Quotulatiousness

January 6, 2012

Weird local story gets a bit weirder

Filed under: Cancon, Randomness — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:33

In Pickering, about 20 kilometres west of here, the regional police found that an abandoned home had been modified to add a “confinement room”. It’s in a fairly secluded area, so there were no immediate leads to who had made the modifications or who (if anyone) had been confined in it. Today, the National Post reported that the “dungeon house” has burned to the ground:

An abandoned Pickering farmhouse that was found to have padlocked dungeon in its basement burned to the ground early Friday morning, adding an unexpected twist to an already bizarre police investigation.

A fire broke out at 140 Concession Rd. 7 outside of Pickering shortly after midnight and soon consumed the desolate building where police had been carrying out an investigation.

[. . .]

Before the blaze, police were trying to determine who built the “confinement-style” room with padlocks affixed to the very thick door, discovered in late November when crews went in to assess the building that had been scheduled for demolition.

Police said the house was last occupied in 2006, but the room was new — believed to have been built within the last year or two.

“I can’t get into what was in the room, but the way it was constructed — the time and effort put into it and the materials used — clearly indicated it was a room designed to hold somebody in,” Durham Regional Police Detective Darren Short said last month.

December 15, 2011

Grim, crime-wracked, post-apocalyptic Toronto ranks … 52nd most dangerous in Canada

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:29

Everyone in Canada knows that Toronto is a cess-pit of crime where the oppressed citizenry huddle in fear, while idyllic Victoria is a benign, peaceful enclave of happiness. But what we know just ain’t so:

Toronto ranks 52nd among cities and towns in the country for the label “most dangerous” according to Maclean’s. Victoria, BC? Far from being a peaceful place, ranks second in the country after Prince George, BC. In fact, BC has four of the top ten dangerous cities, while Ontario’s most dangerous place, Belleville, clocks in at number 11.

November 9, 2011

This is not news: Toronto is Canada’s least-liked city

Filed under: Cancon, Media — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:07

In fact, a strong case could be made that hating Toronto is one of the key factors that binds the rest of Canada together:

Ontario’s capital not only had the lowest rate of positive responses, it also had the highest rate of “very negative” responses. “Many Canadians have a hate-on for Toronto,” said Myer Siemiatycki, a Ryerson University politics professor. “Toronto is regarded as totally self-indulgent, so there’s a sort of ‘Who do they think they are believing they’re the centre of the country and the universe?’” Jim Milway, executive director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the Rotman School of Management, said the poorer perception of Toronto — 19% of respondents gave negative responses — is due to animosity more than anything else. “It’s not necessarily that people like their city more than Toronto,” he said. “It’s that people just don’t like Toronto, period.” Prof. McGrane, of the University of Saskatchewan, said the “grudge” is rooted in historic grievances, particularly harboured by westerners who have long felt “left out.” “It’s not that we hate (Torontonians), but we’re a bit suspicious about them and their motives,” he said.

I can’t claim to have been everywhere in the country, but from Nova Scotia to British Columbia, hatred of Toronto and distaste for Torontonians is almost universal among Canadians.

October 29, 2011

Canadian Air and Space Museum to be evicted in favour of ice rinks

Filed under: Cancon, History, Space, Technology, WW2 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:20

A sad tale at the CBC website about the impending eviction of the museum and other tenants of the historic (but not historically designated) DeHavilland plant in Downsview:

A building that played a major role in the production of aircraft for the Allies in their fight against Hitler during the Second World War is facing the wrecking ball.

It’s located in Toronto’s Downsview Park and is described in federal heritage documents simply as “CFB Plant .1, Building .1.”

Just one month after the federal government celebrated Canada’s aviation history by reintroducing the name, “Royal Canadian Air Force,” it was sending an eviction notice to a building where RCAF planes were assembled.

Built in 1929, the plant housed the operations of the de Havilland Aircraft company which provided 17 per cent of Canada’s planes during the war years.

[. . .]

