Extra, Extra: A (Non-Trash) Panda's Happy Birthday, People Are Gay (Deal With It), and Toronto's Bid to Reduce Overdose Deaths
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Extra, Extra: A (Non-Trash) Panda’s Happy Birthday, People Are Gay (Deal With It), and Toronto’s Bid to Reduce Overdose Deaths

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

  • Happy birthday to one of Toronto’s furriest residents! Da Mao, Canada’s only male giant panda, celebrated his seventh birthday yesterday at the Toronto Zoo with a space-themed cake made of bamboo, biscuits, and fruit. Da Mao, along with his six-year-old companion Er Shun, are part of the Toronto Zoo’s Giant Panda Conservation Breeding program. The two will leave their home at the Toronto Zoo in 2018 for a five-year stay in Calgary.

  • Following a protest this morning demanding Ontario’s new sex-ed curriculum be dropped from the school systems this fall, Peel School Board Director of Education Tony Pontes says requests made by parents for children to drop out of gay studies and gender issues will not be tolerated. Citing Ontario’s Human Rights Code, Pontes said, “We cannot—we will not— by action or inaction endorse discrimination.” This morning, a letter sent by the Canadian Families Alliance to the Ministry of Education called to “amend and enhance the curriculum before it is fully implemented across the province,” citing several concerns with the new curriculum. Parents are currently only allowed to withdraw their children from the curriculum due to religious reasons.
  • Toronto paramedics will soon be carrying anti-opiate kits in a bid to reduce overdose deaths in the city. The kit will contain two doses of Naloxone, which helps reverse the effects of a drug overdose, and the tools to administer treatment. Clement Sun, the medical director for Addiction Centre Toronto, said, “If you notice they’re not breathing, they’re unconscious, you can give them an injection and they will start breathing. And therefore you avoid the cardiac arrest. That’s a huge advantage.” The new kits will be fully integrated by Christmas.
  • From today’s edition of 12:36, Toronto’s new lunchtime tabloid newsletter: A supposed new era of Canadian viral comedy hit a snag when the satirical online publication the Beaverton unpublished an article about the winner of the hitherto obscure Mrs. Universe pageant (not to be confused with the Trump-owned Miss Universe). The offending headline: “Ashley Burnham crowned Mrs. First Cree Woman to Gain National Coverage If She Disappears.” The website’s editors said they removed the piece because of complaints by indigenous Canadians. (Want more 12:36? Subscribe to it now.)

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