A construction worker is lucky to be alive after the church in which he was working was demolished, while he was still inside.

Wakefield, Que., residents are worried that highway expansion in the area will contaminate a popular source of drinking water.

A 48-year-old cyclist has died after he appeared to hit a curb and lost control of his bicycle, crashing in the Sandy Hill area early Thursday morning.

Ottawa police are investigating an accident Thursday that killed the driver of a minivan.

The head of the city's non-profit energy-efficiency partner says income generated from Hydro Ottawa should be plugged back into energy-saving measures to help offset the higher costs of electricity.

Fire rescue crews pulled a body out of the Ottawa River near the French Embassy on Thursday morning.

Michael Ignatieff's Liberals have pulled into an end-of-summer dead heat with Stephen Harper's Conservatives, according to a new EKOS poll.

A Quebec commission investigating allegations of Liberal Party influence-peddling in the nomination of judges was adjourned Wednesday after its key witness asked to have his status changed to that of a full participant in the inquiry.

Police are telling the family of a missing Orangeville, Ont., woman to brace for the worst as the search for Sonia Varaschin entered its fourth day.

A proposed patio at MacLaren and Elgin Streets is facing opposition from its neighbours.

The City of Ottawa's transportation committee approved a motion to improve a stretch of Carling Avenue on Wednesday.

The Canadian government will not fund a clinical trial of the so-called liberation therapy for multiple sclerosis at this time, Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq says.

Premier Dalton McGuinty says he's looking at creating new guidelines on school fundraising.

NDP MP Charlie Angus, who previously supported a Conservative bill to kill the long-gun registry, says he can no longer "stand beside" the Conservatives on the next vote on the bill.

One of three Ontario men charged in connection with an alleged terrorism plot has been linked to the Pakistan Taliban, according to a news report.

Former First Nations leader David Ahenakew insists he's not an anti-Semite, telling his hate-crime trial Thursday he doesn't "hate the Jews, but I hate what they do" - and that he still believes Jews started the Second World War.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty tabled a deficit-free fiscal forecast Thursday that contained a political time bomb that could put his government in peril as early as Monday night.

Two men are dead after a shooting late Thursday afternoon in an Ottawa highrise apartment building.

World-renowned scientist Stephen Hawking has been appointed a distinguished research chair at Waterloo, Ont.'s Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.

When NASA returns to the moon, Canadian-built eyes could show its lunar rovers where to drive.

To anyone else, the photo album found in the truck of Mark Steinberg's car wouldn't be worth much, but the Vancouver lawyer says the album was his only physical link to a fading past.

CTVglobemedia Inc. on Thursday joined the parade of media companies across North America that have chopped staff amid an industry downturn.

Thai Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat sacked his national police chief on Friday, fuelling speculation that the government is preparing to crackdown on protesters besieging Bangkok's main airports.

Russia is satisfied with Washington's refusal to push for allowing Georgia and Ukraine to be official candidates to join the NATO military alliance, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Friday.

The world's oldest person, an Indiana woman, died on Wednesday at the age of 115, according to a gerontology expert.

Two people who were jailed during June's G20 summit in Toronto have launched a $115-million class-action lawsuit against the Toronto Police Services Board, federal Attorney General Rob Nicholson and the Peel Police Services Board.

The City of Toronto should concentrate on improving and upgrading bus service in order to better serve low-paid service workers who tend to be concentrated in the inner suburbs, a report recommends.

Police are telling the family of a missing Orangeville, Ont., woman to brace for the worst as the search for Sonia Varaschin entered its fourth day.

Police in St. Thomas, Ont., are treating the death of a Toronto stand-up comedian as a homicide.

Michael Ignatieff's Liberals have pulled into an end-of-summer dead heat with Stephen Harper's Conservatives, according to a new EKOS poll.

A Somali Canadian man is upset after a 911 call he says he didn't make led to a police raid at his home in an area of Toronto known as Little Mogadishu.

A Montreal man has been charged with mischief relating to damages done during the G20 summit in Toronto last June, police say.

The Canadian Food Inspection agency is warning Toronto-area consumers about a recall of beef from the Kabul Farms retail store in North York.

