The Doo Doos and don’ts of the year that was
It was another year of living stupidly.
Degenerates and desperados, dolts and dimwits — we had plenty ’round these parts in 2015.
Hapless crooks and lawless cops: I can’t spot the difference, can you spot the difference?
Sex was endlessly on the brain, on the police blotter, and on our not-so-smart phones.
Somebody built a tunnel to nowhere — “coolest fort ever,’’ said the police chief who turned pol.
The locally elected took themselves way too seriously, while the Maple Leafs took us for another laughable ride. Baseball was grand until the carpetbaggers from Cleveland arrived.
Teachers bullied and taxi drivers rebelled.
We fell in love with an illuminated T-O-R-O-N-T-O sign, as if the city at the centre of the universe needed any more affirmation of its selfie conceit.
We dug Drake. Bieber … not so much.
Join us as we take a step back in time — but carefully, because the steaming piles of silly were everywhere
We were mean to each other and cruel to animals. But we made it through another year — most of us, anyway.
Herewith a look back at the sillier, seamier and screwier side of the past 12 months in Toronto and vicinity. Now out you go, 2015 — git. Cuckold-doodle-do Toronto-based Ashley Madison, a website that helps people cheat on their spouses, experiences massive data breach that leaks personal information of 39 million users online.
Subterranean alien?
Police are mystified by an elaborate, ventilated tunnel discovered in a wooded area near York University.
Pulp friction
Ryerson University is discovered to have two-tier toilet paper: soft-tothe-touch for administration executives and one-ply for students.
Urine a lot of trouble
Pie-eyed pants-less fan rips a urinal off the wall at Rogers Centre, flooding the 500-level and disabling elevators.
Beating the rap
Thanks primarily to Drake, Hogtown is mercifully rebranded as hip “The 6ix.’’
Queen for a day
Israeli-born math professor Dror Bar-Natan takes the citizenship oath of allegiance to the Queen and immediately disavows it as “repulsive.’’
It pulled a knife, I swear
Cops in Newmarket shoot dead a black bear found in a backyard minutes before Ministry of Natural Resources tranquilization officials arrive. Holey moley Closure for repairs to a Yonge St. sinkhole costs the city $250,000.
Holier molier
The TTC’s unfinished Spadina subway extension from Downsview Station through to York University is $400 million over budget.
Take a hike
Toronto’s foremost tenants’ rights group is forced to move out of its Carlton St. location after a new landlord jacks the rent by nearly 30 per cent.
CSI: Toronto
Tweet from Toronto cop: “If you built a tunnel near the Rexall Centre in #Toronto give us a call, K?’’
The skinny on fat
Dr. Stanley Bernstein, he of the famous Bernstein Diet, wins $10,000 in a six-year defamation lawsuit against rival diet guru Dr. Pat Poon.
Tunnel vision
Mystery tunnel revealed as “man cave’’ dug by two men in their 20s.
Sad sac
Bag of biohazard bodily fluids stolen from Public Health laboratory, presumably by a thief who thought it contained drugs.
Saddle up
Previously unknown “slithering sperm” action — racing the fertilizing pack toward an egg — is discovered by a U of T research project. “You do catch yourself cheering for them,’’ says David Sinton. “It’s a little bit like horse racing.’’
Pane in the glass
TIFF starts off with a bang — a shattered penthouse window at Yorkville’s Four Seasons hotel injures two passersby.
Springing a leak
Scarborough—Rouge Park Conservative candidate Jerry Brance, a service technician by trade, admits he peed in a homeowner’s mug during a 2012 house call to repair a leaky sink.
Phi Beta Klan
Posters for a White Students’ Union show up at U of T campus.
Canucklehead
NDP Leader Tom Mulcair calls Toronto “Canada’s most important city’’ — while in Vancouver.
Bummer
A man convicted of mischief for videotaping the buttocks of bikiniclad women at Woodbine Beach is acquitted of voyeurism because the judge could not conclude the videos were taken for a sexual purpose.
Wheely wheely dumb
Taxi drivers shut down traffic in protest over Uber.
Wardrobe dysfunction
Hundreds of students across the city protest in solidarity — “Crop Top Day” — after an Etobicoke teenager defies a principal’s order to go home and change out of her belly-baring sports-bra-like top.
