JB's Warehouse & Curio Emporium

I should be used to waking up to the radio blaring our glorious mayor's latest blunder . Should be, but it's still aggravating, maddening, and saddening all at once. That there are people who actually still admire the oaf is among the things that makes me fret about the future of humanity. It appears our best mayor ever may have been ticketed for jaywalking last night. Which got me to thinking, especially after reading a story on the early history of jaywalking , when did the term first appear in Toronto newspapers? Cue a quick trip to the online archives of the Globe and Mail and the Star ... The answer appears to be two stories published a century ago. First, an item from the May 18, 1914 edition of the Star , which compares jaywalkers to another emerging menace of the automotive age, the joyrider. Source: the Toronto Star , May 18, 1914. The next day, the Globe published the following piece - less body, more headline: Source: the Globe , May 19, 1914.

Background: besides writing Past Pieces of Toronto for OpenFile, I tackled several other assignments for the site. One was this piece, originally published on August 8, 2012. Source: Toronto Star , November 10, 1970. Rob Ford’s recent hospitalization for asthma, stomach and throat issues raises questions about what would happen if the mayor endured an extended period of time in a hospital bed. While it’s likely he would pass on most of his duties to Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday, previous top municipal officials haven’t let ailments like a broken pelvis prevent them from performing official tasks. Such was the case with Borough of North York Mayor Basil Hall. What landed Hall in North York General Hospital on November 6, 1970 was an attempt to touch up the paint in the basement of the home he had recently moved into at 87 Forest Grove Dr. When he stepped from one ladder to another, Hall lost his footing and fell to the concrete. “There was no chance to break the fal...

The cover caught my eye as it sat in a bin at Goodwill Buy the Pound in Scarborough: a large, blonde-haired bully about to give the beats to a bespectacled pencil-neck geek whose dog is afraid of what might unfold. There was something familiar about the bully, though it took a second to kick in. Sweet jeezus, it's Rob Ford! Flipping through the book, the resemblance grew with each page. I figured it was worth making a fifty-cent investment, since who knew when it might come in handy for a mayoral fiasco. That opportunity is now. Wednesday night, there was a confrontation next to Ford's home between the mayor and Toronto Star reporter Daniel Dale . Details are still emerging, but Ford's actions toward the media in the wake of the incident (such as refusing to talk to any City Hall reporters unless Dale is removed from the beat) reinforce his image as a bully to those who don't support him. Which brings us back to Let's Talk About Being Bullied . Let's ...