The South Bayview Bulldog

Berardinetti

Do high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes merely create congestion? That’s the view of Michelle Berardinetti (Ward 35). Her sense of traffic on Eglinton Ave. E. is that very few cars can qualify to run in the HOV lanes. Therefore, says the Scarborough Southwest member of council, she wants the lanes eliminated. Berardinetti represents the south side of Eglinton.  The lanes were created to encourage car-pooling but has it? “We don’t see any studies produced to say that that works,” she said. “I want to see a report to see if it works. We do many things in the city to improve gridlock, but this is more detrimental.” 

BlogTO has an interesting feature on the Zeidler Architects vision for Yonge and Queen (inset). Here we see the breathtaking transition from the 19th century structure in place to a 65 level residential building. It seems quite unclear as to just how feasible this will be. Re-construction may be required to make the tower sit satisfactorily on the heritage site. It may have to be torn down and become a facade, perhaps. Kristyn Wong-Tam (Ward 27) has also made an apparently sensible complaint about the absence of parking in this concept. Hard to imagine that there is no new parking at all, but that is what is being said. According to BlogTO a recent public meeting  “was worryingly devoid of any actual community members” BlogTO

Sun News poll makes interesting news. Justin Trudeau is more popular than the other leaders but least suited to be prime minister, according to the survey.

It surely won’t be very long now. The heavy oak doors and other elegant woodwork have been stripped from the interior. The porch light and electrical fixtures have been ripped off the exterior. Someone has even dug up the nearly 90 year old flag stones that formed the front walk. And then on Thursday, September 19, 2013, Enbridge sank a hole across the street and turned off the gas to 308 Rose Park Drive in Moore Park. Outside on the nice little boulevard that lines the street, the mandatory orange plastic mesh tree fence has gone up to protect the maples. They are only about 45 years ago, planted in sadness too when the original elm trees all died off from the wretched disease. In this instance, the orange tree fence also protects the unique stand-alone street lamps that line Rose Park Drive. They remain in use from the 1920s. A short walk to the rear past the original milk box is the large yard. Stretching across nearly 70 feet, it will be fine for the two town homes to be built here in the months to come. The owners — all of them — are gone but neighbors have many memories of their friends and events (inset) like the 2011 Rose Park Drive Street Party where magician Tricky Ricky beguiled kids in the driveway to 308. So long 308. 

And how did he get down? It’s simple really. This one-year-old colt descended the same way he clambered up on the roof. The garage from which he surveys the world in this unusual picture is built into the side of a hill (inset). It is not a wide path to the roof, but if you are a sure-footed young creature with four legs for balance it can be done. We judge that little length of roof just off the ground to be about a foot and a half in length. Pat and Stephen Downey of Hampton, New Brunswick run this horse farm with Stephen’s brother Archie. It was Archie who got up early the other day to find the colt up on the roof. He snapped a picture and sent it to his brother. No one believed it. The old photo shop trick, you know. But it was all real and it took some coaxing to get the colt back down to his pasture. Those old shingles must taste awful. 

“Driver tried to stop”

Two women passengers on the OC Transpo bus  that collided with a VIA train Wednesday say that driver Dave Woodard did respond to the cries from passengers telling him to stop. But he did so too late. This information, aired on CP24,  has been unreported by the media and is being transmitted even now quite incidentally. Previously aired information about the seconds before the collision have come from motorists and train passengers who seemed to suggest that the bus slammed into the train without slowing. If Woodard did in fact apply the brakes in a futile attempt to avoid the crash it would tend to suggest that he had been distracted or asleep in the moments before he heard the passengers shouting at him, not disabled or unconscious as some have speculated.