From snoozing transit workers, a crie de coeur for the right to shop, mild earthquakes, sartorially-loud slaps at left-wing pinkos and waffles on ice -- Toronto had its share of oddball news in 2010.

Enjoy the ride as CTV Toronto takes you through the wacky and wild news of the year, in order:

The case of the napping TTC worker

In a case that would set the tone for a snarky 2010, a person snapped a photo of a TTC worker apparently sleeping in a collector's booth on Jan. 9.

The photo went viral, tapping into a vein of simmering public anger about poor services from TTC employees. That incident, and others, would lead to the city creating a customer service task force to see how the TTC could be improved.

In the case of George Robitaille, there was a sad twist. The 55-year-old was on medication for a heart condition. At the time of the photo outrage, some pointed a finger at the photographer for not checking to see if Robitaille was okay.

Robitaille, who had once come to the aid of a disabled man, died of a stroke in late November.

He's in, he's out

The mayoral campaign started on Jan. 4, but it started getting mildly interesting when former deputy premier George Smitherman officially  joined the fray several weeks later, and perked up a bit more when then-Coun. Adam Giambrone entered the race on Feb. 1.

It then took a sharp turn into tabloid territory.

A 20-year-old female university student came forward to say she had carried on an affair with Giambrone that included having sex with the 33-year-old TTC chair in his City Hall office.

It turned out she wasn't the only one.

Giambrone originally said he would stay in the race, but by Feb. 10, the left's great hope was an ex-candidate. He would eventually decide to leave city politics. His old ward  (18, Davenport) would go to rival Anna Bailao, whom he bested in 2006.

In the wake of his departure, Giambrone went on a trip to Paris with Sarah McQuarrie, his longtime live-in partner, to try to patch things up.

At year's end, he had been doing some archeological work, among other things.

I'm sorry. So sorry

Coun. Paula Fletcher got into it with a citizen while debating the city's 2010 operating budget on March 2.

John Smith was expressing his displeasure with the city's proposed tax hikes. Fletcher (Ward 30, Toronto-Danforth), a member of council's left, exercised her freedom of speech by accusing him of being a mouthpiece for John Tory, the ex-politician turned Newstalk 1010 radio host.

It got heated.

Smith: "You should be fired!"

Fletcher: "Oh come and run against me … come on down, baby!"

The next day, budget chief Shelley Carroll read out a note from Fletcher. In the note, Fletcher said she regretted her tone.

Fletcher would go on to win re-election in the Nov. 25 municipal election.

See Rob run

Coun. Rob Ford spent $200 and registered as a candidate for mayor. "I'm ready, we've got a team and we're going to change the way this city is being run," he told reporters on March 25.

He didn't use the phrase "gravy train" in those early days.

Breach of privacy

A Toronto woman launched a $600,000 lawsuit in May against telecommunications giant Rogers Communications, saying the company's billing practices breached her privacy and revealed her infidelity.

Gabriella Nagy had her cellphone under her maiden name.

In June 2007, her husband added Internet and home phone services. It included Nagy's cellphone. Several calls had been made to one number. The husband called and learned of the affair.

"I had a brief affair -- it was very short-lived, a few weeks," Gabriella Nagy told CTV News. "I did not need to lose everything. I am at a point that there's no turning back. Everything that I held dear -- especially my job -- is gone."

Rogers said it cannot be held responsible for the breakup of the marriage or Nagy losing her job.

The gravy train

Some time in May, Rob Ford started using the phrase "gravy train."

Then, in June, he got a perfect example.

Retiring city councillor Kyle Rae threw himself a goodbye party on June 7 -- at a cost of $12,000 to the city. Rae said he handed over a $25,000 cheque to the city that came from surplus campaign donations and that the party was an acceptable communications expenditure under existing rules.

To others, it looked like someone who was entitled to their entitlements.

"“It’s time to put a stop to this gravy train and the first step is for Kyle Rae to return all of the taxpayers’ dollars he spent on his lavish party, and the second step is for him to tender his resignation, immediately," Ford thundered in a news release.

