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Newsstand: November 23, 2010
Illustration by Jeremy Kai/Torontoist.
Tuesday’s news bats typical and terrible: David Miller’s got World Bank plans, Toronto wants three million dollars against bedbugs, more gun and pedestrian violence, and someone who should know better causes a mistrial with his face.
David Miller “coulda woulda shoulda’s” his way through exit interviews in preparation for his departure from City Hall December 1. Naw, just kidding, Miller stands by his years as mayor and is leaving with his head held high, and if he uses the conditional tense, it’s by grammatical necessity, not because he’s all full of regret. Miller is moving on to a role as advisor to the World Bank on city and environmental issues. It’s an unpaid gig, but there are perks. Yeah, don’t worry David, we totally understand: we did an unpaid internship one time, too.
Sure, we’re bigger and we have brains and opposable thumbs and all that, but they’re so persistent, and hard to see, and damn those bites are just the worst. So what we’re saying is: it’s us versus them, and what price tag should be put on the artillery in the battle against bedbugs? Three million dollars, according to Toronto city Councillor Paula Fletcher (Ward 30, Toronto-Danforth), who’s asking the province for about that much cash money in order to wage war against the pests. Her request was endorsed unanimously by the Toronto Board of Health, whose members wish to clarify that none of them has bedbugs or anything, so you can totally come over and hang out. No worries.
Toronto’s “hail of bullets” rains on, with a nineteen-year-old shot in North Toronto last night, marking the third death by gun violence in the last week. The police haven’t released the identity of the victim.
Speaking of recurring themes in terrible ways that people are killed and injured in the city, a twenty-three-year-old woman is in hospital with head injuries after being struck by a car last night while crossing Glencairn Avenue just west of Avenue Road. Last week, sixteen pedestrians were hit by cars over the course of two days—a statistic that police attribute to post-daylight savings early nightfalls and the reduced visibility caused by cold weather wear. It seems fair that police shimmy the blame over onto those on foot when they discuss these sorts of accidents, because pedestrians are the ones getting themselves around by plowing giant hunks of metal through space at inhuman speeds, right? Or maybe it’s the other way around.
The trial of Erika Mendieta, the mother of a Toronto toddler who died of head trauma in 2003, has been declared a mistrial due to the strange behaviour of an assistant to the Crown whose antics were distracting to both the accused and the jury. Paul Alexander was an assistant attorney the first time Mendieta’s case appeared in court, which ended in mistrial for unrelated reasons. This time around, Alexander held no official position and sat in the body of the courtroom where he apparently made faces so bizarre that they attracted the attention of the jury, who passed a note to the judge asking that the blonde man performing facial exercises be removed from court. Ok, maybe they put it differently. So, to be honest, we don’t know what an assistant attorney is, but does it mean that Alexander is an intern? Because if so, listen up, David Miller: this is how not to act when working unpaid.