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Newsstand: January 20, 2015
We made it through Blue Monday. Well, hopefully we did. You’re still here, right? In the news: parents struggle to save a downtown non-profit daycare, the health board wants you to know how much salt is in your food, an introduction to the new president and CEO of the Toronto Region Board of Trade, and Douglas Coupland’s Gumhead arrives in Toronto.
Parents of infants and toddlers who attend George Brown College’s daycare at Scotia Plaza are trying to launch a $2.5-million fundraiser to keep the centre open. The daycare centre is one of the few facilities downtown that is eligible to offer city-subsidized spots for families due to its non-profit status—in other words, it is one of the only affordable nearby daycare options for families with low- or middle-income jobs in the city’s core. George Brown College will be forced to vacate the location this summer, after their 25-year rent-free lease with a developer ran out. Last year parents approached the charitable foundation of George Brown College to ask them to accept private donations to help save the daycare, but the school declined to get involved with the parent’s fundraising initiatives. The parents have persisted on their own and, while they admit it seems unlikely that they will raise the money to secure a 10-year lease in time, they question why the school has stonewalled their efforts to continue running the centre at Scotia Plaza.
On Monday, the Toronto Board of Health announced that it will push the province to require restaurant menus to list the sodium content of all dishes. Last year the board laid the groundwork for a bylaw that, if passed, would force restaurant chains with 10 or more locations (or, alternatively, $10 million in sales) to post both calorie and sodium counts on their menus. While the province did reintroduce the Healthy Menu Choices Act in November 2014, the board notes that the new legislation would only requires restaurants to post the calorie content of both food and beverages, not sodium values. Dr. David McKeown says that if people were really aware of how much salt was in the food they were eating when they go to a restaurant, they would be apt to make healthier choices.
Please give a warm welcome to Janet De Silva, the new president and CEO of the Toronto Region Board of Trade. Taking over from Carol Wilding, De Silva joins the board after 14 years working in Asia, most recently as the dean of Ivey Asia—the Ivey Business School’s Hong Kong and China operation. The Globe and Mail sat down with De Silva for a rather interesting Q&A in which she talks about some of the strengths and challenges she sees within the city. According to De Silva, Toronto has a lot to offer emerging markets and can do more to help small- and medium-sized businesses become export ready. She readily admits that there is a current lack of middle-income jobs in the city, and also calls out infrastructure issues as a priority for businesses in Toronto. On the topic of building better transit, De Silva calls it the necessary “price of admission to becoming a world-class city.”
Finally, if you woke up this morning with an urge to put a wad of gum on someone’s face, you can thank Douglas Coupland for making your wildest dreams come true. A two-metre tall self-portrait sculpture by the artist and writer has landed at the Holt Renfrew men’s store on Bloor Street West, where, we assume, people will once again be invited to affix wads of chewing gum to the statue, as they were when it made its debut in Vancouver last year. Appropriately named Gumhead, the statue will be on display until March 9, and is part of a larger collaboration between the Royal Ontario Museum and Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, which will both host “Douglas Coupland: everywhere is anywhere is anything is everything” starting on January 31.