The South Bayview Bulldog

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All leads from Thursday night’s MacLean’s debate

Amy Savill from Alberta was visiting relatives in Timmins when her water burst and baby Amelia was born two months premature. The little hospital in Timmins was not up to the job of looking after a three-pound preemie so an emergency flight was ordered from ORNGE air ambulance. They were taken to Sudbury where the baby and mom were delivered into safe hands. Now the government says that because the flight was from hospital to hospital there is a charge which might be as much as $30,000. If the trip had been from the home in which the woman was staying there would have been no charge. Late today, according to Paul Bliss, of CTV, the health ministry said it will look into the matter. Amy said she didn’t think she needed additional insurance because she was travelling in Canada.

The linked story by reporter Tamara Shepherd records the concerns of residents near the Martin Goodman Trail where bikes, pedestrians and skateboards are supposed to share. The picture above taken by a local resident shows the result when two cyclists collided head-on at high speed. It is hard to imagine how careless they had to be to let this happen. But it did.  Etobicoke Guardian 

The hardy Canadian breed of all-purpose horses has happily turned around a perilous trip to extinction and now numbers more than 6,000 registered animals. This means the breed is considered vulnerable but no longer endangered. The Canadian has its roots in the 1660s, when King Louis XIV sent shipments of Arabian, Barb and Andalusian horses from his royal stables to the colony of New France.  As history would have it, there was little to no new DNA introduced until a century later when the English took over the colony, allowing the Canadian to develop its versatile character. The breed had dwindled to fewer than 400 in the 1970s. In 2002, Parliament passed an act naming it “the national horse of Canada.” As you will hear in the CTV video below, the Canadian is a tireless master of many tasks. We like him.

Politics and the mechanics of democracy will evolve tonight as Canada witnesses a new kind of leaders’ debate. The back and forth may not be new but the “boutique” nature of the exercise and its streaming presence to millions of computers and phones is a sharp change. Previous elections saw the CBC, CTV and Global own the debate process. The debates, usually no more than one in each official language, took place on television only. They happened late  in the campaign because parties didn’t want to be dealing with any possible gaffes during the final hours before voting. This all changed mainly because the Conservative’s insisted on something else. The process was opened up to smaller producers. The debate tonight (Thursday, August 6, 2015) is being produced by Maclean’s magazine, which is owned by Rogers. The debate has limited TV exposure but it will be streamed to vast numbers of voters on the Internet. Macleans has a page all ready to go.  It will also be seen  on Ctiy, OMNI-1, OMNI-2 and CPAC.  Macleans and Rogers will offer the streaming debate in five languages: English, French, Mandarin, Cantonese, Punjabi The debate will also be heard on radio — 680News,  570News, 680News.com, 1310News.com, News1130.com and News 957.com  There are more boutique type debates coming. The Globe and Mail and Google have a debate focused on the economy scheduled.

Reverend Gretta Vosper

The liberal orthodoxy of the United Church is about to face a rather critical test. The church’s Toronto Conference will review the fitness of Rev. Gretta Vosper to continue in her position as the pastor of West Hill United Church, or indeed as an ordained minister of the church.  The issue: Rev Vosper is an atheist who is advancing changes which essentially deconstruct the most fundamental Christian beliefs. Rev. Vosper has been uneasy for some time with even the most widely accepted of practices. In 2008 there was a revolt of about 100 congregants when Rev Vosper did away with the Lord’s Prayer. The West Hill congregation is said by some sources to be about 80 persons. This year Gretta Vosper wrote an open letter to the church’s spiritual leader pointing out that belief in God can motivate bad things — a reference to the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris. She is quoted by the Canadian Press as saying that “if we are going to continue to use language that suggests we get our moral authority from a supernatural source, any group that says that can trump any humanistic endeavor.” It is an interesting analysis of terrorism. The reverend is not quoted on how the denial of United Church beliefs would help it, or any civilized body, which is confronted by homicidal terrorists. Now the church has decided it must review the fitness of Rev. Vosper to continue in her role. Nora Sanders, general secretary of the church’s General Council issued a ruling in May laying out a review process that could ultimately lead to Rev. Vosper’s defrocking. Essentially, Sanders said, the review should determine whether Vosper was being faithful to her ordination vows, which included affirming a belief in “God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” In the past, other ministers have asked Rev. Vosper to “do the right thing” and take her campaign to a different platform by resigning from the church.

Loblaws will build a new store and condominium towers at the corner of Bathurst Street and Lakeshore Road retaining the facade of its original 1928 head office and warehouse. Choice Properties Real Estate Investment Trust will partner with Wittington Properties to do the job.  The new deveopment will be known as West Block. It is described as an urban community that will combine retail shops anchored by a Loblaws store with office space and two residential towers. The property is comprised of approximately 3.5 acres of land located on the northeast corner of Lake Shore Boulevard and Bathurst Street. It was last used by Loblaws in the 1970s. “In preserving the original façade of the building, we are honouring the proud heritage of this important piece of Toronto real estate,” said John Morrison, President and CEO of Choice Properties. “We’re very excited to share our modern vision for the future West Block using the building blocks of the past.”  Below, we see what Loblaws stores looked like when the warehouse was built.

It seems fairly elementary when you think about it. Engineers (or somebody) tried to lift parts of Juliana Bridge in Alphen aan den Rijn in the Netherlands with the crane sitting on a barge in the canal. But wait, as the load moves it has the capacity to tip the barge. That would make the cranes slide. And so this spectacular accident played out Monday with two cranes falling across row houses in the town. As many as 20 were injured but it appears not too seriously. And the Dutch are supposed to be so smart.