North York Central Library Blog

Legal Aid Assistance -- Where can I get help?

'"I need a lawyer but can't afford one. Where can I get help with legal problems?"

Legal Aid Ontario has changed their policy and no longer offer legal aid clinics at the library. But don't worry--help is still out there.

You can contact Legal Aid Ontario at their website or, during regular business hours, by phone at 1-800-668-8258 (toll-free) or 416-979-1446. Always call before visiting an office. For general inquiries, email them at info@lao.on.ca

"But how do I know if I qualify?" Check out their website, click on the links, read the brochures.

Click on the Getting Legal Help link, then, from the list on the right, click on Types of Help. If you scroll down this page to Community and Specialty Clinics, you will see a list including issues such as tenant rights, immigration, employment rights, and others.

There is also a list of Specialty Clinics, such as Advocacy Centre for Elderly and Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario. 

 

"What if I don't qualify for legal aid? Where else can I go for help? Is there anywhere else I can find information?"

 

 

 

 

The Law Society of Upper Canada has a referral service and will give you the name of a lawyer. You can arrange a 30 minute free consultation. Call 416-947-3330 or 1-800-268-8326 or you can use their online request form.

 

 

 

CLEO does not give legal advice but has a lot of helpful links, information, and online publications, including a Directory of Community Legal Clinics in Ontario and on topics ranging from Criminal and Youth Justice to Family, Seniors, Landlord & Tenant, and Immigration & Refugee. They describe the law as simply and clearly as they can, making it easier to understand.

 

 

 

CLEO has also launched a new website, Your Legal Rights, with easy-to-find information on various topics of Consumer Law, Education Law, Housing Law, and many more. Here is an example--I clicked on Consumer Law, then on Identity theft. From there, I scrolled down to Watch Your Step on the Internet   (http://yourlegalrights.on.ca/webinar/83962)

 

 

Law Help Ontario is a service provided by Pro Bono Law Ontario and has a wide range of legal information and online resources.  It is especially helpful for people representing themselves in Small Claims Court or Superior Court. There are guidebooks, videos, tip sheets, and more, including A Guide to Fee Schedules, A guide to Getting Ready for Court, etc. They cannot help with family law matters, criminal cases, family law, or landlord & tenant matters.

 

 

 

 211Toronto.ca is a directory of over 20,000 community, social, health, and government services, with pre-selected lists under various topics, including Legal. If you click on Legal, then on Community Legal Clinics, you will get a long list of legal clinics in the Greater Toronto Area. You can also do a keyword search, using such phrases as lawyers referral, women legal, divorce legal, or youth legal.

 

There is a lot of help out there and the library is here to help you find it.

 

 

 

 

 

The Science Behind the Glory

With the Euro Cup about to wrap up and the Olympic Games just weeks away, I'm getting excited. I love the human drama of sport, the compelling backstories, the inspirational individual and team efforts. And for me, some of the most interesting stories are about the science and the technology behind the winning performances.

Pursuing athletic success is a high-tech undertaking. From athletics to cycling to swimming, top athletes are supported by laptop-toting experts who use biomechanics to analyze their techniques and design their training programs. Sport psychologists, therapists and nutritionists support their conditioning and wellness. Engineers use computational fluid dynamics and wind tunnels to model and test the aerodynamic properties of equipment and uniforms.

For example, researchers at the Royal Veterinary College's Structure and Motion Laboratory  have studied how greyhounds and cheetahs run in the hope that understanding the biomechanics of the world's fastest animals will lead to improved technique for human sprinters.

Many sprint athletes at the London Olympics will wear the Nike Pro TurboSpeed, a dimpled tracksuit which the company claims reduces drag and can improve results by as much as 0.023 seconds in a 100 meter event.

