Time to resign, Mayor Ford

Mayor Ford, you have besmirched the reputation of this fair city with your behaviour. It is time for you to do the right thing and resign.

Rob Ford meeting with drug dealer Sandro Lisi, from Toronto Police surveillance

As a citizen, I am profoundly disappointed, and embarrassed. Toronto deserves better from its elected Chief Magistrate.

Resign, Mayor Ford. And get help. Your ‘leadership’ of this city is a sad, shambling joke, and you have lost whatever trust was ever placed in you.



See:
Toronto Police have the video showing the Mayor smoking crack

Editorial positions of the major Toronto papers:


(And I’m sure even the most rudimentary googling will bring up a host of other related stories)

A Pair of Wistful Farewells

Goodbye Iringa, Toka and Thika. It looks like the three surviving elephants of the Toronto Zoo are finally going to be leaving us. A challenging journey to California awaits them, sometime before the end of this month.

Goodbye elephants! You’ll be missed.

The move follows a protracted and often farcical tussle that has lasted years. I hope that the elephants don’t suffer during the trip. Regardless of how you felt about their captivity here, they were amazing and majestic to witness in person, and I thank them for their service.

Goodbye OLF
The other farewell I want to make is to the Ontario Longboarding Forum, a.k.a. OLF, which shut down about a month and a half ago.

OLF was an online bulletin board forum for skateboarders. It was a key hub for the community and an important gathering place for skaters of all ages and backgrounds.

The classic OLF banner with its square-jawed Aryan skaters

My half-hearted description fails to do it justice, unfortunately. At a different time I might have written a lengthy panegyric, but I haven’t the energy. With the rise of Facebook and other social networks, as well as my own declining skating, I have to admit I drifted away over the past couple of years.

Founder Chris Barrett’s notice about the Ontario Longboarding Forum’s demise

Nevertheless OLF was an influential piece of the Toronto skate scene for almost a decade, and I’m happy that I got to participate however peripherally as the site waxed — and waned — in popularity.

I made a lot of friends on OLF. I’m grateful to Chris Barrett and his conspirators for running and administering the site over all these years. Thanks Chris, Adam, Bill, and the other mods. You guys were great, and I salute your efforts and passion. Be proud of your contribution.

There’s a brief history of the origins of OLF in Michael Brooke’s examination of the Toronto longboarding scene, Half the Hills All the Skills; the entire article is well worth reading.

Meanwhile the scene has moved on. More and more people are skating, and OLF’s time came and went. Like the sand patterns in a Zen garden, perhaps OLF’s existence was meant to be ephemeral—no trace of it remains except in our shared memories.

See previously
No more elephants at the Toronto Zoo
City Council Votes to Send Elephants Away

Past Skate Articles From Me
• The Return of Longboard Haven Skate Shop
• Profile: Justin Readings, Downhill Skateboarder
• Is skateboarding illegal in Toronto?
• The Toronto Board Meeting: A Short History
• The rise of Patrick Switzer, Downhill Skateboarder
• Letter to Councillor Mary-Margaret McMahon: Why Jeopardize the Ashbridges Bay Skate Park?
• Concrete Wave’s Lame ‘Pin-Up’ Cover
• The Banana Split -- Four Years Later
• Grappling with another longboarding death
• Our first longboarding tragedy
• Speed! Thrills! Women! FUBU Skate Race Recap
Labels: ,

I went to jail today...

This afternoon I went to jail. It was a fascinating trip — but one I’d obviously rather not repeat.

The occasion was the public opening of the massive, newly constructed Toronto South Detention Centre.

Toronto South Detention Centre main entrance

Slated to begin accepting inmates later this fall, the $594m facility can house 1,650 offenders, plus another 320 in the connected Toronto Intermittent Centre (by comparison, the Don Jail’s capacity was 562, though counts often exceeded that).

A model aerial view shows the sheer scope of the complex.
Image courtesy EllisDon 

The maximum-security jail features state-of-the-art construction, even boasting a LEEDS Silver certification. Its modern design (by Zeidler Partnership Architects) has been specifically implemented to control and minimize the day-to-day movement of offenders within different areas of the building.

Warning sign at the TDSC
As a (mostly) law abiding citizen who values his liberty and personal privacy, let me tell you that I would not want to involuntarily spend any time in this building. Touring the jail firsthand will make you reflect on how we treat prisoners, as well as contemplate the tension between rehabilitation and punishment — regardless of how you feel about the efficacy of the system.

The site of the jail was formerly occupied by the Mimico Correctional Centre; it has a correctional history dating back at least 100 years.

Imagine spending two whole years confined to this block.
Photo by Tyler Anderson / National Post. View original here.

Public tours are continuing Saturday and Sunday this weekend; I recommend it if you’re at all interested in Ontario’s correctional infrastructure and approach. It was particularly edifying, from the perspective that every aspect of the building reflected a practical ‘designed’ purpose.

“How do you build and scale a safe living space where you can control and supervise every waking moment of 1,650 men?”

Observationally I found that people’s inclinations about jail were reinforced by the tour (i.e. if you think humane treatment and a focus on rehabilitation is important, you still thought that at the end; if you think prisons are where criminals should rot away suffering for their misdeeds, ditto).

More reading & photos
Although the general public isn’t allowed to take in any cameras, the media was permitted to photograph the interior of parts of the building. You can see more of the jail at these links:


Labels:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)