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I rather liked the reporting on this one from The Globe and Mail:
In what could have been a disastrous situation, ordinary Torontonians, some of them still dressed in business suits and ties, got out of their cars or parked their bikes, moved into the centre of intersections, and began directing traffic.
"He's jumped right into the fray and made this corner manageable," said Barbara Lowe, who was visiting Toronto from Dublin, Ireland, and was gaping at a middle-aged man in a mauve shirt and tie directing traffic at the corner of Front and University Streets. "I am absolutely taken with his attitude. Look at this guy, he just got out of his car and got everything moving again."
"Five minutes ago ... this was chock a block, up and down. Nothing moving."
Ms. Lowe's friend, Holly Jackson, from Calgary, was equally taken.
"This, in a big city like Toronto," she said, waving her hand at the street as a waitress from Casey's bar ran out with an iced tea for the sweltering would-be traffic cop. "It's unbelievable. It's fabulous.
"This could just as easily be a disaster, but it's not."
The good samaratian, who wouldn't give his name, simply said he was trying to help.
"I'm just trying to direct some traffic to go through ... I'm just trying to help a bit because it'd be chaos here otherwise," he said. "It'd be nice if somebody did it at every intersection."
And at nearly every downtown intersection, someone did.
From engineering consultant Mike Khoa Nguyen, who was waving on cars at King and Bay Streets, to Peter Carayiannis, who was doing the same thing a block north at Adelaide and Bay, "Toronto the Good" lived up to its moniker during yesterday's rush hour.
Every five minutes or so, pedestrians would stop and applaud, thanking the impromptu traffic officials for their work.
Eduardo Viana, a chef at Turf Lounge, brought Mr. Carayiannis a chicken sauté with ginger mustard, while he worked the intersection. Mr. Carayiannis chowed down, to cheers from bystanders.
"Go see the chef," he yelled to the crowd.
Enough with the paranoia! Trash your mobile phone and behave like a social animal, dammit! |
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