May 1, 2013 at 6:00 pm

Extra, Extra: Stamps, Street Names, and Sales Pitches

Every weekday’s end, Extra, Extra collects just about everything you ought to care about or ought not miss.

Once in a while, we all still need to send things by snail mail. As of today, if you do, you can pay for that mail with some pretty new stamps, which celebrate the various arches that you can find in Chinatowns across Canada. Toronto and Mississauga both have gateways in the bunch.

Ever wonder how a street gets its name? Spacing learned how it’s done in five cities across the country.
Toronto’s next municipal election will be held on October 27, 2014, and MP Olivia Chow (NDP, Trinity-Spadina) seems more and more interested in running for mayor as time goes by. She will also, we learned today, be publishing a memoir in early 2014, which may be a useful introduction for people who aren’t familiar with her biography or political views. How very convenient!
On April 24, an illegally constructed plaza containing several garment factories in Dhaka, Bangladesh collapsed. The final death toll isn’t yet known, but is currently estimated to exceed 400. Toronto-based Joe Fresh (owned by Loblaws) is among the companies that had clothes made at that site; they’ve promised to compensate the victims’ families and “to help prevent similar incidents like this in the future,” but they haven’t yet specified how exactly they intend to do that. The Retail Council of Canada has now jumped in; they have agreed to work with other retailers and Bangladeshi authorities to develop new safety standards.