The Star lovingly recreates Bryant’s last night as a man not under suspicion, while in the meantime, Partisan Hobo notes: …there’s no PR firm to save the deceased man’s image. I don’t even know him, but I know he came from a broken home, that he is a visible minority, that he has a historycontinue reading
Current Events Archives
Blood on Bloor
Everything about the recent cyclist death on Bloor is upsetting and horrific. Take first the location: Bloor St. outside Sephora, between Bay and Queen’s Park Circle, a pair of blocks everyone has walked along at some point and that were, at quarter to ten on a summer night, far from empty. Take the absolute insanitycontinue reading
Stephen Maher for Press Gallery President, or something
From the Chronicle-Herald reporter’s affadavit to the Nova Scotia court today. Not only, as it turns out, an effective argument against a frivolous injunction against publication, but also a much-needed reminder for the often acquiescent pool of Canadian political reporters: In exercising the freedom of the press, The Halifax Herald Limited engages its reporters tocontinue reading
jailparty.com
I’m probably showing my age, but I’m relieved that the grownups have intervened and cancelled a planned rave in the old Don Jail. The new owner’s site had the wrong tone, and something like this was probably inevitable. More here and here.
The old jail could be used as a performance art venue, but in all decency it has to be in a context that works with themes around suffering and despair, both experienced by the inmates and by their victims, and by the people who worked in the building before it was a Doors Open curiosity.
The place has a dark history – not playfully Gothic dark, but really seriously dark, and I don’t think that’s registered with the people offering ‘ghost tours’. More below the fold.
Wait… a contracting economy is *bad*?
Missed this the other day, but it jibes nicely with the giddy excitement about the Canadian economy reporting a mere 5.4% (annualized) contraction in the first quarter of 2009. -5.4%, guys! Practically growing! Never mind that the outlook is not for growth for the rest of the year, but for continued, if not necessarily ascontinue reading
Time for some new rules
It’s time to set some new rules around use of the phrase “in this economy.” Rule number one: If the extra fee you’re talking about can be counted on your hands, “in this economy” does not apply. Example, courtesy the Star: Cathy Dernick’s eyes widen in surprise as she learns that come June 1, she’scontinue reading
H1N1: Let it come to you!
Several weeks after the first case of secondary transmission in Canada, and a few hundred hundred “mild” cases of flu later, the Ontario government issues new guidance for clinicians. Key changes: – health care workers now to wear N-95 mask and eye protection when examining all patients with influenza-like illness (ILI); last guidance (April 28)continue reading
Mixed messages
Who to believe? Yesterday, infectious disease expert Allison McGeer of Mount Sinai Hospital told the Canadian Press she is starting to “question the delusion that this was actually going to quiet down and we weren’t going to have a first wave” of cases as weather got warmer. Today, she tells CP24 the level of flucontinue reading
Does he know something we don’t?
From a Star story on tonight’s Tamil protest. Emphasis added: Dave Crowell, a Grade 8 teacher with his class on a field trip from Saskatchewan to study citizenship and immigration, explained to his class the right to protest. “At the moment we live in a democracy,” he said he told them. “This is a peacefulcontinue reading
Twitter and the Tamils
As the Tamil blockade of the Gardiner continued on Sunday night, Twitterers reacted to Bill Blair’s warning that the expressway could possibly still be closed the following morning. For a good approximation of the dominant fear-mongering, largely xenophobic tone of messages posted, see Christie Blatchford in today’s Globe. Here’s a lazier example: No kidding. I’mcontinue reading