Or so says Christopher Hume, writing in the Toronto Star: “Toronto’s accidental treasure“
I love the Spit: it’s a bird sanctuary, wilder than most city parks, looks a bit like Scotland with its hills and fjords, I mean lochs. It’s a good place for a walk or a bike ride. Who cares that the park exists only on weekends or that it’s built out of landfill?
Twenty-five years ago, Toronto declared itself a nuclear-weapons-free zone.
A few years ago, there was a big debate in Toronto about dog breeds: pit bulls, which is a generic term covering a couple of breeds such as Staffordshire Terriers. They’re considered dangerous. I read that in the U.S. one year, the greatest number of fatal dog attacks, 13, was from Golden Retrievers. They just don’t get no respect so people aren’t careful not to provoke them.
Similarly, people panic over one of the eight fatal cougar attacks this century, while the most dangerous animal in the woods measured by fatal attacks is the white-tailed deer with its cute, sharp little front hooves.
Unfortunately, people who want to look dangerous sometimes adopt dogs as accessories. Those people want the dog to look dangerous, too, or to be aggressive and they don’t properly discipline them. They should lose their dogs, one way or another. (My grandfather was working as a postman once when he was attacked by two mastiffs. He killed both of them. A swift blow to the end of the nose will do it.) The local by-law in Toronto is now that pit bulls or dogs that look like pit bulls must be neutered and must be muzzled in public. Also, I think you can’t acquire a new one, though you can keep an old one.
Toronto has a bad habit of jumping on the bandwagon. There’s now a move afoot to ban handgun ownership, even though the existing laws are sufficient to deal with illegal handguns or dangerous carrying. A hobbyist storing a registered gun at a gun club or carrying it properly secured is not a problem. People with smuggled or stolen guns carrying them unsecured are the problem.
I don’t want the city wasting my tax money to make useless, grandiose, feel-good gestures.
I’m off to a meeting of the Toronto Society for Technical Communication executive council, to help plan the meetings or “events” for the coming year.
A former bookstore burned and took the life of its ower. It was crammed to the eaves with books and junk, with just a narrow corridor through it. Neighbours smelled food cooking just before the fire was noticed. The front door was partially blocked with junk and there were triple back doors. Firefighters had to break through the walls and roof to get their hoses onto the fire. The buildings on either side were damaged as well.
Donwatcher reports on the new management plan for Crothers’ Woods in the Don Valley.
One of our local Toronto repertory film-houses is showing Richard Dawkins‘ BBC documentary on March 15 and 19:
“The Root of All Evil?” is a BBC documentary film, written and presented by Richard Dawkins (author of The God Delusion), in which he argues that the world would be better off without religion. This film explores the unproven beliefs that are treated as factual by many religions and the extremes to which some followers have taken them.
This being Canada, the theatre invites:
Join us after the film for a respectful and open discussion about the film and the issues is raises. All are welcome to attend and participate.
In other words, be nice!
My intrepid companion, LotStreetWiz, is in training for Ironman Wisconsin next September. (You didn’t think people just popped out of bed one morning and decided to swim a few km, bike 120 km, and run a full marathon, did you?) Part of his swim training is at the Innes Community Centre in Toronto, where some of the walls are decorated with nice, semi-amateur, undersea murals painted in 2003 by Amos Danniel. Here’s part of one of them.
