Don’t get me wrong: I love my city. But this city-wide strike didn’t leave me feeling very proud of the T Dot.

After a tentative deal was reached, striking City of Toronto workers will be back on the job soon. And it can’t be soon enough. I didn’t even realize how much garbage was piling up during the month-long strike until I passed a giant park-turned-landfill the other day. Sure the overflowing garbage bins gave me an inkling, but a month with no garbage pick-up is just a tad ridiculous.

No wonder tourists aren’t visiting our “lovely” city as much as they used to. It seems the only tourists we had were an influx of mice and other vermon who have been digging through bags of trash lining city streets and parks. Personally, I think they should’ve been legislated back to work weeks ago.  Especially when there are so many city workers dependant on the income from jobs they had to suspend,  parents out there relying on child care and children eager to spend part of their summer in community centres and pools.

Seems like everyone’s going on strike these days. Just the other day Via Rail engineers headed to the picket lines. The two-day strike ended up with a 60% off promotion to compensate customers for the inconvenience. The promotion ends Wednesday night has been extended until Friday, July 31st if you’re thinking about purchasing train tickets… but it seems that their website is on strike now by how slow it’s running (probably the reason for the extension).

Hopefully it won’t be too long ’til Toronto is squeaky clean and running smoothly again.