South Bayview Bulldog Admin

Attack makes you want to vote for Tory #TOpoli

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This attack ad on John Tory is the work of Olivia Chow supporters, they say. Jamey Heath, Chow’s communications director admits however “I’m not going to pretend it’s totally removed [from our campaign]. It’s not.” The ad excoriates the former talkshow host and life-long Progressive Conservative for saying young women should learn to play golf as a means of socializing, for being on the Rogers board, for having supported Rob Ford in a past time and for being vague. Okay. If women (or men) want to call Tory sexist for giving women and girls advice on how to play the game, go for it. But it’s silly. And trivial. As for the rest, it depends on where you want your candidate to be on the political spectrum. Thousands of people supported Rob Ford before he was exposed as a public drunk, crack smoker and friend of trashy people. It’s fair to say “Who knew?” The Toronto Star didn’t run stories before the last election. Vagueness? Olivia Chow didn’t make any announcements about privatization of garbage collection until Tory smoked her out. The fact is, both these candidates have their work cut out for them. The never-say-die Ford brothers are loving the afterglow of the OPP’s unintended “endorsement”.  Ford is pumped. If he can keep his alcoholic consumption confined to the home he might have a shot at re-election. Amazing but true. 

Matlow ticks off council over food truck freedom

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City Council stopped short of making customers report to their local councillor within 15 days as to just what they had for lunch. Seriously, there were 20 separate motions over two days  including an attempt to keep the trucks a measurable distance from the curb. What did pass? So far as one can sift through the materials we see a requirement for a limit of two trucks per block and a buffer zone of no less than 50 metres between a truck and a restaurant. Business Improvement Areas will have a lot of say in where trucks may sit. Josh Matlow (Ward 22) says in his newsletter that many concerns were not based on evidence. “While there certainly will be more mobile vendors on the streets in new locations this summer, I believe Council could have gone even further to free the food trucks,” Matlow said. He is more likely to hear about the trucks from his constituents than Karen Stintz, John Parker or Jaye Robinson, for example. The decisive vote was 34 to 3 to adopt the expanded rules. Eight members were absent for the 6.10 p.m. division Thursday night. Only Denzil Minnan-Wong, David Shiner, Adam Vaughan voted “No” and it isn’t clear what these gentlemen of varying political sympathies were concerned about.  The subject will be reviewed next year Council decided. 

South Bayview Ave, needs some clean up TLC

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One stereotype of  small business owner is someone who sweeps the sidewalk in front of his shop. It’s a good one and at Spring cleaning time, we should remember it. Public spirited people on Bayview Ave. can register a Community Clean Up event by April 23, 2014. It helps the city to arrange pickup of bagged rubbish. Clean up events will be held during Earth Week, from April 22 to 27. The Corporate and School Cleanup Day will be held on Friday, April 25. Students and office workers are encouraged to clean the area around their schools or workplaces. On Saturday, April 26 and Sunday, April 27, everyone can join the Community Cleanup Days. This is an opportunity for groups, associations and organizations to clean up a street, park or other public space in their local neighbourhood. The deadline for organizations and groups to register for their event is April 23. Register

Canada sees job growth of 43,000 in March

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Canada’s economy added 43,000 jobs in March as young people found work, Statistics Canada said today. The country’s unemployment rate dropped by 0.1 percentage points to 6.9 per cent. Growth was best in British Columbia, New Brunswick and Quebec. Job levels were fairly flat elsewhere. CBC

Parker guest will be Chief Planner Keesmaat

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John Parker (Ward 26) has scheduled a meeting for next Wednesday, April 9, 2014, where the City’s Chief Planner Jennifer Keesmaat will speak and answer questions. The councillor waxes philosophical as he observes that the growth of Toronto “is challenging the assumptions many of us have grown up with as to the kind of city we are and should strive to become.”  Right you are sir. Anyway, this will take place between 7 and 9 p.m. at Leaside Gardens.  

Cookware, kitchen store at Yonge and Manor

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Cookware and kitchen store Peppermills will take the large space most recently occupied by Timothy’s Coffees of the World at Yonge Street and Manor Road.  

