Free Republic

When kids put pen to paper, chances are they are printing. But Toronto’s Catholic board, hand-wringing over the handwriting skills of its students, is now looking to make sure all of them learn cursive. Parents have told her their children can’t sign their name, “or they have been handed a handwritten note and can’t read it,” said Trustee Ann Andrachuk. She proposed a recent motion—unanimously approved—asking board staff how to reintroduce cursive in all schools, and how early children should start learning it. […] Across Canada and the United States, concerns have been raised that cursive is becoming a lost...

Midway through the segment, Mr. Kimmel then ushered Mr. Ford to a television screen where the late night host exhibited a series of now-famous videos showing the mayor drunkenly threatening to kill someone, speaking in Jamaican patois at an Etobicoke diner or knocking over a councilmember in city hall chambers.... As revealed on the Monday night segment, the mayor had agreed to do the show after he was personally contacted by Mr. Kimmel on his cell phone. The Toronto mayor is well known for widely distributing his cell phone number to constituents. “When you say ‘jump’ I say ‘how high?’”...

So a lesbian walks into a Muslim barbershop, and asks for a “businessmen’s haircut”. It sounds like the beginning of a joke, but it really happened, and now a government agency called the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario will hear her complaint. Faith McGregor is the lesbian who doesn’t like the girly cuts that they do at a salon. She wants the boy’s hairdo. Omar Mahrouk is the owner of the Terminal Barber Shop in Toronto. He follows Shariah law, so he thinks women have cooties. As Mahrouk and the other barbers there say, they don’t believe in touching women...

SNIPPET: "The arrest of a woman accused of hiding more than 10,000 diamonds inside her body when she landed at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport comes amid warnings that Canada is one of the countries where illicit diamonds have been used for money laundering." SNIPPET: "The woman had landed at Pearson on a Feb. 3 flight from Trinidad and Tobago, when she came to the attention of a Canada Border Services Agency officer, according to CBSA spokeswoman Vanessa Barrasa. The RCMP said the woman was found to have carried 10,202 stones inside her. The 1,500 carats (about 300 grams) of rough...

FULL TITLE: Rob Ford asks for Pride flag — just raised at City Hall to support gay rights at Sochi — be taken down Police investigating threat against Rob Ford, mayor's office says Mayor Rob Ford demanded on Friday that officials remove a rainbow-coloured flag raised at Toronto City Hall in solidarity with the gay community in Russia during the Olympics, prompting fresh accusations that he is homophobic. The mayor duct-taped a Canadian flag to his office window overlooking Nathan Phillips Square shortly after officials pulled down a City of Toronto flag from a “courtesy” flagpole on city hall’s roof...

Sister's ex-boyfriend says Ford arranged it to keep him quiet (Newser) – Just another day in the life of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford: He's being sued by his sister's ex-boyfriend for allegedly conspiring to have the man beaten in jail. A lawsuit submitted by Scott MacIntyre alleges the mayor was behind an assault at a Toronto jail in March 2012 that was intended to keep MacIntrye quiet about Ford's abuse of alcohol and drugs. The lawsuit alleges MacIntrye knew about Ford's alcohol and drug use and claims he was threatened with "dire consequences" if he did not remain quiet....

CNN) -- Toronto Mayor Rob Ford admitted to drinking again after a video posted on social media showed him babbling about the city's police chief Monday night while he was at a fast food restaurant. The mayor, who had pledged to refrain from alcohol, stopped briefly to talk to reporters Tuesday when he was asked about the video that shows him incoherently talking to customers at a Steak Queen in Rexdale.

The ice on Lake Ontario sparkles in the afternoon winter sun. “Come over here,” beckons Tyler Hnatuk. “I’ve found a perfect spot.” Alec Farquhar, his wife Kathleen McDonnell and I pivot on our skates and speed north. Ahead of us, across the frozen lake, bristle Toronto’s towers. Our skates bounce on bumpy patches and slow down over snow drifts. We come to open, smooth ice, longer than many rinks. We glide to and fro, swirling and smiling and enjoying the great outdoors. Some in Toronto complain when the thermometer dips to -26C, as it did outside my kitchen window Friday...

Toronto police are looking into allegations that a member of Justin Bieber’s entourage assaulted a limo driver who was driving the Canadian pop star and several others. But a spokesman says it’s unclear whether the teen heartthrob himself is accused in the attack or simply one of his companions.

