The South Bayview Bulldog

Once again there’s been a public discussion about how wine is sold in Ontario with a word of input from the highest level. This time Premier Wynne says she is prepared to allow the sale of Ontario wines at farmer’s markets. That’s nice. But there will be no Ontario wine sold at corner stores. The government no doubt has concerns about how much money it makes in any private site but also about control of the sale of wine.  Both the government and industry seem silent on the appealing idea of wine dispensing machines. These versatile machines require very little space, are secure and infinitely manageable. They can check a purchaser’s identity and shut down at any specified hour with the spirits safe inside. They can be owned and serviced by the government, if that is necessary, and located essentially anywhere. It seems to represent a modern way to sell wine conveniently, economically and safely. Wine vending machines are in operation all over the world.  It is time that Ontario began to make the sale of its own products more salable in a genuinely convenient and socially suitable way.

A local Toronto Police commander will embark on a four-day mid-winter dog sledding adventure next February as part of his on-going efforts to raise money for TPS Victims Services Toronto.  Staff Inspector Heinz Kuck will have an experienced guide as he covers 100 kilometres of frozen terrain in Algonquin Park. Over the past two years, Staff Kuck and his colleagues at 53 Division have paddled the 56-kilometer journey from Niagara-on-the-Lake to Lakeshore Promenade in Mississauga twice, raising $35,000 for VST, which provides crisis response, trauma and support services to victims of crime and sudden tragic circumstances 24 hours daily. Now the veteran of 35 years with police service will try something equally challenging with the help of  guide Jamie Sands of Chocpaw Expeditions. More 

The thermometer reads a tolerable minus six degrees, but a stiff west wind is blowing as Kevin Talmage drags a thick, 80-foot-long hose across the snow-dusted turf of Bennington Heights Park at the south end of Leaside. Globe and Mail 

It’s over and the digging out has begun. Above is a medley of Toronto snow pictures off Twitter. Left a benevolent “Red Cross” type of shoveller. Centre, this is the laziest snowman we have ever seen. Right, a lady measured the nearly 20 cm of snow in her garden. Good luck all. 

A court date set for next Monday (December 16, 2013) has been abandoned by the Mount Pleasant Group of Cemeteries in the game of legal chess that goes on between it and the citizen’s group known as Friends of Mount Pleasant Cemetery (Friends). The occasion was intended to set a date to challenge the Friends right to “standing” in their claim that the cemeteries are a public trust owned by the province. The citizen’s group claims the cemeteries have been essentially appropriated by MPGC. A move by the Friends seems to have dodged the possibility of such a challenge when they moved their case under the The Charities Accounting Act. That act permits legal standing, stating that two people (in this case. Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam and Friends of Toronto Public Cemeteries) may bring such an action forward. The Friends want a public inquiry into the ownership of the cemeteries. At the last minute MPGC said it was not going to bring the motion forward so it let the court date go. Now MPGC wants the Friends to put up $20,000 for the cost of the cancelled motion plus an additional $50,000 for security. Friends has already placed $70,000 with the court. All of this is the type of rear-guard action to be expected in a battle of this kind. It does raise the question however as to why a review cannot be done in a timely way.

Vito Pilieci writing in the Ottawa Citizen asks the question that comes intuitively to the tongues of your ordinary taxpayer in South Bayview. What are we really going to get for the $190 million in the peoples money that is being given to Cisco Systems Inc. Some independent academics are struggling to figure it out.  Vito Pilieci