toronto

Toronto Bans Shark Fins

- Adam Clare

Toronto has joined other cities around the world in banning the consumption and commercialization of shark fins. The vote was almost unanimous with only three people in council (including the worst mayor Toronto has seen) supporting the killing of sharks for soup. Everyone else on council knew better and supported the ban.

Eric from WildAid sends in the following:

“Toronto’s action is a huge victory in the global fight against an illegal shark fin trade valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars,” said Rob Sinclair, Executive Director of WildAid Canada, who has been at the forefront of this campaign for the past five months.

Fins from up to 73 million sharks are used every year to make shark fin soup and related food products. Shark finning is a cruel and wasteful practice – captured at sea and hauled on deck, the sharks are often still alive while their fins are sliced off. Because shark meat is not considered as valuable as the fins, the maimed animals are tossed overboard to drown or bleed to death.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) estimates that 1/3 of the world’s shark species are threatened with extinction, with certain species experiencing declines up to 90%.

While the practice of shark finning is illegal in North America, current laws banning shark finning do not address the issue of the shark fin trade. Therefore, fins are being imported into North America from countries with few or even no shark protections in place.

Bans passed recently in California, Hawaii, Oregon and the state of Washington as well as the Ontario cities of Mississauga, and Brantford.

Good Bikes on the Streets of Toronto

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

The Good Bike project is bringing colour to the streets of Toronto. Bright neon bicycles are celebrating aspects of Toronto, they really are eye-catching.

Over the past few weeks, more than 30 brightly painted bicycles, a few featuring baskets of potted plants, have popped up all over the city—orange at Queen and Dovercourt, blue at Dundas and Sackville, and pastel pink at College and Robert, among many others. On their own, the bikes may seem like isolated or even arbitrary acts of street art, but in reality, they’re part of a citywide network of bikes, their colours and locations carefully and specifically chosen to commemorate a piece of history, an urban hot spot, or a personal memory.

As with any infestation, even the nice ones, it started small—Vanessa Nicholas and Caroline Macfarlane, two OCAD U Student Gallery employees, found a creative way to deal with their distaste for a rusty, derelict bike abandoned on the street outside their place of work by painting it bright orange and planting flowers in its basket. They were met with enthusiasm from passersby but also with a big, angry ticket from the City of Toronto calling for its removal. With support from fans and friends interested in protecting public works of art, accelerated by media reaction and councilors Gary Crawford (Ward 36, Scarborough Southwest) and Adam Vaughan (Ward 20, Trinity-Spadina) City Hall eventually changed its mind and even Rob Ford hopped on the idea to turn the now-famous Orange Bike into a citywide project, in partnership with Macfarlane and Nicholas, known as the Good Bike Project.

Read the full article at Torontoist.

Mobiles Without Borders

- Adam Clare

M4Drinks_torontoInternational Institute of Mobile Technologies and Engineers Without Borders Toronto have joined forces to create Mobiles without Borders to encourage the use of mobiles in development.

To start things off there’s a networking event happening in Toronto tomorrow Thursday July 7th:

With over 5 billion mobile subscriptions worldwide, mobile technology is becoming more than a form of communication. In North America, Sparked is using mobiles to allow people to microvolunteer and in Kenya, M-PESA is using mobiles to provide financial services to locals. Mobiles are being used in both developed and developing countries for banking, healthcare, marketing campaigns, fundraising and so much more.

Whether you’re a local non-profit looking to build a mobile app to increase awareness about your organization, an international development practitioner looking to build a mobile platform, or a young professional, technologist or marketing professional, join us for a drink and the opportunity to meet others and discuss all things mobile.

Date: July 7, 2011, and every first Thursday of each month
Time: 6:00pm until late
Location: Fionn MacCool’s, 70 The Esplanade, Toronto, ON M5E1R2 (map)

Full disclosure I’m working with the International Institute of Mobile Technologies.

SlutWalk Toronto

- Adam Clare

A few weeks ago a member of Toronto’s police force was speaking at a law school and something akin to ‘women get raped because they dress like sluts’. An outrageous comment to say the least, well a lot of people are outraged and are doing something about it.

As a direct reaction to the crazy claims from the Toronto police is SlutWalk.

We are tired of being oppressed by slut-shaming; of being judged by our sexuality and feeling unsafe as a result. Being in charge of our sexual lives should not mean that we are opening ourselves to an expectation of violence, regardless if we participate in sex for pleasure or work. No one should equate enjoying sex with attracting sexual assault.
We are a movement demanding that our voices be heard. We are here to call foul on our Police Force and demand change. We want Toronto Police Services to take serious steps to regain our trust. We want to feel that we will be respected and protected should we ever need them, but more importantly be certain that those charged with our safety have a true understanding of what it is to be a survivor of sexual assault — slut or otherwise.
We are tired of speeches filled with lip service and the apologies that accompany them. What we want is meaningful dialogue and we are doing something about it: WE ARE COMING TOGETHER. Not only as women, but as people from all gender expressions and orientations, all walks of life, levels of employment and education, all races, ages, abilities, and backgrounds, from all points of this city and elsewhere.

SlutWalk’s official website.

Sustainable Tiffin Delivery Arrives in Toronto

- Adam Clare

Many other cities already have tiffin delivery and now Toronto is one of those cities and here we have a triple-bottom line company rising fast.

She hires Good Foot Delivery and its developmentally disabled couriers for anything within the PATH walkway, otherwise she’s driving the meals downtown until the electric-powered rickshaw she ordered from China arrives.

Pabari, who was born in Kenya to Indian parents, hit on the business idea in her Beaches home while packing lunch tiffins for her son, who’s now 10. Pabarai had quit her six-figure, “soulless” job in marketing for a home-improvement chain after the 2008 death of her father and was re-evaluating her life.

Tiffinday has a triple bottom line: to make money, be environmentally sustainable and socially just.

Read the rest of article.

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