John Parker (Ward 26) has scheduled a meeting for next Wednesday, April 9, 2014, where the City’s Chief Planner Jennifer Keesmaat will speak and answer questions. The councillor waxes philosophical as he observes that the growth of Toronto “is challenging the assumptions many of us have grown up with as to the kind of city we are and should strive to become.” Right you are sir. Anyway, this will take place between 7 and 9 p.m. at Leaside Gardens.
Cookware, kitchen store at Yonge and Manor
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Cookware and kitchen store Peppermills will take the large space most recently occupied by Timothy’s Coffees of the World at Yonge Street and Manor Road.
4000-volt giants carry hydro flow west of Bayiew
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| Belsize and Boyton |
Residents between Bayview Ave and Mt. Pleasant Rd. are witnessing the installation of soaring new hydro standards as the utility prepares to remove the 50-year-old concrete poles. Those cracked and teetering cement standards have carried the neighborhood’s 4,000-volt lifeline for a long time. The solid looking fir poles should be good for quite a few decades as well. Workers were doing their work carefully Thursday as they attached the lethal flow of hydro to the timber at the corner of Belsize Drive and Boyton Rd. Homeowners will be glad for the renewed service. It will come with a number of new transformers. They should make service a little more reliable. For many, the work will remind them of the early hours of December 22, 2013 when rain and ice began to quietly turn the city dark. Utility poles and tree branches collapsed under the enormous weight of the thick ice accumulation. At the height of the storm there were over 300,000 Toronto Hydro customers that were left without power or heat. Many of them were right there in South Bayview where the tree are. The City of Toronto simultaneously opened and operated 13 community reception centres and 13 Toronto police facility community warming centres, providing temporary sleeping accommodations,food, water, hygiene kits and other resources. The warming centres were running around the clock, offering those who lost their power a warm place to sleep and eat until their power was restored. By Christmas Eve, four days after the storm, there were still 69,800 customers without power across the city.
Vescada Salon re-branding as P&P Hair Company
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Vescada Salon. 1661 Bayview Ave., will be changing its name and moving across the street next month. The well-known salon will re-brand under the initials of the owners names, Perri and Palmacci. Thus, when the new location opens right across the street in May it will be called P&P Hair Company. The phone number will remain the same at (416) 484-4111. P&P will continue to sell the popular Aveda products. So what’s the new location? That’s big news for Original’s Bar as well because the owners there have decided to reduce their double frontage and lease the other half to P&P. Original’s will occupy the north half of the address, P&P the south. Original’s also has a re-decoration of the premises ready to go.
Detectives not sure when all files were erased
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OPP Det. Const. Andre Duval was before the justice committee Thursday morning as PC members hunted for anything that will tie Premier Wynne to the scandalous ad hoc erasure of computer files related to the gas plant cancellation. But Duval had to testify that he didn’t know when most of the computers were wiped. Experts have been able to nail down a date on four of the laptops but it remains unclear when the other 20 were wiped..The dates are important because the Opposition says the date range in a requested search warrant goes past Kathleen Wynne’s swearing in as premier. Premier Wynne denies any files were accessed after she took over from Dalton McGuinty.