4000-volt giants carry hydro flow west of Bayiew

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Belsize and Boyton

Residents between Bayview Ave and Mt. Pleasant Rd. are witnessing the installation of soaring new hydro standards as the utility prepares to remove the 50-year-old concrete poles. Those cracked and teetering cement standards have carried the neighborhood’s 4,000-volt lifeline for a long time. The solid looking fir poles should be good for quite a few decades as well. Workers were doing their work carefully Thursday as they attached the lethal flow of hydro to the timber at the corner of Belsize Drive and Boyton Rd.  Homeowners will be glad for the renewed service. It will come with a number of new transformers. They should make service a little more reliable. For many, the work will remind them of the early hours of December 22, 2013 when rain and ice began to quietly turn the city dark. Utility poles and tree branches collapsed under the enormous weight of the thick ice accumulation. At the height of the storm there were over 300,000 Toronto Hydro customers that were left without power or heat. Many of them were right there in South Bayview where the tree are. The City of Toronto simultaneously opened and operated 13 community reception centres and 13 Toronto police facility community warming centres, providing temporary sleeping accommodations,food, water, hygiene kits and other resources. The warming centres were running around the clock, offering those who lost their power a warm place to sleep and eat until their power was restored. By Christmas Eve, four days after the storm, there were still 69,800 customers without power across the city.

Vescada Salon re-branding as P&P Hair Company

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Vescada Salon. 1661 Bayview Ave., will be changing its name and moving across the street next month. The well-known salon will re-brand under the initials of the owners names, Perri and Palmacci. Thus, when the new location opens right across the street in May it will be called P&P Hair Company. The phone number will remain the same at (416) 484-4111.  P&P will continue to sell the popular Aveda products.  So what’s the new location? That’s big news for Original’s Bar as well because the owners there have decided to reduce their double frontage and lease the other half to P&P. Original’s will occupy the north half of the address, P&P the south. Original’s also has a re-decoration of the premises ready to go.   

Detectives not sure when all files were erased

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OPP Det. Const. Andre Duval was before the justice committee Thursday morning as PC members hunted for anything that will tie Premier Wynne to the scandalous ad hoc erasure of computer files related to the gas plant cancellation. But Duval had to testify that he didn’t know when most of the computers were wiped. Experts have been able to nail down a date on four of the laptops but it remains unclear when the other 20 were wiped..The dates are important because the Opposition says the date range in a requested search warrant goes past Kathleen Wynne’s swearing in as premier.  Premier Wynne denies any files were accessed after she took over from Dalton McGuinty.

Grocers face long odds to win an LCBO kiosk

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Some of the hard truths are coming home to  grocers and the public as they wait to see what the government has in mind for its wine and liquor kiosks in grocery stores. Cynics will be inclined to say it isn’t much. The scheme is very limited,  maybe as few as ten places across the whole province.  If you are a small player, moreover, you can forget it altogether. The LCBO is specifying that a store allocate a minimum of 2,000 square feet for a kiosk.  Very few independents have that option. The franchisees of the Valu mart organization (which is owned by a Loblaws subsidiary) can pretty much forget about a kiosk. It also seems a long shot for other indy operators, like the neighborhood chain Rabba. In a place like South Bayview, what does Metro do if Loblaws gets the kiosk? Or Longo’s or Whole Foods? You don’t have to be a serious complainer to think that this is seriously unfair. Why this plan? The government is clearly addicted to the direct transfusion of funds from the LCBO. In buoyant Alberta, the sale of liquor and wine has been privatized. As The Bulldog has observed in the past, a fair and easily controlled system could be built using modern vending machines. There is no sign of that in the LCBO plan and this may have something do with the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, which represents the LCBO employees. Metroland

Colorado death attributed to recreational pot

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As medical marijuana becomes more formalized in Canada, the State of Colorado is learning how to deal with legal recreational marijuana. Many medical marijuana shops and clinics in that state have moved to the quite profitable sale of the material for fun. Now a student visitor from the Congo has leaped to his death from an apartment balcony after eating a legal marijuana cookie purchased by a friend. The medical examiner says that the 19-year-old’s death was caused in part by the intoxicating effects of the cookie

Nancy, Norah, Naomi, Natalie, Nicolette, Nina?

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The Toronto Zoo has revealed its latest addition — a baby gorilla who needs a name. But, says the zoo, the name must begin with an “N”. To help you with this important family task we offer this list of girl’s names beginning with “N”. Let’s see — Nola, Noni, Nikita This one means “Victory of the people” — a good revolutionary name.  But maybe not for a gorilla. Anyway, good luck.