Technological advances in sport don't always have a positive outcome. Speedo introduced a polyurethane swimsuit in 2008 that significantly reduced drag and, some suspect, increased buoyancy. At the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, nearly 90 percent of swimming medals were won by athletes wearing the Speedo suits. As world records fell with increasing frequency to swimmers clad in polyurethane suits, suspicion grew that they gave swimmers an advantage in the form of increaded buoyancy, and swimming's governing body announced a ban on the controversial suits effective in 2010. To many, the nearly 200 world records set by swimmers wearing the suits during the brief period they were worn in competition are tarnished by the ban. Read about The Science Behind the Swimsuit War.

Learn more about the science behind the spectacle:

 

 

Hot Hazy Haven!

My very first TPL post, "Beat The Heat And Enjoy The Summer," provided information on how to stay cool during a summer Heat Alert in Toronto.  Toronto has reached and crossed the summer solstice, and this blog offers useful tips (again). 

In celebration of the summer heat upon us, may I suggest some material to enjoy on the warm patio while sipping a cool drink.

 

Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt

This is a (1975) classic children's novel also worth revisiting.  Natalie Babbitt has a knack for writing in rich and decadent detail.  Here are the first two paragraphs from Chapter 1 to inspire readers to share in this wonderful book:

 

The road that led to Treegap had been trod out long before by a herd of cows who were, to say the least, relaxed. It wandered along in curves and easy angles, swayed off and up in a pleasant tangent to the top of a small hill, ambled down again between fringes of bee-hung clover, and then cut sidewise across a meadow. Here its edges blurred. It widened and seemed to pause, suggesting tranquil bovine picnics: slow chewing and thoughtful contemplation of the infinite. And then it went on again and came at last to the wood. But on reaching the shadows of the first trees, it veered sharply, swung out in a wide arc as if, for the first time, it had reason to think where it was going, and passed around.

On the other side of the wood, the sense of easiness dissolved. The road no longer belonged to the cows. It became, instead, and rather abruptly, the property of people. And all at once the sun was uncomfortably hot, the dust oppressive, and the meager grass along its edges somewhat ragged and forlorn. On the left stood the first house, a square and solid cottage with a touch-me-not appearance, surrounded by grass cut painfully to the quick and enclosed by a capable iron fence some four feet high which clearly said, “Move on—we don’t want you here.” So the road went humbly by and made its way, past cottages more and more frequent but less and less forbidding, into the village. But the village doesn’t matter, except for the jailhouse and the gallows. The first house only is important; the first house, the road, and the wood.

 

For those who prefer visual imagery, here is the (2002) movie version on DVD:

 

 

As I picked up this this book last January, the cold winter scene outside my window disappeared.  I pictured myself running through the hot sun-soaked woods with flies swirling around my brow while looking for a cool spring to drink from--but would that be a prudent decision to make?  The Tuck Family did drink from the eternal spring and may still be living to regret it. 

The power of colourful imagery that stories such as Tuck Everlasting conjure up in the mind is discussed on a June 19, 2012 podcast article called, Fiction:  Reality's Secret Master :

 

Don’t underestimate the power of the storyteller. His tale may begin with whimsy, but by the end of it he’ll have changed the world you live in. He might even change who you are. In this episode, Julie and Robert examine fiction’s effect on reality.

 

HowStuffWorks.com houses several online streaming audio podcasts and one I like in particular is called, Stuff To Blow Your Mind with hosts Robert Lamb and Julie Douglas.  The podcast features intriguing and educational topics.  For me, this particular podcast episode on the mind-altering effects of fiction is particularly mindblowing since I enjoy reading fiction. The podcast audio clip is worth listening to:

 

 

Southern Comfort: The Garden Districts of New Orleans, 1800-1900 by S. Frederick Starr

Toronto's warm temperatures also bring to mind our Southern neighbours.  This title combines the beautiful architecture of the Garden Districts of New Orleans with the social history from the 19th century. For those who are considering a visit this summer, New Orleans Online provides some handy travel tips.

