Ottawa does about face on same-sex marriage for non-Canadians. The Harper government has served notice that thousands of same-sex couples who flocked to Canada from abroad since 2004 to get married are not legally wed. The reversal of federal policy is revealed in a document filed in a Toronto test case launched recently by a lesbian couple seeking a divorce.... The government’s hard line has cast sudden doubt on the rights and legal status of couples who wed in Canada after a series of court decisions opened the floodgates to same-sex marriage. The mechanics of determining issues such as tax status, employment benefits and immigration have been thrown into legal limbo. [The lesbian couple's] divorce application will be considered next month by an Ontario Superior Court judge. They are asking the judge to either craft an exemption allowing them to divorce or to strike down any legislative provision that has the effect of preventing them from doing so. [more inside]
posted by maudlin
on Jan 12, 2012 -
116 comments
The history of Toronto in photos is 90 some odd posts linked to provide a thematically organized visual overview. The vast majority of the photographs featured derive from the Toronto Archives. Should you be interested in a less visually oriented take on Toronto history, there is also the
Nostalgia Tripping series, which was designed to be a bit more about storytelling than just the photos.
posted by netbros
on Dec 5, 2011 -
20 comments
An Ontario Family Court judge was not very happy with the parties involved in a divorce
case [PDF] before him.
posted by Chrysostom
on Jul 12, 2011 -
87 comments
Starting in the summer of 2009, Southern Souls began by capturing unique performances by musicians that call southern Ontario home. Seeing musicians play in the places that they live and breathe, places they themselves have chosen—in the street, in a store, in a kitchen or bedroom—is almost a homecoming for the music itself, returning it to the places in which it started.
[more inside]
posted by purephase
on Apr 30, 2011 -
5 comments
Winded - a journey to find out the real truth behind Wind Turbines [SLVimeo].
posted by scruss
on Apr 5, 2011 -
63 comments
Cracking the Scratchie. With cheating and money laundering and statistics, this story seems like it should be about something more exciting than scratch-off lottery tickets. But it isn't.
posted by jacquilynne
on Feb 1, 2011 -
92 comments
Who are the grandfathers of noise music? The
Nihilist Spasm Band formed in 1965 when eight men, using homemade instruments, began creating noise together in London, Ontario. None of these men were traditionally trained musicians, yet they are often credited as being the major influence behind modern noise music, inspiring Japanese noisemakers like
Hijokaiden and
Masonna, as well as western artists like Thurston Moore of
Sonic Youth.
[more inside]
posted by threetoed
on May 4, 2010 -
28 comments
Michael Schmidt has been found
not guilty of selling raw milk in the province of Ontario. Schmidt owns a
dairy co-op where consumers can purchase shares in a dairy herd and receive a portion of the
raw milk those cows produce in return. His farm was
raided and his equipment seized at gun point back in 2006. Experts are predicting this decision could have wide ranging effects on the rights of consumers to choose what they purchase and eat.
posted by talkingmuffin
on Jan 21, 2010 -
57 comments
Toronto's Open Civic Data. The city of Toronto has released its data to the world via the new Open Toronto initiative: geographic data for a variety of civic divisions, lists of licensed business, public transit stops, routes & schedules, a SOAP-based geocoding API and more.
posted by GuyZero
on Nov 3, 2009 -
30 comments
Late last night, a cyclist was killed in Toronto. "Ontario's former attorney general
Michael Bryant ... will be charged with criminal negligence causing death and dangerous driving causing death, a police source tells the Globe, after a collision left a 33-year-old cyclist dead." Accounts vary, but the sequence appears to be 1) Some collision and argument between the cyclist and the driver; 2) The cyclist grabs the driver's door and hangs on (or he may have been caught on the car accidentally) while the Saab convertible drives on; 3) The car drives into the opposite lane, across a construction zone, and the cyclist is battered against mailboxes and light posts; 4) The cyclist falls under the car's back wheels and is killed.
