The South Bayview Bulldog

Young Zoe and her letter

In 1990, 10-year-old Zoe Lemon threw a bottle containing a message from the deck of a North Sea ferry as she and her parents set off on a vacation to Germany. The family had their vacation, came home to Manchester, Zoe grew up, married and had children of her own and then — just before Christmas 2013 — Zoe’s parents received a letter replying to their daughter’s 23-year-old message in a bottle. It turned out to be from Piet and Jacqueline Lateur in the Netherlands. Piet was walking his dog in the Oosterschelde dykes, near where he and his wife Jacqueline live in Serooskerke, near Rotterdam, when he found the bottle with Zoe’s letter inside it. Zoe, 33, who is originally from Hebden Bridge but now works in a jewellery shop and lives in Pendleton said: “It’s been a bit crazy really. My parents came to visit on Christmas day and they had this letter from Europe addressed to my maiden name, Lemon. “The first thing I saw was my hand writing as a child and my little letter saying who I was and about my pets and my hobbies. It made me a bit emotional.” Mailonline

Thursday has seen a repeat performance of Tuesday’s enormous demand for the cards that provide free food. Lineups at the Golden Mile location were long this morning (Thursday Dec. 2, 2013)  and then the cards were gone with hundreds still waiting. Jenny Yuen  

Updating previous post:  As The Bulldog reported in January, the house on the hill at 4 De-Savery Crescent in what some call the Glebe was living on borrowed time. Now it’s gone and another single family home will take its place. De Savory is one of three or four pretty streets that curve between Manor Rd. and Belsize Drive west of Mt Pleasant Rd. Residents say the home came down in just two days and from the size of the new excavation, it’s replacement will be a big one. Like re-sale homes to the east, residences here are all subject to possible demolition. At 4 De-Savery there is a good-sized lot, one side of which runs along Thurloe Ave, As readers of the South Bayview Bulldog will know, this is across the street from the now vacant site of Glebe Presbyterian Church.  That property is slated, on approval, to see the construction of six town homes over a common underground parking garage. There are many older homes on these streets and the evidence of the pressure is seen by the development going on along Manor and especially at the corner of Redpath Ave. We continue to wonder about the future of the old apartments at the corner of Penrose Road and De-Savery. In the photos we see the scrambled remains of the corner steps to 4 De-Savery. Below, the same steps when they were cloistered by evergreen bushes on either side when the home was still inhabited.  

The now nearly forgotten impact of cable-TV on local programming in Canada has taken one last kick at Toronto. Citytv’s venerable New Year’s Eve broadcast from Nathan Phillips Square will be submerged in the ABC celebration. Why? Because there is just too much to watch on TV on New Year’s Eve. Rogers, owners of City, has decided it can do better without fighting for the eyes of local TV watchers by letting ABC take centre stage. It is a pattern that is many years old as private TV discarded local programming that was unable to hold large audiences in the age of multi-channel choices. Toronto Star

Some have scolded City for this decision. Others are excited about bundling up to be at Nathan Phillips Square. Others say, “no thanks,”  it”s the fireplace for me. Go there by clicking tweets.