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• News

  2009 in review: Top 10 Toronto news stories

  

  Posted by Stephen Humphrey at 5:01 pm on January 1, 2010
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  With the cloud of recession hanging over it, Toronto endured a smelly six-week garbage stike and saw one of its most beloved bookstores close.

  Torontonians heard announcements that the city’s approach to transit was being re-imagined for the coming decade, but also that the mayor wouldn’t stick around past the next election. One colourful political figure announced he was leaving provinicial politics to make a bid for mayor, while an Etobicoke MP began his audition for the role of prime minster.

  Cancer took the lives of a talented local singer and an admired shaper of cultural events.

  Toronto couldn’t get through the year without its share of bad behaviour, as demonstrated by the convication of a pipe-swinging serial bike thief and an altercation between a cyclist and a politician’s convertible which left a bike-rider dead and a political career in ruins.

  Experts now claim the economy is rebounding. Here’s hoping some of that good news trickles down during the coming year.

  (More …)

   

• News

  Ongoing strike a ‘real blow to the morale’ for Toronto Islands workers

  

  Posted by Laura Godfrey at 9:58 pm on July 29, 2009
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  Just when they were preparing for ferries to revive their deserted businesses, Toronto Islands workers must endure yet another delay in the 38-day city strike.

  Although the strike was set to be ratified today, CUPE Local 416 – representing Toronto’s outside workers – has delayed their vote. Mayor David Miller said at a press conference this afternoon that the main problem is negotiating back-to-work protocol. In other words, who’s going to clean up those mountains of garbage?

  But business owners on Toronto Islands are just eager to welcome back the 22,000 visitors they normally see each day on a typical July weekend.

  (More …)

   

• Superfeed

  Toronto man’s mission: turn Queen Street into clean street

  

  Posted by Superfeed Editor at 11:47 am on July 17, 2009
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  From CBC | Toronto News

  With the litter collecting on many Toronto streets because of the strike by municipal workers, some downtown businesses are taking a step to clean up.

  Three business improvement associations in the city’s west end have hired Mark Giesbrecht, who calls himself Mark the Litter Guy, to sweep up.

  (More …)

  More Toronto news<

   

• News

  As strike continues, hammers stop swinging on affordable housing projects

  

  Posted by Laura Godfrey at 4:12 pm on July 16, 2009
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  For 62 low-income families living in run-down, high-rent areas, the garbage bags piling up at nearby drop sites are not the cause of the big stink in Toronto’s city strike. Instead, it’s the news that construction on their affordable housing units has been pushed back indefinitely.

  These families were scheduled to move into houses built by Habitat for Humanity Toronto. Some had already given notice to their current landlords. According to Neil Hetherington, CEO of Habitat for Humanity Toronto, the most emotional part of all this is telling families they can’t move into their new homes.

  (More …)

   

• News

  Welcome to the graveyard: all night with strikers at Bermondsey transfer station – part two

  

  Posted by Rodney Barnes at 4:38 pm on July 10, 2009
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  1 | 2 | 3

  (Continued from part one)

  A little after 1 a.m. Tim Maguire, first vice-president for CUPE Local 79, arrives to boost the picketers’ morale. The strikers, however, give Maguire a little more than he’s bargained for.

  “The reality is we’re a picket line trying to affect change, and change is not happening,” says someone from the crowd. “Now we’re hearing things like August 16, Labour Day, Caribana.”

  (More …)

   

• News

  Welcome to the graveyard: all night with strikers at Bermondsey transfer station – part three

  

  Posted by Rodney Barnes at 4:37 pm on July 10, 2009
  No Comments 1 image
  

  1 | 2 | 3

  (Continued from part two)

  Christine, Claudius and other striking municipal workers occupy a circle of fold-out chairs, trading jokes and work-related horror stories.

  They are each wrapped in blankets against the cold, which is damp but still. The temperature reads 13 degrees Celsius.

