The body of Sgt. Andrew Joseph Doiron is safely home and is travelling the Highway of Heroes from Forces Base Trenton to the coroner’s office at 25 Morton Shulman Ave. in the Keele Street and Highway 401 area around 6.15 Monday evening. It is expected that many hundreds of Canadians will wish to watch the hearse pass on its way to Toronto. There was a repatriation ceremony at the airbase with Gov. Gen. David Johnston and Defence Minister Jason the airbase present.

You might want to come to the topic of the City Budget in a few hours, or maybe a couple of days. There is a picnic of chest thumping motions from the councillors. Rob Ford has 30 of them, including a cut to the tax rate of 3.2 percent down to 1.99 percent, eliminating more than $19 million in Pan Am celebratory events, cutting the mayors budget to$2 million. Fun. If you want blow by blow go to #TOpoli on Twitter where many reporters like Don Peat are busy with updates and smart remarks (not Don of course).

Many have watched with interest as the work continued at this Cape Code-style home at the corner of Parkhurst Blvd and Hanna Road. It has been quite a show as the little yellow brick home began to spread in directions. Looks good to us.

The question in the headline is reverberating along South Bayview Ave. as word comes that Shoppers will locate an outlet in the new Whole Foods Market complex at 1860 Bayview. Many swear it means that Shoppers Drug Mart in the old Bayview Playhouse at 1601 Bayview will close. Parking is said to be an issue. The best response from two sources at the two-level South Bayview store is that yes they’ve heard the story and nobody seems sure what will happen. It does not seem too unreasonable in terms of distance for Shoppers to keep two locations. Rexall Pharma has a store at Moore Ave and in the Sunnybrook Plaza. They both seem very busy. But there is much behind-the-scenes business not visible to outside observers. The playhouse building is a special case as leasing goes. It takes a public-spirited retailer like Shoppers, and before them Brunos, to shoulder the size of this space. The complaint heard most often against it is parking. But there is parking. The grocery stores that leased this space got into trouble because groceries are heavy. No one wanted to cart them a block. When Shoppers opened there in the Spring of 2011 (before Loblaws) they were still keen on the two-storey concept for their stores. But they went a step too far in manipulating the clientele by putting the dispensary on the second floor. People resented it. The perfume promenade inside the front door (like Bloomingdale’s in New York) was one thing, but it was quite another to send old people up to the cheap seats for their medicine. Anyway, the story is  out there for Shoppers to deny. Right now, there are people in South Bayview who think that Shoppers will forsake our pleasant high street for a home at Bayview and Broadway,

Northbound lane cleared (12:30pm); reveals costly consequences of following too closely!  Ouch.

Traffic alert: Fender bender blocking NB Bayview north of Millwood.
12:14 PM – 10 Mar 2015

The much hoped-for end to the strike of professors and others at York University has not occurred. One unit of contract faculty has voted to accept the offer of the university and two units representing graduates and teaching assistants have voted to reject it. This outcome has produced total confusion. There is no informed view on just what it means and who, if anyone, will be at work Tuesday. Clearly, many will not be at work and that means students remain up in the air on the outlook for their school year. Other unexpected details, the teachers who voted to accept the offer will have to decide whether they should now cross the picket line of their colleagues tomorrow. It is not a pretty nor particularly rational picture.

“I’ve been waiting to do this since I was five years old,” says Timothy D. Cook

Timothy D. Cook was as excited as a five-year-old when he introduced the new Apple wrist watch, phone. sketch pad and whatever else in San Francisco Monday. He said he had been waiting to place a call from wrist watch since he was that tender age. Of course, now’s he’s 54. Oddly, he seemed to have no awareness of the kind of problems this device will now cause for the world as young motorists (and some not so young) use their fun phones as they try to navigate traffic. And why should he, some may say. Is it his fault that the iPhone contributes to hundreds of thousands of accidents and many deaths every year across Canada? Perhaps not. But you can prepare yourself for the necessary over haul of traffic legislation and difficult enforcement to deal with the  Apple wrist phone. As it stands, it is illegal for a driver to have a cell phone in his hand in Ontario while operating the car. But, hey now, we wear the Apple watch right on our body as a fashion statement. Let see how society deals with that.

BMO Financial Group and the National Basketball Association (NBA) today announced a multiyear partnership that will make BMO the Official Bank of NBA Canada. We guess this can’t be bad but is it good? Would it make you change banks? The agreement is the league’s first partnership with a Canadian bank and will also make BMO an official partner of the Jr. NBA program in Canada.

The RCMP are investigating 150 Senate expense claims made by Pamela Wallin, including those for 24 trips related to her work on corporate boards, according to documents filed in court. Among the documents detailing the RCMP’s probe into the suspended senator’s expenses is a letter from her lawyer explaining why she provided two different calendars to investigators. CBC

You may have one. It is said 40 percent of coffee drinkers own one or more. Help!

Is the TTC out of control? Is it doing what City Council tells it to do? This complaint is not unknown and this time Josh Matlow (Ward 22) insists that the transit authority seems to be ignoring Council’s direction on how to lay-off liability for possible overruns on the Scarborough subway. TTC Chair Josh Colle has an elaborate denial. It is a tangled tale which Tess Kalinowski of the Toronto Star  seems well able to tell. But it is tangled.