Readable, teachable news.
Tuesday, March 19, 2024
Millions of dollars worth of coins, and a load of candy, were scattered along the Trans-Canada Highway and in the bush in northeastern Ontario on Wednesday.
A Brink’s tractor-trailer truck was driving along Highway 11 north of Kirkland Lake, when it hit a rock cut.
In this case, rock cuts are steep, rocky cliffs on either side of the highway created when a highway is carved through a hill.
They are common in northern Ontario.
People in the community of High Park in Toronto have come together to rebuild a special playground there.
On March 17, an early-morning blaze destroyed a section of the castle-like wooden playground in the park.
Police and fire officials are investigating to find out the cause of the fire.
In the meantime, local residents and business owners are already actively planning and raising funds to rebuild the one-of-a-kind structure.
The Jamie Bell Adventure Playground, where the “castle” was, is in High Park, just north of Lake Ontario in Toronto.
It opened in 1999 and is named after a Toronto resident whose idea it was to build the unique playground.
Members of the community are pulling together again to rebuild the portions damaged by the fire.
And it’s not just local residents who have offered to assist; Canadian Tire has pledged a significant donation towards the project.
Toronto’s 98 libraries are temporarily closed after talks between representatives for the City of Toronto and the library workers’ union broke down last Sunday.
Last Monday, 2,300 library workers set up picket lines at libraries. A picket line, in this case, is where the library workers march with signs that tell the public what they want from the City of Toronto, which pays their salary. Picketing is a way of letting people know that a deal needs to be made before they will go back to work.
What do both sides want?
Library workers are looking for job security*, especially for part-time workers. Part-timers want the city to let them work more hours during the week, says Maureen O’Reilly, president of the Toronto Library Workers Union. The City wants workers to be part-time because it cannot pay full-time salaries.
The deadline for a deal has come and gone four times but the two parties cannot agree on how to settle their differences. The library workers decided that a strike was the only option left for them.
The robo-call scandal is not going away. In fact, it’s getting bigger.
During the last federal election, many Canadian voters said they received automatic voice-mail messages (robo-calls) directing them to the wrong polling station.
CBC News is reporting that they have found voters across Canada who say they got misleading robo-call messages because they were not voting for the Conservative Party.
In other words, according to CBC News, people who weren’t voting Conservative were called and directed to the wrong polling station. (If people can’t find their polling station – the place where they vote – then they may not be able to vote, or they may decide it’s too much of a hassle to find the right polling station.)
This points the finger for the robo-calls at the Conservative Party and Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
During elections, people often get a recorded message on their telephone that reminds them to vote and tells them where to go, to vote.
These messages, which use pre-recorded voices, are known as robo-calls.
Canada’s federal Conservative party is being accused of using robo-calls to mislead the public, during last year’s election.
The RCMP and Elections Canada (the group that makes the rules for elections), are looking into accusations that some robo-calls steered voters to the wrong polling station, or to polling stations that didn’t even exist, which would be illegal.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper says he doesn’t know anything about the illegal robo-calls.
The head of the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) was fired from his job this week.
Most people think it’s because he disagreed with Toronto’s mayor’s plans for public transit.
In this case, public transit refers to the city’s system of buses, subways and streetcars.
Gary Webster has worked at the TTC since 1986; for nearly six years he has been the TTC’s Chief General Manager.
As the head of the TTC, part of Webster’s job was to advise Toronto’s politicians about how the city’s transit system should operate.
Canada is expecting two very special visitors from China.
Er Shun and Ji Li are two giant panda bears, which China will be lending to Canada. The pair will live in Toronto for five years, and then in Calgary for five years.
The giant panda is unique to China. They are more than just a native species, however. To the Chinese, panda bears are very symbolic.
If China lets one of its panda bears live in a country, it’s a sign that China feels warmly towards that country.
In this case, the offer came during a recent four-day visit to China by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Some Attawapiskat residents will soon be moving into new “modular” homes.
Attawapiskat is a remote community in northern Ontario. Last year, the government there declared a state of emergency because residents were living in conditions that were very unsafe.
Canada’s government promised to help fix the housing problems in Attawapiskat.
The first modular home has reached the first nations community, and the second is on its way.
One of Ontario’s most famous landmarks is closing.
Ontario Place will shut down for five years, to be transformed “into an innovative provincial landmark,” according to its website.
The attraction opened in 1971; at the time, it cost $29 million. It was created by the Ontario government to help revitalize the city’s lakefront area. Ontario Place is located downtown, on the shores of Lake Ontario.
The provincial government built Ontario Place as a family-friendly amusement park for Torontonians and as a way to attract more tourists to the city.
Two teenagers in Toronto, Ont. have taken a giant leap – for themselves, and for one little Lego man.
The teens launched a Lego figure into near-space.
They hooked a helium weather balloon, a home-sewn nylon parachute and four cameras to the figure. And then they went out to a soccer field and let their contraption go.
The cameras were set to take pictures every 20 seconds.
When their figure came back to Earth, they looked at the pictures the cameras had taken.
They were shocked to see their little Lego figure, clutching his Canadian flag, with a picture of the curved horizon of the Earth in the background.
