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metronews.ca Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Picture perfect March Break camp for airport employees’ kids Toronto Pearson. 25 kids with cameras explore the 1,867-hectare compound as GTAA hosts its first March Break camp A group of school kids arrived at Toronto Pearson airport on Tuesday for a March Break getaway, but they didn’t get on a plane. In fact, they didn’t leave the grounds. This trip was a staycation for children of Greater Toronto Airport Authority employees — moms and dads who can’t get time off during one of the year’s busiest vacation periods. The GTAA hosted the camp and Toronto Star photographers Rene Johnston and Tim Finlan were the instructors, sharing tips on camera handling, lighting, angles and composition prior to a twohour behind-the-scenes tour. Some of the group’s work will appear at the star.com. The experience showed sons and daughters that their parents toiled at a “very cool” place. For instance, who knew there were two fire stations
Kids’ pics • The children photographed the airport’s private inner workings, revealing a world much different from the familiar sight of terminals teeming with sun-seeking travellers. • A falconer and his predator bird, million-dollar snowplows, airstrip-level views of landing and leaving planes, and 150-metre blasts of water from a fire engine’s 4,500-gallon tanks were among the children’s powerful images.
within the airport grounds, staffed by 80 firefighters? “Before I thought Toronto Pearson was just a place where people just came and left, came and left, a boring sequence of events,” said 11-year-old Amir Buser of Brampton, whose mother works in accounting. “But now I realize how busy this place is.” About 38,000 people work at the airport on a daily basis, with 1,200 of them GTAA employees, said Toronto Pearson spokesperson Trish Krale. torstar news service
Claudia Browne talks with Toronto Star photographer Rene Johnston during a tour of the Airfield Maintenance Facility at Pearson International Airport during March Break day camp on Tuesday. Tim Finlan/torStar news service
Foundation laid for Ripley’s aquarium downtown
A construction crew pours the foundation pads for the giant shark tanks at the Ripley’s Aquarium of Canada site, south of the CN Tower. keith beaty/torstar news service
TTC
The concrete floor of what will be Toronto’s biggest fish tank, in the city’s first tourist attraction in two decades, is down. Now we wait for sharks. Construction crews at the Ripley’s Aquarium of Canada site south of the CN Tower poured the massive, 40-centimetre-thick pad on Saturday. Finishers worked until the wee hours of Sunday, then left the slab to cure for two weeks. “We did it in one continuous pour so there aren’t any ‘cold joints,’” that could make a leaky seam, said Joe Choromanski, Ripley’s vice-
SIU
president of husbandry, in an interview from the company’s Orlando headquarters. “It’s huge, it’s a huge exhibit,” he said of the 2.8-million-litre shark tank, the centrepiece of the $130 million aquarium (including $11 million from the Ontario government) set to open in summer 2013. Construction is now about one-fifth complete, Choromanski said, adding that this winter’s warm temperatures helped keep work on schedule. Ripley’s, owned by B.C. EMS
Man gets 50 days in jail for subway station assault
Police watchdog clears cops in shooting
Changes suggested to emergency response
A 49-year-old man who assaulted a TTC employee at Dundas Station Jan. 18 was sentenced Tuesday to 50 days in jail. The TTC says on average two employees are assaulted every day. metro
The province’s police watchdog has cleared Halton regional police officers after a woman was injured when they opened fire on an SUV.
The death of a man as he waited for medical assistance has prompted a coroner’s jury to make 29 recommendations aimed at preventing a similar tragedy.
the canadian press
Jim Hearst. torstar news service
billionaire Jim Pattison, operates aquariums in Gatlinburg, Tenn. and Myrtle Beach, S.C. Choromanski said Ripley’s has a special concrete formula that includes fly ash, a by-product of burning coal, to make the concrete extra waterproof. And because sharks have a highly developed sensitivity to electrical fields, that leads them to distant prey, no wiring is laid under the tank’s thick bottom slab. The fish will start arriving in spring 2013.
Coming attraction • Visitors will glide through the tank on a moving sidewalk, looking up and around at creatures such as four-metre-long sand tiger sharks, stingrays the size of area rugs and sawfish. • In total, various tanks will be home to more than 13,500 marine and freshwater fish in 5.7 million litres of carefully formulated solution that will start as Toronto tap water.
torstar news service
James Hearst died of a heart attack in the hallway of his Toronto apartment in 2009 while waiting for the city’s Emergency Medical Service to respond. Calls for a standard operating procedure when paramedics respond, and requiring dispatchers to ask 911 callers exactly what happened, were among the recommenda-
tions. The jury also suggested creating a distinction between “unknown trouble calls” and an “unknown medical problem.” The incident happened during the city’s labour strike, but no direct links have been made to that. The jury heard six weeks of testimony during the inquest. the canadian press