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Newsstand: August 2, 2011
Is it Tuesday, or is it Monday? Are you already late, or still early? The mysteries of the long weekend unfold. No, wait, it’s just Tuesday. Let’s get on with it: SIU investigating fatal Caribana shooting; It ain’t easy being tree; lessons from Montreal tunnel collapse; and more glass falls from the condo by the same name.
The SIU is investigating after a fatal shooting at the Caribana (or whatever) parade on Saturday evening. One man was killed, a woman is in critical but stable condition, and another man was grazed. Police have offered scant details, saying only that two officers are named as subject officers, they did shoot their guns, but they didn’t necessarily fire the bullets that injured everyone. According to other media reports, the victim may have fired a gun into the crowd first, and that’s when the officers drew their weapons. Police are appealing to the public to come forward if they saw anything, as only 16 witnesses have been found.
Engineers and other smart people are hoping the crumbled overpass in Montreal will be a lesson to other cities about the importance of infrastructure maintenance. A portion of the Ville-Marie expressway was closed Sunday morning when a 15-metre-long slab of concrete fell from an overpass and crashed onto the road below. No one was injured, but experts say that was a lucky break. If you’ve ever driven through the maze of underpasses and bridges on the island, you may have been terrified. Rusty beams are easily visible, and it looks like half the streets are held together by mesh. Though Montreal’s infrastructure is in worse shape than other major cities due to an Expo and Olympic–fueled construction boom, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities warns there’s a $123-billion shortfall in municipal infrastructure spending throughout the country.
Meantime, it’s raining glass on Bay Street, where two panes of glass fell from balconies on the Murano condo tower and onto the street below on Monday. And this isn’t the first time. Monday’s incident marked the fifth time glass has shattered from the tower and onto the street. No one has been injured, yet. Now, you may be having some vague word association between “glass” and “Murano”, and that’s because some friend or relative has brought you back a Murano glass souvenir from their trip to Italy. The condo tower is named for the stuff, leaving many to wonder when the Bohemian Embassy will be overrun by squatters in long skirts.
And it’s not easy being an old tree in the city. You’ve got to deal with construction, pollution, droughts, insect infestations, and everyone forgets about you on the weekend to go visit your cousins in cottage country. Are you not a tree? If your branch is cut, do you not bleed? Well, no, you don’t. (And thank goodness for that!) Tree enthusiasts are appealing to Torontonians to show some tree love and water them in their time of need. Or they may get mad and start dropping branches on you.
This post originally referred to to “suspect officers” instead of “subject officers.” This typo has been fixed, and we apologize if it caused any confusion.