Charming story on Leaside’s Sarah Jordan

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Linked here is a charming story on Sarah Jordan, a nine-year-old who did outstanding work in the annual food drive. She set a goal of collecting one tonne of food and actually doubled her goal, collecting more than two tonnes of food (4664 pounds) and nearly $2,000 in donations. This was the Leaside students fourth year holding the food drive to collect donations for the Daily Bread Food Bank and this year she expanded it to every class at Northlea Elementary and Middle School and the community with a bin at Tremlett’s Valu Mart. There is a very nice picture by Dan Pearce of Sarah and her sister Claire in Inside.Toronto.com.

Poison runs between Air Canada and staff

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The linked story is an attempt to explain what the Air Canada flight attendants are hoping to accomplish. It isn’t very enlightening but it does give some feeling for the poison’that runs between the flight attendants and Air Canada, and apparently, the Government as well. If you believe the sources in the story the Government’s intention to legislate the employees back to work may somehow be responsible for the rejection. If so, it is a sad commentary on the maturity of the flight attendants. It’s a little reminiscent of the intense militancy of the British Airways flight attendants. Are the flight attendants in a state of war with their employer much like their B/A counterparts? It may be that the Air Canada staff is just that disgruntled. The media has not done a good job at getting at the heart of the flight attendants issue. No representative for example is quoted in this story. Story.

Restoration of 1919 engine shop begins

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Work has begun to restore the Canadian Northern Railway Eastern Lines Locomotive Shop on Laird Drive. It will be a centrepiece of the new Leaside Village shopping complex when it opens next year. Tuesday there were as many as six large scissor lifts with masons and others checking and repairing brickwork on the 1919 engine repair building. Left, for the first time in a long time the wooden shutters are down on some of the graceful windows of the old shop. Right, a scissor lift and bricklayers at the northeast corner on Esandar Drive.
Previous story.

Pictures of your dysfunctional Toronto

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It’s rather like a story from a psychiatric ward. On the left you see a workman sawing down a patio on South Bayview. It was urgent. The patios had to go immediately because “we’re going to replace all this sidewalk tomorrow.” That was August 15, 2011. According to the supervisor of the work Bruce Shaw (who seems to have vanished off the face of the earth) the old concrete tree boxes were to be removed. Fine. The trees would of course come down. Fine. Then Mr Shaw and all his people disappeared. Gone. And nearly two months later, they’re still gone. But then on August 30, 2011 (right) we have the Department of Urban Forestry pruning the trees that are slated to be cut down. It is the first time the trees have been pruned in eleven years. In all of this, there is no communication with the merchants about when or if we may expect this work to begin. During the Christmas rush? Next spring? Who knows? The City’s operations are simply dysfunctional. And what’s more, nobody seems to care.

BlackBerry outage traced to server in England

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BlackBerry users in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and India suffered email outages for several hours on Monday. By this afternoon, the problem had been isolated to a server in Slough in Berkshire the BBC said. Twitter users and Reuters correspondents from Britain to Dubai to New Delhi reported disruptions or complete outages of their email and BlackBerry Messenger services.
BBC

A/C flight attendants reject settlement again

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Air Canada flight attendants have expressed a firm militancy tonight as they voted to reject a tentative deal for the second time in three months. This could place them on strike this Thursday. More than 65 per cent of members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees who voted opted to reject a proposed contract that was signed on Sept. 20 between union negotiators and management. In August, 88 per cent of Air Canada CUPE members who cast ballots rejected the earlier tentative pact. Globe and Mail

Spectacular collapse of a cliff as camera rolls

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Breathtaking video of the collapse of a huge cliff in Cornwall England. Stay with it for a second or two. This comes, happily, with a report from someone who witnessed the event as follows: “Thanks for all of your positive comments. Sorry I can’t reply to them all individually. Hopefully I can answer most of the FAQ’s now…. The failure occurred at about 5pm on Friday 23rd September 2011. It took place on the North Coast of Cornwall. There were only a few people watching, with about the same number of inquisitive seals in the water! There were lots of ‘small’ failures just before the main event. This appears to be a progressive failure, the frequency and size of the smaller failures increased until the inevitable happened. The sound was incredible, those cliffs are about 150-200ft high. I’d been chatting to the couple mentioned in the clip only a few minutes before the footage was taken. They can just be seen walking away in the distance; the path had been fenced off and diverted, so they were quite safe. An amazing sight, and credit to R who took the video, I still can’t stop revisiting it! Thanks again for all the comments, who says Geology isn’t an exciting subject?”

A short lesson on credit card charges

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Dan Kelly is a vice president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. He has written an excellent primer for both storekeepers and consumers who wish to keep down the cost of transactions, and ultimately keep down prices. There is a connection. The phenomenon is as recent as the banks starting to issue so-called premium cards which carry charges of as much as three per cent to the retailer. Here is some of Kelly’s advice: “Take this test. Which MasterCard do you think would cost more to accept: a) President’s Choice MasterCard or b) Capital One Cash Back Gold MasterCard? For Visa, which is more costly: a) Royal Bank Visa Infinite Avion or b) CIBC Aerogold Visa? If you answered a) for each, then you did better than the merchants CFIB tested in a short telephone survey. Words like Gold, Platinum, Cash Back or Points do not mean the card necessarily costs anything extra to a merchant. However, words such as World or World Elite on your MasterCard likely mean the merchant is paying among the highest fees out there.” Read Dan Kelly’s column

Moms-to-be sale marks 17 years in business

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Moms-to-be-and-more will celebrate its 17th anniversary on October 20, 2011. The large baby and children’s store on the northwest corner of Bayview and Manor Road will offer a discount that represents the amount of the sales tax (13 percent). Moms-to-be started out on the east side of Bayview but later moved to its present location when the Submarine sandwich shop closed. Happy anniversary MTBAM.