The South Bayview Bulldog

The social media firm Tsu (pronounced Sue) does a calculation on what it earns from its members content and pays them back a portion of that revenue. Facebook doesn’t like that it seems and has deleted posts which link back to Tsu. Associated Press 

The New York State attorney general has ordered the two biggest daily fantasy sports companies, DraftKings and FanDuel, to stop accepting bets from New York residents. It says the games represent illegal gambling under state law. It is a body blow to the games, which insist they are based on skill. But the amounts of money are enormous and the attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, says the vast majority of those playing lose. Sounds a bit like Lotto 649 and in that sense cynics may see this as government gambling protecting its turf against private gambling. In any case, it is a major blow to a multibillion-dollar industry that introduced sports betting to legions of young sports fans and has formed partnerships with many of the nation’s professional sports teams

This was the scene before dawn at Sunnybrook Hospital on Bayview Ave. as volunteers and relatives placed flags to greet waking veterans on this Remembrance Day.  The weather is wet but there is warmth and kindness for men and women who sacrificed their lives for Canada. About 30,000 flags will be placed on the hospital’s lawn in preparation for an official ceremony.

The new prime minister and his wife Sophie appeared at the We Day rally in the Canadian Tire Centre in Kanata. They both spoke at length with Ms. Trudeau-Gregoire referring to the PM as “my hubby”.  The home of the Senators, with a capacity of 20,000, held 16,000 kids and teachers for this event. Quite a lot of Trudeaumania going on here.

City Council has approved the name change of Markham Ave. to Stickney Way. Leaside Chit Chat 

The strange, penny ante behaviour of someone trying create mischief at City Hall has been caught on video. The capture above show the man. He has struck twice according to police. On October 25 a man tied two capped syringes to the front doors of City Hall using blue rubber ribbons. This incident was captured on security cameras and posted by police on YouTube. On November 1 someone looking like the same man did it again. The syringes are capped and thus unable to puncture anything. The suspect is described as white, with dark hair in a “puffy” ponytail. He was wearing black pants with either a red stripe or red writing down the side of each leg. Police said he was also carrying a dark backpack. It’s unlikely this guy is the sharpest knife in the drawer.

The Fight for $15 movement in the U.S. is on the streets of many major cities today (Tuesday, November 10, 2015) demanding the new minimum wage for all 12 million fast food workers in the country. At present, their median wage if 9.20 an hour. Ontario’s minimum wage (in Canadian dollars) has just risen $11.25 an hours, second highest the country. Part of the strategy of the rallies is to influence the 2016 presidential election, which is one year away.  Most minimum wage employees do not vote.

Five Grade Nine students at Northern Secondary School have won gold medals as the winning team in the midget girls category at the Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations Cross Country Race. The three kilometre event was run Saturday in muddy farm fields at Duntroon, a crossroads on the route to Collingwood. It was particularly perilous, the Northern runners report, on downhill portions of the course. Footing was chancy and some of the competitors were not wearing spiked shoes. They arrived at the finish line smothered in mud. It had, said Northern’s Alex Weir, a few runners ready to just go home. But the NSS team had come to run. You don’t give up when you have been practicing a sport since elementary school. Coach Michael Chapman explained that the final triumph was electronically calculated by digital chips embedded in the bibs worn by each runner. Great work ladies. Photo left to right (rear) Eve Boyer, Parker Hopkins, Alex Weir (front) Ireland Robertson, Zoe Lexovsky. The South Bayview Bulldog 

The TTC budget committee has approved the idea of starting Sunday subway service at 8 a.m. instead of 9 a.m. The move is expected to cost $1 million and must be approved by the whole board. The committee also approved a freeze to the cost of Metropass. It is also considering an increase to cash fares. Cash fare is now at $3 and may be set at $3.25.

The bright new San Francesco Italian Sandwich bar opens for business on Laird Drive in the Husky station near Millwood Rd tomorrow morning (Tuesday, November 10, 2015). It is both a take-out and sit down place. This incarnation of the time-honoured Toronto name has ambitions to establish a chain across the GTA, according to the owners. The brand has been around since the 1950s, it is said. The food is freshly made and includes a variety of Italian sandwiches as well as pizza and panzarotti. Those new garage doors are located just where cars used to enter the repair shop. They will still open in the warm weather where a small patio will inch onto the driveway and,  if the plan goes through, a beer may be had as well.

Benjamin Tal, the Deputy Chief Economist of the CIBC, has issued a rebuttal to a warning the Economic Co-operation and Development. The OECD says markets in Toronto and Vancouver are at risk of a sharp fall in prices. It says that in Ontario, and especially Toronto, economic activity has been relatively buoyant and demand by foreigners has been boosted by the falling Canadian dollar. It adds however that newly completed but unoccupied housing units have soared in Toronto, increasing the risk of a sharp market correction, according to the report.

BENJAMIN TAL

The reaction of Mr. Tal is that the situation is not as crazy as it may seem. He says over-building is not a real issue in Canada. More than that, there are only four developers out of about 150 with unsold inventory and two of them have so much cash in the bank it hardly matters — i.e no financing. Interesting

The Education Minister, Liz Sandals, has announced new funding of $498 million for the construction of new schools in Ontario, including a replacement for Davisvile Public Schools at Yonge and Davisville. This move was telegraphed over the weekend by Josh Matlow (Ward 22) in his newsletter to constituents. Midtown neighborhoods are pushing more than a century in part of the City west of Bayview Ave. Hodgson Senior Public School, now a hundred years old, has had some repairs but it appears to be barely keeping ahead of the decay.  CBC CP24