The South Bayview Bulldog

Ontario has eliminated free tuition for low-income students as it attempts to trim a multibillion-dollar deficit. The previous Liberal government increased the number of grants and made it possible for low-income students to attend college or university free of cost. But the auditor general found last month that costs for that program jumped by 25 per cent and warned it could grow to $2 billion annually by 2020-21. Ontario’s debt was estimated last year to be nearly $350 billion dollars.

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Mike Barry 1938-2018

Mariposa Bicycles 45 Cranfield Rd.

Cycling activists and friends are mourning the death late last year of Mike Barry Sr. Mr. Barry died December 29 at age 80. He was the co-founder, with friend John Palmer, of what has become Mariposa Bicycle Specialties on Cranfield Rd.near Bermondsey Rd. and O’Connor Drive. The men created the first Mariposa bicycle in 1969 from tubing they acquired from the Canada Cycle and Motor (CCM) racing division, which had just closed. In 1972, Mike opened Bicyclesport, a downtown shop where the bikes were made. Mariposa  Remembering Mike Barry

Forest Hill Falcons get family photo treatment at Leaside Cup

Pride of Bessborough Drive Elementary and Middle School

Some ladies wear their hair long on co-ed team

The Leaside Cup senior division for Grades 7 and 8 was won 2-1 Thursday by Forest Hill Junior and Senior Public School in a well-fought match against Bessborough Drive Elementary and Middle School. The co-ed tournament welcomes a varying selection of local school teams. Leaside Cup 2019 was its third year at Leaside Arena.

• Northlea EMS wins Jr. Division Leaside Cup hockey tourney
• Leaside Cup hockey tourney for players from local schools

Granddad recovered

First up Thursday is an engrossing tale of how a Saskatchewan ice fisherman and his friend retrieved a sunken cell phone so that pictures of his late grandfather would not be lost forever. Don’t miss it. Then, a bit of a flutter in five-year mortgage rates at the Royal Bank of Canada. RBC is easing up and others are likely to follow. Below that, a CBC report on the unsinkable Theresa May. Why isn’t she gone? It takes the Corp. a while to name the real reason. Yes, she’s tough, but it’s because no one else wants to deal with the impossible Brexit mess. Lastly, another must-see in the form of a 300-foot-wide whirling circle of ice in the Presumpscot River in Maine. Wild.

Kirk Woodman, a Canadian man who was kidnapped from a mining company site in Burkina Faso Wednesday, has been found dead. West Africa’s Sahel region has seen a number of abductions of foreigners in recent years by extremists linked to al-Qaida or the Islamic State organization. Burkina Faso recently declared a state of emergency in the region as attacks by Islamic extremists increased, especially along the border with Niger and Mali.

Allen Road at 401

Critical injuries

A 49-year-old man from Barrie and a woman, 60, were drivers of cars that collided on the Allen Road northbound ramp to Highway 401 westbound Wednesday night. The man is gravely injured say OPP. The woman has what are said to be serious injuries.

Cynthia Mulligan of City News has snared PC polling information from the days counting down to the June election that put the Doug Ford Tories in power. It cites NDP miscalculation and radical promises for incinerating Andrea Horwath’s soaring poll numbers. As one source says: “The voters looked.” But not in Toronto. Big Smoke voters painted the town Orange. How different is “NDP Toronto” from the rest of Ontario? Plenty.

Sculpture Robert Sprachman at Yonge St. meeting Wednesday

Iron Horse in place, 1994 to 1996

The Midtown Yonge BIA has undertaken to return the memorable Robert Sprachman sculpture known as Iron Horse to the Beltline overpass above Yonge St. south of Davisville Ave. At a meeting Wednesday the sculptor recalled the first incarnation of this work in 1994. It depicts 12 stallions at full gallop and evokes the 19th century culture of the steam engine as an iron horse. The work was intended to be permanent but when the City asked Sprachman for $50,000 to maintain the work the artist decided in 1996 to sell the horses individually. The new work, Iron Horse 2019, will be manufactured locally of recycled plastic to recreate the original. This time around, Midtown Yonge and the Toronto BIA Office will share responsiblity for the Iron Horse. It is hoped to have it in place by June

Northlea Elementary and Middle School has won the junior division (Grades 5 and 6) of the Leaside Cup Tournament Wednesday at Leaside Arena. The score was 2-0, with one marker coming from a shot into an empty net in the final moments of the game. Thursday sees play in the senior division (Grades 7 and 8) with a team from Bishop Strachan School joining the play in this mixed boys and girls tourney. Others contesting Thursday’s cup are Bessborough, Northlea, Forest Hill, Glen Ames and Cosburn.

A tournament well played. Great sportsmanship & determination. Congrats 5/6 on winning the #LeasideCup! @NorthleaTDSB @NorthleatdsbA @VPSanderstdsb @Eh_to_Z pic.twitter.com/OTIEyHSWDd

— Mme Kaziev (@MmeKaziev) January 16, 2019

An average of 58 percent of Canadians think it’s a crisis that a country some 5,000 km wide can’t seem to build pipelines. A study from Angus Reid Institute asked the question. Reid surveyed 4,024 Canadian adults between Dec. 21 and Jan. 3, to gauge national feeling. But responses varied widely though across the provinces, with a high of 87 per cent of Albertans polled calling it a crisis while, at the low end, only 40 per cent of Quebecers had a similar sentiment. Results from the rest of the country were more evenly divided, with 61 per cent calling the issue a crisis in Ontario, Manitoba and the Atlantic provinces, while Saskatchewan polled at 74 per cent, and B.C. was close to deadlocked with a slight edge toward “crisis” with 53 per cent.  The simmering issues of indigenous “ownership” of land and the import of oil from Saudi Arabia to fill the need in the Maritimes are pipeline related. Many call it a scandal.