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Weekend Newsstand: October 2, 2010
Illustration by Matt Daley/Torontoist.
Happy weekend! Here’s what needs to be discussed: political signage season descends, and Oakville protesters get Brockoviched.
Did someone plant a doctor at a mayoral debate to call Rob Ford fat? It’s a question that speaks to the occasional comical absurdity of this city’s mayoral campaign, but it’s also a question that is being seriously pondered, after a doctor stood up at a debate on Thursday and asked Ford, “I’m a physician and I look upon you as a possible candidate. I’m concerned about your weight. Do you think you’ll be able to handle the entire four-year term?” The Star suggested yesterday the possibility that Dr. Marvin Kay had been planted by an opposing candidate to embarrass Ford. Kay says he was simply following his “instincts as a physician,” which were apparently telling him that Ford was dangerously overweight.
Did you know that political signage gets its own season in Toronto? Well, it does, and the season starts Monday, so get ready for a city plastered with the faces and colours of your favourite and not-so-favourite political candidates. George Smitherman’s camp says they’ll be targeting the suburbs, and will soon begin their broadcast campaign in the final run-up to the October 25 election. You may have already seen the questionable mafia-themed posters of Rocco Rossi, or the downright adorable “Small Wonder” campaign ads for Pantalone, which play upon his small physical stature.
When the citizens of Oakville organize a grassroots protest, they don’t cut corners. So when a nine hundred–megawatt natural gas power plant was proposed near Oakville homes and schools, the city’s residents knew that only the best and most glorified agitator would do. Enter Erin Brockovich. The community organizer made famous by Julia Roberts’ Oscar-winning portrayal of her in a 2000 movie, Brockovich is known to charge up to twenty-five thousand dollars for a speech, and was brought in to pump up the Oakville crowds. The feisty mother and activist acknowledged the affluence of her Ontario patrons, quipping that people from Oakville, “have more flat screens than the average person” but “they shouldn’t be told to shut up because they have money.”
An undercover investigation by the Toronto Star has prompted action from the Ontario Ministry of Seniors and the Ontario progressive caucus. A Star reporter spent a week at In Touch Retirement Living, a group home in Toronto’s west end, and found residents living in deplorable, unsanitary conditions. The caucus immediately sent a letter to the federal government calling for a major investigation of living conditions in retirement and nursing homes, and the Ontario Ministry of Seniors is promising new, tougher rules to protect the health and dignity of our province’s vulnerable elderly.