Josh Matlow (Ward 22) has invited residents to a skating party to celebrate the completion of the newly finished Hodgson Senior Public School outdoor ice rink. The gathering will take place Sunday, December 14 between noon and 2 p.m. behind the school at 282 Davisville Avenue. Below are some pictures of the year-long work at this venerable outdoor rink during its resurrection. The old rink was built in 1980. Both the old and the new rinks mark Hodgson as one of only a few open-air artificial rinks in the city. It would be a worthy local task to record the history of hockey and pleasure-skating at the Hodgson rink. The school itself was built in 1915. The old rink had suffered many break-downs and engineers were worried that an ammonia leak might poison kids or others. There was a further delay in re-building the rink when the City was unable to get the school board (TDSB) to agree to a lease for public use that would make the cost of the work worthwhile. Finally, a ten year agreement was reached. The South Bayview Bulldog is indebted to Twitter picture poster Matthew Pelligrino, who appears to have had a personal role in the work seen below and called The Big Pour. Beneath it are photos supplied by CIMCO refrigeration, which installed the mean-looking blue refrigeration unit that keeps the ice in diamond-like condition.
In a front-page interview May 8 — at the height of what then appeared to be a tight election campaign — Wynne revealed Harper had “kind of smirked” and said people needed to save for their own retirement instead of banking on a public pension. Her apparent indiscretion about a private conversation in order to promote the Liberals’ campaign pledge of an Ontario pension plan enraged the Conservative prime minister’s office. Harper’s aides accused her last spring of “misrepresenting the meeting” in order “to distract from her mismanagement of the Ontario economy.” Her strategy did not hurt her electorally, as she won a majority government on June 12.
Four local boy scout chapters are again offering Christmas trees for sale this year. The 58th Scouts are at their usual location, the parking lot of the Church of the Transfiguration at 111 Manor Road (at Redpath Ave.) between 6 and 9 p.m. week nights and between 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekends. Beginning tomorrow, Friday, December 5, 2014 the 132nd Scouts are at their usual spot, the parking lot of Leaside Presbyterian Church at Eglinton Ave. E and Hanna Road. The sale begins at 5 p.m. Friday and runs through Saturday December 6 from 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. If trees still available, the boys will there on Sunday December 7 from 11 a..m. to 3 p.m. And the 82nd and 69th Scouts have teamed up to sell their trees this weekend at Trace Manes Park on McRae Drive between the tennis courts and the library. They will be there two weekends between Saturday, December 6 and Sunday, December 14. Hours are: Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.