Jonathan Bernier says: “I had great respect for Forbes as a player.”
Forbes drops the Leafs from No. 1 to No. 3 in their ranking of the world’s most valuable hockey teams.
Abright star was in the East
Judge rules against a woman, representing herself in court over division of assets in a divorce case, who testified that her child was the result of immaculate conception.
S’no fun allowed
Tobogganing is banned at Orangeville’s best-known hill on advice from the town’s insurer, which sparked a “sled-in” demo.
Toe-tagged-fun
St. Luke Catholic School bars kids from playing tag at recess.
This little piggy had none
Animal rights activist Anita Krajnc is charged with mischief for provid- ing water to doomed pigs in a truck on its way to the slaughterhouse.
A cheap hit
Const. Babak Andalib-Goortani gets zero jail time after conviction on assault with a weapon — ramming his baton repeatedly into a protester during the G20 Summit. This is a holed up The “Tunnel Rat Bandit’’ robs eight Toronto banks in two months, on four occasions, making his escape by disappearing into the subway.
Bench pressed
For the second time in less than three years, Whitby Justice of the Peace Errol Massiah is found guilty, by his professional body, of sexual harassment and “ogling’’ female court staff.
Pot-bellied
Two Hamilton public works employees are suspended after feeding marijuana-laced brownies to colleagues at a staff lunch party.
Junk in the trunk
Fake doctor Marilyn Eli Reid pleads guilty to eight counts of aggravated assault after using caulking guns filled with industrial silicon and lubricant to inject patients seeking buttock enhancement.
Worm’s eye view
Sitcom actor Jean Paul Manoux is charged with voyeurism after two women allege they found hidden cameras in a Toronto condo they rented from him.
Heavy handed
A Toronto girls’ hockey league forbids coaches from touching players on the bench — even on their helmets — in a zero-tolerance policy.
The devil made him do it
A Scarborough pastor is accused of sexually assaulting a parishioner while performing exorcisms on her.
Ties that bind
Toronto sex merchants attribute a spike in sale of whips, chains and bondage for Valentine’s Day to new movie Fifty Shades of Grey.
And those that don’t
Someone shells out $16,100 on eBay for Rob Ford’s crack confession tie: the one he wore when he admitted to smoking crack cocaine.
Macho Macho Man
Jose Bautista makes a statement heard ’round the baseball world with playoff home run bat flip.
Diamonds aren’t forever
After their first post-season in 23 years, Jays make Alex Anthopoulos an offer he can refuse.
So Jays strip Cleveland for their front office and now WE’RE NUMBER ONE!
A sports blog names Toronto the second most-miserable sports city behind Cleveland.
Scrawler out
Sun News Network shuts down permanently.
The Ex-Files
Staff at three Toronto hospitals are caught inappropriately snooping into the medical records of Rob Ford.
E theory of relativity rejected
A former Toronto Courts Services officer who lost his job for supervising an assault on a drug trafficker admits to being an Ecstasy dealer but denies selling cocaine. He’s sentenced to eight years for operating “at the higher echelons of the drug trafficking hierarchy.’’
Cuff off
Toronto criminal lawyer Laura Liscio is dramatically arrested on the job and charged with drug trafficking on accusations that she smuggled drugs into the Brampton courthouse. She’s later cleared.
Scaling the wall of academia
Three “valuable” oil paintings are cut from their frames and stolen from three separate U of T campus locations.
Stick-shifted
Leafs trade Phil Kessel to Pittsburgh.
Stuck on you
Mike Babcock signs an eight-year contract reportedly for $50 million to coach the Leafs.
Flunkies
Education Minister Liz Sandals orders Toronto District School Board trustees to vacate their offices at board headquarters, get rid of their assistants and stop butting into everyday operations of the country’s largest school board.
Transfer please
A TTC bus with no driver on board rolls slowly across the lot at Bathurst Station before colliding with a work truck.
To serve and pocket
According to the Toronto Police annual “sunshine list,” more than half its officers made more than $100,000 last year, largely from moonlighting paid duty.
Bop goes the Bieber
SUV limousine driver who says Justin Bieber repeatedly punched him in the head sues the pop star for $850,000 in damages.
