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Newsstand: February 14, 2011
Illustration by Jeremy Kai/Torontoist.
This Monday goes out to the lovers and the haters: Torontonians charged with driving while stupid, the vigil continues for the feral cats of the Scarborough Bluffs, no wind turbines in Lake Ontario for now, Torontonians have deep pockets for UFC, and a dognapper got caught.
It’s Valentine’s Day, but we already spent our joke about the season of cheap crap on last week’s Newsstand, and we’re pretty much a one-joke pony on the V-Day front. Love, love, love, blah, blah, blah. We’re sort of over it already. Is chocolate on discount yet?
When it comes to texting, talking, and emailing while driving, it seems that the public’s got its kindergarten logic on: ‘If I haven’t been caught, it isn’t bad.’ The law against using communication devices (save the hands-free versions) while driving came into effect in the fall of 2009. While there was an initial drop-off in the dangerous behaviour, the numbers have quickly climbed back up again. It’s a tough law to enforce, since a police officer has to actually see a driver using the device. Police have made nearly 17,000 charges since the law came into effect, each of which comes with a $155 fine. Drivers using communication devices are twenty-three times more likely to have an accident than those who are not. The TPS is rolling out a campaign today called “Last Call” to educate the public about how ridiculously stupid they’re acting the dangers of distracted driving.
It’s a special kind of devotion that leads someone to keep an all-night vigil for a band of feral cats, warding off coyotes with sticks and a flashlight, but that’s exactly what Robert Brydges and a roster of like-minded volunteers do on the Scarborough Bluffs every night. From the colony of about twenty-five cats that live in Bluffers park, three have been picked off by hungry coyotes, with the most recent casuality this past Friday. Brydges is trying to get the cats adopted. One has been given a new home already, and eight are in temporary care. Want a feral cat to round out your fam? You can check out the Scarborough Bluffs Feral Cats facebook page.
Feeling cautious about the relatively untested science, the Ontario Government has suspended all offshore wind turbine projects in the province. Included on the list of projects being put aside is a plan to erect seventy wind turbines in lake Ontario, stretching from the Leslie Street Spit to Ajax. While wind turbines on land and their effect on human and natural environments are fairly well known, wind turbines in lakes are relatively unstudied. The world’s only offshore wind turbines planted in fresh water are in Sweden, as part of a pilot project.
UFC stands for Ultimate Fighting Cash-Cow. UFC 129 is coming to the Rogers Centre April 30, and the event has officially hit sell-out status and doubled UFC records for both ticket sales and gate numbers. With 55,000 tickets sold, the event has doubled the previous record for UFC ticket sales from a Montreal event in December, and with sales of over $10 million, the previous gate record ($5.4 million from a Las Vegas event in 2006) has also been smashed. Tickets have ranged in price from $50 to $9,999, to say nothing of pay-per-view sales for those who watch the event at home, which will go for around fifty bucks a pop. The proof is in the punching: people will shell out for UFC. We don’t really get it, but hey, different strokes. Or strikes. Or beatings.
An eighty-four-year-old man was reunited with his dog yesterday after Goldie the Bichon Frise was dognapped. John Hildon was walking his dog Friday evening when a stranger asked him whose dog it was, then grabbed Goldie, ran across the street, and got on a bus. The unnamed thirty-six-year-old man was tracked down by police and charged with theft and possession of stolen property.
A strike agreement was reached thirty minutes before the midnight deadline, and thus the buses are running in York.
In weird news that we don’t really know what to make of: a Mississauga man found a watch in a package of Redpath sugar.