The South Bayview Bulldog

There is a bit of a face lift  going on at old favorite Rosie’s Kitchen and at the adjoining shop, Unique Jewellery, 1549 and 1551.Bayview respectively. The brick front of both these shops will be covered by a new stucco finish. Here we see workers putting up sheeting to hold the stucco at Unique Jewelry while Rosie’s frontage (to the right) shows bare brick which was under their old sign. Tell Frank and Nora at Rosie’s that you saw it here. 

It would be a challenge to tote up the value of all the building permits in Leaside and environs. Two houses coming right along are ( l to r) 63 and  58 Bessborough Drive. (Many thanks to an alert reader who corrected the numbering of one house).

It’s no doubt heart-breaking for the eight women badminton players who have been expelled from the Olympics by the World Badminton Federation. These young people from China, South Korea and Indonesia are naive and were foolishly influenced.  It’s a shame they were tricked — or tricked themselves — into thinking it was okay to intentionally lose. Their teams had already qualified and by losing, the badminton women were trying to succeed to a match against a weak team still left in the competition. But sports is about playing the game strenuously to win. The judges were right to disqualify. The two Canadian athletes who have been the lucky beneficiaries of the match-fixing won’t be tempted to make a similar mistake.  Alex Bruce of Toronto and Michele Li of Markham received another chance in the doubles tournament because two of the offending teams had been in their group. The Canadians were thus launched into the quarter-final, and they took advantage. Ms. Bruce and Ms. Li beat the Australian team in three sets (21-9, 18-21, 21-18) to advance to an unexpected semi-final appearance against Japan.  Win or lose, the IOC can be sure that Canada’s girls will be giving it everything they’ve got. 

We’ve been keeping tabs on this modern home under construction at 445 Heath Street East in Bennington Heights  since the original was knocked down. It now appears in a nice cladding of sand coloured brick. The structure was designed by real estate agent Tracey Fines, who owns the property with her husband who is building it. They live just down the street. Tracey also designed the similar spacious home at nearby 8 Evergreen Gardens (inset). 445 Heath should be on the market in September, Tracey says.

A staff writer for The New Yorker has resigned and his bestselling book has been halted after he acknowledged inventing quotes by Bob Dylan. Jonah Lehrer released a statement Monday through his publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, saying that some Dylan quotes appearing in Imagine: How Creativity Works did “not exist.” Others were “unintentional misquotations, or represented improper combinations of previously existing quotes.”Lehrer said he acknowledged his actions after being contacted by Michael Moynihan of the online publicationTablet Magazine, which earlier Monday released an in-depth story on the Dylan passages in Imagine. “I told Mr. Moynihan that (the quotes in question) were from archival interview footage provided to me by Dylan’s representatives. This was a lie spoken in a moment of panic. When Mr. Moynihan followed up, I continued to lie, and say things I should not have said,” Lehrer wrote in his statement. “The lies are over now. I understand the gravity of my position. I want to apologize to everyone I have let down, especially my editors and readers.”