TSX through the roof to 471.61

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From the TMX site: The Toronto stock market surged more than 400 points Wednesday after the Bank of Canada and other major central banks took coordinated action to provide added support to a global financial system. The S&P TSX Composite climbed 471.61 points, or 4%, to 12,204.11 The TSX resource sector in particular benefited from steps by China, the world’s second biggest economy, to encourage growth. Canada’s central bank is joining the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the European Central Bank, the U.S. Federal Reserve and the Swiss National Bank “to enhance their capacity to provide liquidity support to the global financial system.” Story

OMB decision on 1860 Bayview released

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A final decision on the development at 1860 Bayview Ave. at Broadway Ave has been released by the Ontario Municipal Board. There will not be any surprises for those who have followed the matter. The developer, Starbank Developments 1860 Corp., acquiesced to residents concerns relating to traffic. There will be road-widening along both Bayview and Broadway and a northbound left-turn lane “to direct traffic onto the site.” Elsewhere, there would be “various restrictions on turning notably to limit traffic into the neighbouring residential community.” It appears from a diagram that there will be an entrance and/or exit into the in-building parking on Bayview with a similar feature on Broadway. There will be, it is said, 193 parking spaces. The OMB decision quotes Starbanks as saying that while parking “would not (conform) to the 1960’s standards foreseen in the by-law, parking spaces would be ample in light of today’s actual parking requirements, with the added feature of ‘generous drive aisle width’ to make people very comfortable’ parking inside.” Diagram

Pottery Road to re-open today

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Pottery Road is scheduled to re-open later Wednesday, The road has been closed since the Spring and was supposed to open at the end of the summer. But engineers found that changes made durng their work has caused instability in part of the Don Ravine. That required a futher two month closure. The new pottery road includes somewhat wider traffic lanes and a very nice bicycle and walking lane.

MLG is now the Peter Gilgan Athletic Centre

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It’s the end of an era as Maple Leaf Gardens assumes a new name as the Peter Gilgan Athletic Centre at the Gardens. Mr. Gilgan made a gift of $15-million to finish the new Ryerson University facility. He is the founder and CEO of Mattamy Homes. Tomorrow (Wednesday) a new Loblaws is scheduled to open on the ground level of the newly renovated three storey centre.

Mayor’s press aide joins Sun and Newstalk 1010

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Mayor Rob Ford’s press secretary, Adrienne Batra, has resigned to become the Toronto Sun’s comment editor and a municipal affairs correspondent with Newstalk1010. A dogmatic fiscal conservative, Batra is the former provincial director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation in Manitoba. Batra came to work for Ford during his 2010 mayoral campaign and has helped him navigate through a handful of damaging missteps by playing up his regular-guy-makes-mistakes persona. At city hall, Batra is known as one of the few people who the mayor absolutely trusts and will listen to. For the last year, she has kept the gaffe-prone Ford on a tight leash.

School kilts: Confessions of an “old girl”

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The recent concern about school kilts has prompted a St Clement’s (private) School old girl to observe that the nerve-wracking business of just where the girls should have their hemline has been around since the time of that great Ontario educator Egerton Ryerson. She confesses without embarrassment that she and her friends all hiked up the hems purely to tantalize the boys. It was not the kilt, but the one-piece tunic, that seemed to inspire the most hussy-like behavior she reports. “You would fluff up the top of the tunic above the belt and as you did, the skirt got shorter and shorter.” And she suspects that those present-day kilt wearing undergrads who say innocently “But, I like the kilt” have something similar in mind. What can you do? We suppose asking the boys to wear kilts, while not unmanly, is definitely out of the question. It seems for sure that the girls don’t want to wear the trousers, except figuratively, of course.

TImeWarp at Northern Secondary School

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Students of Northern Secondary School will hold a “dancing fashion show” in aid of the United Way tomorrow (November 30, 2011) at the school, 851 Mt. Pleasant Rd. . It begins at 7 p.m. As those who remember the Rocky Horror Picture Show will know, TimeWarp is one of the crowd pleasing interludes of the cult movie. There will be a silent auction in which parents bid on goods and services donated by local merchants.

Moore Ave Loblaws cancels 24/7 hours

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Loblaws on Moore Ave has dropped its 24/7 business scheme. The decision was taken just after Thanksgiving after only four months as a concequence of the poor response from overnight shoppers. Essentially there are very few such people. Now Loblaws is observing more traditional hours (7 am to midnight) although the closing time of midnight appears to be two or three hours later than before the 24/7 experiment. Previous story