The South Bayview Bulldog

Police are searching for a rough-looking character who is alleged to have tried to lure a 12-year-old boy into his van. The boy rode his bicycle home right away and told his parents. This happened Tuesday, June 3, 2014, at approximately 2 p.m. in the Dupont Street and Ossington Ave area. Police released pictures of the man. He is described as white, approximately 60, heavy build, balding with salt-and-pepper hair and white facial hair. He was last seen wearing a dark-coloured tank top and dark-coloured pants. He was seen driving a brown-or-grey-coloured older model Ford Windstar-type Van. Police are asking parents to remind any out-and-about young person not to get into vehicles with strangers. 

Three desperate drug bosses awaiting trial have escaped from the Orsainville Detention Centre near Quebec City in a green-coloured helicopter. The last time something like this happened was slightly more than a year ago when accomplices hi-jacked a chopper pilot at gunpoint to free convicts. But the 2013 escapees were quickly apprehended about 85 km away. The three break-out drug accused are identified as Yves Denis, 35, Denis Lefebvre, 53, and Serge Pomerleau, 49. All three were arrested as part of a major police operation in 2010 called Operation Ecrevisse. 

You may be certain that democracy’s great reformers, every single one of them  from Lord Grey (Reform Act 1832) to Canadian rebel democrat William Lyon Mackenzie (Upper Canada Rebellion) would snort in derision at the idea that voters might actually go to the polls and elaborately refuse to cast their ballots. Only this cossetted and self-involved society could conceive of an idea so stupid, so arrogant. A story linked below in the Huffington Post floats the notion for those who are “unconvinced and unimpressed” and who want to vote “none of the above.”  Really. The idea raises fecklessness to a new level. Democracy isn’t about liking the people who are running or getting your issue all fulfilled on a platter. It isn’t about sulking because the political process isn’t neat. People died to create the democratic way. Stalin and Hitler laughed at “none of the above.”  Are you stamping your feet about the gas plants? Pouting because that silly Tim Hudak can’t count? Well suck it up baby. Get busy and meet the candidates. Maybe you want to vote for a one-issue candidate. Fine. That can be your protest. After the election, you’ll have the right to complain. “None of the above” is the first turn on the road to Hell. Huffington Post

Toronto police are asking for help in a very unusual theft Tuesday, June 3, 2014 when a full-sized jukebox was taken from a home in the Victoria Park Ave and Kingston Road area. It is an original Wurlitzer manufacture jukebox which weighs an estimated 300 to 400 pounds. It is approximately five feet high and two feet wide and deep. This is a very distinctive item and would have required more than one person to remove it. Anyone with information is asked to contact police at 416-808-5500  Wurlitzer was a fabled musical instrument, organ and jukebox maker which was founded in Cincinnati in 1853 by Franz Rudolph Wurlitzer. It’s early 20th Century invention for playing phonograph records automatically in restaurants and bars became an established part of life for many decades and was memorialized in pop songs such as Jukebox Saturday Night.

No one will ever know how many qualified (or likely) voters in Ward 26 actually search Twitter but for those who do, there’s no missing the smell of politics in the air. Yes, there is a municipal election coming, albeit after what seems like the world’s longest election campaign. The vote isn’t until October. Here we see the evidence of two candidates as (top) well-known meat and food retailer Andy Elder (Grilltime on Laird Drive) and Hand and Stone fight over a Jon Burnside jersey. Burnside,  close second in 2010, recently declared for 2014. Charlene Kalia tweeted this. Right below is the incumbent, John Parker with Henry Chong and his inventive Revelo LE-1 bike. It is said to be the “coolest compact ebike around” and a “Leaside cottage industry.”  We know that candidate Dave Sparrow must be is this Twitter run somewhere and we will find him. Beyond Leaside, the campaign is seems to be riveted on transit and polls which suggest this is the “number one” concern. Of course, public opinion is frequently led by the media, fed by politicians. In Toronto all polls ask questions inspired by the idea that the City is mired up to its hips in “Gridlock” 

RCMP Constable Dave Ross and his bride Rachael Vander Ploeg (inset) were a perfect picture of what life should be like. But Ross is now dead, along with two other RCMP officers, in the shooting rampage of a young misfit who was apparently haunted by visions of a Russian invasion of Canada. Justin Bourque, just 24 (lower inset) lived on a potholed, treeless dirt road in a forlorn trailer park in Moncton. He walked purposely southwest on the dead-end street about 7 p.m. Wednesday night, just after he got home from work. “He was staring dead ahead, with a blank deadly stare on his face with no emotions,” witnesses said. He wore army fatigues, a bandana on his head, with a long rifle slung over the left side of his chest, a small gun at his waist, as well as various knives, a water can, and a cross-bow hooked on his right shoulder. The strange sighting and a witnesses phone call to police would trigger the shooting of the officers and  a long two day manhunt for Bourque eventually ended when he was found  and apprehended without further injury. Now the effort to plumb this isolated man’s psyche begins. Is he yet another young man seeking his destiny through death and destruction? It is a psychiatric phenomenon stretching from Al Qaeda to love-sick teenagers. Time will tell.