Mayor Rob Ford is in a Toronto courtroom this morning to fight a $6-million defamation lawsuit, and is expected to testify later today.
The owner of an east-end restaurant filed the suit over comments by Ford during his 2010 election campaign.
At the time, Ford was incensed that the city gave a 20-year lease extension to the operator of the Boardwalk Cafe along Woodbine Beach.
Ford said the deal "stinks to high heaven." He also agreed with a radio interviewer when asked: "Is someone getting money under the table?"
The restaurant's owner, George Foulidis, is accusing Ford of libel, saying he suggested he won the contract as a result of illegal activity. Ford wouldn't talk about this case when asked about it on Monday.
The statement of claim was filed before Rob Ford was elected mayor. It centres on remarks he made about a controversial decision to award the vending rights along a swath of the Eastern Beach to George Foulidis, the owner of Tuggs Inc., the company that operates the Boardwalk Pub, without a public tender.
Mr. Foulidis alleges that Mr. Ford defamed him when he suggested impropriety during an interview on Newstalk 1010 in July 2010. Asked by radio host Jerry Agar if anyone is getting money under the table, Mr. Ford said “I truly believe they are, and that’s my personal opinion, and when I see all these donations, going through campaigns, it stinks to high heaven.”
The statement of claim filed in Ontario Superior Court of Justice in October 2010 also cites part of a Toronto Sun news article, based on an editorial board meeting with the mayoral candidate. Council’s decision to award the untendered contract to Tuggs Inc. “smacks of civic corruption,” says the article, paraphrasing Mr. Ford, although he is not quoted using those exact words. He does tell the newspaper: “If Tuggs isn’t, then I don’t know what is” and that the deal “stinks to high heaven.” (Then-mayor David Miller blasted Mr. Ford’s comments at the time, to which Mr. Ford responded in a press release: “I think it was corruption, Mayor Miller doesn’t, so let’s make all the information public and let the taxpayers decide for themselves.”)
[. . .]
Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday, who chaired the audit committee during the last term, said there was “no proof” of illegal activity regarding the Tuggs deal.
“I guess it depends what one means by corruption. What Rob meant, I have no idea. Certainly, if he meant they did not follow the city’s policy and they didn’t do what was in the best interest of the taxpayer, if that’s what he meant, he was right,” Mr. Holyday said. “I think [council] acted improperly. Whether corruption was involved, I don’t know.”
All she wanted was a haircut.
But when Faith McGregor walked into the Terminal Barber Shop at Bay and Dundas streets, she was shocked to hear from the owner that no barber at the shop would cut a woman’s hair because it goes against their religious beliefs.
McGregor has since filed a complaint about the June incident with the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC).
The shop wasn’t busy that day, she says, and two barbers were standing at the back of the store. “I asked, ‘Do you do a businessman’s cut?’ It’s a basic haircut. They said they do.”
After describing the cut, owner Omar Mahrouk stopped her. “He just looked at me and said, 'I can’t do that. We don’t cut women’s hair here.'”
McGregor says she was shocked. “I just wanted the exact same cut as they would give a man. Nothing different.” The 34-year-old dyke says she always gets her hair cut at a barber shop, not a salon.
Mahrouk told her “it’s against his religion” to cut a woman’s hair, she says. Mahrouk and two other barbers refused, all saying they practise Islam, which forbids them to touch strange women, she says.
For his part, Mahrouk admits that he denied McGregor service. “I can cut my wife’s hair, but not a strange lady. For me this is not discrimination. I explained that I have nothing against woman. This is my religion. She did not accept it.”
[. . .]
“The law is the law, but this is my religion. But I am not discriminating against anyone,” Mahrouk insists. “It is against my religion.”