Grocers face long odds to win an LCBO kiosk
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Some of the hard truths are coming home to grocers and the public as they wait to see what the government has in mind for its wine and liquor kiosks in grocery stores. Cynics will be inclined to say it isn’t much. The scheme is very limited, maybe as few as ten places across the whole province. If you are a small player, moreover, you can forget it altogether. The LCBO is specifying that a store allocate a minimum of 2,000 square feet for a kiosk. Very few independents have that option. The franchisees of the Valu mart organization (which is owned by a Loblaws subsidiary) can pretty much forget about a kiosk. It also seems a long shot for other indy operators, like the neighborhood chain Rabba. In a place like South Bayview, what does Metro do if Loblaws gets the kiosk? Or Longo’s or Whole Foods? You don’t have to be a serious complainer to think that this is seriously unfair. Why this plan? The government is clearly addicted to the direct transfusion of funds from the LCBO. In buoyant Alberta, the sale of liquor and wine has been privatized. As The Bulldog has observed in the past, a fair and easily controlled system could be built using modern vending machines. There is no sign of that in the LCBO plan and this may have something do with the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, which represents the LCBO employees. Metroland
Colorado death attributed to recreational pot
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As medical marijuana becomes more formalized in Canada, the State of Colorado is learning how to deal with legal recreational marijuana. Many medical marijuana shops and clinics in that state have moved to the quite profitable sale of the material for fun. Now a student visitor from the Congo has leaped to his death from an apartment balcony after eating a legal marijuana cookie purchased by a friend. The medical examiner says that the 19-year-old’s death was caused in part by the intoxicating effects of the cookie
Nancy, Norah, Naomi, Natalie, Nicolette, Nina?
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The Toronto Zoo has revealed its latest addition — a baby gorilla who needs a name. But, says the zoo, the name must begin with an “N”. To help you with this important family task we offer this list of girl’s names beginning with “N”. Let’s see — Nola, Noni, Nikita This one means “Victory of the people” — a good revolutionary name. But maybe not for a gorilla. Anyway, good luck.
Land value drives intensification on Bayview
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It’s about the mushrooming value of the land on which homeowners sit along Bayview Ave. This week many in Ward 25 are complaining about another proposed townhouse development on the street. This one is between York Mills Rd. and Old Colony Rd. The pressure is the same type of economic stress that occurs when developers want to knock down townhouses built in the 70s to build high-rise apartments or condos. It’s happening on streets like Belsize Drive in Ward 22. The Councillor in Ward 25, Jaye Robinson, is said to have created a “design guideline” for the neighbourhood. But unless zoning is changed, and can be enforced, it seems like a losing battle.
Trying to guess what drove courthouse shooter
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Jets emerge as 2014 election issue #TOpoli
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In what seems as much like a tense stand off as anything else, the forces of Porter Airlines and NoJets Toronto are both spinning today’s City Council decision as a victory. In an odd outcome, Council voted 44-0 for a staff report that contains many conditions for jets to go wheels down at Billy Bishop Airport. Noise, pollution, traffic and other elements must be probed and the results found acceptable before the City would proceed. The timing of this action by Council is said to make it certain that no further debate or vote will occur until after a new mayor and council are elected. NoJets TO made it clear on its website tonight that it will make the Porter application an election issue. Tonight’s outcome would seem to offer even greater definition between mayoral candidate Olivia Chow and the other candidates. She is the only one who has expressed clear opposition to jets on the island. Deputy Mayor Kelly, an open advocate of the Porter plan, said the “modernization” of the airport is still alive and that he too considers the vote today a victory. NoJets TO
A lottery win to touch the heart of all Canada
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| Liam and Tina Ferrone |
An Ottawa area woman, Tina Ferrone, has won the $48 million Lotto Max prize. It is a lottery outcome which will touch the heart of the country. Ms Ferrone’s husband was stricken with cancer in January of 2012 and is out of work. It has been “a long hard road” since then, says Liam Ferrone. He has undergone chemotherapy and stem cell treatment during the succeeding two years. Liam is now said to be in remission. Even with a catastrophic disease like cancer, a $48 million dollar windfall will change the lives of the Kanata, Ontario couple in a way they could never imagine. Liam will repay debt incurred because of his illness. Tina says she wants to start a yoga studio. It’s a lifelong passion. Then they will travel and Liam will buy a truck. Tina bought the ticket “on a whim” last Friday while picking up groceries. She had never played Lotto Max before, and when she checked her ticket Saturday at a Shopper’s Drug Mart she was shocked. “I thought it was $48,000 at first, I couldn’t process what was happening,” she said while picking up her prize in Toronto today (Tuesday, April 1, 2014).