A Bit More Detail

• Global News reports on how Canadian zoos protect their animals from the unexpected cold of our country's winters.


• Emma Teitel wonders over at the Toronto Star why men underdress in winter. Is it some effort to prove a suitability for mating? (Me, I just tend to be warm, honestly.)


• Laurie Monsebraaten notes over at the Star that affordable childcare has become still more impossible in Toronto with the minimum wage increase. (The previous sentence reflects two structural issues with the Ontario economy.)
  
• CBC notes lessons Ontario can take, on minimum-wage increases, from Alberta and Seattle.


• Ian Hussey of the National Observer takes issue with five major claims against minimum wage increases.


• This account, of shoppers saying goodbye to a closing Toronto Sears store, is sad. The Toronto Star has it.


• Chantal Hébert notes at the Star that Andrew Scheer and the Conservative Party are best served by a, well, conservative policy, of waiting to see what happens with NAFTA.

When the gates of the Metro Toronto Zoo opened in Aug. 15, 1974, officials anticipated a first day crush of 50,000 visitors.

What they got was 8,000 as officials blamed an ongoing transit strike and fears of overcrowding for keeping visitors away. It wasn’t the only glitch.

The guests who did come complained of too-high barriers that prevented children from seeing some of the animals on display. Some of the animals were impossible to see at all: A group of aardvarks mysteriously disappeared, believed to have burrowed under their enclosure, far from view.

[. . .]

Throughout its more than 40 year history, officials charged with overseeing the 700-acre public zoo, have been exceedingly optimistic that putting a wide selection of the animal kingdom — especially newborns — on display would attract the kind of visitors needed to keep it running. But in all the time gates have been open, the Toronto Zoo, as it’s known now, has always operated at a loss, needing millions from the city each year to keep going.

Bad weather, declining spending on tourism and competing attractions have been the target of blame since Day One.

But with attendance rates falling — reaching an eight-year low last year even as zoos in Calgary, San Diego and New York have seen revenues climb — the Toronto Zoo is faced with an age-old problem: Adapt to survive. But how?

It’s a done deal. Eighteen elephants from Swaziland are today en route to three U.S. zoos despite an attempt by an animal welfare group to stop the controversial move.

The elephants are bound for the Dallas Zoo, the Sedgwick County Zoo, in Wichita, Kansas, and the Henry Doorly Zoo, in Omaha, Nebraska. And the nonprofit Friends of Animals isn’t happy about it.

Here’s how the dramatic events went down: In February, the Connecticut-based group filed a lawsuit challenging the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision in January to approve a permit for the animals to be transferred to the zoos. A hearing on whether to grant the group a preliminary injunction was scheduled for next week.

In spite of the looming hearing, the zoos moved to anesthetize the elephants and board them on a flight from Swaziland to the U.S., reported The Wichita Eagle. According to the publication, court records show that Friends of Animals was tipped off about the planned transfer by an anonymous source. Its lawyers filed an emergency temporary restraining order to stop the move. The restraining order was temporarily granted—and then reversed.

It’s dry season in San Andreas, where California’s ongoing drought and prolonged excessively hot weather make a fire hose at the Performing Animal Welfare Society Wildlife Sanctuary a welcome escape for three African elephants as familiar with frigid winters as drawn-out summers.

Iringa buries her head in the ground and kicks her foot up in the air as she bathes in the steady stream. Toka wiggles down in the mud, throwing dirt with her trunk, basking in the oozing slime.

This is probably the first year the ground these two elephants call home hasn’t frozen, said sanctuary co-founder Ed Stewart. Iringa and Toka, along with a third elephant, Thika, moved from the Toronto Zoo to their warm, sprawling habitat last fall.

[. . .]

Despite protests from zoo staff, the elephants’ relocation was finally pushed through in late 2012, when city council reaffirmed its decision to move the mammals to the sanctuary, which takes in retired zoo and circus elephants. Barker funded the October 2013 transport.

In the nine months since their hotly-contested move, Iringa, 45, Toka, 44, and Thika, 33, have started acting like elephants in the wild rather than captive creatures, Stewart said.

“Natural behaviour is exhibited a lot, like every single day,” Stewart said. “Every day they resemble elephants in Africa.”