Riding on some selfies built for two. NDP leader Jagmeet Singh proposed to girlfriend Gurkiran Kaur at a party to which he invited members of the media —maybe as a preemptive solution to the perplexity that followed their meet-the-parents Rokha. Singh’s social media bragging about how “she said yes” included Kaur looking thrilled to have her face on Snapchat.

Doug Ford’s non-campaign campaign was in trouble out of the gate. City officials sent DoFo a letter to warn him that robocalls inviting people to Ford Fest, where he announced a run for mayor, may have violated election rules. Ford responded to the Globe and Mail, which dug up the note, with a ramble about how John Tory has been stumping even harder ahead of the kick-off on May 1. And, as if to make the October election as much of a rerun as possible, Olivia Chow’s stepson Mike Layton is in non-denial mode about running from the left, which Tory claims that he isn’t interested in thinking about.

“This is a dream come true for me. But I haven’t come here to be a tourist. I came here to get a job done.” Andy Byford had his first official day as president of New York City Transit, and the New York Times was there. Five years of subway-riding photo-ops on the TTC have refined Byford's knack for being the kind of boss who chats up passengers on the ride to work, even amidst the MTA’s colossal crisis. But the statute of limitations on framing his job as newsworthy to Toronto probably ends here:

Canadian Journalists for Free Expression censor their own campaign to wall off Donald Trump. The cash-strapped CJFE reacted to incredulity about its petition to refuse POTUS entry to Canada for this June's G7 summit by deleting the whole exercise from its website. CJFE then posted a rambling rationalization that was soon also deleted. Meanwhile, recent CJFE donor Margaret Atwood finds a defender in PEN Canada, which has been alarmed by calls to remove the "UBC Accountable" website she defended in the Globe and Mail. And over at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the father of Darcy Allan Sheppard has an open letter about its new boss, Michael Bryant.

WeWork has an award for every wannabe. As it prepares to consummate its department-store-salvaging strategy with Hudson’s Bay, the startup-for-startups rang the opening bell at Nasdaq—with staffers wearing “CREATOR” shirts to promote a million-dollar awards show featuring a performance from Macklemore. WeWork Toronto also has its own contest, which looks to give freelancing distinction:

The world that Jordan Peterson wrought. Promoting his new book, 12 Rules for Life, found Peterson in the U.K. for a scrap with Channel 4 presenter Cathy Newman. At the same time, his promised Edmonton event was rejected by the venue after complaints. Meanwhile, a Peterson-style showdown surrounds Acadia University professor Rick Mehta, where a petition is circulating to stop him from teaching because of some tweets. (The counter-petition is more popular.) Business is better for Montreal-based YouTuber “Roaming Millennial,” whose pseudonymity hasn’t stopped her from a paid American gig at CRTV, thanks to her softer-focus take on Peterson-compatible topics:

Coach House Books might’ve churned out its last poem. “Poetry is changing, and the way people read is changing,” explained the publishing company’s director, Alana Wilcox, after announcing Coach House has paused 52 years of printing verse on bpNichol Lane. The decision coincides with an era in which local Instagram poet Rupi Kaur sells more than enough books to get profiled by Rolling Stone.

Word of the moment

BLACK STALLION

The brand name of a sexual enhancement product that Health Canada seized from a Woodbridge variety store.




Facebook icon Twitter icon Forward icon