David Soknacki, the chairman of Parc Downsview Park, says the building at 65 Carl Hall Road is not currently classified as a heritage building.

Up until Oct. 26., the Canada’s Historic Places website listed the facility as “a recognized Federal Heritage Building because of its historical associations and its architectural and environmental value.”

Then the listing disappeared.

H/T to Michael O’Connor Clarke for the link.

September 28, 2011

Toronto: paradise of the high-profit, cellar-dwelling sports franchise

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Sports — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:11

Last year, I posted a bit of Toronto-baiting, referring to the town as the place “where professional sports go to be embalmed”. In the comment thread to that post, “Lickmuffin” set me straight about just why Toronto teams are so bad — the answer is that Toronto fans expect no more of them, and are happy to pay for mediocrity. Stephen Marche goes a few steps further on that line (largely proving Lickmuffin’s point):

It’s a given that the true fan goes to games not for the necessarily occasional thrill of winning, but for the quotidian experience of losing — a truth articulated originally and beautifully by Nick Hornby in Fever Pitch. Losing in Toronto, however, is an unremitting condition. The CFL team, the Argonauts, is so bad that when I recently found a friend of mine betting on it, I immediately wondered if it was time for an intervention about his gambling addiction. As it stands, the Argonauts are 2 and 6 3 and 9. The Blue Jays this year aren’t completely terrible, but when you’ve said that, you’ve said everything. They may be a rising power in the East, as many claim, but they sure haven’t risen yet. The Raptors are still in their post-Bosh wilderness (not that the Bosh period was a golden age), and Toronto FC currently rests at the bottom of the Eastern Conference. The Leafs, who matter to Torontonians more than all the other teams combined, have not won the Stanley Cup since 1967, and they haven’t made the playoffs in a franchise-record six seasons. The only team with a longer dry spell is the Florida Panthers. The Leafs’ major source of hope seems to be Brian Burke himself, but when the major source of your dreams is a front-office guy, you are in a dark place. Cheering a GM, to me, is hitting rock bottom.

And this in Canada’s biggest city, where hockey matters more than baseball in Boston or basketball in Indiana or football in Texas. The only other places where sports dwell so near the most profound and abiding national questions are rugby in New Zealand, which recoups the warrior culture of the Maori, and football in Buenos Aires, where the slumdog Boca Juniors battle the uptown Millonarios in a never-ending class war. Maybe Real Madrid against Barcelona could be added to that list, but nobody else. People who were surprised that Vancouver burned after the Stanley Cup playoffs last year are unaware of the history of the sport in Canada. Of the 10 biggest riots in Canadian history, six began at hockey games.

[. . .]

So who can blame Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment, the business that controls the Leafs and the Raptors, for following that oldest and truest of rules: Never give a sucker an even break? The most recently released financial reports, published by the Toronto Star in 2007 and which were neither confirmed nor denied by the privately held MLSE, suggest they run a profit margin of more than 20 percent. Before we start hacking away at the irresponsible evil-capitalist angle, however, we should recognize that the majority shareholder in MLSE is the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Fund (although they are currently looking to sell); the profits of MLSE have paid for the retirement of a lot of hardworking people, so it’s good that they’re good at business. And they are excellent business people.

September 15, 2011

National Post headline funnies

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Education, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:19

The article discusses a day planner that was distributed to students at a Toronto primary school. The planner included a printed version of an online “Days of Significance” calendar that had references to sex workers, female genital mutilation and Palestinian solidarity. The board agreed with the complaint that this material was not appropriate for a kindergarten-through-grade 5 audience (although they did not say whether the planners were being withdrawn). The National Post headline, however conveys a slightly different message:

Sex workers, genital mutilation not suitable for children: TDSB

I should hope that sex work and FGM would be considered unsuitable!

September 1, 2011

Toronto’s HOV lanes should become toll lanes

Filed under: Cancon, Economics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:24

Like everyone else, I hate paying tolls, but my time is worth more than the toll to use the faster route. The C.D. Howe Institute is proposing converting the existing (and additional planned) high occupancy lanes on highways to toll lanes:

Car-pool lanes on Canadian highways should be converted to high-occupancy toll lanes to reduce congestion and generate revenue for municipalities, says a C.D. Howe Institute report released Wednesday.

