Volume 47 No. 2
March 20, 2018
Potts’ voter proposal By Josh Sherman
BEACHES—EAST YORK MPP Arthur Potts has tabled a private members bill to lower Ontario’s legal voting age for provincial elections to 16, down from 18. Potts said he tabled the bill to spark “a conversation” about letting younger voters participate in elections. “I think they (below-18 voters) would have the potential to change party positions,” he added. Potts hopes lowering the legal voting age to 16 will help form voting habits from younger ages and increase voter turnouts. The local MPP worked on the bill after speaking with the political youth group Beaches—East York Young Liberals. Tanveer Shahnawaz, a member of the Beaches—East York Young Liberals, said the political
activism of high school students from Parkland to push for gun control after a school shooting shows how engaged—and effective—young people can be within the political system. “The youth, when they are committed, when they are willing—they are arguably the most able to be mobilized,” he said. He also noted Ontarians as young as 14 are allowed to join political parties already. Fellow young Liberal Moor Samiei adds, “Youth voices do matter.” She points to how political policies, such as the Ontario Liberal government making tuition free for more than 210,000 students under its loan program, are relevant to those in high school. “Even at the age of 16, you should at least have the option to vote—you’re not being forced to vote,” she adds.
PHOTO: ANN BROKELMAN
Hawk yeah, spring is here As spring hits the Beach, wildlife columnist Ann Brokelman zooms in on red-tailed hawks. Already, they’re busy building their nests for the new season. More on Page 19.
Pop-up books? There’s an app for that By Josh Sherman Paul Boyd saw the potential for something more as he experimented with cinemagraphs—those pictures with isolated areas of movement you might have seen in ad campaigns—in 2015. An app Paul says is the first of its kind was the result. “It’s my attempt to make a popup book, basically, for an iPad,” said Paul, who plugged away on the project with his dad, Steve, and two children, Hunter and Madison, the stars of the narrative app they describe as an “interactive motion picture-book.” The app, titled “Toys Away, Snow Today,” follows a simple storyline. It’s a snow day, but before the users can head outside to play, they’ve got to clean up a room by putting their toys away in a trunk. Doing so unlocks a number of
cinemagraph scenes, and nearly all were shot right here in the Beach. “Shooting here in the Beaches is spectacular because, you know, you don’t have to go to another community, you’ve got everything right here,” explained Steve. “You’ve got the beaches, you’ve got parks, you’ve got buildings… you’ve got the skateboard park not far away,” he added. The only non-Beach settings are Sherman Falls and Costa Rica, where Paul shot the night sky while on vacation after a failed attempt at doing so at the Dark Sky Preserve a couple hours from Ottawa. “It just didn’t work. It was a total failure,” said Paul of the overnight trip that was marred by the cold, moisture on the camera lense, and a big, bright moon that cancelled out all the stars they wanted to capture in the scene. Despite the misstep, the two
PHOTO: SUBMITTED
Madison and Hunter Boyd run along the beach in a scene from the app Toys Away, Snow Today, which was created by their grandfather, Steve, and their dad, Paul.
enjoyed working with each other. “Despite all the rumours of never working with family, it worked really well,” said Steve. The biggest hurdle was the cod-
ing of the app itself. Neither father nor son had done anything like that before. In fact, father still hasn’t. “The concept was there, we could see it, and we were getting
the shots, but how do you actually make it work so a three or four or five year old can sit down with an iPad and put a toy in a toy trunk or make a kite fly across the sky?” said Steve. The father-son team arrived at the answer with some help from CartoonSmart.com. The service helped Paul by building some of the features into the app and providing some code. “There was so much trial and error,” he said. To get the trunk to open with the tap of an iPad was no easy task. That alone took Paul a month. Concept to completion was a two-year journey, but now you can download the app, Toys Away, Snow Today from the Apple App Store. “We had a pretty big bump [in sales] early on—the whole friends and family thing—and now we’re just in the grinding mode, getting it out there,” said Paul.
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