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Weekend Newsstand: February 28, 2015
In the news this fine February morning: astronaut Chris Hadfield's uniform was found in a thrift store, Toronto is Canada's least equal city, and the SIU won't release the name of a man shot by police last week.
By now, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield is a household name. But recognizing the name doesn’t make it any stranger to encounter in a thrift store. Doctor Julielynn Wong says she found Hadfield’s space-worn suit in a second-hand shop in Toronto. “I thought, ‘Wow, what is a flight suit like that doing up there?'” she told reporters. Wong, who is Facebook friends with Hadfield, messaged him to ask if the suit was really his. After confirming some details about it, he said it almost certainly was, though he had no idea how it ended up at a thrift shop.
A new report by the United Way found that Toronto is the most economically unequal city in Canada, and the gap between the city’s rich and poor is growing twice as fast here as it is nationally. Previous work by the United Way and McMaster University found that almost half of all workers in the GTA are in precarious employment. Even so, the study found that city residents “maintain high levels of trust in each other,” meaning that city officials should act soon to curb growing inequality. The Toronto Star has an in-depth examination of both this phenomenon and some of the people affected.
A policy change from 2012 means that the Special Investigations Unit, the civilian outfit that investigates Toronto police misconduct, only reveals the names of dead victims with the permission of their relatives. That’s why the man who was shot to death last week by police still hasn’t been named; the SIU hasn’t yet located his next of kin. While this move means families won’t open a newspaper and discover a loved one is dead, some say it’s also a slap in the face for transparency and oversight. The move is especially odd given that police release the names of all homicide victims regardless of family wishes, so the only victims whose identities are kept from the public, at the moment, are victims of the police. “I would say there’s a greater need for society to understand every possible fact we can about a death when the person is shot by police,” said Ryerson University journalism professor and former lawyer Lisa Taylor. “Even more so than when we’re talking about a homicide not involving a police officer.”