High-occupancy toll lanes differ from high-occupancy vehicle lanes by allowing solo drivers to use them, but at a cost. The lanes require that individual drivers pay to use them, but vehicles carrying more than one passenger can drive on them for free.

“When you have bad congestion, the only way to maximize capacity of the highway is to restrict and manage access,” said Ben Dachis, author of the report. “You do that by charging people for that access.”

My commute into Toronto is pretty much at road speed until I get off the 407 ETR (a toll road) and get on the southbound 404 (a non-toll road with an HOV lane in each direction). That’s about the halfway point of my journey, but I’ll spend 75% of my travel time on the second half of my commute. The HOV lane is rarely full to capacity, and there are always “cheaters” who use the lane even though they’re alone in their vehicles (you can tell because they dart back into the regular lanes at the first hint of a police cruiser ahead).

In my own case, converting the HOV lanes on the 404 to toll would only save me 10-15 minutes, as the Don Valley Parkway does not have HOV lanes, but saving 20-25 minutes per commute would be quite worthwhile for me.

July 14, 2011

Yet another twist in the twisty-turny mess that is Ontario liquor law

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Law, Wine — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:42

Michael Pinkus responds to an unfair accusation against Diamond Estates over their ability to open a retail store in Scarborough (most wineries are not legally able to do this):

Upon reading the Fashionable Press’ article I shot back the following (on everybody’s favourite medium these days) the Facebook comment section: “Have you really not been paying attention??? Diamond has a store because they bought a winery that had 1) a pre-1993 license and 2) had a pre-existing store. No mystery here, no cronyism, just smart business sense. In Ontario’s archaic system there are two things that reign supreme: a pre-1993 license (which allows you to blend foreign and domestic wines) and a winery with an outside store attached. Diamond got them both when they acquired DeSousa.”

The reply from Fashionable was quick: “Yes we understand that point the issue remains why no other winery can do the same thing?”

To which I answered, “This comes back to the archaic laws … not cronyism or the fact that Murray Marshall is chairman and CEO of VQA Canada. As many know I am not a huge supporter of the big wineries that can blend (and do) but Murray is working well within the crappy, backward, stink-ass system we call the alcohol laws in Ontario. If another winery wanted to do it they can pony up the 3+ million Cilento will sell their license for (of course I may be off by a few million on the price because that pre-93 piece of paper is a license to print money).”

To understand all this, and all it’s intricacies and complexities is to understand why Ontario’s small wineries are so pissed off (and yes that is the right wording here) when the subject of VQA stores is brought up. But back to Diamond … The moment DeSousa went up for sale Murray saw it as an opportunity to get a store that wasn’t tied to Niagara and a way to get his products into the hands of consumers in the much more lucrative market of Toronto (in this case Scarborough).

Now the astute amongst you (or the Ontario wine history buff) will note that Lakeview also has a pre-1993 license (est. 1991) – but that’s where it gets even wonkier. While Lakeview would be allowed to blend foreign with domestic wines, the original owners never branched out to buy another retail store, so their operation was stuck in Niagara post-1993 when the moratorium on wine store licenses was imposed. DeSousa (est. 1990) on the other hand, did acquire one additional retail licence prior to the cut-off.

The hard part about owning these stores is they are rarely permanent, and here’s why. The rationale behind placing one of these additional retail outlets somewhere is that it is an “under-serviced neighbourhood” … Fashionable asks the following: “Why didn’t the LCBO find this under-serviced gem and plunk one of its outlets there? … Why did they choose in a gentlemanly way to cede over to Diamond?”

To that I say ‘Have No Fear’, if that Diamond store does well then you can bet the farm that the liquor monopoly will parade in like a white knight and announce a store nearby … which will force Diamond to relocate the store to another “under-serviced area” … and how, you may ask, will the LC know that Diamond is doing so well? That my friends is what smells bad in this entire deal: Who do you think gets to look at the sales numbers from these off site stores? Hmm? They’re not called the KGBO by some for nothing.

