well i don't think i was missing anything, save a lot of concrete. i did however have an opportunity to experiment in civil (or is it social) education:
i was walking north up yonge when i came upon a shiny new mercedes sitting in the right-hand lane with it's hazards on. the obviously "very wealthy, yet too good for pay parking" driver had decided that finding a parking spot was for losers and that she could just leave her car in the middle of the road while she ran in for a pack of cancer sticks. i was glaring at the car with that deep, ugly feeling you get when you think about those morons who drive slowly in the fast lane when the car's owner, a tall, slender blonde woman came out and hopped back into her set of overpriced wheels.
she then continued up to the corner of college & yonge where she had to stop at a red light and i crossed the street in front of her. she then unwrapped her brand new cigarettes and chucked the garbage out the side onto the street. i was appalled. i don't care who the hell you think you are, this is my city too, not your landfill. i stopped in the middle of the street, walked over to the rich bitch, picked up her trash, tossed it back into her lap and walked off.
but the sad part is she didn't seem phased at all. she just picked the junk out of her lap and tossed back into the street as i reached the edge of the street and the light turned green. apparently, toronto really is her landfill.
i spent a good deal of my very long walk thinking about how i could have done that better. how could i have been more effective -- something to consider if the opportunity arises again. i considered the rude approach: "listen here lady. this city isn't your landfill. get a garbage bag for that overpriced heap", but i can't imagine that being helpful. there was the passive-aggressive, tossing it in the backseat -- equally ineffective. i settled on a polite but obvious approach. "excuse me, but you dropped this. please keep your garbage off of my street"... too bad this was decided about 15 blocks later.
so how would you have done it? is this just futile? do you have a better suggestion? toronto is the laughing stock of the country in it's inability to manage it's garbage habit, are we supposed to just sit by and let these people maintain this?