Residents of Ferryland on Highway 10 along Newfoundland’s Avalon Peninsula have spent the weekend taking pictures panoramic and selfie-style with the focus on a large iceberg which is stuck off the shore. CBC
Jason Maslakow is known across Canada as Dart Man, a supreme fan of the Toronto Maple Leafs. Seventy-two hours ago he wasn’t. How come? His remarkable ascendancy to national awareness is a story of Maslakow’s love of the team plus an astonishing cocktail of fan fever, modern media and corporate savvy. It started Saturday night in Washington when the Kitchener man was in the stands for Game Two with his face and beard made up in the blue and white. By Monday, the Leaf organization had arranged to hoist a banner of Dart Man into the rafters of Air Canada Centre. He was (and is) lionized on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and seen as an essential off ice player in any Leaf playoff victory. Maslakow is a suitably unassuming man, married, with a not-bad sense of humour. Asked on CP24 what he would do about the movie Dart Man, he said he thought he looked a lot like Brad Pitt. Dart, by the way, is slang for cigarette.
The fugitive accused in the shooting and killing a man in a Facebook video over the weekend is dead by his own hand, according to Pennsylvania State Police. The killer, Steve Stephens, shot himself after a short car chase which occurred when a citizen reported seeing his vehicle in a McDonald’s parking lot.
This weekend is the Clean Toronto Together event. As many as 200,000 citizens will officially participate in street, neighbourhood and public space cleaning with the assistance of the City. One such cleanup is the Third Annual Sweep the Street held by the Bayview Leaside BIA. Saturday and Sunday the Toronto-Leaside Rotary will run an electronics recycling drop off station at the East York Town Centre (poster above). Also keep in mind that the Don Valley Parkway is closed this weekend from 11 p.m. Friday to 5 a.m. Monday for cleaning.
The Crosstown’s Communications & Community Relations Team is hosting a tele town hall on Tuesday, April 18, 2017 from 7pm-8pm. Residents from Yonge to Don Mills are invited to join in a live and interactive Crosstown conversation. If you live in this area, Crosstown will be calling you, and if you’d like to participate or listen in, all you have to do is stay on the line when they call. Here’s the message area residents received earlier week:
Tele town halls are live and interactive phone meetings – very similar to a radio call-in show. The Crosstown’s tele town halls will provide residents along the Eglinton corridor an opportunity to ask our project team whatever’s on your mind. If you are interested in participating, but don’t have a landline, you can still join. You can connect to the call from your cellular phone by dialing 1-877-229-8493, ID Code: 112697 at 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday, April 18. Alternatively, you can tune into The Crosstown Facebook page, where they will have a link to a web audio stream.
Thursday April 20th, 2017 at Leaside Memorial Gardens, 6:30pm-8:30pm. Learn about the future Laird Station, one of 15 underground stations on the new Eglinton line now under construction. Join Metrolinx and its constructor, Crosslinx Transit Solutions (CTS), at an open house to find out what construction is happening in your neighbourhood, why it needs to happen, how it may impact you, who to contact if you have questions/concerns, when construction is happening.
Saskatchewan rancher Adrienne Ivey might have heard of a beaver, but until now, had never seen a beaver herd. Cattle, that is. On Friday, Ivey and her husband were surprised to see 150 of their heifers crowded together in one of their pastures. Curious about the strange behaviour, they investigated further, to find the herd of cattle following a beaver that had wandered along. “He was out and about, I think looking for a new place to build a beaver lodge, and they were following him,” Ivey said. “There was about a three-foot space around him. They didn’t want to get closer than that.” According to Ivey, heifers, young cows that haven’t had a calf before, are more inquisitive than the average bovine, which may have led to the cows following the beaver. “They’re a curious bunch,” she said. “They’re kind of like teenagers. And I think they were following this thing around because they couldn’t figure out what the heck it was.” Ivey thought the odd event was even more notable considering the beaver is Canada’s national symbol. “We just thought this was so funny and so Canadian,” she said. “A Canadian beaver leading around a bunch of Canadian cattle just makes it even more funny.” Ivey said they have a number of sloughs and wetlands on the ranch, and often see beavers walking around. The couple farms near Ituna, 135 km northeast of Regina. CBC Facebook
A young man has been charged with stunt driving at 183 km/hr early Tuesday in a 100 km/hr zone on Highway 401. The driver, 22, was stopped by an officer on the highway near Victoria Park at 6 a.m. The man’s licence has been suspended for seven days, and his vehicle, a Audi RS7, has been impounded for seven days.
See later post — Do John Tory, Bill Morneau and Charles Sousa have any idea what to do about Toronto’s out-of-control house prices? Tuesday is the day that the mayor and the two ministers will meet to try to figure it out. They do so on a day when Royal LePage Realty has announced that the aggregate price of a home in the Greater Toronto Area rose by an “unprecedented” 20 per cent across all housing types to $759,241 in the first three months of 2017. The big realtor also suggests that the effect of the tax on foreign buyers in Vancouver is wearing off. Homes there continued to increase in value in the past month by close to 50 per cent on a month-over-month basis.
It appears that City Council will again discuss the bylaws which require grocery stores and other businesses to close on a statutory holiday. The CBC says that City staff has recommended yet again that the patchwork quilt of practices be regularized by permitting all stores to open. In the past, Council has not had the courage to do this. At present, large shopping centres such at the Eaton Centre are permitted to open under the guise that they are tourist areas. Many say this is a legal ruse and a simple sop to huge property owners like Cadillac Fairview. Nonetheless, it has been practiced for decades. At the same time, smaller businesses are left to wonder if they will be charged if they open. In the past few years, however, it has become fairly apparent that, without saying so, the City is not prepared to see businesses charged for opening on statutory holidays. Some legal opinion holds that this is because such a charge might lead to a constitutional challenge. The mishmash of bylaws might be found to be unfair — which they are — resulting in wholesale of invalidation of bylaws.
Tyler Bozak ends it in OVERTIME! Toronto is LIT right now! #StanleyCup pic.twitter.com/AESP9aBXnW
— NBC Sports Hockey (@NBCSportsHockey) April 18, 2017
The Toronto Maple Leafs defeated the Washington Capitals 4-3 in overtime of Game 3 to take a 2-1 series lead. Tyler Bozak scored 1:37 into overtime for the win.
GO CRAZY TORONTO! pic.twitter.com/gV2go8NT2x
— NBC Sports Hockey (@NBCSportsHockey) April 18, 2017
Toronto!!!!!!!!!! #GoLeafsGo
— Josh Matlow (@JoshMatlow) April 18, 2017
Back to back OT wins! @MapleLeafs take control of series. 🚨 #GoLeafsGo #tmltalk
— John Tory (@JohnTory) April 18, 2017
Avery Haines of City News is saying that the Matharoo sisters. Jyoti and Kiran, are back in Toronto and that they somehow departed Nigeria without their passports. This may be, but the last word previously heard in December on the status of the two graduates of Don Bosco High School was from Brad Hunter in the Toronto Sun. He said they had signed “criminal undertakings” confessing to blackmailing and cyberbullying more than 200 men. One of the victims was the influential billionaire Femi Otedola. Hunter said the women had agreed to leave Nigeria and never return. Their departure seems quite sensitive with some Nigerian journalists. But there’s no evidence that the men who were humiliated by dalliances, if any, with Jyoti and Kiran are demanding a public airing of the matter in court. According to Haines, the Canadian government is doing a high-minded privacy routine around just what, if anything, it did to expedite passages of the femmes Matharoo. City News shows a social media account of the Dreamy Beauty Bar, 717 Queen Street East where it says they have been visiting. Their apology