[more inside]
posted by maudlin
on Sep 1, 2009 -
574 comments
From Muddy York to the Toronto of today.... My search to discover the exact age of the house I recently bought led me to the fabulous
Toronto Archives. Even if you don't have the good fortune to live in Toronto and so have the ability to visit the Archives to take a free tour and check out their
massive holdings, they have a whack of stuff on line. Of their million photographs dating back to 1856, over 21,000 are online. Check out some of their
virtual exhibits. I couldn't begin to give you an overview of the site or even the best of its many gems, but check out
Chinatown's VE day victory parade,
Bay and Wellington as it was after a huge fire in 1904,
old advertisements,
letters and
postcards (including
some from the disenchanted), snapshots of a, er,
less politically sensitive time (
thanks, Capn!), and — inevitably! —
hockey artifacts. A friend of mine makes a hobby of Toronto's history, and after this search of mine, I better understand her interest. It’s fascinating to see what lies beneath the
layers of time on a surface so
familiar and
loved.
posted by orange swan
on Jul 4, 2006 -
23 comments
Workers in the U.S. South Too Uneducated to Build Cars? Automobile manufacturer Toyota announced that it would build a new car factory in Woodstock, Ontario, even though several US states offered greater subsidies and tax breaks to the company. The reason?
[M]uch of that extra money would have been eaten away by higher training costs than are necessary for the Woodstock project... Nissan and Honda have encountered difficulties getting new plants up to full production in recent years in Mississippi and Alabama due to an untrained - and often illiterate - workforce. In Alabama, trainers had to use 'pictorials' to teach some illiterate workers how to use high-tech plant equipment.
(Also a contributing factor -- Canada's national health service, which apparently drives down the overall cost of each individual worker.)
To be fair to the US South, the problem may be more apparent there because of the region's zealousness in competing for automobile factories. But the point remains -- Toyota is saying US workers are so poorly educated that it's not worth the effort to train them. Whom to blame? And how many more factory (and other) jobs will have to be lost to better-educated workforces in other countries before this pings on the national radar?
posted by jscalzi
on Jul 3, 2005 -
87 comments
Canada, a 13+ link whistlestop glance at something from all the provinces and territories...
Alberta,
British Columbia,
Manitoba,
New Brunswick,
Newfoundland,
NWT,
Nova Scotia,
Nunavut,
Ontario,
PEI,
Quebec,
Saskatewan,
Yukon. Not to mention the talk about
Turks and
Caicos?
posted by edgeways
on Feb 15, 2005 -
28 comments
Marijuana possession law 'erased' Possessing less than 30 grams of marijuana is no longer against the law in Ontario, a Windsor judge says in a ruling released yesterday that compounds the chaos over Canada's pot laws. And it's a long weekend too. (btw, Ontario is a province in Canada that includes Toronto).
posted by bobo123
on May 17, 2003 -
23 comments
Do you, Adam, take this man Steve, to be your lawfully wedded husband ... "... a panel of Ontario judges ordered Parliament to broaden its definition of marriage to include gay men and women, the first decision of its kind in Canada. " Rulings on cases in BC and Quebec to follow.
Good news for the Canadian Tourist industry, at any rate. So far the only heartbreak in all this is the utter lack of Crate and Barrel, Williams Sonoma, and Pottery Barn stores in Canada for these people to register at.
posted by kristin
on Jul 14, 2002 -
13 comments
Should Teachers be Tested? In Ontario there is a power struggle between the provincial government and the teachers union over whether teachers should be subjected to testing to ensure they are current on their subject knowledge.
Personally, I have enjoyed every ironic complaint of the teachers that testing is unfair. It seems to me that they are failing the test before even taking it when they implicitly claim that testing is good for the students but bad for them. What do you think?
posted by srboisvert
on Aug 25, 2001 -
15 comments
First gay marriage legal, for now "The Ontario government will face a court battle if it refuses to register two marriages performed yesterday at a Toronto church in a ceremony billed as the world's first legal homosexual wedding since the Middle Ages."
posted by sylloge
on Jan 15, 2001 -
11 comments
Man, I love Ontario. Monday afternoon, an amazingly significant court trial ruled that possession of marijuana being criminal is unconstitutional, and that new laws need to be written.
posted by cCranium
on Aug 2, 2000 -
9 comments
