Photo: "AGO stairs" by septembergurl99, member of the blogTO Flickr pool.What's happening in the GTA (and sometimes beyond):Former Canadian Olympian, Marnie McBean summed it up nicely: "Toronto finally won something." Beating out Lima and Bogota on the first ballot,
the Pan Am games will come to the city in 2015. Although the bid organizers are ecstatic about the win,
public reaction has been ambivalent. As desirable as new sporting facilities and infrastructure are, many are worried about the price tag of an event that's not as prestigious as it used to be.
A
Globe article featuring Amir Gissin, Jerusalem's leading PR man and Israel's consul-general for Toronto, explores
his project to "rebrand" Israel abroad by using Toronto as a testing ground for the international community at large. Citing the city's overall size, its large Jewish and Muslim communities, and the fact that it's home to some of Israel's harshest critics (the article mentions the United Church and the Canadian Union of Public Employees), Gissin views it as an excellent testing ground for a PR project that aims to change the discourse that surrounds the country.
The TTC announced yesterday that it'll be
limiting the number of tokens purchased at one time to 10 or less. The move is intended to prevent hoarding in the face of a possible (likely!) fare increase in the new year. Was it ever fast, though. The decision on the fare increase won't even take place until Nov. 17th. I also wonder about the effectiveness of such a strategy. If one really wanted to hoard tokens, couldn't he/she just purchase 10 over and over again on separate days? I guess they bank on people not going to the trouble of doing so.