Autumn in High Park Toronto

Saturday Brew: Geographic Personality Profiling, Reference Library Reno, Meteorite Found, Bid for World Pride 2014, Revisiting Last Week

Photo: "One warm autumn day" by bensonkua, member of the blogTO Flickr pool.

What's happening in the GTA (and sometimes beyond):

According to a survey compiled by the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management, citizens can be divided into "psychological subsets" that are linked to the neighbourhoods in which they live. Indeed, the study supports the commonly held notion that there exists some sort of east/west divide in Toronto. Residents living east of Greektown tend to be a worrisome lot, while those living along Queen West appear to be more relaxed. The study is based on a sample of 1347 people, which strikes me as a bit small -- but the results are intriguing all the same.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper was in town yesterday to announce federal support for a project to improve the Toronto Reference Library, but apparently he and his office didn't know exactly how much the federal government was kicking in. Oh well, at least the library's getting a reno. But do prime ministers normally announce three million dollar funding packages in person and to such acclaim?

The meteorite that I mentioned a few Saturdays ago has been found by a family living in Grimbsy, Ontario. They originally thought that the broken windshield on their truck was the work of vandals, but had reason to reconsider after the University of Western Ontario appealed to residents in their area. Sure enough, the fragments of rock they retrieved from the truck were 4.6 billion years old. If you missed some of the video footage, it can be found here.

A bid team is making its pitch to the selection committee for World Pride 2014 today. Standing in the way of success is Stockholm, which lost the 2012 event to London. Although this may drum up some sentimental support, here's hoping that Toronto gets the nod. With so many successful Pride parades (and weeks) under our belt, not only do we deserve the event, but we'd be pretty much perfect hosts.

To update/revisit a couple of headlines from last week, although Toronto is the priciest ticket in hockey, it appears that demand might be starting to wane, if only slightly. Scalpers are reporting that they're selling tickets well below face value, a pretty decent indicator that fans are displeased with the debacle that is the 2009/10 Maple Leafs.

And to the dismay of opponents of the island airport, the Toronto Port Authority is considering the option of having more airlines fly out of it in the future. TPA chair Mark McQueen, did, however, clarify that the "initiative is not an 'expansion' of the [airport], but rather a way of potentially maximizing an asset for the people of Toronto."


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