A Teacher Blogs

John Tory isn't the first Chief Magistrate of Toronto to embrace the role of LGBTQI ally. That would be pre-amalgamation Toronto Mayor Barbara Hall, who marched in Pride as both a City Councillor and Mayor. (As a lawyer, Ms Hall had defended men arrested and charged as found-ins in the infamous 1981 bathhouse raids in Toronto.) Her successor Mel Lastman, was a reluctant participant at first, but soon got into the fun. David Miller marched with the Chief of Police. But Mr Tory, no stranger to Pride, seems right at home at #IDAHOTB. John Tory at IDAHOTB 2015 / Photo: Gordon Nore . More so than his predecessor. Rob Ford at IDAHOT 2013 / Photo: NOW Toronto Some interesting reading in this 2012 NatPo piece --  Newsmaker: How does Rob Ford's Pride Parade attendance compare to past mayors?

I know.  This was Rob Ford's last interview before going in for major surgery.  And I'm a terrible person for posting this.  Councillor Ford sat down for "an exclusive one-on-one" interview with TheRebel's Ezra Levant on May 7th. At the eight-minute mark , Ez asks Ford his thoughts on the 2015 Ontario Health and Physical Education Curriculum . What could go wrong? WARNING: Coarse language. Ezra Levant: I'm surprised at the story of the sex ed curriculum. I read in the paper the other day that 35,000 kids stayed home in some parents-students strike in the sex ed curriculum Kathleen Wynne is putting in. Rob Ford: It makes me sick to my stomach. It makes me absolutely sick. I have two kids -- one in grade two; one in grade four. My one in grade two and my other one in grade four should not be talking about what anal sex is or what a blowjob is. This is what they're teaching these kids. That makes me sick. I told my kids, "If they star...

Ben Levin at his plea hearing. Source: The National Post newspaper. This past week brought news of former Deputy Education Minister Ben Levin's guilty plea  in connection with a series of charges related to child pornography. The details of his case had not been known, apart from charges of making and distributing child pornography, as well as counselling an undercover officer online to perform sex acts on a child. The actual statement of facts heard in court on the day of the hearing is vile beyond description -- from the sharing of imagery depicting a child victim to the jaw-dropping revelation that Mr Levin told an undercover officer (posing as a mother seeking stories of sex with children) that he had used his own daughters for gratification with his wife's support. If there is any saving grace, police found no basis for this latter fiction; however, Levin's closest family are left to suffer in the knowledge that they were used as background characters in his play...