Photo: "Last weekend of the summer..." by chewie2008~, member of the blogTO Flickr pool.

What's happening in the GTA (and sometimes beyond):

He's young, he's driven, he's risen through the ranks faster than anyone before, and he's black. At just 41 years of age, Peter Sloly is one of four officers in the Toronto Police Services that are at the Deputy Chief rung... which means that soon enough Toronto could have its first black chief of police. Hopefully the media attention doesn't hinder his chances as much as it props him up.

A major oopsies back in 2006 could end up costing the City of Toronto millions of dollars. After being granted special, emergency permission to dump partially-treated sewage into Lake Ontario, someone on staff forgot to close a bypass gate and the lake continued to be polluted for an additional 3.5days. Wow.

Labour issues at the Fort Erie "Peace Bridge" Canada-US border crossing meant that just 3 of 15 lanes were open on Sunday, causing severe backlogs at it (and slowdowns at the other land crossings in the Niagara region). Apparently 15 people "called in sick" but Ottawa knows it's not a communicable flu or virus that's gone around; it's employee dissatisfaction with their tightening budget that's triggered the job action.

Is our court system prejudice against the media and citizens' abilities to provide a fair trial in high-profile cases? Once again, we're seeing a potentially extended publication ban on the Jane Creba homicide case, even though the Supreme Court of Canada dictates that bans only be imposed when there's actual evidence of compromised defendant rights, not merely speculation.

Toronto Police are still searching for Mariam Makhnaishvili, a teen that went missing in Forest Hill a week ago. They're now taking their efforts to two area schools, in hopes of learning more about her potential whereabouts.

And if you've been offline all weekend, on what was a gorgeous final weekend of the summer, here's what blogTO was up to:

• Beverly got wrapped up in Clubland's delicious soup haven RaviSoups.
• Christopher headed up to a new MMA gym in Vaughan to challenge UFC fighter Diego Sanchez, who was a no-show.
• Connie and Chandra reviewed some more films at TIFF and announced the winners, including Precious as peoples' choice.
• Briony found some bargains on clothing Penny Arcade Vintage.
• Crystal chatted with city councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, about life in the city and cycling.
• Daniel stopped some fashionistas in their tracks, and found that some are still sporting shorts.
• Elizabeth art crawled Queen West.