Trash Thrash
Toronto’s mean streets have truly become Toronto’s Mean Streets. The lack of garbage collection due to the C.U.P.E. strike appears to be turning otherwise normal residents into hostile combatants.
There were confrontations over garbage citywide, with one of the strangest occurring at Adelaide and John Sts. The scene turned positively surreal, as two striking C.U.P.E. workers confronted two men in a truck trying to remove a mound of trash from in front of a building. “That’s my garbage!” shouted one, as the union strikers called him ‘scab’.
The situation reached ludicrous proportions, as both sides swore, shoved the other, and battled over the bags. As one tried to load his truck, the union men would reach in and unload it. They tried to throw the bags into the open cab. But the strikers blocked it like basketball players. They played soccer with the green containers, kicking them away from each other, trying to gain control. And amidst all the pushing and shoving was an ongoing war of words that lasted 10 minutes or more.
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