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Newsstand: February 16, 2015
In the news this holiday morning: three paintings have been stolen from the University of Toronto, the community health workers who have been on strike for two weeks return to work Tuesday, and a family blames the Toronto police for failing to alert them to a relative's death.
Three paintings have been stolen from the University of Toronto in the last month. Paintings by Yee Bon, William E. deGuarthe, and Francesco Guardi were taken on Feb. 7-8 weekend, Feb. 3, and an unspecified date, respectively. Guardi was a highly regarded 18th-century Italian painter, and in recent years two of his works have sold for tens of millions of dollars. Works by Bon and deGuarthe fetch considerably lower prices. However, as the Globe and Mail reports, stolen artworks rarely sell for anywhere near their actual value. Serious art collectors want to show off their collections, and usually require ownership records proving the legitimacy of previous owners and changes thereof. Even so, Interpol estimates somewhere north of $6 billion in artwork is stolen each year.
Community health workers represented by the Ontario Nurses’ Association (ONA) will return to work Tuesday after striking for just over two weeks. The ONA and Community Care Access Centre, the group that manages employees, have agreed to arbitration. The workers, who include registered nurses (registered, practitioner, and registered practical), physical therapists, social workers, speech therapists, and other health workers, had been working without a contract for months. The ONA had initially proposed arbitration, and ONA president Linda Halsam-Stroud said the strike has led to “a colossal waste of health care dollars as the employer spent taxpayers’ money foolishly on catered meals for management, overtime, strike-breaking security firms and high-priced lawyers, and who knows what else—with complete disregard for the public purse” from the CCAC. CCAC spokesperson Megan Allen-Lamb, meanwhile, said the organization looks “forward to having our employees return to CCACs to resume their important work.”
The family of Gary Joseph Cormier blame Toronto police for not working hard enough to find them and inform them of Cormier’s June 2014 death. Cormier died after falling off the balcony of a Bleecker Street apartment, and after the police’s initial attempts to find next-of-kin were fruitless, Cormier was buried in an unmarked grave in Vaughan in October. Cormier’s sister, Wanda Rose, found out about her brother’s death just days after he would have turned 52, only after she began making calls to Toronto police. He had been in and out of touch with his family for years and had struggled with alcohol and drug addiction. At the time of his death, according to police, Cormier was high on crystal meth. “Everyone I speak to is just in disbelief that this could happen in this day and age,” Rose told the Toronto Star about her family not finding about about Cormier’s death. “Very sickening, all of it.”