Hot Dogs and Meal Trucks, Oh My! - While no fast food option is particularly good when it comes to getting a good and nutritious meal, there are certainly ways to save time while improving on going to a fast food restaurant.  This post discusses some options that you can pursue along that road.

The Toronto Traveler Celebrates World Cocktail Week – Have you ever had a Toronto Cocktail?  How about the fictitious, yet hilarious Toronto Toddy?  Check out recipes for both in this post!

The Toronto Traveler’s Submission to the b5media Travel & Culture Theme Day – Take Toronto’s best known landmark and combine it with a well placed ambulance in order to get a picture that captions itself, no editing needed!

Happy Victoria Day from The Toronto Traveler – Victoria Day’s a very important holiday in Canada, so naturally no post about the City of Toronto would be complete without an acknowledgement of this great holiday!

Start off your day with Free Pancakes in Toronto – Pancakes are delicious and posts about them are fun to read

Well, the above five posts certainly represent my most memorable experiences with The Toronto Traveler in May.  What about you?  Do you agree with the above choices?  Disagree with them?  Have other suggestions that you’d like to put forward?  Feel free to leave a comment letting me know what you liked about this month and what you’d like to see moving forward into June.  The more feedback I get, the better I can make the blog for my readers.

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Photo Credit: Flickr

1) Strikes Affect the City Massively: The TTC has been on strike before; many times in fact.  During my own time in primary, middle, secondary and now post secondary school, the TTC has had at least three different strikes that I can remember off the top of my head and there were probably a number of near misses as well where the union was able to negotiate a deal with the city at the last minute in order to avoid a strike.  And those near misses were good things too, because the city is paralyzed without the TTC.  People can’t go to work, tourists can’t visit the places they want to visit and generally the mood of the city goes down when the TTC is not around.

2) Main Tourist Attractions are Near Subways: Whether you are talking about the CN Tower, the Rogers Centre, Roy Thomson Hall, Casa Loma or any other major tourist attraction in the City of Toronto, almost all of them are built near subway stations.  This is not to say that the buildings themselves were constructed with the subway in mind, but rather it is to say that the TTC provides a route to the city’s main attractions that allows tourists that don’t know the city very well to get to them relatively easily.  This makes the TTC very important for Toronto’s tourism industry.

3) Rush Hour is better on the Bus: I remember the feeling of joy I had when I first got my driver’s license and now six years after the fact I’ve come to realize that I hate driving downtown.  If I take the bus, train or streetcar however, I can fall asleep and let someone else worry about the driving.

4) The TTC is Cheaper: Whether you are a person working a job where money is tight or whether you are a tourist trying to see Toronto on a budget, the TTC provides you the opportunity to save a ton of money on gasoline.  A monthly metropass is just over $100 and a weekly pass is around $30.  If you toured Toronto in a car for a week, the first time you filled up you would already be past the amount of money you’d need to pay for unlimited weekly travel on the TTC.

5) The TTC Reduces Smog: Whenever people ask me when they should come and visit Toronto, I usually recommend that they do so during the summer.  While part of this is just my Canadian bias feeling that someone can’t truly see Toronto in all its glory without some snow on the ground, another part of it is the fact that downtown Toronto during the summer has problems with smog from time to time.  For a city’s downtown core that is already prone to poor air quality days, can you imagine how much worse it would be without the downtown subway system?

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- Torontonians frequently substitute the word Chesterfield in for the word couch

- Torontonians and most other Canadians use the proper term Inuit instead of the term Eskimo

- When Torontonians say the word ‘film’, it usually comes a lot closer to sounding like ‘fillum’

- When we say the word hockey, it means ice hockey, because that’s obviously the best kind. Don’t cross us on this one

- Most Torontonians will substitute the phrase ‘icing sugar’ for the phrase ‘powdered sugar’

- If you hear a Torontonian say ‘The Rock’, they might just as likely be talking about Newfoundland as they are about the wrestler

- Rubbers means rubber boots, get your mind out of the gutter people!

- A case of beer that has 24 bottles in it is known as a two-four

- It’s pronounced ‘zed’, not ‘zee’

- Some Torontonians (mostly of the older generations) say “that’ll learn ya” as slang for “that will teach you”. I actually shouldn’t say of the older generations, because I probably do this myself relatively often

This is by no means an exhaustive list and I’ll probably do more at a later date, but for now this should get you started on your quest to sound like a Torontonian!

