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Weekend Newsstand: February 26, 2011
Illustration by Jeremy Kai/Torontoist.
Turn around, bright eyes—it’s Caturday! Also, Saturday! Today, strap on your skates and enjoy the ice while you can, but keep your coffee cup out of the toxic chemical vat. Ombudsman Fiona Crean explains why Doug Ford shouldn’t talk smack, fighters impersonate fighters, and Toronto, Ohio, gets the photo treatment.
After revelations that Ontario’s department of lands and forests used Vietnam-war chemical Agent Orange to clear brush over decades, it has surfaced that Ontario Hydro workers were using it too. Documents from the now-fragmented organization show it sprayed the toxic chemical through backyards, farmers’ fields, and thick brush over a twelve-year period in the 1950s and 1960s. If residents had concerns it wasn’t safe, Hydro workers would dip a cup into their chemical vat and take a swig—proving that it was not only totally healthy, but also delicious. Right? Wrong! Former workers are now developing all kinds of serious illnesses. Hydro One, one of Ontario Hydro’s five successor companies, has admitted Ontario Hydro workers sprayed with the chemical from 1950 to 1979. Concerned residents are being told to call their switchboard if they want to talk.
City Ombudsman Fiona Crean has responded to some rather uninformed comments about her expenses made by Councillor Doug Ford (Ward 2, Etobicoke North). She’d been asking for enough extra money to cover two new staff members to help her address more citizens’ problems, but in the new world of consultant-only gravy, was denied the request. In Thursday’s budget debate, Ford said she’d been lobbying every councillor for more money, that she already had a director of communications, and—the best one—that she was wasting money on a costly thirty-six-page, full-colour brochure. Turns out said “brochure” was her legally mandated annual report.
While winter may seem like it’s dragging on forever, a sure sign that it’s ending is upon us this weekend: skating rink closures. Well over half of the city’s fifty-one rinks will welcome their final skaters on Sunday, with the rest set to end their seasonal lives in mid-March. Cold temperatures in other years have led to the extension of city rinks’ lives, but it appears ice skating is just the type of gravy the current council has no use for.
But, if watching real mixed martial arts fighters pretend to be imaginary mixed martial arts fighters is more your thing, you best start preparing to see the new film The Striking Truth, which premiered last night at the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts. Starring ubiquitous Canadian fighter Georges St-Pierre, “it’s a human story, one that uses the world of MMA as a metaphor for life.”
Finally, ever need a break from regular Toronto but crave the comforts of home? Why not take a trip to sunny Toronto, Ohio, the steel town with a heart of gold that named itself after us in 1881. It’s the second time talk of our southern imitator has popped up in conversation in a week, so maybe it’s all for a reason. Still on the fence? Take a look at this Toronto (Ontario) Media Co-op photo essay that shows how the other Torontonians keep it real.
We originally stated that Ontario Hydro had been renamed Hydro One; as pointed out by a reader, Ontario Hydro was in fact broken up into several separate entities, one of which is Hydro One.