Yellow Pages: Ballast for my big blue bin
I walked out my door yesterday and found two Yellow Pages behemoths on my doorstep. Thankfully, someone came and stole one while I wasn’t looking. Perhaps one of my neighbours actually makes use of the Yellow Pages. I sure don’t. Who, in this day and age, makes their fingers do the walking through pounds of inky newsprint when you can find everything you need while afloat in the cloudlike ether of the Internet? I promptly put the Pages where it belongs—but not before discovering some truly stupid information inside, plus one very curious omission, which I’ll tell you about after the jump.
Before tossing it into the recycling bin, I flipped though to see if this thing might be of any use at all. There was a guide for visitors to Toronto. Perhaps they ought to plunk the Yellow Pages outside the door of every hotel room in the city. There were shopping mall maps, not particularly useful at home, and not particularly portable as I walk the length of Yorkdale. There were some useful emergency phone numbers and whatnot, stuff the city ought to include on the back page of its recycling calendar. The most fun I had was looking at the colour-coded seating charts for local theatres and stadiums—including the Air Canada Centre, the Hershey Centre in Mississauga, BMO Field, Massey Hall, the works.
Yet one venue was absent, the one stadium that hosts the only affordable regular attraction in town: the Rogers Centre, home of the Blue Jays. I don’t know why, but could it be out of petty rivalry? Rogers, after all, is Bell Canada’s main competitor, and the Bell logo is there on the bottom left-hand corner of the Yellow Pages cover, just above the words “Fully Recyclable.” Okey-dokey, then: off she goes into the black-hole bin.
this is a personal peeve of mine. I think Yellowpages should put a sticky on people’s mailboxes saying “we’ll be back tomorrow – if this is still here, we’ll deliver you a phone book”
The Province should force Yellow Pages to contribute to the Stewardship fund, although they might ask with some merit why Toronto Life and other publications don’t face similar charges.
Full disclosure, I’m the Webmaster for Yellow Pages Group. The print directory is still relevant for approximately 70% of Canadians that use it every month. The omission of the Rogers Centre info was an oversight that is being promptly corrected for future publications. Yellow Pages Group has been contributing to Ontario recycling for more than a decade and currently funds directory recycling through Stewardship Ontario.