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Newsstand: November 4, 2011
To all you who woke up this morning thinking it was Saturday, we feel your soul-crushing pain, and offer today's news as a consolation: Toronto might have to close 400 day cares by 2014, the City blows $5 million on a garbage truck yard, councillors take the first step toward east-west downtown bike lanes, and the drama plays on at the Toronto Zoo.
Sometimes life would be better if it were more like Monopoly, where you make money just for going in circles. Plus you get to wear a top hat and a monocle, and drive around in a shoe. But the money thing is probably a bigger deal for the city right now, especially as a new report estimates 400 day-care centres might have to close by 2014 unless the province ponies up a lot more cash than it’s currently providing, or Mike Layton (Ward 19, Trinity-Spadina) wins second prize in a whole whack of beauty contests. We don’t have a solution, but we sure hope parents everywhere are feeling pretty terrible about the financial burden they’ve caused right about now.
Is there a more expensive way to say “oops” than spending $5 million to renovate a truck yard so you can lease it to a private garbage collection company, only to have that company tell you it doesn’t even need the yard? Undoubtedly, and we’re sure the City will find it. But in the meantime, they messed up. So now a freshly renovated garbage truck yard sits empty and unloved in an area too far from the city centre to even merit having a Ferris wheel built over it.
The Public Works and Infrastructure committee just made you all a lot happier by taking the first steps toward putting permanent separated bike lanes on Richmond and Adelaide Streets between Bathurst and Sherbourne by calling for an environmental assessment into the matter. But before we celebrate, let’s all remember that this is Toronto, and there will probably be a lot of bullshit before it’s all over.
It’s animal rights activists versus zookeepers versus city councillors in a showdown over the Toronto Zoo’s elephants that’s got to be one of the cutest ugly feuds ever to take place north of Highway 401. First, the councillors decided to send the elephants to a California sanctuary instead of an accredited zoo, with the activists offering to fly a zookeeper and councillors to California to check it out. Everything seemed to work out, until the zookeepers phoned the councillors and asked them to reconsider. Enraged, the activists have now withdrawn their offer of flying a zookeeper to the sanctuary, and might block the zookeepers from being involved in the elephants’ move. One thing’s for sure: it would make an awful sequel to Dumbo.