Tag Archives: Toronto

An Aurora shooting victim narrowly missed the shooting at Toronto’s Eaton Centre in June

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I only know about this tragic story because I follow Jake Tapper on Twitter. He tweeted:

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Here’s Jessica Redfield’s last tweet before becoming one of the shooting victims in Aurora last night.

How strange (and, yes, chilling) that in her last blog post, dated June 5, 2012, she’s discussing how she narrowly missed a shooting in the food court of Toronto’s Eaton Centre last month, and how it continued to haunt her:

Late Night Thoughts on the Eaton Center Shooting

“I can’t get this odd feeling out of my chest. This empty, almost sickening feeling won’t go away. I noticed this feeling when I was in the Eaton Center in Toronto just seconds before someone opened fire in the food court. An odd feeling which led me to go outside and unknowingly out of harm‘s way. It’s hard for me to wrap my mind around how a weird feeling saved me from being in the middle of a deadly shooting.

“[...] I say all the time that every moment we have to live our life is a blessing. So often I have found myself taking it for granted. Every hug from a family member. Every laugh we share with friends. Even the times of solitude are all blessings. Every second of every day is a gift. After Saturday evening, I know I truly understand how blessed I am for each second I am given.

“I feel like I am overreacting about what I experienced. But I can’t help but be thankful for whatever caused me to make the choices that I made that day. My mind keeps replaying what I saw over in my head. I hope the victims make a full recovery. I wish I could shake this odd feeling from my chest. The feeling that’s reminding me how blessed I am. The same feeling that made me leave the Eaton Center. The feeling that may have potentially saved my life.”

http://jessicaredfield.wordpress.com/

I’m so sorry, Jessica. My heart goes out to your family and your friends.

May Day protests: banks feel victimized, “like elk defending themselves from attacking wolves”

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Just pathetic:

Organizers and protesters around the world will come together to commemorate International Workers Day tomorrow, and they are taking on familiar targets. Large protest actions are planned in more than 115 American cities, where activists will continue the anti-Wall Street message started by the 99 Percent Movement last fall. The action will again center in New York, where protesters have identified 99 targets in Manhattan, including large Wall Street banks like JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and Bank of America.

[...] Though the New York-based banks offered no specifics on how they plan to deal with the protests, one security adviser made the laughable comparison that Wall Street banks — the same ones whose errors include triggering the financial crisis and wrongfully foreclosing on thousands of Americans — were innocent elk defending themselves against attacking wolves, Bloomberg reports.

[...] It’s no secret why the banks view the 99 Percent Movement so negatively — the movement took Wall Street’s excesses and abuses to the mainstream, refocusing the national discussion on rising income inequality, exploding student debt, and fraudulent banking practices.

Continue: Wall Street Banks Coordinate To Fight May Day Protests, Compare Themselves To Elk Hunted By Wolves

Right. These guys are victims.

Rooftopping

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i'll make ya famous

please remain seated with your seat belts fastened

LaughingSquid: Rooftoppers are daredevil photographers who climb to the tops of buildings and other urban structures and take photos of the view. Canadian photographer Tom Ryaboi is an early practitioner of rooftopping and has popularized the genre with his death defying photos of Toronto. Ryaboi explains why he rooftops in an interview with My Modern Metropolis.

photos by Tom Ryaboi

Meanwhile in Toronto

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(High Definite)
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CTV.ca: 100 pictures: G20 Chaos in Toronto

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(Reuters)

Burning police cars. Protesters emerging from sewers. Smashed windows, black-clad anarchists and tear gas: a global economic summit came to Toronto, bringing TV images of mayhem in its wake.

Despite the clashes and arrests, the anti-Group of 20 protests in Toronto this weekend were smaller and more peaceful than the giant riots of years past — a sign, say activists and analysts, of a changing dynamic between civil society groups and the world’s economic leaders.

…Violence was sporadic. Police arrested about 500 people, among them four who climbed through sewers to emerge near the locked summit site. Authorities also used tear gas on the public for the first time ever in Toronto to disperse violent protesters such as the masked anarchists who have become a regular feature at such global meetings.

While Toronto was unnerved and images of the violence were broadcast widely, the scuffles paled in comparison to huge demonstrations that marked earlier summits, including the “Battle of Seattle” at a World Trade Organization meeting in 1999 and the 2001 G8 meeting in Genoa, Italy, where one protester was shot to death. More ….
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G20, Toronto, protesters