 

Route 66 Still Kicks:  Driving America's Main Street by Rick Antonson

 

 

For those who prefer to travel by car and take an adventurous journey to experience some American nostalgia, this book will guide you on a journey through Route 66. Here is an excerpt from Google Books:

"You'll never understand America until you've driven Route 66—that's old Route 66—all the way,” a truck driver in California once said to author Rick Antonson. “It's the most famous highway in the world.”

With some determination, grit, and a good sense of direction, one can still find and drive on 90 percent of the original Route 66 today. This travelogue follows Rick and his travel companion Peter along 2,400 miles through eight states from Chicago to Los Angeles as they discover the old Route 66. With surprising and obscure stories about Route 66 personalities like Woody Guthrie, John Steinbeck, Al Capone, Salvador Dali, Dorothea Lange, Cyrus Avery (the Father of Route 66), the Harvey Girls, Mickey Mantle, and Bobby Troup (songwriter of “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66”), Antonson's fresh perspective reads like an easy drive down a forgotten road: winding, stopping now and then to mingle with the locals and reminisce about times gone by, and then getting stuck in the mud, sucked into its charms. Rick mixes hilarious anecdotes of happenstance travel with the route's difficult history, its rise and fall in popularity, and above all, its place in legend.

The author has committed part of his book's proceeds to the preservation work of the National Route 66 Federation.

[Retrieved June 21, 2012 from http://books.google.ca/books/about/Route_66_Still_Kicks.html?id=iwFxuQAACAAJ&redir_esc=y]

Next Avenue (PBS) has recently published an (June 14, 2012) article on Route 66 called, Still Getting Kicks on Route 66:  The Mother Road Provides a glimpse of past American Life that is worth reading.  HowStuffWorks.com has more information (audio podcasts, videos, and written journal articles) on Route 66 available through the Route 66 road sign portal below:

 

 

My Ruby Slippers:  The Road Back to Kansas by Tracy Seeley

 

As Route 66 passes through Kansas along its way from Chicago to Los Angeles, a visual journey would not be complete without including an internal journey to reconcile with the past.  Tracy Seeley embarked on the latter to find her way "back to Kansas" in her (2012) book. 

 

 Sure, there’s no place like home—but what if you can’t really pinpoint where home is? By the time she was nine, Tracy Seeley had lived in seven towns and thirteen different houses.  Her father’s dreams of movie stardom, stoked by a series of affairs, kept the family on edge, and on the move, until he up and left.  Thirty years later, settled in what seems like a charmed life in San Francisco, a diagnosis of cancer and the betrayal of a lover shake Seeley to her roots—roots she is suddenly determined to search out.  My Ruby Slippers tells the story of that search, the tale of a woman with an impassioned if vague sense of mission: to find the meaning of home.

 

The above excerpt was taken from her own blog based on this title:

 

 

We hope you will venture out on some personal journeys of your own and enjoy some cool reads (and podcasts) along the way.

Happy 145th Birthday Canada!

In less than two weeks the most favoured public places of Toronto will light up with celebratory fireworks and will be booming with free events, concerts, performances, carnivals and barbecues. Make sure to plan your day of family fun by checking out the listing of events around the city.

If you are planning a trip to North York Central library around the long weekend, please remember that all the Toronto Public Library branches will be closed on July 1st and 2nd. However, Mel Lastman Square   will offer a full day of fun and performances on Sunday, July 1st.

Just in time for Canada Day, the North York Central Library Tea & Entertainment program will feature the film Over Canada: An Aerial Adventure. 

From a bird's eye view, this award winning, high definition documentray presents an "aerial adventure" over the vast Canadian landscape unveiling its dramatic and awe-inspiring splendour. A must see for all nature lovers!

To view this film in a company of like-minded enthusiasts drop in to a Tea & Entertainment event held at North York Central Library on June 29 at 2 p.m. in Auditorium.

If you cannot attend the Tea & Entertainment event at the library you can also borrow this film on DVD along with these beautiful photography books.

