1 Comment December 1, 2014 at 4:20 pm

Extra, Extra: Food Bank Statistics, Man on Wire, and Comics at the Library

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

The Ontario Association of Food Banks has released its 2014 report, and it highlights some worrisome trends. Last year, about 14,200 new households used food banks; this year, the number was approximately 17,000—a jump of 20 per cent. Each month, 375,000 clients use the service, and more than one third of food bank users are children.

Photos turned up on the internet this week that seem to show a man balancing on a “slackline” stretched between two skyscrapers. The National Post explains that “unlike tightrope walking, which involves a rigid rope or wire, a slackline has more give.” “Give” is not a quality we generally look for in things we’re trying to balance on 50 storeys up in the air, but then, we try to avoid balancing on anything if it’s more than, say, five feet off the ground.
Comic fans (or fans of any pop-up shops that are not conspicuously holiday-themed), rejoice: the Toronto Comic Arts Festival will be opening a pop-up shop inside the Toronto Reference Library. It’ll kick off on December 2 at 6 p.m. with a book launch for Toronto’s own Chip Zdarsky, and in the new year, it will “develop into a full-fledged retail space, with a full complement of comics & goods.”