City
Morning Brew: Remembrance Day Ceremonies in Toronto, Hand Sanitizer Snafu, Billy Bishop Airport, Raptors Prefer Winning to Spirit, Giller Goes to Linden MacIntyre
Photo: "Img2009-11-01-009" by picturenarrative, member of the blogTO Flickr pool.
What's happening in the GTA (and sometimes beyond):
Remembrance Day in Toronto is being marked by ceremonies honouring those who have fallen in military battles. Some offices are closed for the day, some open late, and most of us will work through the day and take a moment of silence at 11am.
When you buy lots of anything, you generally get great pricing. But not always. The City of Toronto, for example, appears to have gotten shafted when it rush purchased over 200,000 bottles of hard sanitizer for health professionals at $2.59 per bottle. I bought one mini bottle of Purell at Shoppers this weekend - for about the same price.
The Toronto Port Authority has gone ahead and made the decision to rename the City Center Airport "The Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport," despite there already being an airport in Owen Sound, Ontario. The TPA generally does whatever it wants, doesn't it?
The Leafs are recently playing their best so far this season (3 wins, 3 loses, and 4 ties in their last 10 games, which really isn't so hot). But because in the NHL standings spirit is NOT everything, Raptors fans at the Zan Tabak Herald had a little fun with stencils down by Union Station.
The Giller Prize was awarded to Linden MacIntyre, for his book that touches on the uber-sensitive topic of sexual abuse within the Catholic church.
And tough new rules aimed at slowing the rapid restaurant/bar development on Ossington have been proposed and include: no large or two-storey restaurants, no rear patios, no large side patios, and more. Should these kinds of limitations be imposed? What's best for the neighbourhood?
Discussion
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We need to repeal all of these malicious, totalitarian restrictions. Ossington is now a safe, legal operation and it gets closed down. Meanwhile the city did nothing when it was controlled by Vietnamese gangsters.
By their actions, Council prefers organized crime to run wild in our neighbourhoods. The ungenerous would say that they're corrupt and run by the Mafia, but I'm sure it's just rank incompetence and unbelievable stupidity. Western politicians seem to respond similarly to all situations - reasonable fear of violence gets accommodated while civil, law abiding citizens are derided and abused. This is what you call a bad incentive!
But at least the Mafia wasn't loud
I felt safer with the "Vietnamese gangsters" and before that Mendelson Joe.
it blows my mind that people are this worried about a little noise as opposed to having a growing neighbourhood with more options of food, nightlife and culture.
keep the Ossington improvements a coming I say!
Considering how many people work within 6 blocks of it, it's kinda disgraceful how few people bother to go to the Remembrance Day ceremony at old city hall on Queen. Every year I go the crowd is only about 1500-2000 people...
At the very least people should stop what they're doing, go outside and find a Canadian flag to look at for 2 minutes and give some thought to the meaning of the day. It's not too much to ask.
The Ossington thing is all about trying to ensure that the area retains a diversity in businesses, isn't it? If you believe Jane Jacobs, that's good city-building.
Might also be worth pointing out that h*pster meccas like NYC (Williamsburg et al) allow far fewer bars per block than Toronto does.
Whether our authorities can pull this off properly -- that remains to be seen...
Well said Poppy, Lest We Forget
Stop renaming shit. It's unnecessary.
Ratpick,
Joe doesn't want diversity in the businesses. The council yesterday put, in essence, a serious limit to any new restaurant growth. That's not bars. The street is lined with high end restaurants including Libretto, Delux, Foxley, Paramour.
The by-laws apply to bakeries, cafes, and any foodservice establishments. I'm not sure what exactly he wants there? Clothing stores? More electrical supply shops? Mechanics?
Clearly, for a guy with the incredibly unoriginal moniker of "Picard102." There must have been at least 101 of them before you.
I'm surprised you didn't go with Kirk2009
:)
Having my username be just Picard would be kind of useless. It's an actual name and the TV show would make it fairly invisible. 102 was a random number generated to help it clear the noise around just the name.
For those interested in Ratpick's comment about New York's regulations on bars-per-block - Working wih my local residents group (queen/beaconsfield), we've done a bunch of research on how bar density is handled in other big cities with vibrant nightlife. What we've found is that there are regulations limiting how many bars there can be in an given area in New York, LA, Berlin, Chicago, Montreal, London, and San Francisco. But there are no such limits in Toronto. You can see that research at: http://bit.ly/3dzLxv
Brian writes:
"The council yesterday put, in essence, a serious limit to any new restaurant growth. That's not bars."
For some reason, in the eyes of City Hall, there are no “bars” in Toronto.
Pretty much any bar you can think of in Toronto is licensed as a restaurant, even places where you’ve never seen anyone order food. So neighbours say “there are too many places like X, Y, and Z in our neighbourhood”, and X, Y and Z are all places that serve drinks and serve little if any food. The city looks and sees that those places are officially “restaurants” (even though no one would call them that) and decides that neighbours want restrictions on restaurants, even though they don’t.
I'm not a supporter of what the city has done on Ossington. But I *would* like to see the city develop regulations that allow nightlife to flourish, while also protecting residents rights to peace an quiet. I think it's possible to that. A big first step would be the creation of regulations that distinguish bars from restaurants. Lots of cities have this. For some reason, Toronto doesn't.
That's just silly Scott. I live on Humbert and have been there for six years. I can now walk home alone. That wasn't the case as little as 4 years ago. Open your eyes!
I'd kind of agree with you. Although the city has plenty of tools at their disposal to manage sound and disorderly conduct. It's a question of using those tools to effect the change they want rather than blanketing and stereotyping the neighbourhood with 'bars' when there are people who are creating great local cuisine.
Come on Ryan, what's this really all about for you? It's not that loud, I know because I live there. In the middle of the City there will be some sound, it's the sound of people living their lives.
I am from vancouver and i wanted to say that world war one was fought because at that time all the colonies in the world had already been taken so the only way for a european country to get more colonies was to fight another european country for colonies.All the european countries and canada and the usa are equally to blame for this.This had nothing to do with peace.After the first world war european countries made millions of dollars at Germanys expense.So that caused the second world war.The wars today are fought for the same reasons.Soldiers are dying so that one country can have an economic advantage over another.It is not a good way to go.
Bad enough what they're doing to Ossington. I'm worried that this will spread to other parts of the city as part of the harmonization of the by-laws they're proposing.
Uhh....I guess The City Of Toronto didn't think about going to the Dollar Store to buy the hand sanitizer.
just a thought....
And Poppy is right "At the very least people should stop what they're doing, go outside and find a Canadian flag to look at for 2 minutes and give some thought to the meaning of the day. It's not too much to ask."
A lot of people's lives were given so that we can enjoy what we take for granted today.
Make sure you take a moment to reflect on that and those that have lost loved ones.
Do Dat
http://www.dodat.com
It was a joke.
Though, too many bars and restaurants -can- be bad for a neighbourhood if they end up going up faster than the rate at which people visit the area. If that happens, business just ends up getting diluted and it becomes tougher for any one individual location to thrive. And often the disproportionate increase in businesses can turn people off who are put off by the sudden change
Your ignorance is more than offensive on a day like today.
I agree that the city has a lot of Tools.
Many of them hold office.
Beautiful photo today.
Go Raptors!