South Bayview Bulldog Admin

How to get results for your candidate

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Polls for Ontario’s 40th General Election are open today between 9 am and 9 pm. As soon as polls close, you will be able to check the status of things in your own riding by going to the official government election site, www.elections.on.ca., where it will be possible to isolate and follow results for the candidates you wish to know about. For the rest, you won’t be able to escape the election coverage on radio and television. Now get out there and vote. Please!.

Toronto’s gotcha parking ticket strategy

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We’ve written before about the “gotcha” nature of traffic ticketing in this City. Tickets are not issued to police parking but to raise taxes. So long-standing and entrenched is the gotcha state of mind at City Hall that many people there may not even realize what they are doing. The City has been in a desperate state for money for years. Bureaucrats and their subordinates condone any pretext for issuing a ticket no matter how much of an abuse it represents to the spirit of the law. Take the case of this car parked on Roxborough Avenue West whose driver accidentally put one wheel up on the edge of the sidewalk while parking. The offence, as any good traffic enforcement officer knows, is “parking on the boulevard”. $55 please. Stunning. Motorists may rightly resent this type of gotcha money grab.

Now here is the glass-is-half-full news

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From the glass is half full department, it may be true that Mayor Ford has been talking on his cellphone while driving again. Silly man. But, the good news is that his worship was still in Toronto while he did it. This can be contrasted with the previous chief magistrate of our town who frequently used his cellphone in Paris, London, Rome, Tokyo, Sydney and other interesting places. When he was in Toronto he was packing to leave. Secondly, those who worry that the sliding fortunes of Research in Motion might lead to the disappearance of their beloved Blackberry, fear not. There is talk of a takeover today and what this means is that the massive user-base of the hand computer will always be a force for survival of the Blackberry. Remember the Apple computer. Finally, we judge it to be good news that “unions” have joined the demonstrations in New York aimed at (take your choice). The thing about unions is that they’re made up of usually honest, hard-working bread-winners who, unlike the rest of the demonstrators, are rather cool to the idea of a dictatorship of the proletariat. And that’s good.

Toronto finishes up for a change

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Check it out. TSX page here.

Lai Toh Heen restaurant closes

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A well known restaurant at Mount Pleasant Rd. and Soudan Ave. has closed. Lai Toh Heen was distinguished by its refined style. Dim Sum and other multiple course meals seemed popular. Also within the past two weeks, the Sweets Gallery on the corner of Soudan has also closed.

Low-key “shoes” ad gets Bulldog prize

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The South Bayview Bulldog gives the nod to the NDP “shoes” advertisement for the most imaginative bit of electioneering in this campaign. It might not make you vote for Andrea Horwath but as a way of telling you she is different from the others, it’s quite effective. The ad appears to have run mostly on the Internet where you can find it by searching “”andrea shoes”.

Election polls head off in all directions

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If pollsters Angus Reid, Abacus and Ipsos were physicians, you’d have a hard time figuring out what was wrong with you. The three political forecasters have got very different projections this morning about the outcome of the Ontario general election tomorrow. Angus Reid for the Toronto Star has the Progressive Conservatives ahead of the Liberals by three points, 36 per cent to 33 per cent. The NDP has 26 per cent. But wait, an Abacus survey for the Sun has the Liberals ahead by a three-point margin, with the NDP at 24 per cent. Both these numbers suggest a minority government. Finally, the Ipsos poll released last night night shows the Liberals heading for a majority, with a 10 point lead at 41 per cent. The Tories are at 31 per cent and NDP at 25 per cent. Altogether a oddly mixed set of results.

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Very entertaining and informative post by Jenna Hatfield at BlogHer on Apple’s incredible manipulation of the market with — would you believe it — an iPhone 4S, — not an iPhone 5. They say the iPhone pundits are quite cranky about this. Don’t blame them. The iPhone 4S seems to have less to do with the natural evolution of the phone and more to do with artificially moving old product. BlogHer.

City has sympathy for Pottery Rd. users

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The City says it’s really sorry but Pottery Road has to remain closed until engineers figure out how to stabilize the wall of the ravine near the top of the road at Broadview Ave. The stability isn’t perilous but it has to be addressed before the road can re-open. The City’s manager of technical services says: “The slope is not in imminent danger of failing; rather, the City wants to ensure that there is a sufficient factor of safety from a future potential slope failure at the location of the retaining wall,” he said. “The City is sympathetic to the public for the inconvenience.” This began when for whatever reason engineers were not able to accurately gauge the nature of the ravine wall (right) before they began to cut it away to build a nice bike path on the other side of the road (left). A retaining wall was built but it wasn’t high enough, apparently. A sad experience for citizens and for engineering credibility, it would seem.

iPhone event scheduled for 1 p.m. Toronto time

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The “Let’s talk iPhone” event at Apple’s California campus (headquarters) is due to start at 10:00 PDT (1 EDT).

We’d stay up all night to eat these bagels

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Now that the Bagel House at 1548 Bayview is open 24 hours a day we have to think of a reason to work in some midnight dining there. As legions of Montreal Bagel fans know, the two genial baker-owners, Jessie Sahdra and Sat Chouhan, have built a fantastic business on quality and superb chewy, flavourful bagels. They began in 1999 when they migrated from traditional Montreal bagel bakeries Fairmount and St. Viateur where they learned their craft. We don’t know whether its ‘the simple ingredients, the hand rolling, boiling in honey water or the wood-oven baking. Together however, the Montreal Bagel is a South Bayview treasure. Correction Make that a national treasure.

Game On as CityNews challenges CP24

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CityNews CHANNEL has launched and it’s “Game On” between Rogers and CTV’s CP24 for your eyeballs, mostly in the morning (where the money is). Of course CityNews is on Rogers Cable here in South Bayview and that means the cable operator is giving its new service the royal treatment as it debuts