A Toronto high school teacher has been charged with three counts of sexual exploitation in relation to three separate incidents involving one of his students.

Toronto Blue Jays outfielder Jose Bautista was named the American League Player of the Month for August on Thursday.

Police say a six-year-old girl reported abducted from her home in Manchester, England, in 2008 may be in Toronto.

TD Bank says its profits grew 29 per cent in the third quarter to $1.18 billion, narrowly missing analyst expectations.

Police have arrested a man wanted in connection to a fatal shooting in Markham's Pacific Mall last year.

Col. Chris Hadfield will become the first Canadian astronaut to command the International Space Station during a mission launching late in 2012.

Nearly a year after their daughter's disappearance, the family of Toronto teen Mariam Makniashvili refuses to give up hope she will be found.

Every weekday's end, Extra, Extra collects just about everything you ought to care about or ought not miss.

• "We appear to have put ourselves at the mercy of every interest group, ethnic group and splinter group." Jan Wong, writing in Toronto Life, says that she likes street festivals just fine; she just likes not being mildly inconvenienced while driving more.
• On a related note, preserve your sanity and don't read this Joe Warmington column in the Sun about GO Transit's new bus-only Don Valley Parkway lanes. Seriously. Don't.
• At least Bixi's got five hundred members signed up—that's half the number they need by November 30 to launch the bike-sharing program here.
• And one new Torontonian took to Reddit to ask about proper streetcar etiquette, and got sixty-two comments on everything from how to use transfers to how to not get hit by cars while getting on or off the streetcar.

Like Torontoist? Send us tips, get involved, or follow us through Twitter, Facebook, or RSS.

This morning, when most of Toronto was having its coffee, "Furious" Pete Czerwinski, of Mississauga, attempted to eat fifteen pounds of poutine in one sitting, live on the Dean Blundell Show, on 102.1 The Edge. He did it, he said, to raise awareness of multiple sclerosis, from which his mother suffers. The stunt was sponsored by Smoke's Poutinerie, the rapidly expanding poutine chain, which currently has nine locations in Ontario and one in Quebec. Smoke's founder Ryan Smolkin, who was in the studio to preside over the day's feat of gastrointestinal fortitude, told us he has big plans for the future of competitive poutine consumption.

"Now that we have locations in Ontario and Quebec," said Smolkin, "we'll have regional championships." He envisions these regional contests culminating in a world championship showdown at BMO Field, similar to the one that took place there earlier this summer, where the winner ate thirteen pounds of poutine. Plans are still tentative.

Smolkin said of his expansion plans that he's currently eying locations on Bloor Street, near Spadina Avenue, and that he hopes to open Smoke's outlets nationwide in the near future. Asked if he could provide an estimate of the nutritional profile of the fifteen pounds of poutine that Czerwinski was about to consume, he wasn't sure. "I can guarantee you there is fat and calories in it," he said.

Czerwinski, a muscular guy (a bodybuilder, in fact—and also a recovered anorexic) whose last eating triumph involved polishing off a seventy-two-ounce steak in world record time on field during a CFL game, ate the first five pounds of poutine relatively quickly, while Dean Blundell and Todd Shapiro did their morning DJ thing. The spectacle wasn't really made for radio, so there were webcams rolling. Czerwinski's girlfriend stood by supportively, in a t-shirt that had the phrase "My boyfriend ate my homework" silkscreened on its back.

After downing nearly ten pounds using his bare hands (standard practice in any competitive poutine eating situation), Czerwinski began to slow down. He mumbled through a mouthful of potatoes and gravy that he didn't think he'd be able to make it through the final five, and Blundell and Shapiro suggested that their designated studio lackey, whom they call Meatus, might enjoy eating some of the leftover spuds with no hands, and with his shirt off—which Meatus did, because acquiescing to fun suggestions like those is his job.

Afterward, Czerwinski said he felt fine. "Especially when I do this for a good cause, then I feel a lot better afterwards."

Photos by Christopher Drost/Torontoist.