 

Portraits of an Era. An Aerial Photography of Howdy McPhail is an astounding collection of aerial photographs of farms, villages, and large and small communities from Ontario to British Columbia-Thunder Bay to Victoria-in the 1950s and 1960s. This book is perfect for those interested in photography. The collection of photographs presented in the book is unique and has an immeasurable historic value.a

Canada from above : a photo journey celebrates Canada's most spectacular natural and man-made landmarks shot from above. An aerial view of a beluga migration in Nunavut and the Horseshoe Falls in Ontario are only a couple among the book's  many fascinating features. Its full-colour images are breathtaking!

 

 

 

 

To add to the list of Canada Day events, the Textile Museum of Canada is holding a Dreamland: Textiles and the Canadian Landscape exhibition. In it, the works of the contemporary Canadian artists are juxtaposed with the landmark Canadian artifacts from the museum's permanent collection. The exhibition runs until September 30th. You can catch the Curator's Tour on Wednesday July 4 at 6:30 p.m. 

The Toronto Public Library Museum+Arts Pass program (MAP) makes museum-going even more exiting by letting families explore Toronto's major museums and attractions for free. Find out the Rules and Conditions of borrowing MAP passes and do not miss out on the great exhibits and events!

To find out about all library's programs and events please click here.

Have a safe and  happy Canada Day!

Toronto Island

When a long weekend strikes the tradition of packing up, hitting the road and getting away runs deep in the culture of this city. But like so many Torontonians, I have neither a car nor a cottage to getaway to. It doesn’t really bother me, because on a long weekend after everyone has fled, the streets of Toronto become quiet(er). It’s almost eerie. Drivers and cyclists stop flipping the bird to each other – as much – and the westbound lanes of Lakeshore Boulevard are so empty you could setup a road hockey tournament.

 Maybe, I’m exaggerating...

 But, there are lots of great places to visit in the city that can leave you with the feeling that you have left it. A personal favorite has always been Toronto Island. The pace and vibe is so different than the rest of the city. Looking to the south you see nothing but the waters of Lake Ontario and for a moment you feel like you’re far away from the competitive fast paced nature of Toronto. Facing the north you see the towering skyscrapers of downtown. You’re instantly reminded of your place. The island is both a part of Toronto and separate.

Map of Toronto Island, circa 1810.  Notice the connection, between the shore and island.

The Ojibwa shared a similar sentiment. The island was used as a “place of healing” and possibly a burial ground.  After Europeans arrived, a blockhouse was constructed in 1793 and in 1808 the Gibraltar Point lighthouse – famous as much for its history and its hauntings – was completed.  Interestingly, the island was not always an island. In 1852, a violent storm created a gap in between the shore and what is now Cherry Beach.

Gilbralatar Light House, 2012

The history and significance of the island runs deep in the history of this city. If I’ve sparked your interest, drop by any Toronto Public Library branch – especially North York Central – and have a look on the shelves. You will not be dissappointed.

Library Resources

• Memories of Toronto Island : 10 minutes and 1,000 miles away
• The Toronto Islands
  
• Trillium and Toronto Island 3rd ed.
  

Online Resources

• City of Toronto: Toronto Island History
• A Visual History of Toronto Island – BlogTO
• Friends of Toronto Island App - Toronto Standard
  

A Hare Raising Tail

Think back to your younger years.  The days you waited anxiously for Christmas or your birthday in the hopes that you’d wake up that morning to the bark of a new puppy, wrapped in a red bow, and just as anxious to jump into your arms while feverishly licking your face.   A new pet is always a request made by a child, whether it be a puppy, a kitten, a hamster, or even a slithery snake.  But, once that pet is adopted, taking care of her is never as easy as once thought. 

A good place to start actually involves reading up on your hoped for pet before you even adopt.  Did you know that female dogs hitting puberty will face a menstrual cycle approximately twice every year if not spayed right away?  Estrus, better known as heat, is probably something many new want-to-be-dog owners don’t even think about, but should definitely research in advance. 

