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Newsstand: January 31, 2011
Illustration by Jeremy Kai/Torontoist.
It’s Monday, but don’t worry, we’ve got your back: more photos of TTC employees text-‘n’-driving, Ro-Fo’s new chief of staff named, bus cuts will affect Toronto’s deaf-blind, Gay Village beating labelled as a hate crime, and shit, it’s all kinds of cold out.
Two photos have surfaced of TTC bus drivers pulling the ol’ text-‘n’-drive while on the job. Last Wednesday, a passenger sent a photo he snapped of a driver on the 65 Weston Road North bus in to the Toronto Sun. By Friday, another photo emerged, taken Tuesday on the 54 Lawrence route by mother of two Alexia Schell. The TTC has identified at least one of the drivers but are not releasing details in order to avoid jeopardizing the disciplinary process, which TTC spokesperson Brad Ross says is underway. A little Monday morning advice: whether you’re hauling a bus or not, don’t text and drive, people. But also, don’t be an asshole. A TTC driver was assaulted by a drunken man at Lansdowne Station last Friday, and that’s pretty shitty, too. Words of wisdom from the gob of Newsstand.
Rob Ford’s chief-of-staff-to-be is Amir Remutella, a Molson Coors exec who once worked as executive assistant to Mel Lastman’s deputy mayor Case Ootes. Unlike polarizing outgoing chief of staff Nick Kouvalis, Remutella is regarded as a more temperate choice who may be better able to speak the City’s two unofficial dialects—Ford and Pinko. He’ll take office on February 22.
A little tidbit gleaned from the Globe and Mail‘s piece on Remutalla is that team Ford has gotten real creative with the naming of their planned transit network (and by planned we mean not planned because there isn’t really any plan except for a plan to not be whatever that thing David Miller planned was). But anyway, get this, guys, this name is totally gonna rock your socks: Transportation City. That’s right, it’s not Transit City because Transit City was a plan for suckers and pinkos. This is Transportation City, and it’s real serious business, okay, because it’s, like, a totally different noun, and it has way more syllables. Yeah.
Speaking of Ro-Fo and transit/transportation, added to the list of folks who will be negatively affected by the new mayor’s proposed cuts to transit service: Toronto’s deaf-blind community. That’s right, we’ve got ourselves a real PR winner. The Rotary Cheshire Home at 422 Willowdale Avenue houses sixteen deaf-blind residents. Down the street is the Canadian Hellen Keller Centre, a facility which offers training, workshops, and other programs to eighty deaf-blind users. Both are served by a bus route in danger of being cut. The RCH’s location was chosen precisely due to its transit accessibility. So long as they can walk, deaf-blind riders do not qualify for Wheel-Trans, the city’s door-to-door transit service for those with physical disabilities.
An attack that took place on Church Street this weekend is being categorized as a hate crime. Ryan Lester, thirty, and his twenty-four-year-old brother Ben, were getting a post-bar snack early Saturday morning when they were taunted with homophobic slurs and then beaten. Ryan Lester was called a “faggot” and kicked in the face, and his brother suffered bruises and a broken molar that needed to be repaired. Toronto Police Deputy Chu Chang says that in his year-and-a-half at 51 Division, it’s the first time he’s recorded a hate crime. Eoin McManus and Benjamin McCall, both twenty-one years old, have been charged with assault and mischief. This comes on the heels of recent reports of teenagers throwing slushies at residents of the Gay Village—copped from “the slushie facial,” a form of harassment favoured by the letterman-jacketed on the TV show Glee.
Come in from the cold: with temperatures falling below -16C last night and staying at a cool ‘minus-18-but-feels-like-minus-26’ today, Toronto is on cold weather alert. Plus, there’s snow a-comin’: 20-30 centimetres is expected to fall sometime between now and Wednesday. Is it Groundhog Day yet, or what?