Oct 23
I take great pride coming from a family of strong women, they might not have called themselves feminists, but that’s how I saw them. My maternal grandmother was a real-life Rosie the Riveter who welded aluminum fighters and bombers during WWII. My paternal grandmother was a technical draftsperson who continued working after the war- helping …
Oct 19
One of the most interesting resources published on the City of Toronto’s website is a detailed listing of councillor’s expense reports. Councillors are given a fixed annual budget each year ($30,815.40 in 2014), details of their spending (and reciepts) can be found at this link. The data can’t be downloaded in spreadsheet form, and it can …
Apr 23
City Council’s executive committee recommended today that councillors who receive external funding for trips outside the country should provide financial details. It’s a logical request, one often requested of people in businesses, universities, or virtually any organization with sensible governance. There are important reasons to do this; partly to keep the bean counters happy, but also to …
Dec 17
UPDATE: The story originally identified the person in the beige jacket feeding the fire as Chelsea Flook of the Sierra Club. Flook has written and said that it was not here. Your Humble Narrator apologizes for any misconceptions as a result of this error, but still points out that Flook promoted this event- behaviour that’s …
Nov 18
Remembrance Day was last week, a non-holiday (most people work) where Canadians take a brief moment to remember people who have fought and died at war. Despite his having just admitted lying to the whole city, Mayor Rob Ford showed up to preside over the ceremonies. This of course meant that Ford had to endure …
Jun 02
Joshua Blakeney is one of the most disturbing journalists in Canada. On the one hand he comes across as harmless, a babbling idiot who publishes stories worthy of the National Enquirer. Most people don’t believe his fish stories, it’s hard to take them seriously when peppered with stupidity. My favourite was the one that said the …
May 24
On July 30th of last year I noticed one of my friends was being treated rather disrespectfully. They were in a Twitter exchange with Sandy Garossino where the conversation led to the TIDES Foundation’s funding of organizations that espouse the use of political violence. My friend made a very valid point, TIDES has funded groups like …
Nov 16
Tonight was the night that the anarchists converged on West Toronto- much to the dismay of the local residents. It all started a couple of weeks ago when Zach Ruiter, an anarchist, started publicising the fact that there’s a uranium processing plant at Lansdowne & Dupont. The plant has been there for over 50 years, …
Aug 18
Back in 1975, a entrepreneurial man sailed a ship across from Soviet Yugoslavia into Toronto’s harbour and setup what became one of our city’s legends. Regardless of it you like his ship or not, and regardless of you hated or loved the food, one has to have some respect for someone with the guts to …
May 24
I got a response about yesterday’s article on mental health stigmatisation from Toronto Hydro this morning. I must say, whoever wrote this has very little respect for our intelligence. Here’s my response to them…