Robert Frost gently reminds us that “Before I built a wall I'd ask to know/What I was walling in or walling out”. In this case, these seawalls only protect those who find themselves lucky enough to be lodged behind them. The rhetoric of “protecting New York City” is vague and self-serving, and ought to compel the question, “Whose New York City”? None of the three plans mentioned above would change anything for the residents of the Rockaways or other barrier islands. Moreover, if for example the water is indeed stopped by a seawall at the Narrows, it will have to find something to do with itself. It is likely that it will double back and form an even greater surge, promptly pounding the coastline nearest it, ie, the entire south side of Staten Island.
This then naturally raises the question of who is incentivized or even allowed to live where, and why. A seawall makes this explicit, and virtually permanent. This is the built environment at its most pointedly political. In fact, the essence of urban infrastructure is oftentimes its representation, or occlusion, of the political. Some may protest, saying that technology is fundamentally agnostic, that it can be used for good or ill but cannot be intrinsically political, but in fact there is nothing new about this.
[. . .]
The monolithic nature of the seawall will occupy [. . .] instantly communicate who is on the right and wrong side of the tracks. Beyond signaling people where they may and may not live, it may further signal that we (as a society, as a government) refuse to be responsible for those who choose to dwell outside of its protective embrace.
Chances are, you have never tasted wild coffee. Only an estimated 5% of Ethiopia's production is wild, what is known locally as "forest coffee" (Cultivated plantings in Ethiopia are called "garden coffee"). Willem Boot, a noted importer and an expert on Ethiopia, thinks it could be even less, around 1% or 2%.
But that tiny amount accounts for the most diverse sampling of coffee in the world. By one estimate, Ethiopia is home to 98.8% of arabica coffee's gene pool. Most of that diversity is found in the forest.
How many wild coffees are there? It's hard to say – the scholarship doesn't exist. The number some kick around is 1,000, while others think it's higher. These coffees are the stuff of myth. They fire up the imaginations of many leading traders and roasters in the industry's creative class because there's a decent chance that they include some of the world's most spectacular and distinctive coffees. The reasoning goes: if the farmed coffee of Ethiopia is (at its best) that good, just imagine what has yet to be discovered, and what it might taste like if it was processed carefully.
[. . .]
How many strange, delicious coffees are growing wild in Ethiopia? We will never know. Just when we're ready to appreciate the unfamiliar – this generation of tastemakers is fascinated by the peculiar, the mind-blowing – it looks like coffee's most diverse catalogue of flavours will steadily diminish, and probably disappear. The loss of tonnage will be made up elsewhere, but the loss of possibility will be absolute.
[T]he Greater Toronto Airports Authority agreed to help the struggling, and currently homeless, Canadian Air and Space Museum find a new site for its aircraft and artifact collection — including a replica of the legendary Canadian-built Avro Arrow fighter jet — at Pearson International Airport.
“We are talking and hoping we can come to a good arrangement,” said airport authority spokesman Scott Armstrong.
More than a year ago the aviation museum, a non-profit organization run by volunteers, was evicted from its Downsview Park location after running into financial problems and the park corporation’s desire to repurpose the building.
By September 2011, the museum owed the park’s property owner some $100,000 in unpaid rent.
“It was a very unpleasant experience,” Ian McDougall, museum chair, said of the eviction notice that forced volunteers to dismantle and pack the collection into storage containers.
The museum struck a deal with the GTAA earlier this year to temporarily store its collection on airport property.
With most of its collection already shipped there, McDougall said, the museum pursued negotiations to secure a permanent home at Pearson.
According to McDougall, the museum has already found a location at the airport where a new building could be constructed to house the collection. A press release notes the museum is looking at land near the south end of the airport, near Highway 401.
[. . .]
McDougall added that “we’re still working out large details,” particularly how the struggling museum can afford to lease airport land, given its financial difficulties. After a year with its doors closed to the public, the volunteer-run organization has all but burned through its small cash reserve, he said.
Earlier this month, in a move to turn dreams of an airport home into a reality, the museum launched a campaign on crowdfunding site IndieGoGo, seeking $500,000 in donations to help fund a new home for its collection, which includes a full-scale replica of the Avro Arrow fighter jet.
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