The one event that made TIFF 2017 worth remembering. The Room finally got a big-studio roll-out with the launch of James Franco’s homage, The Disaster Artist. Fans of the football-tossing original turned out late at the Ryerson Theatre, including a contingent of teenage boys sporting shirts with Tommy Wiseau quotes like “Anyway, How Is Your Sex Life?” While The Room's auteur will seemingly hang out with any Canadian, appearances alongside Franco were more exclusive:

Jagmeet Singh’s ambusher is sorry for being so obnoxious. Jennifer Bush, the 42-year-old “loud grandmother activist protecting women from oppression,” who supplied the NDP leadership candidate with a golden viral moment, transmitted an apology for her style to Joe Warmington. (The story was then deleted for some reason.) Bush claims she’s simply taking a stand against Sharia law. Singh’s decision to treat her with “love and courage” was decried by one side for being too chill and by the other side for being inconsistent with free speech. Singh, for his part, is putting the incident behind him. He’s now into the “woke toddler” phase.

Doug Ford attacks John Tory for ditching deputy pal. Don’t tell the first declared challenger in the 2018 mayoral election that it’s too soon to talk about it. Another sign of the sea change: Urban Toronto closed its epic Rob Ford discussion thread after 114,373 posts in seven years, in favour of a new one dedicated to Doug. Meanwhile, unrepentant DoFo-boosting councillor Vincent Crisanti has been dumped as deupty mayor, allowing Ford's pre-campaign to show off its first social media meme:

Cops want more runway to end 95 years of illegal weed. Senior police officials told a committee hearing on Bill C-45 that that there’s no way they’ll be ready to deal with legalization next July, while pot czar MP Bill Blair is asserting that the government will be taking its time to get legalization right. Meanwhile, the Canna Clinic in Kensington Market was the latest to be raided—for the third time—resulting in 15 people being charged with drug offences. But, as talk turns to the economics of distribution in Ontario, it’s plausible that the province won’t even end up making money from it.

A yard sale against midtown density creep.NO to Brownlow” is a campaign trying to fight what’s described as “a massive, slab like development” of two 24-storey towers around Mt. Pleasant and Eglinton. Fighting development at the OMB costs money, so these neighbours will be selling crap they don’t need. (These kinds of campaigns are rarely overly concerned with appealing graphic design.)

The Rebel is now a conduit for romantic Fake News. Laura Loomer, a muckraker for Ezra Levant’s organ (her latest disruptive stunt involved Hillary Clinton) was affirmative when alt-right goofball Tim Gionet, better known as “Baked Alaska,” announced that he’s dating her. B.A. even apologized to Twitter followers for his white nationalist past, as Loomer insisted this was a "love story better than The Notebook." Then, he admitted it was a prank, but only after tricking one outlet into writing about it:

National Post union drive likened to hell freezing over. Some staff at Canada’s only major non-unionized newspaper feel that it’s time to hook up with organized labour. Cutbacks and six-figure retention bonuses for managers are cited as reasons rank-and-file employees need more job protection. Postmedia's latest innovation is Life By Design" a newspaper section that reprints content from Rogers Media magazines, which have gone mostly digital.

Word of the moment

STANDS TRIAL

Premier Kathleen Wynne has threatened Ontario PC leader Patrick Brown with legal action for using these words to describe her court testimony about alleged bribery in the Sudbury byelection.




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