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G20 protestors redirected from summit to Trinity Bellwoods Park, asked to grumble quietly

For those that doth protest too much (Image: Jane Martin)

Nothing says “anti-establishment” like a march organized by the man. On June 26 and 27, G20 security officials plan to corral protestors into Trinity Bellwoods Park by way of designated “protest routes.” The 37-acre residential park, some two kilometers west of the summit’s outer boundary, or “yellow zone,” has been declared the summit’s official “protesting area.” On the Saturday of the Summit, the Ontario Federation of Labour plans to march from Queen’s Park to Trinity Bellwoods with Greenpeace, Oxfam Canada and the Canadian Labour Congress slotted to join. Spokeswoman Meaghan Gray says police will be “strongly encouraging” protestors to use the designated zone.

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The Informer

Mayor May Not

April 23, 2010 | 8:39 am

3 Comments

Three reasons why road tolls are no longer politically toxic

(Image: dougtone)

Back in March, mayoral hopeful Sarah Thomson suggested the city charge for highway use—a proposal that earned its proponents an unambiguous smackdown from the press. What a difference a month makes. After years of simmering on the political backburner, road tolls are suddenly everywhere—with one Trent University professor even calling them “inevitable.” City councillors and municipal candidates are giving the idea a cautious public airing, measuring its inherent value against the vitriol of voting Torontonians.

A recent Toronto Star-Angus Reid poll shows that only 31 per cent of GTA residents would support road tolls along the DVP and Gardiner. Why, then, are our elected leaders staying in this hostile campaign territory? Have they all grown spines? Perhaps, but we have three other theories:

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The Informer

March of Crimes

April 6, 2010 | 10:06 am

7 Comments

Health Canada’s weed is mostly shwag, critics warn

Last week’s police raid on Toronto’s Cannabis As Living Medicine (CALM), eastern Canada’s oldest medical cannabis club, had little in common with a blockbuster movie drug bust. In this surveillance video posted by CALM on YouTube, undercover officers flit past a parked disability scooter before taking one employee to the ground. Patrons inside remain seated as they look on, nonplussed. Now the Queen Street East compassion club’s 2,000-plus members have to go without the 16.5 kilograms of marijuana, 1.9 kilograms of hashish and 200 grams of hash oil that were seized in the bust. But the real story here isn’t the bust—it’s the blame. Critics of the cops say places like CALM need to exist because Health Canada’s federal marijuana program doesn’t know how to properly deal drugs, delivering insufficient quantities of a poor-quality bud.

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The Dish

Culinary Curiosities

April 1, 2010 | 9:38 am

4 Comments

New trend: food tattoos

Ink and icing (Image: Ann Larie Valentine)

More and more, the Globe is spotting trends in the manner of children after shiny objects. To wit, the paper has turned its attention to foodie tattoos. “When I decided on this [tattoo theme], I’d never even seen a food tattoo. Now I see so many girls getting, like, cupcake tattoos and candy and pie, cake and stuff like that,” says Amanda Tanos, an amateur cake decorator from Ajax. “I think it’s just become part of fashion now.” For others, an epidermal ode to cheap sweets is more than just a fashion statement—a food tattoo can acknowledge the complex social and political dimensions of one’s eating. At least that’s what Vicki Fraser of Ladner, B.C., thinks. She is planning to get a small cupcake tattooed on her arm or ankle. Mind you, when pressed, she admitted, “I just thought it’d be nice to have something really cute and sweet and just happy and have no stupid attachments to it. And plus, who doesn’t like cupcakes?”

With mancakes now on the scene, the answer ought to be “nobody.” And since they’re here, why not get a mancake tattoo?

• Food tattoos take off [Globe and Mail]
• Mancakes are selling like hotcakes in Toronto bakery [Toronto Life]

The Informer

Mayor May Not

March 19, 2010 | 4:41 pm

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The man who made a mayor out of Miller joins Team Pantalone

For lefties at city hall, the mayoral race has been a political cha-cha. Nimble feet are assets to insiders who’ve had to quickly transfer weight from one left-wing candidate to the next—David Miller, Adam Giambrone, Joe Pantalone. But the dance may end now that Toronto’s most sought after campaign manager, John Laschinger, is joining Team Pantalone. He’s the man behind David Miller’s electoral successes and was ready to back Giambrone before his sexty flame-out. With Laschinger chairing the Joe Pantalone campaign, lefty support is starting to mount, making it less likely that another candidate will emerge to challenge George Smitherman.

