Or, “The Real Reason We Left T.O.”.

When it comes up in conversation, Maria and I never shy again from a good Rob Ford joke. We tell people that he’s the real reason why we left Toronto, and some of the time, it feels very much like the truth.

Although they said it couldn’t be done, although they said he’d need the support of council—which he’d never get—and the support of the people of Toronto—which he’d never have enough of—he’s doing it. Rob Ford is nearly single-handedly dismantling the City of Toronto.

He’s blown through the city’s surpluses created by Mayor Miller, he’s repealed taxes and fees which are going to have to be replaced with funding cuts, he’s declared war on the city’s social services and programming, and he’s flipping the bird not just to cyclists and pedestrians, but to motorists too. What’s more, Doug Ford, the mayor’s equally erudite brother, claims to have never heard of Margaret Atwood, one of this country’s most celebrated authors, after she spoke out against Ford’s earlier comments about closing Toronto libraries. That is, Doug Ford thinks that since there are more libraries than Tim Horton’s stores in his Etobicoke neighbourhood, some of those libraries have got to go.

What the Fords are doing to Toronto is not surprising, I don’t think, to anyone. If anything what’s surprising is how easily they’re getting it all done. With the Fords in charge, politics in Toronto feels more like schoolyard wheeling-and-dealing than it does governance of the country’s most populated city.

But,  if anything, Rob Ford’s alleged middle finger salute and his brothers comments about Margaret Atwood aren’t atypical but are becoming the norm. That’s because politics in Toronto, and elsewhere, are seeing the rise of a new kind of anti-intellectualism. A second coming of the Dark Ages.

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OK, so I have a more than passing interest in the paranormal. So a new television show like Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files is going to, in the least, pique my interest for a few episodes. But can it hold it beyond that?

In my experience, paranormal TV runs the gamut from something very scientific and research-based like MonsterQuest (featuring actual tenured academics) to something more akin to a couple of guys running around in the dark without flashlights cursing and swearing to appear cool—like Extreme Paranormal. (For Extreme Paranormal, picture the Jackass franchise done with ghosts.) Somewhere in the middle, is a balanced show like Ghost Hunters, one of the original and most successful series in this genre. A show in which two plumbers and a rag-tag group of other investigators set out to use what they deem to be scientific tools to track and record ghosts. They’ve been doing it for a long time, seven years now, and they’re honest in their pursuit whether or not the “science” they use is altogether scientific.

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In my profession I talk a lot and, as a result, I drink a lot of water to keep hydrated. I have an 800ml stainless steel water bottle that’s dinged and nicked from lots of use and sports a purple sticker with a unicorn on it that says “Chiropractic is Magic”—a gift from my wife’s workplace. I fill up my water bottle, on average, about three times a day from the tap, a gesture that I didn’t used to think very much of until I started getting comments from my coworkers.

It seems that tap water has got a bad rap.

Frequently, when filling up my water bottle I’ll hear things like, “Ah, slumming it today, are you?” Slumming it? By drinking water out of the tap? And it isn’t because the water isn’t cold because I always add ice from the freezer. It’s the quality that I’m receiving heck for. The quality of tap water.

It’s clear that the bottled water industry—a billion dollar industry—has pulled one over on us, and it’s a shame because there’s nothing wrong with water from the tap.

I don’t know where the impression arose that bottled water is safer or healthier than tap water but it simply isn’t true. The fact that it seems to be widespread enough that educated, intelligent people would believe it is of concern.

After doing digging I found that Health Canada holds water, in the bottle and out of the tap, to relatively the same standards but the situation in the United States, and other countries around the world is very different. In fact, in these places bottled water can be held to a lesser standard then tap water. So drinking tap water can be better for you. What’s more, some argue that by drinking local water you’re building up immunities to local diseases. I don’t know if that argue holds any water scientifically but there certainly is no data, anywhere, to show that water imported from France is any better than the stuff coming out of your kitchen facet.

But it’s the importing that’s the problem, isn’t it? Consider the manufacturing costs, the wastefulness, the unnecessary shipping and transportation when perfectly good water comes right out of the tap. David Suzuki, in an interview for the CBC called our bottle water consumption “absolutely disgusting” highlighting the fact that we pay more for water in a bottle than we do for gasoline.

OK, so this is my tap water rant. I’m constantly surprised though by people who themselves are surprised that I’m drinking unfiltered water out of the tap. Considering that many of the brands of bottle water out there are, themselves, just tap water in a fancy, wasteful bottle I think it’s time for a reality check.