  (More …)

   

• Superfeed

  One striking worker. One angry resident. Let’s talk

  

  Posted by Superfeed Editor at 11:56 am on July 5, 2009
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  From Toronto Star – Toronto & GTA

  Mary Ormsby
  FEATURE WRITER

  Their common ground is their common ground.

  A striking city employee picketing at a temporary east-end dump site and a resident who can see and smell stewing garbage mounds from her sidewalk have each walked their dogs on the Ted Reeve Arena fields.

  (More …)

   

• Superfeed

  Toronto seeks injunction to allow exterminators to spray dump site

  

  Posted by Superfeed Editor at 7:26 pm on July 4, 2009
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  From CBC | Toronto News

  Lawyers for the City of Toronto were in court Saturday, seeking an injunction to stop pickets from blocking a pest control company that has been spraying garbage at the Christie Pits temporary dump site.

  (More …)

   

• Superfeed

  Christie Pits to close but trash stays put

  

  Posted by Superfeed Editor at 2:21 pm on July 4, 2009
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  From Toronto Star – Toronto & GTA

  Donovan Vincent
  staff reporter

  With two temporary garbage dumps nearly full just 13 days into the civic workers’ strike, the city is closing both and opening two new ones.

  The Christie Pits site, the scene of ongoing protests from neighbours opposed to part of their park being turned into a garbage dump, will close to additional trash at 7 p.m. tomorrow, city officials said.

  (More …)

   

• Superfeed

  City Set To Turn Two More Parks Into Dump Sites As Strike Continues

  

  Posted by Superfeed Editor at 2:19 pm on July 4, 2009
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  From CityNews: Top Stories

  The city is set to turn two more parks into dump sites as a strike by civic employees drags on.

  Toronto hit Day 13 of the job action on Saturday, with no news from either the Mayor’s office or union officers.

  (More …)

   

• Superfeed

  No car? Scarborough senior hauls her trash on bus

  

  Posted by Superfeed Editor at 12:31 pm on July 2, 2009
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  From Toronto Star – Toronto & GTA

  When the smell of the garbage piling up in her home finally became intolerable, Martha Dewhurst decided she needed to take a trip to one of the city’s designated garbage drop-off sites.

  (More …)

   

• Superfeed

  Raising a stink vs. suffering in silence

  

  Posted by Superfeed Editor at 12:26 pm on July 2, 2009
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  From Toronto Star – Toronto & GTA

  They are both home to seasonal arenas closed for the summer. A throw away from baseball fields where kids and adults play league games on Sundays.

  A whiff away from residents trying to get used to the idea they now have garbage dumps a short walk down their street.

  (More …)

   

• Superfeed

  Neighbours Of Christie Pits Dump Protest At City Hall

  

  Posted by Superfeed Editor at 9:47 pm on July 1, 2009
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  From CityNews: Top Stories

  A vocal neighbourhood group fed up with the City using its popular park as a garbage dump took its protest all the way to City Hall Wednesday.

  Members of Friends of Christie Pits Park showed up at Nathan Phillips Square carrying bags stuffed with fake garbage and placards that read, “Keep our parks beautiful” and “Parks are not dumps.”

  (More …)

   

• News

  Strikers thanked for lending a hand

  

  Posted by Alexandra Kazia at 9:26 pm on July 1, 2009
  No Comments 1 image
  

  Picketers at one east-end emergency dump site are being thanked and wished a Happy Canada Day.

  Garbage is still piling up on day 10 of a strike that involves road workers, daycare workers and all other city workers. (More …)

   

• Superfeed

  A peek into a park

  

  Posted by Superfeed Editor at 6:45 pm on July 1, 2009
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  From MyTownCrier.ca – Strike2009

  It’s noon at the parkette at Logan and Danforth Aves. the day before Canada Day. Moms sit around the fountain feeding raspberries to tots in strollers; old men smoke; a few people drink from Tim Hortons cups, no doubt enjoying the sun-dabbled scene.

  On the stage area in the northeast corner of the square that’s lined with Grecian columns, a statue of Alexander the Great presides over the scene.

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