Hen-pecked
Maple Lodge Farms says it will investigate alleged abuse and neglect of chickens at its slaughtering facility after an animal rights group releases video of alleged mistreatment, including allowing the birds to die of cold while being transported.
Fire him
A Hydro One employee is canned after obscenities are hurled at City-News reporter Shauna Hunt doing a standup outside a Toronto FC match, the latest victim of the boorish trend known as FHRITP (F--her right in the p---y).
Hire him
The engineer fired by Hydro One for on-air sexual harassment of Shauna Hunt is reinstated following arbitration.
Ménage a twit
A person driving in the HOV lanes is caught with two dummies in the car.
Leaning precariously to the loony right
Downtown intersection is closed because of unstable antenna atop the Trump Tower.
North poll
Councillor Josh Matlow demands the “fascist” Trump name be removed from the luxury downtown hotel.
Castro-naughts
Four Cuban rowers defect during the Pan Am Games.
Polo B.O.L.O
Police issue an arrest warrant for a member of the Brazilian men’s Pan Am Games water polo team on a charge of sexual assault.
M.A.R.V.E.L. superhero Staff at the Main Street library branch find a handwritten note tucked inside a comic book. “I am sorry that a page ripped when it fell out of my bunk.’’ YouBoob
Conservative Party drops Toronto candidate Tim Dutaud after he’s identified as the “UniCaller’’ in prank YouTube videos posted six years earlier — pretending to orgasm while on the phone with a female customer service representative and mocking people with mental disabilities.
Empty chairs
Thorncliffe Park School is half empty on the first day of classes as parents keep their kids away in protest over new sex education curriculum.
Failing grade
Former provincial deputy education minister Ben Levin pleads guilty to pornography charges, including exchange with an undercover officer of revolting bondage photos of underage girls.
Bandit ambit
Mayor John Tory declares war on “Raccoon Nation,’’ trundling out the next generation of raccoon-resistant green bins.
The Full Monty
U.K.’s Daily Mail runs a piece on a Newmarket health centre’s aerial image, which portrays an uncannily anatomical layout with a penisshaped entranceway.
Wayne’s World
The Joker-mobile and Batmobile burn rubber on city streets for months during filming of Suicide Squad, about the DC Comics book team of the same name.
Blow-hards
City bans tobacco-free hookah pipes.
S’wats up wit’ dat?
GTA hit by a string of “swatting” pranks — calls made by hackers to police about phony gun incidents — causing five schools to be put on lockdown.
Girls, interrupted
Female players stay on the sidelines after a soccer team from a private Islamic school in Mississauga threatens to forfeit a game against their Catholic school opponent rather than play against a team with girls on it.
Bill and coo Eighty years after last seen, endangered
Great Lakes piping plovers are confirmed to be nesting near Hanlan’s Point.
Bêtes noir
A drug-and-booze fuelled mob at Yonge-Dundas Square terrorizes police and sends a man to hospital with stab wounds during Nuit Blanche.
Lordy Lordy
Yonge-Dundas Square management denies permit for a Christian group seeking to hold a concert.
Kitty littering
Woman tosses three kittens from the window of a moving vehicle.
War of words and music
Toronto Symphony Orchestra cancels performance by a renowned Russian-Ukrainian pianist over her Facebook comments about conflict in the Ukraine.
Station identification
CBC marquee headliner Evan Solomon is fired for taking secret commission payments related to art sales involving people he dealt with as TV and radio show host.
Return of the Swamp
Things Animal sanctuary rescues 150 crocodiles and alligators from a Toronto garage.
Up yours
Toronto man is charged with voyeurism and criminal harassment for taking upskirt videos at a TTC station.
Lust on wheels
A “Delicious Disabled’’ party, organized by “disability awareness consultants,’’ is held at a wheelchairaccessible Toronto theatre to explore — and participate in if they wish — sex acts.
Lock-a-bye baby
A crying infant is found locked in a safe inside a room at the Howard Johnson Hotel in Niagara Falls.
Kid you not
Toronto Councillor Sarah Doucette suggests the city employ goats to weed parks.
You’re on Candid Camera
Police search for a young man caught on security camera masturbating outside birthing unit of Oshawa hospital.
And a Happy New Year
Unknown Grinch swipes wreaths from upscale Summerhill homes. Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.