunch of handy dandy guides to the municipal elections kicking around, including ours. And we also have a few ideas of our own on who we think should be the next mayor of Toronto.
And something no mayoral candidate wants to hear days before an election: even though the national recession officially ended last fall, it’s worsening in Toronto, according to a report released by TD Bank. Welfare caseloads have doubled since the recession started, up to about ninety thousand and climbing. Our 9.2% unemployment rate is well above the national rate of 8.0%. And food banks and charities are struggling to keep up with the demands on their services.
The Dalai Lama kicked off his weekend visit to the city with a speech about world peace and stuff at the Rogers Centre on Friday. More than fifteen thousand people attended the Peace Star’s message. The spiritual leader offered guidance for creating a more peaceful world (genuine compassion for one another) and the proof that humans are social creatures (we have the same teeth as sheep and rabbits). His Holiness will be in town until Monday doing various holy things.
A section of the Gardiner Expressway is closed until 6 p.m. Saturday and the freeway will be shut down a bunch of times over the next few weeks.
Hundreds of women rallied in Yonge-Dundas Square on Friday night for the thirtieth annual Take Back the Night march. The event raises awareness about violence against women. And it probably could have used a lot more coverage than this.
And on a sad note, actor Denis Simpson died of a brain haemorrhage on Friday morning. Simpson grew up in Scarborough and went on to land major roles on Broadway and in the Toronto theatre scene, but he is best known as the host of classic TVOntario kids show, The Polka Dot Door. Simpson was fifty-nine.