City of Toronto has withdrawn some 880,000 parking tickets in order to meet the requirement that trials be held within a reasonable time. This happened in court on Friday but was announced today (Sunday, September 6, 2015). The court backlog of tickets has led to these stale-dated tickets being suspended in the legal process until they had little or no chance of obtaining a conviction under the charter.

TOO MANY REQUESTS FOR TRIAL

The charter ensures the right to a trial within a reasonable amount of time, historically 12 to 16 months for parking tickets. Withdrawing the tickets ensures compliance with the charter and avoids pursuing tickets that have exceeded the time frame and have no reasonable prospect of conviction.  The City says it prioritizes the scheduling of trials in its courtrooms to accommodate more serious charges first although it a would appear that parking ticketS surely fall to the bottom of any such list rather quickly. The high volume of parking ticket trial requests made between 2012 and 2014 greatly exceeded courtroom capacity and availability of justices of the peace to hear the cases.

LIKE AN HOUR OR TWO IN JAIL

It is also evidence that those who say one should never plead guilty to a parking ticket but rather always request a trial are right. That would no doubt be a more popular option if it were not for the required process of standing in line in certain unfortunate City-owned rooms to register such a request. Some people have called this experience a lot like being in jail for an hour or so.

 

Sunday September 6, 2015 will see the first game of the Bennington Rolph Road Soccer Association season. Teams will gather at Rolph Road School (Hanna Rd side) about 6 p.m.

It’s a frequent issue at this corner, Rchmond West at Duncan. Winter, summer — the water mains break.

A three-alarm fire has destroyed an auto repair shop on Kelfield St. Saturday night. This remarkable picture was taken by freelance journalist Monika Moravan who tweeted that she had to leave the scene because of heavy smoke. The blaze is at A1 Auto Repair near Dixon Rd. and Highway 27. There are apparently no injuries. Toronto Airport has been radioing aircraft about the smoke in their flight paths. Monika on Twitter 

According to HollywoodLife.com Kate MIddleton, 33, “can’t wait” to have a third child before she is 35, so she can have “even more” babies before she 40. As inside information goes, this purported peek into the royal psyche is a doozy. Of course, it may just be more “rubbish” as the rival gang called Gossip Cop like to say. “Kate has only just had her second baby, but she’s already thinking about number three! She definitely wants a third baby by the time she’s 35. That way she can have even more before she’s 40,” a royal insider tells HollywoodLife.com. “Kate grew up with two siblings, so she likes the idea of having another soon. But to be honest, she doesn’t want to stop there and has talked about having four children before she’s all done” We’ll keep that in mind.

CBC

Twenty-four cadets have been treated for concussions, and other injuries including a broken nose, dislocated shoulder and a hairline fracture to the cheekbone after the annual “pillow fight” between upper classmen and freshmen (known as plebes) at West Point Military College in New York State last week. The pillow fight is not dissimilar to events at many universities in which the new arrivals are confronted in some form by the second year class.  It is said that in 2012 the confrontation carried on after the pillow fight and that 60 people were injured.

Work is under way on six town homes to be built on the site of the former Glebe Presbyterian Church on Belsize Drive. The property sits officially on Belsize but the church’s door was at the corner of De Savery Crescent and Thurloe Ave. The design for the homes seemed attractive but it is said to have run into trouble because of the common underground garage with 13 parking spaces. The matter was referred to the Ontario Municipal Board and the City lost. Today the property is fully-fenced and work has begin on grading. The old church sign remains in place and overgrown behind green screening.

Margaret was helping out at the Rotary Club of Leaside table on South Bayview today (Saturday, September 5, 2015). She was selling tickets to the Charitable Foundation Raffle which is on again as the Rotary Corn Roast approaches. It is at Trace Manes Park as usual on Sunday, September 20, 2015. The draw is at 5 p.m. There are six great prizes: $500 gift certificate at McDowell’s valu mart, $200 gift certificate at McDowell’s valu mart, two purple tickets worth $160 to a Leafs game, $75 gift certificate at Against the Grain Restaurant, $50 certificate from Longo’s on  Laird and another $50 gift certificate from Longo’s on Laird. The tickets are $5 or three for $12.

Weather Channel.

Fairly self-contained report from CNN tells of a concept from Goodyear in which tires would somehow create energy to help re-charge electric car batteries.