The Toronto Star: Celebrated writer Margaret Atwood is offering personal visits to some book clubs as part of her online campaign to spare Toronto’s libraries from Mayor Rob Ford’s budget knife.
On Thursday, Atwood retweeted a Twitter message asking people to sign an online petition, started by the library workers’ union, telling City Hall to ignore city-hired consultant KPMG’s suggestion to “rationalize the footprint of libraries to reduce service levels, closing some branches.”
Many of Atwood’s more than one-quarter million Twitter followers complied and promptly crashed the server hosting the petition, which was restored in about a half-hour when the union upgraded to an unlimited bandwidth package.
Atwood has since kept up the pressure, with many of her tweets referencing a recent quip on radio by Councillor Doug Ford that: “We have more libraries per person than any other city in the world. I’ve got more libraries in my area than I have Tim Hortons.”
The doughnut shop claim — which turned out to be false — is prominent on the petition website with a photo of the Ford brothers and a plea for Torontonians to fight any attempt to privatize or cut the city’s 99-branch system, which loaned out more than 32 million books, DVDs and other items last year.
“Twin Fordmayor seems to think those who eat Timbits (like me) don’t read, can’t count, & are stupid eh?” Atwood tweeted Friday.
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