An on-site media scrum Friday by Acting Staff Superintendent Pauline Gray and Superintendent Ron Taverner outside 31 Division on Norfinch Drive is embedded here. The senior officers discuss the early morning shooting on Stong Ct. in northwest Toronto. The audio is low but the senior officers say that the girl, 14, who was critically injured is apparently likely to survive.
The head of critical care at Micahel Garron Hospital, Dr. Michael Warner, has added his voice to the medical opposition to any early relaxation of lockdown rules. Again, projections of 5,000 or more new cases per day of the virus are being heard. It’s similar to the fears discussed at New Year’s. In the event, Ontario began to flatten the second wave of C-19 in the middle of the month. Daily new cases rose to somewhat more than 3,000 and then began to decline.
Government determined
But the government seems determined. While Toronto apparently remains locked down in stay-at-home mode until February 22, a maze of timed re-openings will be permitted starting Tuesday. Readers will recall the post yesterday in which the government’s sickness-modeling expert Dr. Adalsteinn Brown did not contradict a reporter who asked if the doctor foresaw “a disaster.”
Faces, faces and what better likeness to show you first than that of the late Erich Schwam, who died at 90 in December. He was an Austrian Jew who found refuge as a child from the Nazis during WWII with the people of a tiny village in Southern France. Oh yes, his will contained a gift of some two million Euros to the town in gratitude for their humanity. At the centre, Michala and Ben are among those who have found love during the pandemic. Like many others, they met online and because of isolation rules spent a lot of time getting to know each other that way. Finally, women’s rights protester Loujain Alhathloul has been released from prison in Saudi Arabia. Note the bitter comments to this CBC story about how Canada continues to buy its oil and sell arms to Saudia Arabia. Why do we do it? Because we like Iran less.
The redevelopment of the ValuMart grocery store, parking lot and Davenport Garden Centre at the corner of Bayview and Davisville Aves will be on the agenda of the North York Community Council on March 1. Wilmar Kortleever has posted information indicating that a preliminary report will be presented on the proposed rezoning required for this development. The street address is 1466 to 1500 Bayview. Details have been posted on the SERRA website as well.
The OPP Highway Safety Division tweeted scenes of a salt truck collision on Highway 410 Wednesday.
#Hwy410NB driver of a salt truck struck another vehicle. The truck lost control traveled up the embankment coming to rest on the steel rail. Minor injuries ^td pic.twitter.com/CYFgGko4WV
— OPP Highway Safety Division (@OPP_HSD) February 10, 2021
Update #2 #Hwy410 at countryside dr. Clean up is underway. ^td pic.twitter.com/6B9mcscIaw
— OPP Highway Safety Division (@OPP_HSD) February 10, 2021
The Leaside Heritage Preservation Society is seeking members during a limited-time two-for-one membership drive. There are five levels: Founding (Life), Corporate, Adult Annual, Senior Annual and Student. See the details.
The City has issued a cold weather alert as very low temperatures are forecast both in the daytime and at night over the weekend. Municipal warming centres are open at the following locations: 129 Peter St., 5800 Yonge St., Exhibition Place, Better Living Centre,195 Princes’ Blvd. and Scarborough Civic Centre, 150 Borough Dr.
Wednesday sees another of the periodic C-19 free tests at local sites. They start at 1 p.m. and run through to 7 p.m.
As everyone knows, the Communist bigwigs in Beijing have censored the Internet so that there’s no dangerous discussion about bad things like, oh you know, democracy and stuff like that. The politburo bosses got a rude surprise recently when the Clubhouse app briefly blew away those restrictions.
Infamous Edmonton bonspiel was a C-19 spreader among doctors
The physicians’ curling meet last March in Edmonton that resulted in 54 cases of Covid-19 is now the subject of a study by one of the doctors who caught the bug. His study shows that the virus was communicated not on the ice but at receptions and dinners after the curling. Not so surprising.
I am not a cat!
