The South Bayview Bulldog

Magical Midways with its carnival rides and games of chance is back in Thorncliffe Park outside the East York Town Centre. There are the traditional rides like Go Gator and Tilt-A-Ride. The Snocones and Cotton Candy booth was busy as Saturday, April 23 saw a good crowd. Magical Midways is here until Sunday, May 1, 2016.

The sunny lawn outside the Legislature building is the scene Saturday afternoon of the #COD Rally. That’s a body protesting the government’s apparent pre-occupation with the cost of medical service. They are known as Concerned Ontario Doctors and claim that “unilateral cuts” to the province’s health-care spending has jeopardized doctors’ ability to provide quality care to patients.

Volunteers from businesses, homes and the BIA formed a powerful cleaning team from Davisville  Ave to Soudan Ave  for the annual Spring Sweep. After nearly three hours of collecting cigarette butts and refuse along our favorite high street a few of the heroic cleaners took a pictures with the bags of rubbish. Well done gang and thank you all big time. See you next year.

Group prepares to hit the street at 9.a.m.Saturday, April 23

Thank you to our wonderful Bayview Pixies! You keep Bayview Leaside beautiful! pic.twitter.com/8dpZwaAGTe

— Bayview Leaside BIA (@LeasideBIA) April 23, 2016

Business Insider says Costco members should expect annual membership increase of as much as ten percent next year. Annual fees could go from $55 to $60 for a basic membership and from $110 to $120 for its executive membership in the U.s. the report says. ,“If its comp were to dramatically slow in the meantime or if there were some major macro disruption, it might delay this increase,” analysts wrote. “But, it sounds like that’s not likely.”

The Winnipeg woman accused of concealing the remains of six infants in a U-Haul storage locker spoke daily of wanting to abort her pregnancy in 1997 her trial has heard. A friend, Danielle Devereaux, who met Andrea Giesbrecht in 1996 and worked with her until 2000 at Pioneer Grain testified that Giesbrecht was worried when she was pregnant in 1997. “She said she didn’t want to have the baby and talked about plans on how to abort the baby,” Devereaux testified.

Remains of one of the Humvees that escaped parachute rigging

Three expensive Humvee vehicles fell to absolute destruction during a training air-drop by a U.S. Army airborne unit in Germany this week. More than a million viewers on social media have seen the sequence after a video surfaced showing (in total) three Humvees breaking free of rigging and plummeting to the ground. The video is seen below in edited form which deletes profanity of the oddly delighted men watching. They are not identified,  Many original versions may be seen on YouTube.

A favorite Mac’s store and Subway sandwich bar at Eglinton West and Avenue Rd. are gone, demolished in what seems like wink. Much faster than the removal of the McDonald’s at Bayview. All such work is being done by Priestly Demolition Inc. Locals know well that the Oriole station will be here on the northwest corner with a secondary entrance 80 metres to east on the north side of Eglinton where two storefronts are already history. Metrolinx tells Wikipedia that this station will serve Chaplin Estates, Marshall McLuhan Catholic Secondary School, the Eglinton Park and the Eglinton theatre, but of course there are no movies there any more. It is now the Eglinton Grand event vanue.

Toronto Blue Jays first baseman Chris Colabello has been suspended for 80 games without pay after testing positive for a performance-enhancing substance. Major League Baseball made the announcement via Twitter.

Chris Colabello has received an 80-game suspension after testing positive for dehydrochlormethyltestosterone (PED) pic.twitter.com/sxF7CKUL3x

— TSN (@TSN_Sports) April 22, 2016

https://twitter.com/RobinsonMegan/status/723609494698135552

A few pieces of streetcar rubbish delivered, the rest of them years late and no expectation of when we might see them. Yeah, that qualifies as the worst business outrage perpetrated on taxpayers since the computer scandal. CBC

The debt-ridden Ontario Government is pushing forward with urgent plans to control the cost of OHIP. Friday morning the health minister, Dr. Hoskins, released eye-popping figures which show that 500 doctors on the province bill more than a $ million in fees each and that one, a ophthalmologist, took home $6.6 million. The names of all doctors are being kept confidential .The 500 doctors represent just two per cent of all practitioners but cost $677 million a year, or nearly 10 per cent of Ontario’s Fee-For-Service budget. And many of them charge much more than $1 million, the government’ reports.

DUELLING NEWS RELEASES

The information appears to be part of a war of media releases between the Ontario Medical Association and Queen’s Park. The OMA says the province’s efforts to limit certain types of doctors’ fees is hurting patient care. It’s not family doctors and their practices that Health Minister Eric Hoskins wants to see reduced, but the most costly specialists. Many patients will know that over the past few years specialists in particular have had to change the frequency with they perform certain procedures, especially preventive. Among these is cataract removal, which has become less expensive to perform because of technology. “Of the top five billers in the province, two are ophthalmologists, two are radiologists and one is an anesthesiologist,” a government fact-sheet states. “The top biller, an ophthalmologist, billed more than $6.6 million last year. The top diagnostic radiologist billed more than $5.1 million and the top anesthesiologist billed more than $3.8 million. The  average doctor’s gross payment is $368,000 a year.

Justin Trudeau went boxing in New York City yesterday and the Twitter responses range from “be still my foolish heart” to “how embarrassing.”  The prime minister was at a Brooklyn gym for a stripped-down snapshot session of change-room odour. Later, Mr Trudeau held a question-and-answer session at New York University where some queries packed a punch (good one). But the punch wasn’t a knockout wallop. One student asked how Trudeau could justify backing new oil pipelines after campaigning on climate change. He said that he was very clear before the election that he backed the Keystone XL project and didn’t actually campaign against the fossil-fuel industry. He called halting fossil fuel development simplistic. Better than boxing maybe. Mr. Trudeau is at the United Nations today signing a climate treaty.

CBC