The South Bayview Bulldog

A nine-member team from Leaside United Church (LUC) is about to leave for Honduras where it will participate in charitable service work for the El Hogar project. The name means The Home and El Hogar has given thousands of Honduran children both a start in life and skills with which to make their way when they are grown. LUC members will.be accompanied by two additional members from Eastminster United Church. Team leader Neal Kelly has written to say that the team has been working for more than six months to raise money for their service  work — the  education of abandoned, orphaned and hopelessly poor children in Honduras. The remarkable decency of these volunteers starts when they pay their own airfare, which this year was $4,300 U.S. The LUC team will have two teens in its number. Members will arrive in Honduras on March 15. They are Lynda Miller, Darryl Bunt, Brenda French, Valerie Flynn,  Barbara Kinnear,  Carol Bennett,  Meleah Bennett, Sam Kelly and Neal Kelly

Leaside Junior Wildcats have suffered a heartbreaking 4-3 loss to the plucky London Devilettes Friday night in London. The loss puts Leaside just a game away from elimination in its best of five series against London in the Provincial Women’s Hockey League.  Leaside won the first game at home but has fallen twice to London, once at home and once in London. Friday’s game featured a back and forth struggle in which the teams traded the lead twice before London’s Emily Bowman scored the winning goal at 21 seconds into overtime. It means the Leaside ladies will have to take the fourth game on enemy ice Saturday if they hope to stay in the hunt for the PWHL trophy.  Box score 

Premier Wynne briefly addressed the Waterloo Ravens and Leaside Wildcats girls teams at Leaside Gardens today (Saturday, March 12, 2016) before their game. Then she dropped the puck in the ceremonial fashion. The under-nine aged girls “applauded” Wynne’s remarks with the well-known hockey stick racket. The game featured novice girls at the Leaside Wildcats March Madness Hocky Tournament. Jennifer Smith, president of Wildcats hockey, said the match saw girls in the novice development stream (DS) from Leaside against a DS team of Waterloo Ravens. The DS stream offers girls with talent and a desire to play competitively to move from house league to the “big time” of girls’ amateur hockey.

THUMP THUMP THUMP

Leaside Gardens was full Friday night as players came and went. Parents and kids talked in the hallways and checked out silent auction offerings in the William Lea Room. The social activity was punctuated by a  recurrent thump thump thump of hockey bags on wheels descending the stairs to the dressing rooms.  (You will hear one on the video below). Boisterous hockey dads cheered on teams as games were played one after another with just enough time between to flood the ice.

DEMOCRATIC  HOCKEY

The benefits of the hockey experience to a girl (or boy) is easily understood. Teamwork, strenuous effort, new friends and a new involvement with their parents But March Madness reveals the hockey rink as a social leveler for kids.  Girls on teams without fancy jerseys or socks can compete and win against those who may have better gear. When that happens, it’s a good lesson for both teams.

CNN produced this brief piece on prime ministerial and presidential humour. Laugh, giggle, sign or squirm.

Left-hand turn in front of an oncoming dump truck

A mother and daughter were hit by a dump truck as they tried to turn left onto Highway 27 at Albion Road Friday morning. They were struck by a dump truck. The daughter, said to be in her 20s, was taken to hospital with life-threatening injuries. The two were travelling in a Toyota RAV.  Firefighters had to free both women from the SUV. The mother was taken to local hospital with relatively minor injuries. The driver of the dump truck did not need hospital treatment.

Ontario Court Justice William Horkins has found  law professor Diane Way guilty of cruelty to animals following the 2011 discovery of horrifying conditions inside her Manor Rd home near Servington Crescent. It is a tale of pain and suffering for 60 or more cats housed at Ms. Way’s home and for the humiliation she felt about the conditions there — but which she was unable to correct. Judge Horkins concluded that the home had become a nightmare: “Wall to wall cats; floors, walls, furniture rotting and coated in cat urine, cat fur and cat feces. The smell was literally overpowering,” he said this week in his judgement.

DEAD BODY?

