Cycle Sadness
Memorial ride for Henry Mejia on Saturday, April 20. The cyclist was killed by a drunk driver at Kennedy and Hwy 401 on April 13.
Massey redo
What Construction of a six-storey addition to historic Massey Hall, which will necessitate demolition of the Albert Building, built in 1917 and named after the son of Massey family patriarch Hart Massey.
Why According to a report of the Preservation Board, “the alterations are in response to serious long-standing deficiencies in the design of the existing concert hall relating to front-of-the-house patron services and comfort and back-of-the-house accommodations for performers.”
When The project will be considered at the May 14 meeting of the Toronto and East York Community Council. On the same agenda: a further report on the 60-storey mixed-use Massey Tower just kitty-corner to the site on Yonge.
Bike Works
Riderless bikes (don’t call them abandoned) collected by city Transportation staff get a new lease on life at the Brick Works. This spring these “beautiful noble cadavers,” as Brick Works outreach guy Anthony Westenberg describes them, will be used in youth-training bicycle-rebuilding workshops. To date, 60 bikes have been restored for proud new owners in St. James Town, Rivertowne/Don Mount/Regent Park, Flemingdon Park, Thorncliffe and Kingston Road/Galloway. Ride on!
Photo by Leigh Morgan
Media watch Boston bombing
“USA! USA!” is the chant we’re getting used to hearing when a terror suspect is captured or killed stateside. It went up again, live across the nation on TV, when accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was taken into custody last week. It’s like a football game. The reporting, too. See CNN’s John King’s erroneous report that a “dark-skinned” suspect had been taken into custody. Another report picked up by Fox claimed that a “Saudi national” was among the bombing suspects. Also not true. Less reported: an Ipsos Reid/Reuters poll published two days after the bombing shows that most Americans see the biggest threat to public safety coming from random acts of violence committed by other Americans, not foreign terrorists. Score one for common sense.
28%
How much less women earn than men on average in Ontario, according to a new Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives report.
Casino games
Mark Grimes likes to keep a low profile – and his nose clean. But they don’t call him the midnight mayor for nothing. Still, it came as a surprise when news broke in the Star last week that the Etobicoke-Lakeshore councillor took a taxpayer-funded five-day junket to Vegas last July. Grimes, after all, is chair of the board of governors for Exhibition Place, the site preferred by MGM for a Toronto casino. But it’s Grimes’s explanation that’s more bothersome. He says he went to Sin City to check out a pedestrian mall idea for the Ex, but expense documents say he was there to meet with MGM and Caesars officials.
