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Newsstand: August 12, 2011
Friday, you don't call, you don't write, you just turn up every week and expect us to still love you. And dammit, we do. In the news: a fish travels to City Hall, Rob Ford says no to a potential Olympic bid, layoffs likely for City employees, and another G20 arrest is ruled unwarranted.
The obvious top story of the day: Mississauga mayor Hazel McCallion brought an 18-pound salmon to Toronto City Hall for Rob Ford on Thursday as a dig for his bailing on a fishing trip planned as part of the Great Ontario Salmon Derby. His staff said he was busy, but perhaps the mayor was still too fished out from his recent excursion with Prime Minister Stephen Harper to bother spending time with a bunch of 905ers. McCallion, who prefers to speak in grammatically incorrect sentences, reportedly told Ford, “This fish will be great on you’re barbecue,” according to the Toronto Sun. More on Salmon-gate as it unfolds.
Ford might have a legitimate excuse for missing the fishing trip, though. It could be that he’s just too busy shutting down a potential bid to have the 2020 Summer Olympics in Toronto. According to Ford’s second head, Doug (Ward 2, Etobicoke North), it’s just not possible with the current state of the city’s finances, although others say the bid wouldn’t cost anything until further on down the line. The Fords were probably just scared of the potential for increased traffic downtown.
And one last bit of RoFo news: looks like City employees aren’t exactly flocking to the mayor’s buyout plan, so layoffs will likely be necessary to meet Ford’s directive to reduce spending by $380 million. In other news, the mayor has unveiled a preliminary list of campaign pledges for the next election, which include blowing the pollution out of Toronto’s skies with a big straw and driving to the moon.
A judge has ruled that police were the principal aggressors in a protest during last year’s G20 summit, and that a man arrested at the protest for no other reason than being there probably shouldn’t have been, nor should he have been detained for two days before being released with $25,000 bail. As these rulings pile on, it saddens us to think we might have been better off with Judge Dredd–style combined-police-and-judge law enforcement that weekend.
Sadly, prominent sex worker and trans rights activist Wendy Babcock was found dead in her home August 9, apparently having committed suicide. A fierce supporter and nurturer of marginalized people, she will be greatly missed.
To all you art appreciators out there looking for easy public money: we’re sorry to be the bearers of bad news, but the provincial government has pulled an ad by Metrolinx and the TTC looking for an art consultant for the Eglinton LRT that included an attractive and somewhat ironic salary of $420,000.