news
Newsstand: February 11, 2011
Illustration by Jeremy Kai/Torontoist.
It’s the Friday before Valentine’s week and love is ON SALE this weekend only! In the news, TTC union says “wait a minute,” Doug Ford is being courted by the Tories, and researchers are puzzled by death of ROM bees.
The union representing TTC workers is backing away from last week’s announcement that they won’t strike while contract talks continue. According to the union, the city responded to a union offer eschewing job action following the contract end date with a document that would have required all TTC workers to declare themselves “essential.” Basically, it comes down to choosing between the warm and fuzzy feeling that comes with looking at yourself in the mirror every morning and saying “Hey! I’m essential!,” and the ability to bring the city to its knees at will if they don’t meet your contract demands. Well, that makes sense then.
Less than four months into his term as a rookie city councillor, mayoral brother Doug Ford is telling constituents not to worry that he might abandon council to run for the provincial Conservatives in the fall. Ford the elder acknowledged that he’d been approached about becoming a candidate, but said he was presently focused on his council role. However, he also noted that “the residents, I represent them if I run provincially or if I’m a city councillor.” What next—Premier Ford? Prime Minister Ford? King Ford? Actually, you probably have to be British for that last one.
Speaking of people who are boosting the career of Doug Ford, the demonstrators who disrupted a City Hall budget committee meeting are warning that they’ll be back. Ontario Coalition Against Poverty members brought their standard contribution to the political process—irrational yelling and vague, empty threats—into council chambers, allowing Councillor Ford to advise one particularly vocal protester to “get a job.” With each side having earned the admiration of their respective constituencies, police broke up the melee and made a couple of arrests, while OCAP supporters vowed they’d continue to fight against Ford-driven budget cuts.
In news less political, researchers are looking to find out why twenty thousand honeybees at the Royal Ontario Museum biodiversity exhibit suddenly died last week. ROM officials are uncertain what caused the insects to buzz their way off the mortal coil simultaneously, but said it was not colony collapse disorder, which has been the culprit in the disappearance of bee populations worldwide. A surviving bee waxed philosophical, saying, “Circle of life—one minute you’re sucking nectar and hanging out with the queen, and the next you’re in a dumpster waiting to get hauled off to the landfill. Plus we only live about sixty days anyway.”