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Weekend Newsstand: July 7, 2012
Once in awhile a day comes along that reminds you what this is all for, why this crazy ride we call life is worth riding. That day is Saturday, so bask in its glory while you read its news: Giorgio Mammoliti has big plans for solving homelessness in Toronto; Kristyn Wong-Tam has big plans for Wellesley Street; the heat, and a playground, rise in High Park; Toronto's infrastructure has heatstroke; rain brings a reprieve from the hot, hot, heat; and flesh-killing bacteria-killing maggots (enough said?).
Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti (Ward 7, York West) has a message for Toronto’s most vulnerable citizens: you can’t sleep on the streets. The head of Mayor Rob Ford’s taskforce on homelessness says it’s time to get homeless people off the streets, and wants the City to replace shelters with apartment-like transitional housing in which homeless people could get support for addictions and mental health issues. If only we’d known all along what the simple solution is to homelessness…to simply stop being homeless! Just, stop it! Thank you, Mammoliti.
A 2.1 acre stretch of land that runs along Wellesley Street between Bay and Yonge streets may soon become a park if Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam (Ward 27, Toronto Centre-Rosedale) gets her way. Rather than go through with the sale of the vacant lot at 11 Wellesley Street (the office of the Infrastructure Ontario minister says the property is on the market), Wong-Tam is pushing for a park with a Green P lot, possibly underneath. The land was donated to Ontario in the late 1980s to build a new ballet and opera house, a plan that collapsed along with the economy. Word is that cement blocks will be set-up outside the proposed parkland so that Toronto Star reporter Daniel Dale can peek over and check on the progress from time-to-time.
Were you complaining about the heat yesterday? Were you doing so while rebuilding a playground? In other words, are you a true Canadian hero? No? Well, guess what. These people are.
In case you hadn’t noticed, Toronto’s infrastructure doesn’t seem to be coping with the heat very well. Blackouts across the Toronto-area from late Thursday to Friday evening were caused by aging equipment failing in the heat, and on Friday the TTC slowed subway trains to 40 km/h from 60 km/h in open areas because tracks can expand and warp at 35 degrees or higher. In other words, Toronto was not built for this kind of weather. Looks like Americans aren’t the only ones who think we live in igloos.
If all this extreme heat talk is getting you down, parts of the GTA will have something to look forward to today—torrential downpours! Hurray!
The following news blurb is NSFB (Not Safe For Breakfast-Eating). A Scarborough man who almost lost his foot to an aggressive flesh-killing infection was saved by an unlikely ally: maggots. How did this happen, you ask? Please continue, you say? Don’t say you weren’t warned. Doctors at Rouge Valley Centenary Hospital arranged for said maggots to be quickly imported from California, and within 24 hours after arrival, 800 maggots per treatment were applied to the man’s wounded foot once a week for three weeks. They were then left for up to 36 hours to eat the dead flesh. While on, they were covered with mesh so that they could breath, and at the end of each application the maggots were washed out with a peroxide rinse, and then disposed of once dead. Now you know.