news
Newsstand: November 11, 2014
Lest we forget. In the news: Rob Ford will not attend today’s Remembrance Day ceremony at Old City Hall, a disabled man videotapes three hours of ridicule he endured while walking on Toronto streets, a petition to keep a controversial “dating coach” out of Canada gains ground, and the story of a Burlington resident who survived the Second World War by going into hiding for over two years.
It was expected that Mayor Rob Ford would deliver one of his final speeches as Toronto’s chief magistrate at this morning’s Remembrance Day ceremony at Old City Hall before hitting the old dusty trail back to Ward 2, but he has backed out citing health reasons. On Monday afternoon, Mayor Ford’s chief of staff Dan Jacobs confirmed that the mayor was still not sure if he felt well enough to attend, and was pulling out of the scheduled appearance out of respect for the event. Councillor Ceta Ramkhalawansingh (Ward 20, Trinity-Spadina) will now speak on the mayor’s behalf, and mayor-elect John Tory will be in attendance as a guest.
Toronto comedian Andre Arruda was born with Morquio syndrome, a genetic disorder that is associated with dwarfism and limited mobility. Recently, Arruda had a friend videotape him travelling around Toronto streets in his wheelchair, capturing more than 100 instances of verbal harassment and prolonged staring from passersby. Distilled down to a one and a half-minute video clip, Arruda’s cameraperson captures him being called a “leprechaun” and “Mini-Me” while groups of people regularly stare or laugh at him. Arruda says he was prompted to make his video in response to a video by a New York City woman that recently made headlines for highlighting her daily instances of gender-based street harassment. Arruda explains his aim was to widen the conversation about street harassment, saying, “There are so many types (of harassment), it’s not just the women. It’s for anyone who is perceived different. People don’t really know how to react to someone like me.”
Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander has responded to an online petition urging officials to keep Julien Blanc from entering Canada to deliver a series of controversial seminars on dating that are considered to promote emotional and physical violence towards women. Blanc is scheduled to deliver free seminars in Toronto, Calgary, Montreal, and Vancouver next year, but so far over 3,000 people have signed an online petition to lobby against him gaining legal entry into the country, while others have started to use the hashtag #KeepJulienBlancOutOfCanada to promote the cause. Blanc’s past tweets and Instagram posts have reportedly promoted violence against women, while videotapes of his past seminars depict him instructing men that shoving a woman’s head into their crotch would lead to a successful “pick-up.” In a statement issued yesterday, Alexander confirmed that his office is aware of the petition against Blanc and that he is currently “looking at all options and will consider using every tool at our disposal to protect the rule of law on Canadian soil.”
Finally, the Toronto Star celebrates Remembrance Day with a series of war stories including the story of 85-year-old Betty Laron, a Burlington woman who grew up in Zevenaar, Netherlands during the Second World War. Close to her 13th birthday, in early 1943, she and her family were forced into hiding to avoid persecution by the Nazis for being Jewish. Her father Josef moved his wife and Betty into the upstairs floor of a home owned by a poor family called the Heisters, who sheltered them for 786 days. For two years and two months, Laron and her family lived in almost complete seclusion and silence, eating rotten potatoes. Before being set free on April 3, 1945 Laron contracted tuberculosis, which persisted even after the war. Laron herself admits that her story echoes similarities with Anne Frank, who was in hiding around the same time as her own family. Says Laron, “She landed in almost the same circumstances with her family. Only there was one bad thing. She was discovered and she did not survive, and I did.”