Rae shrugged.

But there was no looking back. The gravy train was rolling.

A good deed gone wrong

Rob Ford dodged a bullet on June 17 by claiming a telephone offer to help someone score some OxyContin was a good deed gone awry.

Ford had got into a conversation with a fellow named Dieter Doneit-Henderson, who was HIV positive. Ford went to visit Doneit-Henderson after some controversial 2006 comments about AIDS came back to haunt him.

On June 4, Doneit-Henderson asked Ford, in a 50-minute telephone conversation, to help him find some OxyContin, a powerful painkiller.

"I'll try. I'll try," Ford responded. "I don't know this s--t but I'll try to f-----g find it."

Ford said at his news conference that he said what he needed to say, in order to get the person off the phone “without provoking him."

Ford would later have to explain away a 1999 drunk-driving arrest in Florida. And remarks about immigrants. And some other things. But he still won -- in part by campaigning on his promise to improve customer service at City Hall.

The earthquake

On June 23 at about 1:45 p.m., Toronto got shaken and stirred.

An earthquake, measuring about 5.0 in magnitude, struck north of Ottawa, but managed to make itself felt in Toronto.

"I was sleeping. Woke up wondering why my bed went all exorcist on me," one CTV Toronto follower said on Twitter.

Fortunately, no injuries or serious damage in the GTA -- but lots to talk about around the dinner table.

G20 follies

The G20 summit on June 26 and 27 turned out to be one of the grimmest weekends in Toronto's history. The destruction spree by a relatively small group of vandals using so-called Black Bloc tactics led to a police crackdown that left more than 1,100 people under arrest.

One of those was arrested was self-described absurdist filmmaker and "Love Police" member Charlie Veitch. He was nabbed at Pearson International Airport on June 29 just before flying back to Britain.

A YouTube video shows Veitch telling a security guard on June 24: "We're from British military intelligence. I'm here with the the Metropolitan Police. It's all fully authorized at the highest levels."

He didn't attempt to flash anything resembling official identification.

Someone who sounds like Veitch may have also been at a protest in front of Toronto police headquarters on June 28 asking any police officer who wasn't a neo-nazi fascist to raise their hands.

The most surreal moment came on June 26, at the height of the vandalism. The Eaton Centre, which normally only closes on Christmas Day, locked its doors.

 "Why, why are you closed? I want to go shopping in the Eaton Centre!!" a man screamed at locked doors.

"Why are you putting us through this?!?! Who gave you the right??"

Well, it is private property. And they do have the right to keep out rampaging anarchist vandals.

And did we mention Officer Bubbles? A Toronto police officer is suing YouTube for comments and online cartoons about his arrest of a female protester who had been deliberately blowing bubbles at him.

Not wacky, just nice

CTV Toronto cameras caught 77-year-old Helen Banville on her porch, where the 33-degree-Celsius temperatures were cooler than her bungalow, which lacked air conditioning.

Joseph Samardzich saw the item on TV, bought an air conditioner and installed it in Banville's home.

"I'm the luckiest person in the world," Banvillle said. "I've never had a thing ever given to me."

Takedown!

It was some of the most visually spectacular footage CTV cameramen shot this year. OPP officers, with weapons drawn, surrounded a pickup truck that came to rest in a construction area at Yonge Street and Highway 401 on Aug. 13.

They punched out the driver's-side glass and pulled the male driver out. The man was a fighter, and kept resisting police -- who may have pepper-sprayed him at one point.

The trouble started in Oxford County west of Kitchener, where a number of collisions were reported. It continued eastward down Highway 401. At Milton, the vehicle lost its right front wheel but kept going into Toronto -- a distance of more than 50 kilometres.

The driver would ultimately be charged with 17 offences, including impaired operation of a motor vehicle.

Miller's election joke

Mayor David Miller had some fun with the news media by showing up at the clerk's office at City Hall on Sept. 10 -- the last day candidates could enter the election. But he joked that he was $20 short of the $200 registration free.

Miller had announced in the fall of 2009 that he wouldn't be running again

Fire sale on electricity

Bruce Power was paid nearly $60 million not to generate electricity in 2009.

