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Newsstand: January 19, 2011
Illustration by Jeremy Kai/Torontoist.
You want the news? You can’t HANDLE the news! Oh, all right. Today, birds beat cats in Oakville, people complain about their mail, and Halton Catholic schools get their gay-straight clubs back.
In the same week in which Toronto Life offers a full cover whine about how costly Toronto is, ShermansTravel.com begs to differ. The U.S. travel site has declared Toronto one of the top “value destinations” on the planet, ranking us tenth in a list that includes other hot spots for the cheap and cheerful like Denver, Nicaragua, and Guanajuato, Mexico. Thanks, Mayor Ford, for showing us that thrifty can be cool!
Tweety’s revenge? Oakville kitties are staring out the window and playing a lonesome harmonica as a new bylaw bans cat owners from allowing their pets to roam free outdoors. The law is intended to prevent the purry little predators from killing birds, and failure to observe it could lead to a $105 fine and a trip to the shelter for Felix. Where the hell is a cat supposed to get a hundred bucks, anyway?
The Halton Catholic District School Board has reversed a ban on gay-straight clubs that had been widely protested by students and civil liberties groups. At a meeting on Tuesday, the board voted to scrap the controversial rule, which had been imposed prior to last October’s election. God was unavailable for comment.
If your mail is arriving late or not at all, you’re not alone. The Globe reports that even as technology renders Canada Post irrelevant, parts of Scarborough have seen so many complaints about poor postal service that local MP Michelle Simson is investigating personally. Canada Post officials blame the situation, which started last summer, on vacation and sick days during the holiday season.
But don’t worry, just breathe deep and visualize your mail coming through the slot. Canada Post has hired Deepak Chopra to run the show, effective February 1. Unfortunately, this Chopra isn’t the Oprah-famous New Age guru, but a former President and CEO of Pitney Bowes Canada, which makes more sense but is way less interesting.
And Target is facing some opposition to its plans to expand into the Great White North. The U.S. retailer is being sued for $250 million by Fairweather, which owns the Target name in Canada and claims its business would be harmed by the name confusion. Fairweather has owned rights to the name since 2005 but didn’t use it until the American chain filed a challenge with the Canadian trademark office last year, at which time the crafty Canucks opened Target Apparel stores in Sudbury Ontario and Nanaimo, B.C.