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Newsstand: October 4, 2010
Illustration by Matt Daley/Torontoist.
The newest in news on this fine Monday morning: giant clown heads explained, mutiny and coffee brew on Team Rossi, records broken, records tied, and those little piggies went all the way to the paved shoulder.
Swine arrives in the city for round two, and this year, it’s personal. Actual pigs, not the flu kind, have been unleashed on the city, after a truck carrying more than 200 pigs overturned on the 427 near the Gardiner Expressway just before 5 a.m. The little oinkers were corralled and waited on the side of the road for vets to come check them out and rescue them. Luckily, the driver of the rig was uninjured. Unluckily, the ramp from the Southbound 427 Express lanes to the Eastbound Gardiner will be closed all morning.
Residents displaced by the six-alarm fire at 200 Wellesley Street East began returning home this weekend, in what Toronto Community Housing calls a “phased return.” Of the approximately 1,200 people put out by the blaze, about 340 returned home on Saturday and Sunday. The rest continue on in shelters, hotels, friends’ places, or, as the Star reports, on the street.
As you read this, campaign signs are springing up on every available centimetre of the city. But according to the Globe, not everyone on Team Rossi expects to make it through the last three weeks of the campaign. A top Rossi campaigner met with a big Ford guy over some Double Doubles, and promised a hefty chunk of Team Rossi would help Ford—in the event Rossi quits the race. But in last night’s twenty-billionth mayoral debate, Rossi once again declared he has no intention of quitting.
And even if Rossi does serve as the Ralph Nader in this campaign, as the Star said he might last week, he is good for this thing: he said some random numbers about the plastic bag fees, which prompted the Star to do an actual investigation. And they revealed that most of that five-cent fee goes right back in the till for the retailers to keep. We don’t know about you, but we assumed that money went somewhere else. We don’t know where. But somewhere.
The Jays gave a Cito Gaston a “going away present” by winning yesterday afternoon’s season finale in Minnesota. They also got two more homers, bumping their season total up to 257. That ties the Jays with the 1996 Baltimore Orioles for the third most home runs in a season ever. Ever!
Just in case you had no idea why giant clown heads were sandwiched between buildings and no cars were going on Yonge Street all Saturday night: it was Nuit Blanche! Re-live (or just live) all the wonders of the all-night art thing with our live coverage. And stay tuned to Torontoist today for a discussion of all the goods, the bads, and the needs improvements.
And even though we were up all night, Toronto still had the muster to raise over $5 million for breast cancer research (adding to a record $33 million nationwide) in the CIBC Run for a Cure on Sunday. Way to go, us!