Posts with the Thomas Foster tag

Barris Beat

Jewel on the Hill

Written by Ted Barris on . 1 Comment
Thomas Foster Memorial, our jewel on the hill.

We were winding up our visit to the building just north of the Sandford Road, a structure my author friend Conrad Boyce called a “Jewel on the Hill,” when our wonderful guide took questions. The one I asked had nothing to do with the building, but everything to do with its namesake.

“What’s the story about Thomas Foster rewarding women for delivering the most babies?” I asked.

“In his will in 1945,” explained tour guide Nicole Greenly, “the recently deceased mayor of Toronto, Thomas Foster, awarded cash prizes to women who had the most babies in Toronto in the decade following his death.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Celebrity, thy name is Uxbridge

Written by Ted Barris on . 2 Comments

You probably missed it. You can be forgiven because I missed it too. But last Monday the Internet was all a twitter (yes, pun intended) about a birthday event. It’s one that your teeny-bopper kids (or grandkids) probably noticed. It appears that music heart-throb Justin Bieber celebrated his 16th birthday by visiting the Son of a Gun Tattoo and Barbershop in Toronto. There he had a tattoo of a seagull inked onto his left hip.

“That’s a bad area,” the tattoo artist told MTV News. “Justin was nervous, but then he got into it and it was done. It’s very tiny.”

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