So the brief and fleeting moment that Diamond has taken advantage of will disappear as soon as the LCBO decides that they need to move into that disadvantaged area and open an LCBO store, which will force the private seller to close their store in the area. Nice.

June 26, 2011

Anti-semitism at the University of Toronto

Filed under: Cancon, Education, Liberty, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:54

Post-graduate students at the U of T may have gotten a bit too honest and outspoken in class:

Picture the following: A discussion in a post-graduate university class on the topic of Jews turns ugly. The professor is uncritical when one student says he doesn’t want to be around Jews. Another student complains about “rich Jews,” implying their excessive power. In a subsequent class, the same professor, as if to validate those points, says half her department faculty are Jews and with her approbation, students conduct a ‘Jew count’.

While this sounds like an episode in Germany leading up to the anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws, it occurred more recently and much closer to home, at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Social Work. Now, more details are emerging under the exceptional circumstance of two U of T professors publicly criticizing a colleague for facilitating classroom anti-Semitism and the university administration’s inadequate response.

The controversy began when some visible minority students in a Social Work Master’s program at the University of Toronto expressed discomfort about being around “rich Jews,” in Professor Rupaleem Bhuyan’s class, regarding a proposed outing in 2009 to the Baycrest Centre, an internationally renowned Jewish geriatric and research facility. They were undoubtedly confident of a sympathetic ear from her. The previous year, Bhuyan denounced Israel as a satellite of the United States, unworthy of distinction as a separate country.

The few Jewish students in Bhuyan’s Master’s Program class were intimidated into silence for much of the discussion by a classroom culture slanted against them. Finally, one young woman spoke up, protesting her grandparents had come to Canada with virtually nothing and she was proud her family could now afford the fees for them to reside at Baycrest.

That must have rung an alarm bell for Professor Bhuyan, because startlingly, she then admonished her students not to divulge what transpired in class to outsiders.

H/T to Ilkka for the link.

June 15, 2011

Preview of the CN Tower Edgewalk experience

Filed under: Cancon, Randomness — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:25

H/T to Michael O’Connor Clarke for the link.

May 14, 2011

QotD: The Liberal Party as Canada’s “Skull-and-Bones Society”

Filed under: Cancon, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 00:19

John Manley strikes me as a shining example of one of the great tragedies of the Liberal Party of Canada: a fine public servant blessed with good sense, but subsumed by the weird rituals of that odd cult. Over the years I’ve been shocked at how many really smart, well-meaning ex-Liberals I’ve met who left the party, and public service, because their skills and talent go thrown under the bus at some point by those hidden party puppet-masters we hear so much about, but so rarely show themselves (I assume they’re in some underground fortress in Rosedale) because it was what the party required.

Not being a Central Canadian lawyer, I don’t think I can ever understand the sort of strange grip the Liberal party in its prime once seemed to have on people, but it certainly appeared like it was, for a very long time, some kind of skull-and-bones society, promising Canada’s ambitious, young, bright men and women a route to power, but requiring their allegiance till death. I consider sharp, well-meaning guys like Manley, or former Indian Affairs minister Bob Nault, victims of a game they were obliged to play in order to achieve what they wanted. Until the Liberal party’s recent conversion into a yawning, smoldering crater, if you wanted to make an impact in Canada, especially through government, you’d be best to sell your soul to the Trudeausmen — which, ironically, often meant submitting principle, and logic, to the greater good of the party. I can see why Manley had to go along with the ritual, and retain his silence about the peculiar and problematic universe of mini-lobby groups that had grown like weeds within the party itself. Perhaps, like a befuddled Moonie, he couldn’t even see the problems until he broke free of the party’s hold. But then again, it’s also hard to sound credible complaining about structural problems in your party when it keeps winning election after election after election.