How embarrassing for Texas lawyer Rod Ponton when he appeared before a local judge on Zoom in the form of a kitten.
Last week’s national layoffs at Bell Media hit a scale seldom seen in the radio and television business. They seem to indicate a sense of crisis at Bell as the world increasingly turns away from broadcasting to streaming. The change has been underway for a while but few people would have predicted the end of the weather on CTV News. In Toronto, Tom Brown and Anwar Knight were both laid off. The dismissal of CFRB news director Kym Geddes seems like a prophetic statement. The bloodbath in radio has seen news departments replaced with the audio of CTV News. Here is a summary collected from many sources by media scribbler Steve Faguy.
Bell Media’s mass layoff campaign, which began Monday (Feb 1) in Montreal, continued Tuesday and Wednesday with layoffs at various Toronto operations, hitting Newstalk 1010 (CFRB), and cuts in other markets across the country.
Social media was active with people announcing they had suddenly become free agents, and others wondering who else was about to announce the bad news. Though more than a dozen came forward, that’s a mere fraction of the more than 210 who are to lose their jobs this week.
Like its sister station in Montreal (CJAD), Newstalk 1010 gutted its newsroom, as its newscast has been replaced by CTV News branding and reporters. It also cancelled its weekday evening program — The Night Side with Barb DiGiulio — and will run more repurposed programming in its place.
Its schedule shows it will rebroadcast CTV News Toronto daily at 6 p.m. and a rerun of the Evan Solomon Show at 10 p.m. weekdays. Jamil Jivani fills the 7-10 p.m. slot.
Weekend host and Toronto broadcasting legend Ted Woloshyn was also let go. Among those 1010 staff confirming their departures on social media were news director Kym Geddes, reporters Hayley Cooper, Lucas Meyer and anchor Claude Feig.
Bell won’t confirm which jobs or employees it is cutting, so we must rely on self-reporting to find out who has been told their services are no longer required.
Others across Bell Media to announce they had been laid off:
- Rick Henriques, communications coordinator
- Robin Johnston, director original production, factual and reality
- Dahlia Kurtz, weekend morning show host at CFRA 580 Ottawa
- Steve McCann, managing writer at Your Morning
- Ivy Mak and Glynn Perkins, CTV Toronto assignment editors
- Brent Wallace, TSN Ottawa reporter
- Playback reported Tom Hastings, director of original programming, drama, had been let go
- Toronto Mike reports weather anchors Tom Brown and Anwar Knight were cut
- A number of sales people and affiliate reps for Bell specialty services were also eliminated.
- Update since first posting: TSN anchors Dan O’Toole and Natasha Staniszewski have been let go.
- Update #2: The Windsor Star reports Steve Bell has been let go from CKLW Windsor after 40 years with the station
- Update #3: The Niagara Falls Review reports two producers with 610 CKTB along with veteran reporter
- Noelle Sinclair have lost their jobs.
- Update #4: BNN anchor Catherine Murray.
- Lynzee Barnett, host of London’s Pure Country
- Cash Connors, morning host at Kitchener-Waterloo’s Virgin Radio
Mary Wilson of The Supremes has died suddenly at her home in Henderson, Nevada, at the age of 76. She is survived by her daughter, son, several grandchildren, a sister and a brother.
Many people aren’t getting out as much as they used to but construction goes on across midtown with schools, businesses and condos rising to completion. Above, we see the new Davisville Public School. It seems well on schedule to open for classes this coming fall. Below, at the left and upper right are shots of the new Gyro Mazda showroom, service bays and office on the east side of Laird Drive. Lower right is the condominium and retail complex on Bayview Ave to be known as 730 Hillsdale.
Access to Leaside Centre from Industrial?
Also near completion it appears, is the building which will house Shoppers Drug Mart and PetSmart in the expanded Leaside Village (Longo’s) shopping centre. The new structure was built officially at 25 Industrial St. It raises the prospect that the whole of Leaside Centre will soon be accessible from that street as well as Laird and Esandar Drive
