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Hero and Villain of the Week: February 27, 2015
Every week, Toronto is filled with Heroes and Villains. These are their stories.
Hero of the Week: The Mystery Tunnel
Deep in the woods of North York, there is a tunnel that leads to a special place. We don’t know exactly what the Mystery Tunnel is, or what it means, but we know that it is our city’s portal to intrigue.
Maybe it is a passageway to Narnia, or maybe it just leads to Vaughan. Maybe we are all characters on the seventh season of Lost. Maybe Councillor James Pasternak (Ward 10, York Centre) is finally building the Sheppard West subway of his dreams; if so, we salute his determination. Or maybe it’s just a hole with a really logical explanation.
Whatever the answer is, the tunnel is a rarity in 2015. It’s a veritable mystery that fills us with wonder and awe–even if it is the bizarre variety–and we should cherish those moments when they come along.
Villain of the Week: Sex Ed Fear-Mongers
Opponents of updating Ontario’s sex education curriculum are angry. They do not want to modernize the provincial guidelines for teaching sex education, which has not been changed since 1998. They do not want students to learn the fundamentals of sexual consent, which seems less conservative than it is backwards. And while they’re at it, they would like to call people who support the sex education update perverts.
To be fair, these views do not necessarily represent all opponents of the issue. But it does capture the spirit of the crusade that motivates politicians like Patrick Brown, Monte McNaughton, and assorted irrelevant individuals. They’ve said that the curriculum, which teaches kids to eat their vegetables and proper terms for their body parts, among other things, amounts to “indoctrination” and is tantamount to “grooming” children for nefarious purposes. Even conservative religious commentator Michael Coren thinks these sex ed critics have gone too far.
Far from adding to a debate that could use thoughtful and informed discussion, the inflammatory rhetoric of the sex ed fear-mongers poisons the well on an important issue with real-world consequences. If there’s anything that’s being perverted in this issue, it’s the actual contents of the curriculum that is actually being discussed, and that’s a shame.