Ben Chin, a vice-president of the Ontario Power Authority, said the arrangement is like having a fire station. They aren't needed all the time, but one must still pay to keep it open.

Happy landing

Highway 407 is a toll highway, not a toll landing strip.

But on Oct. 8, pilot Robert Fijalkowski landed his 1974 Piper Warrior on the highway at night, about two kilometres away from Markham's Buttonville airport. He had been flying back from Lindsay, Ont. when the aircraft developed mechanical troubles.

Nobody got hurt.

"If he was able to put it down in the dark on the 407, it's a really great job," said pilot Ralph Gaston.

What goes around, comes around

Do you remember someone phoning into the Newstalk 1010 radio show of John Tory in 2009 and calling him a three-time loser?

That would have been then-Coun. Sandra Bussin (Ward 32, Beaches-East York).

The payback came on Oct. 16, when Tory campaigned for candidate Mary-Margaret McMahon.

On Oct. 25, Ward 32's voters elected McMahon and made Bussin the loser.

Doubling down

KFC introduced a new sandwich this fall -- the Double Down. No bread, but bacon, cheese and sauce between two deep-fried chicken breasts -- and 1,740 milligrams of sodium, or more than a day's worth.

Health Promotion Minister Margarett Best shot from the lip on Oct. 19 and told reporters, "It's not something that we have discussed but it's certainly something we may look at and review."

The Tories used this as an opportunity to snipe at Premier Dalton McGuinty.

"You know that Premier Dad is going to be tempted to do that (ban the sandwich)," said Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak.

About an hour after her initial remarks, Best's office said in a statement that there were no plans to review the availability of any food product.

"Consumers have the right to choose the food they wish to purchase," it said.

Cancer scammer pleads guilty

In one of the more bizarre fraud cases of recent times, a Burlington woman pleaded guilty on Nov. 2 to having faked cancer and duping people into raising money for her bogus charity.

Ashley Kirilow's story began in 2008. It escalated to the point where she had shaved her head and eyebrows and lost weight to more closely resemble a cancer sufferer. She admitted her deception to her father this past summer, who went to the police.

"It was weird to see her. I hadn't seen her in about nine months -- and she's got hair now," Jennifer Prior said following an August bail hearing for her former friend.

Kirilow will be back in court on Jan. 27 for sentencing.

Left-wing pinkos

Ford went on to win the Oct. 25 municipal election by a comfortable margin. He became mayor on Dec. 1, with the official swearing-in on Dec. 7.

Ford's guest of honour was the rock-'em-sock-'em hockey commentator Don Cherry, who spiced things up.

"I'm wearing pink for all the pinkos out there who ride bicycles and everything," Cherry said. He made this prediction about Ford's tenure: "I say he's going to be the greatest mayor this city's ever seen … now put that in your pipe, you left-wing kooks."

Some councillors wore pink the next day in protest. Spacing, an urban affairs magazine, cranked out some "left-wing pinko" buttons. And a bike shop, sensing a publicity opportunity, offered Cherry a pink bike.

Waffles

The Toronto Maple Leafs continued to break hearts and irk fans in 2010.

In one desultory effort against the Atlanta Thrashers on Dec. 20, some waffles hit the ice during play. The Leafs were trailing 5-1 at that time.

Criminal charges of mischief were laid against one man.

"I'm just a normal Leafs fan and love them to death," Joseph Robb of Oakville, Ont., said in a Dec. 22 interview.

"I don't know, maybe this is what needed to be done just to keep the attention on them. Because how many years are they going to go (without success)? I'm only 31 and I've been through a lot."

Consider a guy who was 40 when the Leafs last won the Stanley Cup. What has he been through in the last 43 years?

Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment banned Robb from its three facilities in Toronto. The alleged waffle-tosser has a court date in January.

Clucked one ctvtoronto.ca commenter about the waffle-tossing: "Very dangerous. Everyone knows the Maple Leafs cannot skate well enough to avoid objects that are tossed onto the ice."