Many people who visit Toronto for the first time are shocked by the sight of black squirrels everywhere. Many Torontonians are equally shocked to learn that black squirrels are rare and exotic creatures to outsiders. In Toronto black squirrels outnumber grey ones by a ratio of 10 to 1, and are just about everywhere you look. Outside of the city limits however you'd be hard pressed to find a single black one, unless you were in London Ontario, Washington D.C. or the handful of small towns across the U.S. that sees them not as a nuisance, but as a source of civic pride.

White Squirrels (White Wonder)

Black Squirrels (The Black Squirrels of London)

Thanks to the TTC strike, I didn't get very far from home this weekend. With High Park being situated just across the street, Kate and I used this break from our usual weekend shopping sprees to take in a little hanami. We weren't expecting to see much as the cherry trees didn't bloom until May 6th last year. Instead, we were pleasantly surprised to find them in full bloom as you can see in this photo:

Of course under the trees were lots of people sitting on tarps having picnics. Perhaps some of them were even having Sushi Picnics!

Ceder Fair, owner of roller coaster Mecca Cedar Point, bought my town's local theme park (and my former employer) Canada's Wonderland from the notoriously stingy Paramount Parks a couple of years ago. Ever since, roller coaster fans have been waiting with bated breath to see what big new rides the company would put in. The park has always had a nice assortment of rides and roller coasters, however the penny-pinchers at Paramount never would drop the kind of dough it takes to build a really big, marque ride. Well the wait is almost over now as Wonderland has just completed construction and testing of the park's first hypercoaster, the awkwardly named "Behemoth". The press were invited to the park the other day for the big unveiling.

Videos:
Tom Brown Takes a Ride - CTVToronto.ca
A Blazing Roller Coaster - Toronto Star

Wonderland is pretty much the only place you can go in Toronto to ride roller coasters these days. The C.N.E. used to have The Flyer and Doppel Looping (or Double Looper as most people mistakenly called it) however they've been gone now for years. Since Wonderland is actually in the suburb of Maple, technically speaking Toronto no longer has any roller coasters today. As my dad likes to point out to me, there was a time when the Toronto lake shore was a lot more interesting than it is now. Before the Gardiner Expressway was built in the 50's, Sunnyside Beach Park sat just two blocks from the house I'm now living in. All that is left today is Sunnyside Pool and the Palais Royale. Thanks to the highway, roads, trains and streetcars, the spot the park once stood now has the distinction of being "The noisiest location in Ontario" according to Wikipedia.

In researching this story, I can't seem to find a definitive answer as to what the roller coaster at the Sunnyside amusement park was called, or what happened to it. Some articles indicate that it was called "The Flyer" and was moved to the C.N.E. after the park was closed down. The Toronto Star seems to think that it was called "The Rocket" and was simply torn down. They also claim that the C.N.E.'s Flyer was "built at the CNE for $200,000 in 1953 by Patty Conklin", which seems to imply it was not related to the Sunnyside Flyer in any way. This article provides the most detailed explanation of the history of Sunnyside's coaster, however it still left me confused as to how many "Flyer" coasters there were exactly. I get the impression that there may have in fact been three completely different Flyers built in the first half of the last century in Toronto. It seems like amusement park operators had just as hard a time coming up with decent names for their roller coasters back then as they do today.

So for several months now I've been hard at work building new local news websites for CTV affiliates across Canada. Our small team at CTV.ca has released in quick succession CTVBC.ca, CTVEdmonton.ca, CTVOttawa.ca and CTVWinnipeg.ca. To promote its new site, CTV BC is running a crazy ad campaign which you can see here, here and here. Today, finally, we re-launched CTV Toronto's website at CTVToronto.ca (formerly toronto.ctv.ca) using the new design. Please come by and check it out! I don't think CTV Toronto has any plans to make ads like the ones for BC, but they'll probably at least mention the new site on the news tomorrow night.

Link: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3052/2359481647_a9861a45b2_o.jpg

There's an article on Spacing about TTC plans for renovating subway stations on the Bloor-Danforth line, and how a local font-obsessed citizen, Joe Clark, is up-in-arms about it. I'm more inclined to support preserving the heritage of local McDonald's restaurants over subway stations, so I can't really get on board with Joe's crusade against "fake helvetica" signage on the TTC.

Joe points out an interesting aspect of the station design along the Bloor-Danforth line that, despite my near daily trips from one end of it to the other, I had never noticed before. Station tile colors for stations east and west of downtown match up with each other starting from the center of the line (St. George and Bay stations) all the way to Kennedy and Kipling stations respectively. You can check out this handy chart for an explanation of what stations match one another. I guess it would be kind of a shame to break-up the uniformity of this design, but then again the stations are still pretty ugly on this line and in need of work. I guess either way is fine with me. What would be neat though would be if they added chimes to stations like they do in Tokyo.

Link: http://spacing.ca/wire/?p=2861

I just read on Spacing that my favorite McDonald's in Toronto is being torn down to build a condo! The McDonald's in question is the big one opposite the ROM at Bloor and Avenue rd. It is also well known around the world as the McDonald's where a drunk Ashlee Simpson went nuts a few months ago. The building is really cool and unique looking, and even though the condo they are building will have a new McDonald's you can pretty much guarantee that it won't be anywhere close to as nice as this one.

Never before has anything ever gotten me this angry and fired-up! Help stop this terrible injustice and save this historic McDonald's while there is still time!! Join my new Facebook Group and help the cause!!! Fight the power!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Link: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/sport/wrestling/article808724.ece

This could be interesting. The Hulkster is apparently planning to start his own wrestling promotion to compete with the increasingly irrelevant WWE. The intriguing part is that he seems to want to move wrestling back to its glory days of larger-than-life caricatures and colorful costumes. I pretty much stopped watching WWE shows right around the time it lost its WWF name in 2002. Around that time they also lost most of their best starts including The Rock, Steve Austin and Mick Foley. All that's left now is a roster of indistinguishable 'roided-up muscle-heads in black tights lacking any discernable gimmicks or personality, and equally dull bimbos called "Divas" that do nothing but stand around in their underwear.

Still, even during these dark days, you can always count on occasional short moments of greatness. Now with the passing of the Fabulous Moulah, these moments are becoming few and far between. There is however a bizarre story line going on right now that only Vince McMahon himself could have crafted. It involves a magical leprechaun named Hornswaggle who also happens to be Vince's illegitimate child. You can read all about it at Wrestlecrap.com. For me, Hornswaggle illustrates well the biggest hurdle Hulk Hogan has to overcome with his new wrestling show. Even in the WWE's darkest hour, you can still count on Vince McMahon to come up with something crazy and unpredictable. While I welcome the Hulkster's call for a return to gimmicks and colorful characters, I fear that Hogan just doesn't have what it takes to think-up the kind of strange and irreverent stuff that Vince loves to do. Anyway, I look forward to finding out just what Hulk has in store.