The strike of Toronto public workers started last week, but it stench intensifies daily, and it’ll only get worse. Among the other services, garbage collection in the town is disrupted. With temperatures around 30, it really stinks. There was a similar strike 7 years ago, when garbage piled up chest-high around every trash can in the town, household trash was being dumped in parks and other pre-assigned locations and a foul aroma permeated the air. On that instance, after 16 days the province issued a back-to-work legislation and the air was clear again.
It seems that this time everybody is better prepared to make life for Torontonians even more miserable: the striking picket lines are strung across the entrance to the dedicated dump sites making it all but impossible to dump your trash. City inspectors are out in numbers, fining people who left their garbage bags outside the dumping area, since they were prevented to enter it. Toronto Mayor and Ontario’s Premier are not yet ready to issue the back-to-work order. Add it all up and the only ones screwed from both sides are the residents.
Oh, and a reason for strike? The worker’s union is renewing the contract with the city and insists on keeping a peculiar perk: the workers are allowed 18 sick days a year, which, if not used, can be cashed or banked to be cashed at the time of retirement. Makes me want to re-consider my career.
LCBO strike
Unrelated to the garbage strike, provincial liquor store worker’s union was supposed to go on strike on Wednesday. (In Ontario all the liquor stores are operated by the provincial board, LCBO.) On Tuesday there was a stampede in the LCBO stores. People may put up with the piles of garbage, but no one was willing to go dry. LCBO sold more alcohol than during Christmas and shelves were left empty. Then, as it usually happens, the union reached an agreement with the province and alcohol kept flowing freely.
16k on +31 C
Wednesday was really hot and felt even hotter with humidity. My 16k run almost turned into a walk. I started eagerly as always and in about 10 minutes exhausted all the energy. Remaining 1hr 10min I don’t remember. All I know is – I was hot, my legs weighed a ton each, sweating did nothing to cool me off and my brain switched off somewhere along the way. I made it home and regained consciousness in the shower.
In Memory: Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett
Michael Jackson died on Thursday, so did Farrah Fawcett whom I don't remember except for some old photographs from the time when she was hot and I was too young to notice.I photographed Jackson in 1994 and wrote a little story about it.
Sadly, passing of Farrah, who fought rectal cancer and even allowed a documentary crew to film her last battle, was completely overshadowed by the death of the whitest black musician in history. She picked the wrong day to die.
As for Michael, he will be remembered as one of the most talented musicians of 20th century, likely shoulder-to-shoulder with the King Elvis, whose daughter he married and, lucky for her, divorced. Maybe with time we’ll be able to forget his oddities: plastic surgeries to make him whiter than the whites and turned a handsome black face into a grotesque, child molestation charges, dangling of his own son over the balcony in Europe, and many, many more.
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