Posted on 08/15/2003 11:01:09 AM PDT by Pikamax
Mayor Predicts Baby Boom, Slams Candles 1 hour, 10 minutes ago Add Oddly Enough - Reuters to My Yahoo!
TORONTO (Reuters) - Toronto Mayor Mel Lastman predicted on Friday that a surge in births may be seen in nine months after the blackout that struck Canada's largest city, but he advised citizens against using candles in any get-togethers in the dark.
"I guess in nine months we're going to see the biggest baby boom we've ever seen," Lastman told a news conference on Friday, responding to the state of emergency in the city.
It is widely believed that the birth rate rises after times of crisis, but many experts dismiss this phenomena as urban myth.
Lastman also asked people to use flashlights instead of candles in any future brownouts, as well as to conserve energy.
"Please continue to conserve energy by turning off your air conditioner and not running your dishwasher or washers or dryers... this will hurt my son's business."
Lastman's son has taken over the retail appliance business built up by his father.
The mayor, criticized for being slow to appear during this crisis and for a lack of leadership when Toronto was struck by the SARS (news - web sites) virus earlier this spring, has a history of colorful comments.
The millionaire mayor and former furniture and appliance salesman once threatened to kill a reporter, implored the Spice Girls (news - web sites) to stay together and called in the army to help dig the city out of a snowstorm -- much to the outrage of the rest of snowbound Canada.
This is the second outage since power was restored last night. The first outage occurred this morning but lasted only a few minutes.
Canada aint gonna see it. America's gonna see it. All those pregnant women are gonna cross the border to have their kids here, rather than have the Canadian socialist health care system take care of them.
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