“The first officer on the scene thought there might be a dead body inside the house.” Hours later, as OSPCA staff in hazmat gear were in the process of removing a feral colony of 107 cats from the home, homeowner Diane Way returned with a pull-cart full of cat food. Judge Horkins said that Ms. Way loved her cats “not wisely, but too well”. Horkins found Way, 67, guilty of cruelty to animals and causing or permitting unnecessary suffering to animals. Beyond the awful conditions of the animals — cats crusted in fecal matter and suffering from eye and lung infections — court heard that Ms.Way was too embarrassed with the fearful slum she had created to even call a plumber to restore water to the home after a pipe ruptured.

STOPPED STERILIZING

As reported by Metro News, things began to get out of hand in 2009 when Way took in several stray cats in addition to her three kittens, she testified. When she stopped sterilizing the cats and taking them to the vet, the population grew from 19 in 2009 to 107 two years later. She testified she had lost track of how many cats there were by then, estimating the number at 60. Way said she turned off her water after a pipe sprung a leak, too embarrassed to call a plumber. She said she slept on a couch in the living room, and would “wake up in a sea of cats,” Horkins said.

CITY HALL DID NOT HELP

The South Bayview Bulldog reported at the time that the first call to 911 came from an election canvasser who was worried that the dreadful smell indicated a dead body. The fire department came prepared to try to resuscitate a possible victim. The call to 911 was the trigger that brought  the end of the agony not just for Ms.Way and the cats, but for the neighbours who had complained many time to City Hall but had had their cries ignored.  As unhappy as they were, neighbours had not called 911 or police. It is an instructive story.

Robin Pilkey

Robin Pilkey, the chair of the Toronto District School Board,  says the province’s recently introduced new sex-ed curriculum is the cause of declining enrolment. She said that perhaps 2,500 of the 3,500 fewer enrolments next year are the result of the 2015 changes in this curriculum. As a result the TDSB will cut as many as 100 teaching positions and make other staff reductions, Enrolment however has been declined over a period of years. Ms Pilkey made her remarks to the CBC Metro Morning program. The board has previously said the decline was a result of fewer children because of an aging population.

Mayor John Tory has sent a letter to federal transport minister Marc Garneau asking that fewer passenger planes fly over Toronto’s midtown.The impetus for this letter has come from residents’ complaints to Jon Burnside (Ward 26). Leaside, Davisville, Moore Park and other areas have seen elevated noise since the federal government permitted the shift of flight patens south into central Toronto three years ago. This was done because of the enormous traffic in and out of Pearson airport. In his letter, Tory says residents of Toronto’s Don Valley West have met with Burnside to complain of “unreasonable aircraft noise resulting from a change in a new, concentrated arrivals route.”  Mr Tory says: “An overarching concern is for the implementation of this flight plan without consulting both the residents and their local representatives beforehand. As this flight path is concentrated and aircraft operation runs 24 hours a day, residents find little reprieve from the strong aircraft noise throughout the day and night..” Whether the mayor’s efforts will prompt action is an open question. Airline traffic is everywhere and growing.  The noise associated with airports is among the primary reasons for opposition to jets at the island airport.

Bob McIntyre, the much-loved hometown Barrie weatherman has died at age 73. CTV repoirts Thursday night that McIntyre’s health took a “very sudden turn in recent days”. His wife Darlene was by his side when he died. The networks says the family is asking for privacy but that in due course CTV will produce a tribute to honour Bob McIntryre’s life and his legacy. He joined CKVR in Barrie in 1972.  Barrie weatherman McIntyre retires to save job of colleague   Barrie TV weatherman Bob McIntryre dies at 73 

Statesmen and reporters are striving for the essence of the day and the sight of young Justin Trudeau with Barak Obama at the White House. John Ivison in the National Post says the men are behaving toward each other with a kind of mutual reverence. Mr.Trudeau in his remarks placed the relationship with the United States in a category all of its own. Many people will think that could mean different things, for good or ill. All news leads  Canadian Press has selected quotes from prime minister’s remarks at White House.
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Much smoke has been blown by City officials and others about the grand Eglinton Connects Plan done a couple of years ago. Apparently it also connects us with signs the size of City Hall.