September 1 marked the first time in a whole decade that seminal sludge metal gods and grunge pioneers The Melvins played a gig in Toronto. It was a welcome return for local fans of the band, who for the past ten years have had to plot pilgrimages to far-flung burgs such as Buffalo and Detroit to catch the band live. Touring in support of their latest release, June’s And The Bride Screamed Murder, The Melvins' return to Hogtown ("Return to Hogtown" would actually be an excellent title for a Melvins album…or at least a Primus album) came with all kinds of rumours.

First came the rumour that there would be no opener, which turned out to be true. This, in turn, led to whisperings of the band playing some epic, two and a half hour set. Which begat all kinds of unconfirmed reports that there would be two sets, with the band playing their classic 1993 album Houdini in its entirety, followed by some other stuff. Then people started saying that frontman Buzz "King Buzzo" Osborne was actually just two dwarfs in a costume. (Okay, we started that last one.)

In any event, none of these stories held much water. Regardless, The Melvins cooked up a solid set of riff-laden, slow-tempo stoner rock at the Opera House. Here’s what it looked like from where we stood.

7:25 PM: Biking by the Opera House, people are already lined up outside for tickets, the line bending south down Lewis Street. Kitty-corner from the venue, neighbourhood greasy spoon Dangerous Dan’s is already teeming with kids whose pilled Mastodon and Misfits tees also mark them as Melvins fans.

9:50 PM: The Melvins take the stage ten minutes early, to the theme from The Great Escape.

9:53 PM: The band kicks things off with "The Water Glass," the opener from And The Bride Screamed Murder. While the song’s first half is convincingly raucous, the latter half, with its "Rock me, rock me, rock me, rock steady!" still sounds an awful lot like something you’d expect to hear on one of those Jock Jams comps. It works live, though, in a Gary-Glitter-after-six-bong-loads kind of way.

10:01 PM: As evinced by their t-shirts (Helmet, TOOL, Black Flag, Soundgarden) the audience is fairly eclectic, which, given The Melvins’ near–thirty year history of melding hardcore punk, doom metal, and grunge, is hardly surprising.

10:08 PM: The drummer from local hardcore/punk outfit Bastard Child Death Cult is right off the rails: fist-pumping with a king can of Coor's Light in each hand. Beer spilling everywhere. Granted, it is a fist-pump-with-a-king-can-in-each-hand kind of show.

10:15 PM: Band picks up speed with a cover of "Pinhead" by The Ramones. There’s probably nothing more fun to yell surrounded by other beer-soaked idiots at a show than "Gabba Gabba Hey!"

10:19 PM: First crowd surfer spotted.

10:26 PM: Okay, Opera House, listen up. What’s the deal with the washroom attendant? There are few things more alienating when you’re taking a piss in the basement bathroom of some venue then being assailed by a guy with soap and paper towels as soon as you’re done. And then the expectation of tipping? Yes, it’s lousy work being a washroom attendant. But as full-grown adults, most of us have become comfortable with performing basic tasks such as turning on a faucet, applying soap, and drying our hands off with a paper towel. Maybe if this guy was offering straight-razor shaves or something. But otherwise it’s absurd. You’re not some four-star steak restaurant or gentleman’s lounge, Opera House. You’re a rundown, albeit fairly comfortable, concert venue. You’re across the street from Jilly’s, for heaven’s sake. What are you trying to prove?

10:32 PM: Sightline is impaired substantially. This is a function of a) arriving late and b) taking a bathroom break. Luckily, Buzzo’s grey Brillo-pad mop is visible from anywhere in the room. Also, he’s wearing his trademark turtleneck or a neck warmer or zipped-up track jacket or whatever it is. It must be awfully hot. Though he probably knows what he’s doing by this point.

10:45 PM: Two women near the back of the room are comparing their breasts. Sure.

10:57 PM: This is also the first Melvins show in Toronto since they folded Big Business drummer and bassist Coady Willis and Jared Warren into the band. This means two drummers. In theory, two drummers seems like one too many drummers (calling to mind some indulgent, airy Allman Brothers jamming or something), but here it works. It makes everything louder, for one, with the bass driving well into the back of the room. Willis and Dale Crover sync up in interesting ways. Willis is left-handed, and when he and Crover play in time it results in a weird fun-house mirror effect.

11:02 PM: Loud bands are the best. The Pixies may have been on to something with that whole LOUD-quiet-LOUD formula. But loud-LOUDER-loud works just as well.