Kevin Libin, “Where was John Manley when the Liberals needed him?”, National Post, 2011-05-13

April 18, 2011

Toronto area gas station boycott

Filed under: Cancon, Economics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:01

Chris Greaves (who doesn’t even own a car) looks at the possibility of using weekly boycott targets in an attempt to force oil companies to lower the retail price of gasoline in Toronto:

Consider therefore a web site for the GTA which announced as the next boycott period approached that the new target was “Shell”.

Those drivers who subscribe to the mass-boycott idea would avoid buying gas at Shell and, being evangelical, would tell their friends and colleagues that “Shell” was the target this period.

The question is “Who picks the target?” and the answer is simple: torontogasprices already announces the highest and lowest price for gas in the GTA. Score +1 against that company with the highest gas price at a random time each day. Then pick the company with the highest score. Over a short period, the company with the highest prices would float to the top of the list and be ready for a boycott.

In order to avoid any hint of collusion and legal attack, the web site would be hosted as a private web site, a blog perhaps, with the views expressed being solely those of the individual. There can be no legal complaint against an individual blogging and/or tweeting a disarmingly simple statement “This week I am boycotting Shell”.

April 17, 2011

Ilkka lets his anti-pedestrian flag fly

Filed under: Cancon, Humour, Randomness — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:33

Ilkka is usually a pedestrian/public transit rider, so it’s quite a surprise when he looks at the world from the driver’s perspective:

It’s always good to see things from the other guy’s perspective, and today we went on errand to the city on a car, very different from my usual public transit and pedestrian viewpoint. I understand not just the complaints of drivers much better now, but also the notion of “high cost of free parking”. I thought it was absurd how the city of Toronto, by allowing curbside parking, effectively turns its perfectly good four-lane streets into narrow two-lane bottlenecks that massively throttle the traffic. And then all those freaking pedestrians crossing the streets wherever they feel like, something I basically never do. It actually wouldn’t be a bad idea to impose a law that not only is it never a crime to hit a pedestrian who is on the street anywhere else than the sidewalk or a crosswalk, but the city would actually pay a small reward for this service to society, bit like the “kill money” bounty that hunters traditionally get for putting down pests. The problem of pedestrians running around in the traffic would vanish within a week.

I think he’s kidding . . .

March 14, 2011

Canadian in Japan claims government “providing no help” to him

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Japan, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:13

Phillip Ilijevski is shocked that the Canadian government hasn’t been providing him with personalized information on what’s happening near him:

A Toronto man living in Japan says the federal government is “providing no help” to Canadians wanting to know if they should leave the earthquake and tsunami-ravaged country, especially given the nuclear threat.

Phillip Ilijevski teaches English in Takasaki, about 100 kilometres north of Tokyo. He called Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade to find out if it’s safe to stay in Japan, but says the only advice they gave him was to watch the news.

I have no idea why the Canadian government is expected to have better information on what’s happening in Japan in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami than the Japanese government, but it must be Stephen Harper’s fault, right?

If Mr. Ilijevski was in a third world nation with poor communications and little infrastructure, it might be reasonable to assume that Canadian officials would be in a better position to provide advice than local government, but in this case there’s no reason — Japan is better equipped to handle this kind of disaster (and public information flow) than just about any other nation on earth.

As jonkay said in a Twitter update: “As usual,when disaster strikes abroad, TStar’s #1 focus is finding a Canuck to bitch about how Ottawa isn’t helping him”

I’m not sure what a “paprade” is, but apparently Toronto had one

Filed under: Cancon, Humour, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:56

I guess the weekend staff were celebrating St. Patrick’s day a little early, as not only the photo caption (left) but also the pa(p)rade directions leave you a little misdirected:

The parade begins at Bloor and St. George Sts. and heads west to Yonge, where it turns south and goes to Queen and then heads west again to University, ending just south of Dundas on University.

The streets are expected to be closed from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., making driving to the parade difficult.

Highlighting mine. Going west from Bloor and St. George won’t get you to Yonge Street for a fair amount of time:

H/T to Chris Greaves for bringing this to my attention.

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