This year, World Youth Day is being held in Toronto, and the Pope arrives tomorrow for the week, culminating in an enormous mass next Sunday. Lots of roads are being blocked off entirely as walking routes, or else for the parade. When we tried to come home from skating down at the lake, we were nearly turned away from the most direct route since they were just starting to block off Exhbition Place from non-participants. Happily, they let us through since really, all we wanted to do was catch the bus. Intriguingly, according to the signs around Exhbition Place, no bikes or in-line skates are allowed on the site, which means that participants will have to walk, take transit, or drive. Banners and articles on the event are everywhere. A headline I saw last night said this is Canada's largest ever international conference.

Happily for almost everyone, the garbage strike ended just over a week ago. The city workers were legislated back to work, and haven't settled yet, but at least garbage isn't mountaining up any more. It could well have been a PR fiasco to have quite so many people (350,000 I think was one estimate I read) descending on the city with garbage piles rotting everywhere.

Speaking of things which happened while I was away, we're down from 6 pepper plants to 1. No, they didn't die, they vanished. There is only one remnant of another plant. The others have been entirely uprooted and either eaten or at least vanished from the deck. I'm suspecting a racoon and hope the final pepper plant survivies. Meanwhile, this leaves me with 4 and a half empty pots to replant at this point in the season. I'm wondering where to source them from.