The vigil for Ramy Suleman took place over dinner hour on the wide lawn outside 71 Thorncliffe Park Drive. The crowded lawn of sombre mourners included Mayor Tory, Councillor Burnside and MP John Carmichael. Around them and in quiet discussion with them and their friends were the many dozens of Thorncliffe residents who knew the story of Ramy’s death all too well. The 4-year-old was not the first lad to somehow  fall  from one of the high-rise apartments along the wide vistas of the street. The accident has once again ignited the pursuit of greater and reliable safety in these buildings. A check is being done unit by unit to make sure window locks are in place. But sometimes they are removed to permit more air into stuffy units. The warm summer evening was a contrast of sad faces and whispered conversation combined with the yelps children.

These entertaining miniature vehicles are new at Dolly Jewellers, 1699 Bayview Ave. They are not sold as toys although their appeal to children will be obvious. That is quite a custom job on the front-end of the VW Bug.

 Nurse simply unbelievable as Canada wins basketball gold   Medals board 

Sources who claim to know have told U.S. Automotive News that GM plans to add a new Chevy crossover above the compact Equinox and below the full-size Traverse. The plan requires the popular Equinox to get a little smaller in 2017.  The move is said by automotive wonks to follow the trend of mainstream brands of finding inventive ways to fit more flavors of crossovers into their showrooms. The coming Chevy model will be inserted in the middle of the lineup, as a grande plus. And it will require GM to make some adjustments. Step one will be to downsize the Equinox. It will shrink a bit when the next generation appears, shifting to the same global compact platform that will underpin the redesigned Chevy Cruze and Opel Astra cars, due out early next year.  That creates more room for the new three-row crossover to slide in between the Equinox and the Traverse, which also is scheduled for a redesign, in mid-2017. The new vehicle will be a short-wheelbase version of the Traverse, the sources say.

The thorny question question of whether Canadians living permanently abroad have the right to vote has been settled at least for the time being. The Ontario Court of Appeal, the highest in the province, has decided that an absence of five years from the country disqualifies Canadian citizens from voting. In fact, the court requires Canadians to be permanent residents to vote. The long-standing issue originates in Canada’s aggressive immigration policy and the decision of some new Canadians to immediately leave the Canada with no plan to return.  The issue has arisen more than once in recent years when Lebanese-Canadians, some 40,000 of whom live in the middle east, demanded the government fly them home when unrest occurred. This demand caused resentment. The court’s decision was a 2-1 split but the majority found that it was unfair to those who live in Canada to permit those who don’t to make decisions about Canadian laws. Canada’s “social contract” entails citizens submitting to laws because they had a voice in making them through voting, the ruling states. “Permitting all non-resident citizens to vote would allow them to participate in making laws that affect Canadian residents on a daily basis but have little to no practical consequence for their own daily lives,” Justice George Strathy wrote for the majority court. “This would erode the social contract and undermine the legitimacy of the laws.” The case was brought by two Canadian citizens living in the United States — Montreal-born Jamie Duong and Toronto-born Gillian Frank. They argued they had only left for educational and employment opportunities and still had strong attachments to Canada and a stake in its future. Their status and background sets up the contrast between career-driven expats and those who leave Canada to “go home” in effect. Theirs it seems is an attachment to a different culture.  A few Canadians leave the country to live in tax havens  Colin Perkel, Canadian Press