On August 15, 2012, Mary Wagner was arrested after she entered the waiting room of a Toronto abortion clinic and offered help to any woman who would consider changing her mind. She has been in jail ever since on charges of “mischief: interference with lawful enjoyment/operation of a business,” and and breach of a probation order that prohibits her from being within 200 meters of any place where abortions are performed in Ontario. This was the sixth time Mary had been arrested since she began her campaign of civil disobedience in March 2010. Since then, she has spent nearly three...

Police admitted that the fatal shooting of a mental patient armed with scissors could have been prevented if the road sergeant equipped with a Taser had been at the scene in time. Michael Eligon, 29, was walking toward police with the weapon and a ‘blank stare’ when he was shot three times by an officer in Toronto, an inquest heard. A chilling video of the dramatic shooting shown to the inquest captured Mr Eligon’s last moments as he walked toward police who had their guns drawn and yelled ‘drop it’ on February 3 last year. Under cross examination, Constable Scott...

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford admitted to smoking crack cocaine, has been in "drunken stupors," and was caught on camera in an expletive-laced rant. But he's still having a better month than President Barack Obama. Ford has the approval of 42 percent of 1,049 Toronto voters surveyed by Forum Research. The poll results, released on Friday, came as Ford saw most of his powers stripped by the city council in Canada's largest city. South of the border, Obama must wish he were doing that well. Ford, who was elected in 2010 on a pledge to cut government spending, also has said...

Toronto's crack smoking mayor got his own TV show - and finally could speak his mind without all those pesky reporters asking questions. The hour-long "Ford Nation" show that aired Monday on Canada’s Sun News Network gave Rob Ford a pressure-free environment to tell his side of the story after spending the last week sticking his foot in his mouth in front of the press and being attacked politically after admitting to drinking too much - and sometimes smoking crack cocaine.

These thoughts are my own and not necessarily those of Free Republic. ON ROB FORD Schadenfreude has never been so delightful. Talking heads worldwide are obsessed by the admitted illegal activities of a man, in a city, in a country, they didn’t care about yesterday. Someone in the parlor has done some very, very bad things – uttered the word “pu--y” to boot – and the titillating evil of it all is too much to handle. Of course, Justin Trudeau (son of Pierre,) now gunning for Prime Minister, elicited mild yawns and golf applause from Canada’s holier, hempier, and greener...

Toronto’s crack-smoking mayor Rob Ford warned Nov. 13 yet more scandals may come out as he faced a grilling by the city council but denied he was an addict. ~snip~ Ford said he could not assure council that there were no more skeletons in his closet. “I don’t know. I don’t know, there might be like a coat hanger left in my closet. I don’t know. I don’t know what is left,” he said.

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford says he is taking legal action against the former staffers who made stunning allegations about the mayor in a police document, saying he consorted with escorts and used sexually explicit language to a woman working for him. In a profane media scrum aired live on television that left journalists gasping, Ford, wearing a Toronto Argos jersey, denied many of the allegations laid forth in the court documents, although he admitted to occasionally drinking and driving. He was particularly angry about his staffers telling police that they thought a young friend of his was a prostitute. “I...

Toronto's embattled mayor, Rob Ford, professed a zero-tolerance policy for drugs and gangs on Wednesday, but he also admitted he has bought illegal drugs in the past two years. Speaking after Toronto City Council almost unanimously urged Ford to take a break from his duties, Ford said he could not change the past and would continue his efforts as mayor to save Toronto money.

Former Clinton advisor James Carville pointed out Monday that President Obama, whose approval rating has sunk to 41 percent because the U.S. economy “is not growing for a lot of people,” is not even as popular as the crack-smoking mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford. Appearing on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” show, Carville told host Joe Scarborough that the president’s numbers are so low that “the best thing he can do is take a toke on the mayor of Toronto’s crack pipe, because his numbers are about 48.” …

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford is doubling down against calls for his resignation amid reports that police have a video showing him smoking crack. In a whirlwind radio show on Sunday, the embattled mayor apologized for getting drunk in public and said he would try and make sure it didn't happen again. "I shouldn't have got hammered down at the Danforth [festival]," Ford said on his weekly radio show Sunday, according to Toronto's Globe and Mail newspaper. "If you are going to have a couple drinks, you stay at home. You don't make a public spectacle of yourself." But Ford did...

Ford friend Alexander Sandro Lisi charged with extortion related to the video, police chief says Toronto Police have recovered the video that appears to show Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack cocaine, Toronto police Chief Bill Blair said Thursday. “The video files depict images that are consistent with what has previously been reported” in the media, Blair said at a news conference on the heels of a release of documents used by police to obtain search warrants during their summer investigation. Ford has since May refused to comment on the video “that I have never seen or does not exist.” Blair...