Month: February 2017

Leef Luxury online resale will sell your designer goods

by  • 

Roula Panagiotopoulos

Prominent local businesswoman Roula Panagiotopoulos has created Leef Luxury, an online luxury goods resale business. The Danforth-area entrepreneur has applied 20 years of fashion and packaged goods knowledge to the new venture. She is former vice president of Cake Beauty Inc, before that an executive at Vital Science and was nominated for the RBC Canadian Women Entrepreneur Award in 2016. The Leef Luxury site is already showing a lot of inventory but Roula is looking for salable goods all the time. A life in business has taught her the need to provide both consignors and consumers with personal service. “People want to interact with us and that is why we connect with people on Facebook and Instagram,” she confides. “Outside of other proprietary strategies we connect with people where they are. We are always looking for items and if you have any luxury designer items, we love to sell them for you,” she says. Facebook  Instagram

Car wash “calamity” as unlicensed valet hits gas not brake

by  • 

Luckily no one hurt
Ouch
Airbags out

A student driver at a car wash in Brampton accidentally hit the gas instead of the brakes as he took a Ford Expedition out of the wash for a final shine. The car bounded out of the property, through a fence and across a road. The SUV is said to be totaled. Nadia Gangoo said it happened on Friday morning — her birthday — when she and her husband Ian had taken her vehicle to Super Suds Car Wash on Hurontario Street for a VIP Super Clean wash. The irony is obvious. But, Super Suds is saying that its insurance will cover the cost of the damaged car.

Van Dette cites Davidson, Blair, Redway for EY honour

by  • 

Willis Blair
Alan Redway
Justin Van Dette
True Davidson

Justin Van Dette has put forward some suggested names for membership in the East York Hall of Fame. Mr Van Dette was a prime mover with other East York friends and residents for such a place of commemoration.  The well-known defender the of former township and borough says people like True Davidson, Willis Blair, Alan Redway, David Johnson and Michael Prue should be inducted. Van Dette will hold a news conference in March, he said, joined by Mayor Tory to announce further plans for the East York Hall of Fame –– with Toronto Observer 

Wild and crazy Bayview and Eglinton at new heights

by  • 


Work has begun in earnest on the main station for the Leaside stop of the Crosstown LRT at Eglinton Ave. and Bayview Ave. The video on the left is the action at a trench digging across Eglinton near Mann Ave which reduced traffic on Tuesday to one lane on the north side of the street. On the right, the chaotic scene down at Bayview and Eg where pedestrians were asking sewer workers if it was safe to cross the street. “Sure lady, go ahead”. Wild and crazy, you bet. There is more to come here because this stop will require excavation out into Eglinton and a covering of planks for a while.

Red-tailed hawks over Don identified by Carol Sellers

by  • 

Reader Carol Sellers has identified the majestic birds flying over the Don Valley at the Leaside Bridge. They are, she tell us, Red-tailed hawks which nest near the bridge.

Tim Hortons parent buys chicken and biscuit chain Popeyes

by  • 

62 Overlea Blvd East York
Beyonce a fan of Popeyes
Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen

The parent of Tim Hortons and Burger King has bought the chicken and biscuits chain known as Popeyes. There is a heavily-frequented Popeyes on Overlea Blvd at Thorncliffe Park Drive, plus other local locations at Yonge & Eglinton, Yonge & St. Clair and another on the Danforth west of Pape. Restaurant Brands is said to have paid $1.8-billion in cash for Popeyes, a “cajun-style” cookery. The Globe and Mail says the purchase is “a bet” by Restaurant Brands that it can use its international reach to introduce Popeyes fried chicken and buttermilk biscuits to more diners globally. Popeyes was founded 45 years ago as a Southern-fried “Chicken on the Run” restaurant in a New Orleans. It now has 2,000 restaurants in the US and Canada, of which 1,600 are in the United States. It is said that Beyonce is a super fan of Popeyes.

Urban Toronto assays the driverless City of the future

by  • 

Writer Stefan Novakovic of the online planning publication Urban Toronto tells of his efforts to see the future of city dwellers in the age of the driverless car. He got some pretty cynical responses but still concludes the answer may lie between a serene and happy commute and even worse traffic jams and endless sprawl. He does not venture into the more gloomy concern that automated cars run by the government will tell us when and where to go. Brr. The video below from a global body named IBI Group is included. It is a pleasant mix of education and advocacy from a high-minded association of professionals with several hopeful references to that as yet unreached land where things are “sustainable”. A footnote: IBI subscribes to the Modern Slavery Act which condemns everything from chained confinement to “exploitation of any kind.”  A high standard.

“Terrible planning” as Coxwell LCBO gobbles up sidewalk

by  • 

LCBO under construction last year
Wide sidewalks of South Bayview
Dylan Reid notes “terrible planning”

Dylan Reid @dylan_reid of Spacing Magazine has posted a photo of the lamentable encroachment of an LCBO built last summer out onto the sidewalk on the east side of Coxwell Ave. south of O’Connor Drive. The way the building steals space for people just makes you wonder what on earth they were thinking at City Hall. It recalls the bitter battle to save the wide sidewalks of South Bayview Ave. at a time (1960s) that “planners” wanted them reduced to about three feet. Legend has it the broad walkways on our favorite high street survived because at that time Leaside was still a separate municipality.

21 ignored or didn’t hear warning on “Flight from Hell”

by  • 

Perils of not wearing seat belt

The flight that many passengers said was pure hell last December also had many aboard who did not fasten their seatbelts when warned to do so at least twice by the captain. The Transportation Safety Board released a video and other material Monday in which it warned air travelers of the importance of wearing seat belts as directed by cabinet crew. The December 2015 flight from Shanghai to Toronto put down at Calgary after 21 people were injured, one seriously. “Most of the passengers who were physically injured were aware that they were required to wear their seatbelts, but chose not to,” the TSB said. “The injuries resulted from passengers coming into contact with aircraft furnishings, the ceiling, and the floor of the interior.”