• Miller campaign chief joins Pantalone [Globe and Mail]

The Informer

The Feds

March 18, 2010 | 9:22 am

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Jokes write themselves as ancient worm discovered in downtown Ottawa

The latest 450-million-year-old fossil discovered in Ottawa isn’t in the Senate—it’s underground. The remains of a plumulitid machaeridian, an armour-plated annelid worm from the Paleozoic era, have been unearthed in the city’s downtown core and declared one of the world’s rarest fossils. Paleontologists Jakob Vinther of Yale University and Dave Rudkin of the Royal Ontario Museum say that the worms could “move relative to one another,” linking their rigid plates to form “protective body armour.” Related to leeches, the bristled, prehistoric plumulitid machaeridian are thought to have been rampant in what is now our nation’s capital. Plus ça change, etc.

• Remains of 450-million-year-old rare armor-plated creature found in Canada [Oneindia]

The Dish

Deathwatch

March 17, 2010 | 4:21 pm

4 Comments

Filion on the Toronto a la Cart fiasco: “The one thing the city messed up on was the carts”

A cart of problems: workers move one of the Toronto a la Cart stations from Nathan Phillips Square (Image: Anthony Easton)

Meet Nancy Senawong as she schleps her $30,000 cart through Mel Lastman Square, where she will serve city-approved, city-branded, multiculti street fare to passersby for the second summer in a row. It’s now been two years since the Toronto a la Cart scheme was launched, and Senawong is the ailing food program’s new poster girl. Though she remains in debt for the pricey cart, she is the “one success story” from 2009, according to John Filion, the health board chair who first championed the street food scheme. She and at least five of eight other indebted vendors attached to the program will spend the spring scraping together what they’ll need (anywhere from $7,500 to $14,500) to keep their stalls in line with stiff municipal regulations.

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The Informer

City Sindex

March 15, 2010 | 1:04 pm

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An ode to Councillor Michael Walker for his years of comic relief

Mel Lastman once called him a “good excuse for birth control,” but to Michael Walker, long-time city councillor and self-appointed member of the “loyal opposition,” that may be an endorsement, not a slight. After 28 years on council, our city’s most colourful rabble-rouser is hanging up his gloves for good. Over the decades, the representative from St. Paul’s has been the devoted nemesis of two mayors, a crafter of otherworldly policy, and an outspoken critic of gas-powered leaf blowers, downtown delivery vehicles and a city clerk. “I enjoy a good fight,” Walker told news outlets last Thursday after announcing he would not seek re-election this October. And fight he did. Among other achievements, the Ward 22 councillor gave utterly new meaning to the term “policy wonk.” Here, in no particular order, are five career-defining reasons why.

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The Dish

Locavoracious

March 13, 2010 | 3:36 pm

6 Comments

Three things we learned about locavore road trips from the Globe

Highway hell for locavores (Image: Grant Hutchins)

Canada’s highways can be hell for road-tripping locavores—all those thousands of kilometres of pavement, with nary a locally grown, non-processed food in sight. Luckily, the Globe has served up a few solutions. Three useful tips, after the jump.

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The Informer

My Name Is Lucre

March 11, 2010 | 4:35 pm

1 Comment

Forbes’ list of world’s billionaires is unsurprisingly light on Canadians

The second-richest man in the world (Image: WEC)

Silence last year’s symphony of miniature violins—the billionaire bubble that shrank 30 per cent during the recession is expanding again. One hundred and sixty-four 10-figure tycoons have returned to Forbes’ annual list of the world’s billionaires, with an unlikely telecom giant from Mexico taking the top spot, thanks to his net worth of $53.5 billion. Surging prices at his various telecom holdings increased Carlos Slim Helu’s net worth by $18.5 billion over the past year, allowing him to nudge out the one-man empires of Bill Gates (#2) and Warren Buffet (#3). Only one Canadian made it into the company of Forbes’ top 50 richest people. David Thomson (#20), of Thomson Reuters, bumped long-time rival Michael Bloomberg (yes, that Michael Bloomberg) from the top 20.

• Bill Gates No Longer World’s Richest Man [Forbes]

The Informer

The Sporting Life

March 11, 2010 | 2:02 pm

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Toronto Raptors lead the NBA in hungry mascots

If nothing else, the Toronto Raptors can claim to be winning the race to develop cheerleader-devouring dinosaurs. In a video that went viral last month, the team’s mascot ingests one of the Dance Pak performers as she tries to stand defiantly in front of him. “[The Raptor] ate me and then spit out a man,” the cheerleader told Maclean’s. The crowd remains surprisingly nonplussed.

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The Dish

Rumours & Rumblings

March 9, 2010 | 3:44 pm

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Three terrifying visions of our food future, courtesy of Condé Nast Traveler

The tea leaves of our impending food future have settled—and they look ominous. Condé Nast Traveler predicts that over the next few years, the dining world will undergo some dire changes. Three choice items among the soothsaying:

Chefs will be on their hands and knees, foraging for native plant species in the wild.
Restaurants will be passé, or, if they exist at all, will function like galleries, inviting diners into bizarre exhibitions of intense stimuli (think seafood dish paired with an iPod playing sounds of the sea, seagulls squawking in the background).
Chefs will embrace science like never before, consulting chemists, X-rays and CT scans to seamlessly separate stocks, identify animal structures and whip up perfectly textured sauces.
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The Dish

Pantry Raid

March 4, 2010 | 9:59 am

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The latest food fashion is not a dish, but an elusive “fifth taste”

British chef-writer Laura Santtini has managed to get umami into a tube (Image: laurasanttini.com)

The Japanese have known about it for years, and researchers have confirmed its existence, but the Globe is just now declaring it fashionable. Umami is a taste (separate from sweet, sour, salty and bitter) first recognized by Japanese scientist Kikunae Ikeda more than a century ago. Apparently Canadian chefs are clamouring to get it into their dishes. “I do think people are really capitalizing on the name,” Andrew Novak, owner of Toronto restaurant Umami Sushi, told the Globe. “Everyone has something that they’re referring to as umami.”

The so-called fifth taste is ubiquitous in Japanese fare: seafood, shiitake mushrooms and tomatoes, as well as fermented and cured products, such as soy sauce. The flavour’s ability to elude description—it has been variously described as meaty and savoury, or like the sweet flavour of barbecued salmon—has whet the appetite of a few cunning profiteers. The Food Channel recently listed it among its top 10 food trends of 2010 (yes, they realize it’s only March), and umami was the subject of a cook-off on The Next Iron Chef. Yet, as Novak himself says, the brilliant thing about a basic taste is that you don’t have to eat out to enjoy it: “Home cooks could combine their own ingredients to achieve the same effect.”

• Everyone’s crazy for … umami? [Globe and Mail]

The Dish

Pantry Raid

March 2, 2010 | 4:48 pm

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Celebrating the Week of Eating In with the nine “grossest packaged foods ever”

Licence to eel (Image: Tesco)

Pork brains in milk gravy contain 1,170 per cent of an adult’s recommended daily intake of cholesterol (though the upchuck factor may mitigate any long-term effects). This is just one of the meals featured in the Huffington Post’s new assemblage of “grossest packaged foods ever”—a parade of grotesqueries that break virtually every food rule in the book. Number one, Armour Potted Meat Food Product, contains traces of meat from several different species (beef hearts, separated chicken, partially defatted “tissue”). The canned eels occupying the penultimate slot are jellied, as if they weren’t putrid enough on their own. HuffPo is running the slide show to honour the Week of Eating In, which encourages readers to cook from scratch in their own kitchens. To be sure, even those faced with the barest of larders could do no worse.

• Grossest Packed Food Ever [Huffington Post]

The Dish

Aprons & Icons

March 1, 2010 | 3:31 pm

Comments

Corey Mintz cooks dinner of Froot Loops and beets for Scott Thompson

In the latest instalment of his cooking for fairly famous people series, Toronto Star writer Corey Mintz invites Kids in the Hall star Scott Thompson over to dinner. Mintz jokes that eating a bowl of prop Froot Loops while on the original set some 15 years ago was the real reason the Kids disbanded. Endeavouring to reverse bad karma, he whips up a Froot Loop panna cotta from the Momofuku cookbook for Thompson. “The milk and cream are steeped in Froot Loops, sweetening the liquid into cereal milk, before being set with gelatin. It’s garnished with crushed Froot Loops,” he writes. Also on the menu: hamachi ceviche with yams and kumquats; rapini, potatoes and guanciale; and a leg of lamb with navy beans, hazelnuts and beets (which Thompson avoids). No comment from Thompson on whether the panna cotta is good enough to keep the Kids crew together permanently, but we’re not hopeful. “If I had my druthers,” Thompson tells Mintz, “we’d still be working together full-time.”

• Cosmic imbalance and an ailing Kid [Toronto Star]
• FED #20: Scott Thompson [Porkosity]

All stories by Robert Furtado

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