Tag: Canada

Ontario’s New Green Energy Plan: Move Cities Closer Together To Reduce Commuting Distances

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Ontario-FNT-smallTORONTO – The Ontario government has announced a radical new plan to save energy and reduce the carbon footprint for the province. Beginning in January 2018, select Ontario cities will be moved significantly closer to each other to reduce the commuting distances and commute times between them.

Several cities have been identified to be part of the GE Plan pilot project. These include Toronto and Hamilton, Sudbury and North Bay and Kenora and Thunder Bay, which are all strong candidates to be squeezed closer together to reap the many benefits projected by the government planners.

Queen’s Park held a media briefing to announce the ambitious new plan. The atmosphere was electric with excitement as journalists were encouraged to mingle shoulder to shoulder with government insiders around a tabletop model that had been set up to explain the concept.

The model showed that the GE Plan would achieve the most dramatic results by moving Kenora and Thunder Bay toward each other by several hundred kilometres along the Trans-Canada Highway. One of the architects had shown as a “win-win-win” side-note that this would have the added advantage of including the township of Ignace, which would be captured within the new footprint of the two cities.

A skeptic who publicly pointed out that moving Thunder Bay would also necessitate dredging out an inland basin of several million hectares to extend Lake Superior was first pooh-poohed and then ostracized by his fellow bureaucrats. He was then forcefully separated from the glass of chardonnay and cheese canapé that he was holding and quickly hustled out the door into the street.

The divertissement temporarily clouded the spirit of the event, however after the cynic was ejected the buoyant atmosphere was restored. Diligent reporters were able to catch snippets of self-congratulatory conversation by the remaining officials who spoke among themselves in unguarded moments.  “Absolutely brilliant!, “It will save Ontario millions, even billions!” and “It’s the greenest plan yet!” Source: FNT Staff

Photo credit: Original images at: World Atlas,

Canada’s National Pumpkin Association Calls For Cancellation Of Halloween

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Pumpkin Patch-FNT-Small.pngTORONTO – Canada’s National Pumpkin Association (NPA) is lobbying the federal government for a cancellation of Halloween, for the fourth year in a row. Halloween, it says, is an especially injurious and cruel time for the Cucurbita pepo, and below its dignity. The NPA, now in its second decade, has been highly outspoken in its support and protection of the much beleaguered and put-upon vegetable.

“The exploitation and abuse gets worse right around this time every year,” said the NPA’s Executive Director, James Singerson, from its Cabbagetown headquarters. “It used to be limited to just the odd pumpkin pie and the seasonal run on jack-o’-lanterns and such. Now they’re raising them in small crowded patches for frivolous things like pumpkin juice, pumpkin donuts and pumpkin spice lattes. Ugh! Where does it stop?”

Cancelling Halloween, Singerson said, would go a long way toward providing a safer and more stable and loving environment for pumpkins again. “Ultimately we want to stop the nasty business of chunking, and getting them out from under the seasonal carver’s knife is a good first step.”

The NPA is the Canadian offshoot of the IPA (the International Pumpkin Association, not the beer) and its mandate extends to winter squash in general but not to giant pumpkins, which belong to the family Cucurbita maxima.

“They’re a very specialized cultivar, so they have their own association,” said Singerson.

He explained that when it came to chunking, which covers tossing the pumpkins willy-nilly using catapults and other throwing devices, giant pumpkins were usually well protected, just because of their prodigious size.

“You need some serious equipment to toy around with those big suckers and that takes mucho bucks so it doesn’t happen all that often. We can’t be everywhere so we concentrate on protecting common garden variety pumpkins because they are the most vulnerable at this time of year.”

Singerson also wants to see the Cucurbita pepo being accorded more respect in literature and film.

“I mean all we ever see in books and movies these days are scenes associating them with witches and hobgoblins and in other demeaning roles. Look at the Harry Potter thing with the pumpkin juice; just debasing. Well, we’re here to remind people that pumpkins have feeling too,” he said. Source: FNT Staff

Photo credit: Original images at: Stories For Ghosts, and The Original Pancake House