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Newsstand: December 28, 2010
Illustration by Jeremy Kai/Torontoist.
It’s Tuesday of that weird week between Christmas and New Year’s and today we have flights to New York, gold wars in North York, and Oprah being courted by Old York.
Flights are heading out of Pearson to New York City again, following days of delays and cancellations after a blizzard closed all three major airports in the area. While many morning flights were still cancelled today, things are expected to be mostly back to normal by the afternoon. Seems like Toronto’s just in the climatological sweet spot this year, with places all around us getting hit with crazy weather while we bask in relatively temperate conditions. Of course saying that probably just jinxed us.
A Toronto woman has started a Facebook campaign to convince Oprah Winfrey to shoot a Mother’s Day show in the T dot next year. Thirty-nine-year-old life coach Tanya Lee, who was inspired by the Facebook crusade that landed Betty White a gig as host of Saturday Night Live earlier this year, hopes to get two million people to join her group. The population of Toronto is 2.48 million.
Paying top prices for your gold is no business for the faint at heart. The Bathurst and Lawrence store of Harold the Jewellery Buyer was torched early Monday morning by what police are calling an “incendiary device” thrown through the window. The firebombing follows the arrest last August of an employee of the store in an alleged murder plot against Jack Berkovits, owner of competing shop Omni 2 Jewellery across the street.
As if Boxing Day shopping wasn’t already bedlam-ish enough, things got more exciting than a half-price pair of yoga pants when teen idol Justin Bieber was spotted in a Kitchener mall on Sunday. Shortly after the crooning homunculus was identified by fellow bargain-hunters at Fairview Park Mall, he was whisked away by security to prevent a mob scene. Well, more of a mob scene.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has invited Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of Myanmar’s democracy movement, to Canada to personally accept the honourary citizenship she was awarded back in 2007. Suu Kyi was released from house arrest in Myanmar back in November, but in the past has refused to leave the country for fear the ruling military junta wouldn’t let her return. It was actually NDP leader Jack Layton who came up with idea earlier this month, so be aware that all our political leaders are united in opposition to oppressive dictatorships that have no important trading relationships with Canada.