The Taste of the Danforth is one of the highlights of Toronto’s summer festival season. Danforth Avenue between Broadview and Jones Avenues will be closed to traffic and transformed into a fantastic street party for 3 fabulous days - Friday, August 8th from 6:00 PM – 11:00 PM, Saturday, August 9th from 12:00 PM – 11:00 PM, and on Sunday, August 10th from 12:00 PM – 11:00 PM.

Toronto’s GreekTown is the largest Hellenic business community in North America and the third largest in the world after Greece and Melbourne, Australia. When the Taste of the Danforth was launched in 1994, it became the largest Greek festival in the world outside of Greece. Every year it has continued to grow and this year over 1 million people are expected to attend this multicultural event which of course focuses on the glorious food. Yes, this is a multicultural event. Although we think of the Danforth as GreekTown, and it is predominantly Greek, many other cultures and cuisines are represented at the festival including Japanese, Indian, Thai, Cuban, and Pub Grub. The Taste of the Danforth is absolutely FREE to attend. You only pay for the food and drink that you consume. All of the great music and entertainment for the whole family is free of charge. For a list of participating restaurants follow the link below.
http://www.toronto.com/tasteofthedanforth/restaurants

The Taste of the Danforth is not only great fun and a foodie’s dream, but it has raised more than $850,000 for the Toronto East General Hospital and has named the neonatal nursery. Leave your cars at home. Driving and parking in the area will be a challenge, to say the least. The area is very easily accessible by TTC. Take the subway and exit at Broadview, Chester, Pape, or Donlands.

Everywhere we turn we are bombarded with messages of living green, making eco-friendly choices, and choosing natural over processed. Unfortunately there is not often truth in advertising and unless you are an expert at deciphering label-speak you may be buying products that include toxic chemicals. Another reality is that because something is natural doesn’t ensure that it is non-toxic.

Do you think that you are making healthy, non-toxic choices? Use this check list to ensure that you are doing all that you can to reduce the amount of toxic chemicals that you and your loved ones are exposed to.

Babies are the most fragile among us. To learn about less toxic baby care follow the link below.
http://lesstoxicguide.ca/index.asp?fetch=babycare

Many of you who are particularly enterprising and devoted to living as healthy a life as possible are interested in making your own less toxic household cleaning products. The link below will take you to a guide with instructions on how to make your own non-toxic household cleaning equivalents.
http://lesstoxicguide.ca/index.asp?fetch=household

Leave it to women to take matters into their own hands. A group of very creative women are trying to spread the word the old fashioned way – women to woman networking at home “Green Cleaning Parties”. Unlike the usual home parties for everything from candles to lingerie, these parties don’t sell anything at all. They provide instruction on how to make non-toxic cleaners from common ingredients like vinegar, baking soda, and essential oils. To find out how to make your own Green Cleaning Party follow the link below.
http://womenandenvironment.org/greenclean/

The Toronto Festival of Beer is Canada’s largest beer Festival. Last year over 30,000 people attended and considering the response in advance ticket sales to date, many more are expected this year. This delicious event features over 250 brands of beer on site from local breweries in Ontario and across Canada. Available for your drinking pleasure will be every type of beer imaginable including lagers, pale ales, wheat beers, and stouts. More than 95% off all Ontario beers will be on hand.

Rain or shine the Toronto Festival of Beer will go on Thursday August 7th from 4:00 PM – 10:00 PM, Friday August 8th from 4:00 PM – 10:00 PM, Saturday August 9th from 1:00 PM – 7:00 PM and Sunday August 10th from 1:00 – 7:00 PM at Historic Fort York located at 100 Garrison Road. Please leave your car at home. Drink responsibly and leave the driving to the TTC. The festival has 2 main entrances - Bathurst Street for advance purchase ticket holders and Fleet Street at Strachan – which are both easily accessible by TTC.

This is an ADULT ONLY event. You must be 19 years of age or more to enter. Please don’t bring your children or you pets or you will not be permitted entry to the grounds.

Purchase tickets online and receive 5 sample tokens with a value of $1.00 each, a sampling cup and a Beer Festival program. One token may be redeemed for 4 ounces of beer although some premium brands may require more than one token. You may purchase additional sample tokens on site at the Beer Festival for $1.00 each. For those of you who were fortunate enough to have acquired complimentary tickets, they do come with a sampling cup and Beer Festival program, but they do not include sample tokens. For information on how to buy tickets follow the link below.
http://www.beerfestival.ca/main/buy_tickets

Image taken from torontochickens.com

Every once in a while I come across a quirky local Toronto story that is absolutely irresistible. This is the story of the “Toronto Chicken”, a Toronto resident who is using an alias because she is illegally keeping three hens in her yard so that she can use their eggs. These are not any old chickens. They are Clucky, Sally, and Hybie and according to the municipal code Toronto Chicken is breaking the law. The bylaw seems to be quite bizarre in that you can keep pigeons, but not chickens. To read the bylaw, follow the link below.

http://www.torontochickens.com/Toronto_Chickens/City_of_Toronto_Bylaw.html

According to Toronto Animal Services chickens are outlawed because the can be noisy and smelly. However, there is no evidence that there have ever been any complaints made about Toronto Chicken which seems to bear out her claims that “the girls” are quiet and clean. However Toronto Chicken is taking no chances and has set up a series of safe houses in order to protect “the girls” should the long arm of the law descend.