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1) Sir Frederick Banting –

2) Margaret Atwood – Author of such books as The Handmaid’s Tail, Margaret Atwood has become one of the top selling authors internationally in today’s world.  She is also a noted feminist and still lives within the city when she is not on a book tour or doing research for her next novel.

3) Robertson Davies – Author of Fifth Business and many other noted works of literature, Robertson Davies is actually one oy my favourite authors.  I’ve read all of his books many times over and in my personal opinion he’s the best author Canada has ever produced.

4) Michael Ondaatje – The well known author of The English Patient.

5) Conrad Black – Probably a guy that is more infamous than famous, but there you have it.  Black was a media mogul in Canada and really also in North America for a long time.  He was also a Lord in the British Upper House of Parliament before being arrested for his part in embezzlement.

 6) Ed Mirvish – The founder of Honest Ed’s and a well known philanthropist, the City of Toronto was recently saddened by his passing.  A lot of people reminisced about talking with Honest Ed Mirvish either at his shop or during one of the events that he held to help some part of the city and a lot of people in general talked about how great his love for the city was.

7) Hayden Christensen – The actor responsible for playing Anakin Skywalker in Episode II and Episode III of the new Star Wars Trilogy.

The Barenaked Ladies – They’re actually from Scarborough; the place in Toronto I grew up and still live in!

9) Lester B. Pearson – One of the former Prime Ministers of Canada; the man who the international airport in Toronto is named after.

10) Mike Peca – An NHL hockey superstar.

Post from: The Toronto Traveler

Post from: The Toronto Traveler

With that having been said, here are 10 things that you can do to make sure you stay safe on Halloween night.

1) Stay in a group – While Toronto generally has very good per capita crime rates, no city its size is completely free of crime.  Halloween is a good opportunity for thieves and robbers to get some loot because of the large number of people outside at night, so make sure that you stay in a group if you plan to be out late in areas that don’t have a lot of people.

2) Bring a flashlight – This one’s just really common sense and the one that my parents drilled into me for the five years or so that I went Trick or Treating here in Toronto.  Nights are dark and on Halloween (October 31st), there is going to be more dark time than light time.  If you plan to be out in the evening, make sure you bring a flashlight with you just in case you happen to end up in any deserted areas.

3) Have a designated driver – While Halloween’s usually not thought of as a party holiday in the sense of getting drunk, at the same time most partiers will use any excuse to have a few.  And that’s okay, so long as you are responsible about the drive back.  Make sure that the person driving does not have too much to drink and preferably has nothing to drink at all so that they can make sure everyone gets home safely.

4) If in doubt, take transit or a taxi – There is no, I repeat, no excuse whatsoever to get behind the wheel of a car intoxicated.  We live in a city of 5 million people with 5 large taxi companies and one of the largest transit systems in North America; both bus and subway.  If you can’t make the drive home because of intoxication, use one of the many other options at your disposal and come back to get your car the next day when you’ve sobered up.

5) Don’t visit houses that don’t have lights on – This isn’t really a safety tip, but it’s something I’ve learned from my trick or treating days.  When someone doesn’t have one of the street-facing rooms in their house lit, it usually means that they don’t want people knocking on their door for trick or treat.

6) Parents should check food kids bring back – I remember every year that the news used to tell us this and I totally shrugged it off each time.  That was until a friend of mine told me at school one day that his dad had found a nail in one of the chocolate bars he’d been given.  Parents, make sure you check the candy your kids bring back, before your kids have had a chance to eat it.  Check that no wrappers are broken and nothing looks suspicious.

7) If it looks suspicious, get rid of it – Even if you’re not sure that there’s anything wrong with something, if you feel bad about anything at all don’t hesitate to throw it out.

Try not to wear any exotic scents – While exotic scents might accompany a costume very well, there are a lot of people allergic to the chemicals used in most exotic scents and therefore it is better if you just don’t wear them.

9) Charge your cell phone beforehand – You never know when you might need it!

10) Make sure you can see through your costume – Some very unfortunate accidents have happened because people have had imparied vision due to masks and make-up on Halloween.  Make sure that this isn’t even a possibility for you by making sure that your costume allows you to have clear eyesight at all times.

Well, there are my ten ways for staying safe this Halloween, follow them and you’ll have a great time that is worry-free.  Tomorrow I’ll wrap up my segment on Halloween in Hogtown in the 2007 year and we’ll then move on to something else.

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