The South Bayview Bulldog

The Leaside Property Owners Association has taken up the cause of neighbours on McRae Drive opposite Trace Manes Park who are opposing a box style replacement home at 158 McRae. A petition has been started. In an appeal to residents Friday Geoff Kettel and Carol Burton Fripp, co-presidents, say the out-of-character box will spoil the look of the street and dwarf its neighbors. In recent years large box homes have made inroads into streets in South Leaside, Bennington Heights and elsewhere.

LPOA mail Friday

“Do you ever marvel at the view across McRae Drive from the playground at Trace Manes Park – soon to be revitalized as the Georgia Walsh playground – to the row of houses making up the block from Crandall to Field? These seven houses in Revival style are all the same, yet all different. This iconic Leaside streetscape is threatened by the proposed teardown of just one of the houses – 158 McRae Drive – and its replacement with a large modern box with flat roof. The new home, if approved by the Committee of Adjustment next Thursday, will be wider, higher and deeper than any of the other homes on the block. It will dwarf the adjacent homes and simply not “fit”, as seen in the drawing attached to the application. The application for this new house and the variances to the zoning by-law that it requires will be heard at the North York Committee of Adjustment on Thursday August 29th at 9.30am. If like the Leaside Property Owners Assn you are concerned about this please contact the LPOA at info@lpoa.ca.”

In what seems like an unheard-of decision, the RCMP have told CBC reporter David Common of “imminent” plans to arrest Canadian perpetrators in the infamous CRA tax scam racket. The enormous fraud, which has cost gullible taxpayers millions of dollars, is operated out of boiler rooms in India. Many of those have been busted already but the scheme apparently requires Canadian accomplices to help launder the money. Thursday’s unusual release to Mr. Common raises suspicion that the Mounties are trying to spook suspects here.

Canadian Press says that the editor of the East-York based Your Ward News has been sentenced to a year in jail for publishing hate. James Sears seems likely to serve about six months of that sentence before release. Sears, 55, had argued that his lawyer had purposely thrown the case but the judge disagreed. The paper’s publisher, LeRoy St. Germaine, will be sentenced next week.

Additional photo of previously unseen suspect released Thursday

New photo of suspect wearing distinctive cap

Third suspect as seen in July release by police

Toronto Police continue to press the case of pizza delivery men who are switching bank cards on customers when they are paid at the door. In the process, the perpetrators get the PIN and the card. Following that, they promptly clean out the victim’s bank account. Police hunt pizza-delivery fiddlers in bank card switcheroo

The fire on Tonelli Rd. in Mississauga has been extinguished and there are no injuries. The smokey blaze erupted Wednesday afternoon. Remarkably, reporting is absent on just what burned and who owned the place. Tentative posts ranged from an environmental business to a candle warehouse.

Artun Arat and mom, Dr. Emel Arat/Bulldog

1636 Bayview/Bulldog

Peer leaders get ready for new students/TNO

740 Danforth will have a legal cannabis store

Cutie watching buses/@cabbagetownmatt

Artun Arat, seen at upper left with mom Dr. Emel Arat, is serving cooling lemonade outside the family practice at 1600 Bayview Ave. That’s the Leaside Orthodontic Centre. This is the second summer that Artun has raised money for Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital. Thanks Artun.  Upper right is the former location of Cumbrae’s at 1636 Bayview where neighbors are buzzing because the for lease sign has been taken down. Stay tuned. At centre right, TNO (the Neighborhood Organization) has posted a great picture of peer leaders from local schools getting ready to welcome newcomer students. At lower left, 740 Danforth near Pape Ave. (Greek Village Restaurant) has been announced as one of 13 new locations for legal weed stores in Toronto. South Bayview still seems to be weed-store free, at least for now. Finally at lower right is a sweet shot from Cabbagetown Matt on Instagram of this youngster (who he knows) peeking through the hole in the wall at Donlands Station to see the busses.

There is sound, fury and a smirk or two Wednesday on Leaside Community Facebook where an indignant post wants to know why the police would stop illegal turns at the north Leaside entry points off Bayview (Glenvale, Broadway, Craig) but permit garbage trucks to make the same turn.

Metrolinx has announced that Leslie St will re-open at Eglinton Ave Wednesday. A release this morning says that’s two weeks ahead of schedule. Access to and from Leslie to Eglinton by car had been closed for work on the LRT tracks. According to Metrolinx, the work went off without a hitch.

The Danish government is expressing shock and disbelief on Wednesday over Donald Trump’s cancellation of a state visit to Denmark after its prime minister rebuffed his interest in purchasing Greenland. It has the air of bullying about it. Trump’s interest in buying land around Canada recalls the 1866 purchase of Alaska by the US from the Russians.

Alaska purchase shocked the British into creating Canada

The purchase stunned the British and prompted the creation of Canada. Since then, many parts of Canada have reportedly toyed with joining the US — Nova Scotia once threatened it but probably wasn’t serious. British Columbia and Alberta, on the other hand, might ask “how much?”