By the time most of Toronto wakes up, , they'll never know about the hundreds of liquor bottles, marijuana roaches and pepper spray-packing cops that only hours ago blanketed every corner of Yonge St. between Shuter and College Sts. They'll never know about the estimated 17,000 people taking over the street.The good news is nobody died this year, but there were a number of stabbings and hey, here's something to proudly trumpet...
The increased police presence seems to be largely successful, as there's just one gun-related incident all night.I saw where Global TV was interviewing revellers and asking them what they thought about Caribana being saturated with police & their new video surveillance cameras. A couple of folks stated that it was fine as long as every other Toronto event got identical treatment... presumably to curb the spontaneous outbreaks of handgun violence at U of T Frosh Week & the Santa Claus parade.
Funny, the Caribana organisation, which gets hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars every year seems to be a bit of a deadbeat.
Serious reforms are required before the CCC can run the festival again, almost everyone agrees. The organization has been a chronic debtor. It had so much trouble paying some of its bills on time that the city started holding back festival funding in order to give it directly to some of its creditors, including the police and Exhibition Place. Its offices are in a city-owned building on Hamilton Street, Caribana House, near Dundas and Broadview, which the city allows it to use for free as long as it pays the property taxes. That bill is more than $36,000 past due.Oh well... this is good old multicult Canada.