11:08 PM: After six minutes of lethal, heavy-as-hell jamming, Crover and Willis stand on their drum thrones, breaking into a chorus of Merle Haggard’s 1969 country anthem "Okie From Muskogee," which The Melvins covered on their 2000 album The Crybaby. It’s an appropriate closer, considering that 2000 was the last time The Melvins graced a Toronto stage. And given the smell of stale beer and pot smoke lingering in the venue, lyrics like "We don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee/ We don’t take no trips on LSD" seem doubly-satirical.

11:15 PM: So that’s it. The band leaves the stage. No encore. Some people still believe that they’ll be back on for another set, but the roadies dismantling the gear on stage suggests otherwise. It was an awesome set, to be sure. But given all the loose talk of some nine-hour Melvins marathon, a lot of people in audience can’t help but feel a little cheated.

Photos by D.A. Cooper/Torontoist.

Every few weeks, Torontoist receives transmissions from the travel log of Gleebax, the alien Urbanaut, as he explores the foreign land of Toronto.

The Toronto International Film Festival—this year's edition of which begins next Thursday—means many things to many people. For Mina Mikhail and Ryan Ming, it's become a software engineering challenge.

"I've been going to the Film Festival for over ten years, now, and every year I buy a ten-pass to the Film Festival, which is just ten tickets," says Mikhail over Skype from London, where he and Ming, both Toronto natives, are currently doing web development for a social networking and movie streaming service for film buffs. "Sometimes I want to bring people with me, so I need to know how to pick like five or six screenings out of something like eight hundred."

"I've seen year after year, it's a really labour-intensive job, and there's no tool to do it."

It was a problem of overabundant data. Almost anyone else would have grudgingly dealt with it by hand, but Mikhail and Ming are computer engineers, and their approach was different. They started coding in 2008, and their creation was ready for use shortly before TIFF 2009: they called it tiffr.

The program is a TIFF-specific scheduling tool. Users sign up for an account on tiffr.com, and then they can create an interactive online calendar of all the TIFF screenings they're planning on seeing for the duration of the festival, from a database of TIFF scheduling information compiled by Mikhail and Ming. The abstruse process of figuring out conflicts between screening times and keeping track of one's "must see" list becomes, suddenly, relatively easy. Mikhail estimates that the site currently has about five hundred users. The pair have ideas for new features that they say they'll implement in coming years, time permitting.

"We built it so we could use it ourselves, too. That was always my main goal, to just have a system so I could use it," says Ming.

"Exactly. We would use it and we would save ourselves a bunch of time. But in reality it just cost us a bunch of time," says Mikhail, and they both laugh. They estimate that bringing tiffr to its current state of completion (it's still a prototype) took them about four months of "fairly consistent" work.

There are 339 films playing at TIFF this year. In 2008, there were 336. Each one screens several times throughout the Festival for general audiences, and several times again for press and industry delegates. (Though tiffr currently does not work with press and industry screenings, that functionality is under development.)

There is an official TIFF scheduling tool called myTIFFList; it's available on the official Festival website, but its calender functionality is limited in comparison to tiffr's. TIFF also offers an official Blackberry app (Blackberry being one of the Festival's major sponsors).

Completely unaffiliated with TIFF, Mikhail and Ming made tiffr, they say, as a "labour of love," and as a calling card to help them find work. They say they approached TIFF in an attempt to work out a more formal partnership, or at least to get access to film scheduling data in raw form (currently, they get TIFF film schedules by skimming them from the TIFF site with custom-designed software, which is a difficult and unreliable way to get data), but were rebuffed. Last year, festival staff asked Mikhail, who volunteers for TIFF as an event photographer, not to hand out flyers for tiffr at TIFF box offices, in order to avoid the appearance of such a partnership. He complied, after his second warning.

The pair haven't made any money off their creation to date. But there has been some payoff: developing tiffr helped them land those sweet, film-related jobs in London. And, in any case, they consider their creation to be a philanthropic effort.

Says Mikhail: "Now that we've got it working, and we know that it does have value, we're just trying to inform as many people as possible about the fact that we can save some time and maybe not lose hair making it to the film festival."