City
Morning Brew: August 8th, 2008
Photo: "Wild Clouds at Sunset" by wenli85, member of the blogTO Flickr pool.
Your Toronto morning news roundup for Friday August 8th, 2008:
In perhaps a sign of what we should expect from the Igor Kenk trial, bike thief Jean Laveau was sentenced to two weeks in jail for helping Kenk steal a bicycle. Is the sentence worth the crime?
Quick update: turns out Pastor Phelps didn't quite make it across the border. Again. And I'm pretty happy about that.
Children in Toronto will still have the chance to get some swimming as part of their physical education program — the city is keeping school pools open for at least one more year until they can figure out where to get more funding.
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Okay, for all you marketing majors out there: is the decision to take the iconic "Dominion" and "A&P" grocery brand names and replace them with "Metro" a good one? Will you keep calling your local grocery store Dominion (like I still call it the Skydome instead of the Rogers Centre) instead of Metro?
After reports of funnel clouds being seen in the GTA yesterday and grey skies outside this morning, it looks like a good day to stay inside. That is, of course, until the party later this evening.
It wasn't quite quicksand, but a Scarborough man got stuck in the mud last night, requiring an EMS rescue team to extract him from a bog. Watch your step.
I'ts a sweep! The Jays once won again last night, and it looks like everyone's favorite manager Cito Gaston is here to stay. Great to see the Jays playing well, especially after the Argonauts continue to under-perform.
Discussion
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I would avoid changing the name of the place -- people right now want to feel as though their food comes from folksy locals, not nationwide chains. Yes, I know Dominion and A&P are not folksy locals, but this is marketing -- it's all about perception. I say Metro's decision looks great on paper, but might not work so well in practice.
For all us Ex Pats it will give us a glimmer of the old (country) :)
I'll always go to a Fortinos anyway over the ones being changed.
It will be weird to get used to, and maybe 'Metro' isn't the best name, but it's certainly better than A&P. It's a shame to see Dominion go however. And Loeb? While it might be a Canadian store through and through, frankly, the name just sounds silly.
Since no one outside of Quebec knows Metro, and it's way overused (Metro the newspaper, Metro Toronto, Metropass, etc...), why not compromise and keep that name in Quebec while merging the non-Quebec stores under the very familiar "Dominion" brand?
I'm also against homogenization.
People go to different stores, even if they're all owned by the same corporation (ie. Indigo/Chapters/Coles/W.H.Smith/World's Largest Book Store), for different reasons, not all of them logical. For some, they've been going to Dominion since they were a child, and FYI, I remember when they used to have them in QC, LONG before Provigo, Maxi and Metro ever even existed.
To take that away, well..... I can understand it's cost cutting, by doing away with all the separate branding. Still, I find it disappointing to be losing some of our history, and unsettling too.
Re. school pools:
Funding is coming from the Ministry of Health Promotion but Ministry of Education is taking the lead. As a government employee it annoys me when the media simply says, "Queen's Park" or "the Ontario government" rather than specifying which ministry.
Re: Metro/Dominion/A&P:
People like the familiar. People won't stop shopping there but they won't like the change and yes, many will keep calling Dominion and A&P by their old name. It's confusing.
I shop No Frills anyway.