Cats don’t simply forget about their feelings.  In fact, cats have been confirmed to have human-like emotions.  They can be happy, excited, angry or even depressed.   Need proof?  For any cat owner, a urine soaked bed or chair is not uncommon to find when having just returned from a trip.  They don’t forgive easily, I can personally guarantee that.

Dogs and cats tend to be the more popular pet requests, but fish, hamsters, and birds follow in closely.  More unique pet purchases include turtles, snakes and other reptiles, rats, bunnies, and insects. 

The Science & Technology Department at the North York Central Library has a vast array of pet books, intended to help you decide which pet best suits you and your home, and learning how to take care of such a pet.

 

 

Author Sam Stall, provides excellent information on how to choose the right dog for you in his title, the Good, the Bad, and the Furry.  This book offers information about whether the dog is a better option for a couch potato or a senior, which dogs make a lot of noise, which dogs are more suited to a city dweller, and much more.  Learn a little about each breed and their history, hassles and special perks, and settle on the right dog for you and your family.  

 

Similarly, a popular and well known animal expert and author, David Alderton, has written several books like the one above, targeted to those who are looking to take care of cats or other small and unique pets instead.  The Cat Selector is the perfect title for looking into different types of cats, from high-maintenance cats to those that are more talented.   Learn about different breeds of cats, their history, behavior, common health issues and other important  characteristics.  Also check out Alderton’s other books, The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Small Pets and Pet Care and The Exotic Pet Handbook.  Both books specialize in information about tips and tools needed for pets outside of the mainstream.

                                     

Patricia Bartlett has focused on some interesting pets as well in her book, Reptiles, Amphibians and Invertebrates : An Identification and Care Guide.   Like Stall and Alderton, this author provides an illustrated guide to various animals such as frogs, salamanders, newts, etc., as well as information about their selection, caging, and feeding.  Learn about their lifespan and general behaviours to make certain you choose the right pet for you.

 

Visit the North York Central Library to learn more about a new friend, and make it a hare raising tail!

There's an app for that!

If there is, do you think you could build a better one? Or do you have an idea for an app that you think has potential?

App development has really taken off since the advent of mobile devices. But it's a crowded field - according to one estimate, over 1000 smartphone apps are introduced every day. Sorting through the platforms, development environments and programming languages presents one set of challenges - and bringing your app to market represents yet another.

If you're interested in getting into mobile app development and marketing, come to the North York Central Library on June 6 and 7 for our two-part workshop series What's App with That?.

On Wednesday, June 6 at 6:30 pm join Graham McCarthy for Part 1 of the series, Exploring Mobile Application Development. It's a great starting point for anyone thinking about jumping into the exciting field of building mobile apps. Learn about the current mobile application development landscape, the major platforms to support, features to consider leveraging in your app, the importance of UX and the dreaded app submission process. Graham McCarthy will also discuss the pros and cons of building mobile web versus native apps.

Graham McCarthy is co-founder and CTO of HitSend Inc., Project Manager for Ryerson Mobile at Ryerson University and is part of Ryerson's Digital Media Zone project.

 

On Thursday, June 7 at 6:30, join Brennan McEachran for Part 2 of the series, The Business of Apps. Have you got a great app idea and want to know how to make it succeed? Learn how to make your idea a reality and explore the mobile application landscape through a business lens. Brennan McEachran will discuss current industry trends, which platforms to build your app for, costs associated with building an app, key success attributes for launching, and related issues.

Brennan McEachran is founder and CEO of HitSend Inc., a member of Ryerson Mobile at Ryerson University and a participant in Ryerson's Digital Media Zone project.

Both workshops take place in the Auditorium at North York Central Library.

 

Interested in reading about this subject? We have lots of books and ebooks on app development and marketing. Here are a few suggestions to get you started: