Negotiations between city hall and CUPE Local 416 are dragging on continuing this week, as the city creeps slowly toward an ever more likely labour stoppage on February 5. Doug Holyday says the fact that talks are even happening is proof that progress is being made—but we’re pretty sure sure both sides are more concerned with looking favourable in the public eye than they are with reaching an agreement. Also, in the event of a work stoppage, garbage pickup would stop everywhere except Etobicoke, where a private contractor provides the service. So perhaps Rob Ford is even thinking a municipal workers’ strike redux would give him a little political ammo on the privatization front. Then again, he’s not really in a position to make any bold political moves these days. Read the entire story [Toronto Sun] »
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Apparently, fiscally conservative councillor Doug Holyday doesn’t quite get the concept of a double standard. He’s all for service cuts in the 2012 budget—but only insofar as they don’t directly affect the people who voted him into office. Case in point: Holyday says he won’t support cutting mechanical leaf collection in Etobicoke. The deputy mayor’s noted that leaf collection is a “very valued service in the areas that get it.” And we don’t doubt it. Of course, we suspect the hungry kids who benefit from the city’s breakfast programs, people who swim in public pools and those who use public health programs also value the services they get. Read the entire story [Toronto Sun] »
The last place to get a nice-sized home on a quiet, leafy street for less than $150,000 in the GTA—Twin Pines trailer park
On a bright morning in August, Judi Lloyd drove through Twin Pines with the air of a visiting dignitary. The preternaturally cheerful 57-year-old real estate broker was on her way to list a home. The Mississauga trailer park is located just off Dundas, one of the city’s main arteries. Like all of Lloyd’s visits to the park, the trip quickly turned into a mixture of socializing and networking as she waved to and chatted with residents from the driver’s seat of her black Ford Escape. She gestured at the mobiles we passed, noting the histories and special features of each. “You wouldn’t even know that’s a trailer,” she said, pointing at a 48-by-24-foot mobile on a spacious, pie-shaped lot. “If someone dropped you in there and you didn’t see the outside, I swear you’d think it was a little bungalow.”
1| Bob and Ena Barclay, paid $8,000 for their mobile home 45 years ago
2| Stephen Plume, paid $125,900 for his mobile home in 2007
3| Debi Little, paid $105,000 for her mobile home in 2011
4| Patrick Rostant, paid $140,000 for his mobile home in 2009
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Exodus to the burbs: why diehard downtowners are giving up on the city
The reasons to abandon the overcrowded, overpriced, not-so-livable city are beginning to outnumber the reasons to stay. More and more of us are tempted by the 905 and beyond. Screw Jane Jacobs. We’re outta here
Brian Porter and Carrie Low thought they’d hatched the perfect plan to avoid the eight-lane gridlock they faced every week on their drive to the family cottage in the Kawarthas. Porter, a soft-spoken 41-year-old Toronto firefighter, would arrange his work schedule to be home on Friday. He’d pack the car at noon and pick up his daughters, Lily and Amelia, from daycare shortly after lunch. Then, rather than head from their home in the Beach to pick up Low downtown, he’d drive to a strategic pit stop in Oshawa. Low, a slim 41-year-old redhead, works as a lawyer with RBC in the financial district, her days and nights packed, respectively, with meetings and paperwork. Her role in the escape plan was to get off work early and catch the GO train to Oshawa Station. Often, she’d end up working a pressure-packed day until 5 p.m. anyway, leaving Porter and the girls waiting at the station for hours. In the end they never gained that much time—it could still be a challenge to get to the cottage before nightfall. But at least they’d avoided the worst hours on the DVP and the 401.
Reaction roundup: city hall reporters journeyed to Etobicoke to take in Ford Fest—then, they tweeted about it
What’s a good ol' BBQ without burgers? (Image: Neil T)
Last Friday, Jonathan Goldsbie tweeted, “When we reach the ‘1500 Royal York’ bus stop, the bus driver announces ‘Stop for Rob Ford.’ Half the passengers on the crowded bus disembark.” And so began an evening of dispatches from Ford Fest, a late summer gathering in the backyard of Doug and Rob Ford’s mother. The event attracted the mayor’s supporters, critics and people who were just there for the beer and food. Undeterred—or perhaps fuelled—by the hamburgers, Toronto’s city hall observers expressed their amazement with the Fords’ vast backyard and the treasures within. We’ve rounded up some of our favourite tweets and broken them down into categories—because here’s another case where the reporting on Twitter outdid the old-timey fare (except for maybe this piece)—after the jump.
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CONFIRMED: Tim Hudak will be attending Ford Fest
(Image: Ontario Chamber of Commerce)
This weekend, all of Toronto (well, most of Etobicoke, at least) will be checking out the cul-de-sac at the Ford family compound to see who arrives to have beer and hot dogs at the second annual Ford Fest. Last year’s party fell during mayor Rob Ford’s election campaign; this year, however, promises more partying for partying’s sake and less rallying around the small-c conservative flagpole. Earlier this week, rumour had it that Ontario Tory leader Tim Hudak wasn’t on the guest list, but Toronto Star reporter David Rider confirmed that Hudak will indeed be attending the festivities. Now that Ford has met with Dalton McGuinty and, this afternoon, NDP leader Andrea Horwath, that leaves just Hudak for Ford to corner by the kiddie pool and shake down ask for some subway money.
The Chase: One couple resists the lure of suburbia for a few more precious years downtown
The Buyers: Erica Smith, a 34-year-old real estate agent with Condo Chicks, and her fiancé, Marc Puddy, a 37-year-old insurance executive.
The Story: Smith and Puddy started looking for a place together after they got engaged in November. Torn between the large lots of the suburbs and their love of downtown, the couple looked at houses in Etobicoke and Port Credit as well as condos in the core. “Condos are getting smaller and smaller. It’s hard to find one that feels like a home,” Smith says. They needed room for their dog and a home office, as well as two parking spots. They set an upper limit of $1 million—preferably less if they opted for the burbs—and started their search.
Recent fact-checking spree reveals that no, Etobicoke doesn’t have more libraries than Timmies, contra Doug Ford
Not a Tim Hortons (Image: Anthony Easton)
We suspect that “fact-checking the Fords” will be a growth industry for city hall watchers, especially after Ed Keenan’s piece in the The Grid giving a rundown of five examples in just one week. But this one, uncovered by the (library union–backed) advocates at OurPublicLibrary and picked up by the Toronto Star is kind of a howler: Doug Ford was quoted on the radio as saying “We have more libraries per person than any other city in the world. I’ve got more libraries in my area than I have Tim Hortons.” That statement is getting the drubbing it deserves on Twitter (look for the hashtag #booksnotdonutsforford), and the facts are pretty clear.
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At $2 million an episode, Combat Hospital, a new MASH-like war drama set in Afghanistan but made in Etobicoke, needs to find an audience fast
Combat Hospital’s 185,000-square-foot set, on the site of a former bottle factory, is one of the largest in Canada. (Image: Eamon Mac Mahon)
Over the 10 years of Canada’s military presence in Afghanistan, our film and television industry has, on more than one occasion, recreated that country for the purpose of entertainment. Mostly, these efforts have occurred on Canadian soil, no small feat given that Afghanistan is an anarchic, war-ravaged nation where summer temperatures can reach 50 degrees Celsius, and Canada is a country known for its cold-weather sports and niceness. Ingenuity, it seems, is key. When a production team attempted to build an Afghani village for the CBC series The Border, they did so in a gravel pit in Caledon, a popular film location that, owing to the magic of the lens, has also served as a tropical jungle (Amazon) and the high Arctic (Lives of the Saints). The Maritime producer Barrie Dunn, for his soon-to-be-released film Afghan Luke, used the British Columbia interior, specifically a small town near Kamloops called Cache Creek.
A look at some of the city’s hottest rides—and some of the most enthused enthusiasts
When the warm weather hits, the car-obsessed and their vintage toys come out to play, top down, engines gurgling, exhaust pipes fuming. But who are they and where do they come from?
Austin’s Powers
Mark Doust
Purchasing Manager, Etobicoke
To behold Mark Doust’s 1953 Austin-Healey 100/4 is a revelation: the car is gorgeous, curvy and lithe, pinched around the waist like a wasp, and streamlined for speed, right down to the collapsible windscreen that slides forward at its base to reduce resistance. “You can never drive like that, of course—it just directs the bugs to your teeth,” Doust says, laughing heartily. Read the rest of this entry »
Apparently the Mastercard Centre for Hockey Excellence is a financial sinkhole
The Mastercard Centre for Hockey Excellence is eating city dollars
Hockey seems to be the topic of the day. First, the Vancouver Canucks get thumped by the Boston Bruins in game six of the Stanley Cup Finals last night. Then, early this afternoon, city council’s economic development committee put forward a request for Rob Ford to write a letter to the NHL commissioner expressing the city’s interest in a second NHL team (it seems the request was summarily shut down). And last but not least, news broke that the city is embroiled in a financial snafu concerning a four-pad ice hockey rink in Etobicoke.
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Five things we learned from last night’s garbage debate
We attended last night's garbage debate
Newbie councillor Josh Matlow has spent the last six months very carefully straddling council’s middle, taking a calculated stance on issues from taxes to the TTC to garbage privatization. Last night, in an attempt to provide some clarity for the voters in his ward—and perhaps his own thoughts—he invited fellow councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong and left-wing economist (they exist!) Hugh MacKenzie to debate the pros and cons of the latter. Adding to the evening’s star power, Steve Paikin agreed to moderate the debate—in part because he lives in the area and in part because it seems he’s constitutionally required to preside over any such forum he happens to attend. Unfortunately, the turnout was poor and the drama was low. But we did learn a few things—five of them actually. More after the jump.
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The Fortress falls: Liberal ridings taken by Tories and NDP
Five fallen Liberal incumbents
After the dissolution of Canada’s 40th Parliament, the GTA was a Liberal playing field, Fortress Toronto the most secure of all Liberal strongholds. With the Liberals holding 20 of Toronto’s 22 seats—and no credible expectation that the party would lose many, if any, of its MPs in the 4-1-6—the idea that they could do any worse than they had under Stéphane Dion (who, by the way, won his seat in Montreal) was inconceivable. Of course, everybody knows how that turned out. The stranglehold was broken in emphatic fashion as ridings that held long-standing Liberal incumbents dumped them like a bad college romance. We look at a number of key Liberal losses and explore how the GTA changed from solid red to a bluish-orange hue.
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It’s official: Duggan’s Brewery has served its last pint
(Image: Danielle Scott)
Not long ago, it seemed as though brew and gastropubs were on the rise in Toronto, but a couple of recent closures are giving us pause. While My Place’s failure might be attributed to its west end location and size, many are shocked to hear that downtown brew pub Duggan’s Brewery has also shut its doors.
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Ontario’s boring budget is fine, except for people who live in cities, and Peter Milczyn
The snoozer: Ontario’s budget goes over like a light breeze
Perhaps the first thing to say about yesterday’s Ontario budget is that it perfectly embodies the government of Dalton McGuinty: no surprises, nothing terribly showy, just a hope that incremental progress in certain areas and doubling down on the two biggies for any province (health care and education) will win the Liberals re-election. The problem for us is that there’s nothing here for cities. We set out to write a blog post about what’s in the budget for Toronto, but really and truly, there’s bupkis—unless you count a little bit of an eff-you to Etobicoke.
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