The South Bayview Bulldog

This weekend will be clear with temperatures around freezing as much of South Bayview plays hockey and gets ready for Valentine’s next Sunday, February 14, 2016. Those with little children should look in on the Valentine’s card making class  at Bamboo Bay arts and craft school at Bayview Ave and Millwood Rd. Leaside Gardens will be busy as a subway station at rush hour all weekend. The Leaside Select Invitational Hockey Tournament is on all weekend. And the Leaside Jr. Wildcats are over in Burlington Saturday night to play the Barracudas of the Provincial Women’s Hockey League. The Wildcats sit in second place in the league and the  women have high hopes of taking the cup. Go Cats

ST CUTHBERT’S REFUGEE FAIR

St. Cuthbert’s Anglican Church will hold its Refugee Sponsorship Information Fair tomorrow morning (Saturday, February 6, 2016). It will open at 10 a.m. at 1399 Bayview Ave. Lorna Krawchuk notes the church has made an application for sponsorship and is looking for people willing to give a hand. Please drop in and see what you can do to make the transition of these newcomers easier.

The City has received the “No Board” report regarding its outside workers in CUPE Local 416 There are 4,200 such employees with the most important being those who collect the garbage. The arrival of the report  sets a clock ticking to 12:01 a.m., or one minute past midnight, on the morning of Friday, February 19. At that time the City may lock out the union and/or the union may strike. But a stoppage is not inevitable. The news release linked states generalities and says nothing about the half of Toronto that has privatized garbage collection nor has anyone at in the government said anything about that. City News Release

Conrad Black’s estate on the Bridle Path will be auctioned to the highest bidder on March 8, 2016. The home has been in Black’s family for 65 years. It is 23,000-square-foot and sits on a 6.6-acre lot. The home has nine-bedrooms and 11-bathrooms. The mansion has a caretaker suite and a converted coach house guest apartment. It is  valued at $21.8 million. Black’s house was built in six stages and has undergone extensive renovations by New York architect Thierry Despont, who has also designed and built homes for Calvin Klein, Bill Gates and the late Greek shipping tycoon Stavros Niarchos. “It is a big house for two people,” Black said in a statement. “We will be abroad a good deal and moving to a more manageable home will be a convenience to us now as our careers have evolved.”  Concierge Auctions will handle the sale.

This is a touching story from Aaron Saltzman of the CBC in Orangeville, where everything is pretty much Anglo-Saxon. So the school board gave a Syrian refugee brother and sister tablets loaded with Google Translate. Watch for the light of understanding in the kids’ faces.

Two storey house with a corner tower will sit at Rose Park and Welland

A large two-storey home with a Victorian replica corner tower will sit at 240 Rose Park Drive on the northwest corner with Welland Ave. It is similar to a few other architectural fancies in South Bayview. The inset home was built in 2013 at the corner of Broadway Ave and Laird Dr. The corner tower gives occupants a pleasant 180-degree view of the outdoors. Below is 240 Rose Park as it was for so many years before demolition in 2015.

Eva Ravikovich

A Newmarket court has found three people who ran the daycare where two-year-old Eva Ravikovich died to be guilty of operating an illegal child-care centre. Ruslan Panfilova, 47, his wife Olena Panfilova, 50, and her daughter Karyna Rabadanova, 26, were found guilty under the province’s Day Nurseries Act by a justice of the peace in a Newmarket court. The 2013 death occurred at the daycare on Yellowood Circle. There were 27 children at the daycare the day the child  died. Police found rotten food in the refrigerator, a garbage bag of dirty diapers and 14 dogs in the home. Provincial law limits unlicensed child-care facilities to five children under the age of 10.

Leaside Gardens swimming pool and (inset) long-abandoned sunbathing steps

The nearly 60-year-old swimming pool at Leaside Gardens will be renovated this summer. As plans go forward at the Parks and Recreation Department for this work, there is said to be a related idea from developer Shane Baghai to create a new City parkette on about half an acre of unused table land behind the pool. It is known around the Gardens as “the back 40”. The pleasant parcel of grass and trees is now land locked from City streets and is not accessible to police vehicles and other services. But Baghai is said to have proposed access to the land off Southvale Drive on the west side of the proposed condominium he hopes to build at the land known as 3&5 Southvale.

Google maps reveals the little-known green space behind Leaside Gardens.

Nothing is agreed to but the parcel of land itself, which is seen through the west-facing window wall of the swimming pool will be part of a landscaping project regardless of the park project. This work will see the demolition of the old sunbathing steps (photo at top) a relic of a bygone era when soaking up sun in a bathing suit was more fashionable. The City will create a grassy terrace down to the window of the pool from the table-land to the west.

MAIN PUMP SEIZED

Inside the pool, old equipment such the seized pumping system which is supposed to empty the pool will be replaced. For years, pool staff has had to rent portable pumps when it was necessary to drain the pool. The roof leaks too. Stains and rotting ceiling panels can be seen in change rooms and elsewhere. The leaking is worst it seems under heavy roof-top dehumification equipment. It will have to be hefted down along with HVAC to do the work.

SCHEDULE

The project is expected to take three to five months. The present start date is hovering between May and June of 2016. The pool closure work has parents with kids in swimming classes and others looking around for another pool. The nearest would seem to be the outside pool at 5 Leaside Drive (416) 396-2822 and the indoor pool at the East York Community Centre, 1081 Pape Ave (416) 396 2880

Sales of resale homes in the Greater Toronto Area have risen a dizzying 8.2 per cent in January from a year earlier, says the Toronto Real Estate Board. The total number of transactions was 4,572. Average prices climbed 14.1 per cent, while the MLS home price index revealed an increase of 11.2 per cent.  The 905 factor taken alone is even more remarkable. The average price for a detached home in the city, or 416 area code, rose 11.6 per cent, but surged 20.9 per cent in the 905 region. Percentages aside, total price tags were higher inside Toronto, an average $1.06-million in 416, compared to $783,565.

 Atlantic.com has written a thought-provoking article recognizing the many ways in which Starbucks makes a contribution to the lives of its employees. It wants to be a company with a conscience, as stated in its own PR about this work.  But critics say such things as helping UK baristas pay up-front apartment rental fees in London are small change against a fatter pay cheque. Worth reading.

By mid afternoon South Bayview was beautiful

Men in shirt sleeves, joggers in shorts, an open-jacketed stroll with Fido and an inviting opportunity to let the sun shine on your face. That was our favorite high street on a February 3 like no other it has seen. Thanks to a Texas low pressure system we received a funneling of warm air that made this the warmest post groundhog day in history. Forecasters predicted that previous record highs would be shattered when the temperature passed 9 C Wednesday morning. At 2 p.m., the mercury hit 15.5 C at Pearson International Airport. The previous record set at the airport was 9.3 C in 1991.