In Canada only 4 municipalities allow the keeping of backyard chickens – Niagara Fall ON, Brampton ON, Victoria BC, and Surrey BC although in the U.S. there are over 170 municipalities that permit backyard chickens. These municipalities are not small backwater towns. They include Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, and Boston. To sign Toronto Chicken’s petition to change the bylaw and allow the keeping of backyard chickens in Toronto follow the link below.
http://www.torontochickens.com/Toronto_Chickens/Petition.html

Toronto Chicken’s has set up a website which provides a lot of information about raising backyard chickens.

There has been talk for years about tearing down the Gardiner. It seems like it’s an annual event and it’s that time again. However, this time there is more than talking going on and the prevailing winds are saying that a section of the Gardiner is going to come down. Full demolition would be too costly to even be a consideration. As a first step City Council has voted to spend $11 million on an environmental assessment, which will take up to 4 years to complete. They also voted to spend $30 million to redesign the York/Bay/Yonge exit loop from the eastbound Gardiner.

The costs for demolishing a section the Gardiner and replacing it with an 8-lane boulevard are estimated between $200 million and $400 million. The fear aside from the financial ramifications of taking down the 2.5 km stretch of the Gardiner between Jarvis and the Don Valley Parkway is traffic gridlock. There were estimates done that are not detailed and can not be taken as fact that replacing the Gardiner with an 8-lane boulevard would only add one to two minutes to a commute time. This doesn’t seem very likely. Still on the table is talk of the 1.5 km Front Street extension west of Bathurst which many feel would do a lot more than replacing the section of the Gardiner.

For now it seems like the only thing that is going to happen is that we are dishing out $11 million for a study. Are you in favour of spending between $200 million and $400 million to demolish a section of the Gardiner and replacing it with an 8-lane boulevard? If they are so concerned with traffic gridlock I think that they should invest that money into expanding our subway and GO train systems.

Irie Fest  is an exciting celebration of culture, music, and food taking place from August 1 – August 4 at Nathan Phillips Square and Queen’s Park. All events at these 2 locations are absolutely FREE! This year there is an exciting new addition to the festival – The Taste of the Tropics – which is all about delicious and exotic tropical food. The Taste of the Tropics will be located at Queen’s Park North.

There are some amazing shows scheduled at Queen’s Park and at Nathan Phillips Square:
• Byron Lee and the Dragonaires on Saturday, August 2nd at Queen’s Park
• Culture with Kenyatta Hill on Sunday, August 3rd at Queen’s Park
• The Fab 5 on Monday, August 4th at Queen’s Park
• Cafe Cubano on Saturday, August 2nd at Nathan Phillips Square
• Kay Morris on Sunday, August 3rd at Nathan Phillips Square

Sunday, August 3rd come out to Queen’s Park for the dance performances featuring Baby Boyz, Chemagne Martin, the Caribbean Dance Theatre, the Ishay School Dance School, and the Ngoma Dance and Drum Ensemble.

An Art Exhibition will take place in the City Hall Rotunda featuring the works of Ato Seitu, Robert Small, Ras Stone, and Tafewa Turner.

Leave the car at home and take the TTC. Queen’s Park North is located at 671 University Avenue and is easily accessed by taking the subway and exiting at either the Museum or Queen’s Park station. Nathan Phillips Square is located at 100 Queen Street West and can be accessed by taking the subway and exiting at either the Queen or Osgoode station.

Road rage is becoming an epidemic in our society. When did this all happen? I don’t remember even hearing the phrase road rage 10 years ago. The worst that anyone did was honk, shout a few expletives, and give someone the finger. That seemed to be quite satisfying and we all moved on. But, that is not how it works anymore. Now the shouting of expletives and giving someone the finger all too often escalates into threats and dangerous and aggressive driving that result in tragedy.

The CBC’s Fifth Estate cited a Canadian study that found that 40% of men and 27% of women admitted that they acted aggressively while driving and have engaged in yelling, gesturing, threatening to hurt someone, attempting to damage another driver’s car, or hurt him or her. A Canadian survey found that up to 48% of people reported being at the receiving end of someone else’s anger on the road - up to 6% were threatened, up to 4% had someone try to damage their car, and up to 3% had someone attempt to hurt them.

Road Rage Research has determined that although anyone is capable of engaging in road rage, including stay-at-home moms who bake cookies, the profile of someone most prone to road rage is male, under the age of 39, urban, educated, employed full-time, and never married.

What has become of society that we have resorted to this type of behavior? Experts say that with the increase in traffic on our roads comes the increase in commute time which in turn creates frustration which can lead to anger and rage. While we wouldn’t dream of shouting, gesturing, or threatening someone in a face-to-face confrontation on the street, being in a car gives us a false feeling of safety and in essence the courage to be aggressive.

