Before we get to the latest and one hopes last installment of the Great Toaster Saga of ‘23, a couple of quick notes on some other blood-pressure-elevating items.
One Very Bad Idea down, one to go
In mid December, after public outcry, the NPCA beat a hasty retreat on their plan to charge for parking at St. Johns Conservation Area, a boneheaded, pound-foolish proposal for the ages. At least, says the NPCA board, there won't be any charge for the remainder of their term, which is three years. So tune in around this time in 2027 to see whether the next board attempts to repeat history.
Incidentally—no, not incidentally, but crucially—you can bet your last Loonie that if it weren’t for the attention paid to this issue by PelhamToday, and the resulting reader reaction, come this spring you would have been paying $14 to park for a 30-minute walk around the duck pond. That’s how effective journalism is supposed to work, whatever the outcome.
The other Very Bad Idea that's still pending is the even more boneheaded proposal by some Pelham Town Councillors to impose a Town-wide speed limit of 40 km/h. We’re working on a video to demonstrate what this would look like in the real world. In the meantime, just think back to the slowest driver you’ve ever been stuck behind, and now imagine that this is the rest of your life driving in Pelham—a slow-motion hell on earth, all for little to no increase in public safety, if anything the opposite, as noted by Town staff in a November report to council. The issue is set to be debated once more at a future council meeting. Stay tuned.
Dogs in cemeteries, ServiceOntario in Staples
In the latest installment of Oh Lord, What Now, the fun continues. First, dogs and their bodily functions. The Town of Pelham is currently updating its policies concerning cemeteries, and at this Wednesday’s Town Council meeting a motion was made that would have banned dogs entirely from Town graveyards. Luckily it was defeated, but it’s coming back for another vote at the end of the month.
Once again, as with the plan to effectively punish all drivers for the dangerous driving of a few, some on council effectively want to punish all dog owners for the bad behavior of a handful.
Obviously—I repeat, obviously—it is unacceptable that dogs should be allowed to pee or poop on graves or gravestones. But given the absence so far in Pelham of roaming packs of feral canines, the only time you’ll see a dog in a graveyard is at the end of a leash held by a human. Owners that allow their dogs to do their business on a gravestone should have the sh*t fined out of them, absolutely. That’s the bylaw you want.
Banning the rest of us from taking a beloved member of the family along to visit another beloved and departed member of the family is actually mildly cruel, and not the solution to what surely is an infrequent problem to start with. Either way, let your councillors know how you feel about it.
Now comes the news that the Ford government seeks to move some ServiceOntario centres into Staples office supply stores. Could there be a more blatant example of the symbiotic relationship between conservatives and corporations and their deep donation pockets? (CanadaPost inside Shoppers Drug Marts, you say? Well played.) It’s early days on this one, so pop some popcorn and settle in for the political theatre to come—make it more fun by knocking back a shot every time you hear the words “efficiencies” and “little guy.”
My kingdom for proper toast
Right, on to our main attraction. You may remember that just before Christmas I was in the market for a new toaster, having clumsily turned our old toaster into toast with a botched repair. Three would-be replacement toasters from Amazon, at increasing price points, all failed in the simple task of evenly toasting a slice of bread.
Then came the happy ending, the fancy Italian toaster from Canadian Tire, bought on Christmas Eve, that succeeded. Angels got their wings, music up, roll the credits.
This one:
So two things. First, that column prompted plenty of reader reaction, ranging from “Check out this Consumer Reports list,” to a letter to the editor extolling genuine retro toasters from the 1950s, to “Just get a $5 toaster from a thrift shop—no brainer.”
Amazon even got in on the act, apparently unfazed that I had already ordered and returned three toasters from them:
And second, after three days, the fancy Italian toaster stopped toasting properly.
Yep, it was back to caramel on one side of the bread, a Whiter Shade of Pale on the other. Classic song, crappy toast.
It turned out that the letter writer on retro toasters had nailed it. Not the retro part, but the part about how so many new toasters vary in looks yet are basically identical inside owing to using the same core component—the heating elements.
Before I returned the SMEG to Canadian Tire, I compared its heating elements to photos that I’d taken of the equally fancy German toasters ordered through Amazon. They looked identical. And they identically failed to toast evenly. It just took longer for the Italians to catch up to the Germans, failure-wise.
At the Canadian Tire return desk I’d barely gotten, “It doesn’t toast very w—” out of my mouth when the service rep nodded like she was expecting me and said, “I’m not surprised. We get a lot of these back.” Well, jeez. Now what.
I was fed up with buying new toasters. Maybe a thrift store would be the answer after all. I headed for the superstore of thrift stores, at least around here, namely:
The shelves at Value Village did not disappoint, at least not in terms of stock. There were many, many toasters to choose from, and none, whatsoever, that I wished to choose. I give you the motley crew, duct tape no extra charge:
And what’s the story with this enormous DeLonghi...thing? Are we meant to toast whole baguettes?
Dejected, I returned home toasterless, where, in purgatory on its way to the Humberstone landfill, sat our old toaster on a stack of leaf bags in the garage, mocking me.
Unless.
Unless I summoned heretofore unknown reserves of patience and dexterity, and once more attempted to put the old toaster back together, which I failed to do before, and which is what snowballed into this whole half-crispy, half-spongy nightmare. (Long story short: In December, after getting the old toaster apart to retrieve its jammed crumb tray, I couldn’t get it back together. I just couldn’t get it together, man.)
Fine, let’s do this.
So it was back down to the basement and my favourite professional work surface, the top of the dryer:
Using tiny Allen wrenches and slowing my breathing like a yogi, I finally managed to nab the fugitive crumb tray, and in so doing remembered the fiasco of several years ago—when the tray’s plastic handle had broken off, allowing the tray to be pushed so far into its slot that it got stuck.
Right, crumb tray extracted. So far so good.
Then it was time to fit the frame back onto the chassis. By some miracle I was ultimately able to do this without even swearing that much. Four new screws in the base to hold it together. Now we just needed to clean off the accumulated gunk.
For this it was off to Beamer’s Hardware for a spray bottle of their strongest kitchen degreaser, which succeeded in removing both the grease and the numerals indicating toast darkness around the selector knob, but that was fine. Clockwise dark, counter-clockwise light. In any case, we basically leave it set at:
And so, four new toasters later, we have come full circle to the 14-year-old original.
The moral of the story is that I should have left well enough alone, possibly even if it risked an overflowing crumb tray bursting into flame like the Burning Bush, although in this scenario the Burning Black & Decker would definitely have also taken out the house. So not that, of course, but I should have stopped somewhere short of opening the thing up. Maybe those consumer-unfriendly custom screws serve a useful purpose after all. At least we got a couple of columns out of it.
Just under the wire
If you didn’t catch John Swart’s latest Balanced Life column yesterday about Blue Zones and longevity, give it a look. Personally, I don’t know anyone who wants to live to 100 who’s not already in their 90s, but if the goal is to live as healthily as possible for as long as possible, then there are some useful bits to pick up from John’s piece, and from the Netflix series he’s reviewing.
Still missing the sun? Me too. Try this live camera at Venice Beach, on the California coast.
Venice Beach is a place you’d neither likely want to live in or possibly even visit (there is an historic homeless problem), but a video visit from the comfort of your couch works great, and it works great because as far as I’ve seen over the last several days, it’s almost always sunny, the ocean and sky are beautiful blues, and the sunsets are spectacular. Also the camera roams around and all manner of humanity shows up. Enjoy.
See you next time.