Recently a road rage incident in Milton left a man dead. This incident happened at approximately 5:00 AM. How much traffic could there have been and what on earth could make someone so angry at 5:00 AM that caused this tragedy? The driver who caused the death in this incident is now facing charges of criminal negligence causing death, dangerous driving causing death, and failing to remain at the scene of an accident causing death which could lead to a life sentence. I hope that he gets it. Until we start treating murderers like murderers, we haven’t got a hope to stop road rage.

Derek Forward has created a petition calling on the province to end the Beer Store monopoly. The petition says:

“We the people of Ontario demand that The Ontario Government immediately remove the monopoly currently enjoyed by The Beer Store. The people of Ontario demand that the Ontario government allow beer to be sold and distributed through existing and regular grocery and food store channels.”

Over 3,000 have already signed the petition. If you agree and want to sign the petition, follow the link below.
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/nobeerstore/

Mr. Forward found the inspiration to start his grassroots movement after discovering that the Beer Store controls 80 % of Ontario’s $2.9 billion beer market and is privately owned by the three largest brewers in the province - Labatt, Molson and Sleeman, which are owned in turn by large foreign multinational beer makers - Belgium’s InBevSA, the American Molson Coors Brewing, and Sapporo of Japan.

This grassroots movement has caught on and is growing. There is now a website http://freeourbeer.org/ that has been created expressly for the purpose of trying to reform Ontario’s retail beer system. You can give your opinion, answer polls, and see what others have to say.

Small brewers, small store owners, and bar and restaurant owners say that the Beer Store charges high prices and gives them limited choice. On the other side of the coin the government sings the praises of the Beer Store citing them as a leader in bottle recycling.

There is a growing movement that wants the government to either return the Beer Store to the status of a co-operative owned by all of the brewers in the province or license other businesses to compete. What’s your opinion? Personally, I think that competition is the best option for the consumer.

Like it or not as of April 1, 2009 producers and importers will have to start paying recycling fees for all televisions and computers that are sold in Ontario. It’s impossible to believe that these charges are not going to be passed along to you and me. The recycling fees are substantial:

Desktop computer $13.44
Monitor $12.03
Television $10.07
Printer $5.05
Laptop computer $2.14
Mouse $0.32
Keyboard $0.32

This is only phase one. Next summer recycling fees (yet to be determined) will most likely be added on telephones, cell phones, BlackBerrys, pagers, answering machines, modems, cameras, photocopiers, flatbed scanners, video and DVD players, radios, and stereo equipment. There is an organization called Waste Diversion Ontario that will be running the collecting and recycling operation. Approximately 650 drop-off depots will be opened across the province to deal with the massive amounts of electronic equipment that is expected within the next 5 years when it is estimated that Ontarians will throw out 2.2 million TVs and 4 million desktop computers each year. At the moment only 27% of all electronic waste is reused or recycled. With this new program in place it is estimated that by year 5 approximately 61% of electronic waste will be reused or recycled.

They say that the purpose for adding these recycling fees is to hit the manufacturers in the bank account in order to get them to produce environmentally friendly products. Call me skeptical, but I find it difficult to believe that a program that is expected to generate $62 million in the first year alone was created for altruistic purposes.

Mark your calendars. July 15th – August 3rd Caribana will be back in Toronto and the official launch will be taking place at Nathan Phillips Square, City Hall on Tuesday, July 15th from 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM. This fabulous 2-week cultural festival is major international event celebrating Caribbean music, cuisine, and visual and performing arts. The highlight is of course the Caribana Parade, with hundreds of thousands lining the 1.5 km parade route in order to see the all of the fabulous masqueraders and live soca, calypso, steel pan, reggae, and salsa artists.

Don’t miss any of the fantastic Caribana events.

• Caribana Junior Carnival at Shoreham Drive/Yorkgate Mall on
Saturday, July 19th from 10:00 AM - 4:00 PM.
• Art Exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum on Thursday, July 24th until Monday, Aug 4th from 12:00 PM - 9:00 PM daily features A Visual Art Exhibition – COLOURblind International – Roots to Rhythm produced by the Association of African Canadian Artists.
• Caribana Gala at the Liberty Grand – Exhibition Place on Friday, July 25th from 7:00 PM – 1:00 AM with all proceeds going to a Caribana Foundation.
• Kaiso 365 Calypso Monarch Finals for the crowning of the Calypso Monarch at the Leah Posluns Theatre located at 4588 Bathurst on Saturday, July 26th from 8:00 PM - 1:00 AM.
• Caribana King & Queen Show at Lamport Stadium on Thursday, July 31st from 7:00 PM – 12:00 AM.
• Caribana Parade beginning at Exhibition Place on Lake Shore Blvd. and proceeding west on Saturday, August 2nd from 10:00 AM - 6:00 PM. This event is an unbelievable experience of sights and sounds. Arrive early to stake out a spot along the parade route.
• De Caribana Lime - Island Festival located at Olympic Island on Sunday, August 3rd from 10:00 AM - 6:00 PM featuring showcasing the diverse cultures of all the Caribbean people with song, dance, drama, story telling and a food competition.

For all of the information on how and where to buy tickets follow the link below.
Caribana Festival Tickets