The South Bayview Bulldog

“Shelter” for those evacuated from their homes

Several blocks of south Leaside were blocked off from traffic Tuesday and many people were evacuated when crews replacing the water main broke a natural gas line Residents said the people in the block of Rumsey Rd. between Crofton Rd. and Parkhurst Blvd were ordered out of their homes. One woman, the owner of 182 Rumsey, was walking her dog only to hear sirens and rush home. Police would not let her into the street until she told them her ten-year old son was still in the home. She said the rupture occurred outside her front door. Police ordered a large bus to the scene to accommodate those who needed to rest for the estimated three-hour repair job to be done. No injuries were reported.

GAS LEAK: Rumsey Rd + Crofton Rd~Leak is capped~Homes still are evacuated & road closures still in effect till further notice #GO1562846

— Toronto Police Operations (@TPSOperations) August 29, 2017

Silver Elvis/Canada

Strong Lady/Australia

MaracaTALL Drummers/Brazil/Canada

The 18th annual Toronto International BuskerFest for Epilepsy is at Woodbine Park Labour Day weekend starting Friday. Three of the more than a hundred performers from around the world are shown above. BuskerFest used to play on Yonge Street til 2015. That venue ended when Scotiabank stopped funding. This year CTV (Bell) The Toronto Star and Metro Inc and others are sponsoring BuskerFest, which is in aid of Epilepsy research and assistance. This year’s festival will feature more than 100 world-class performers including acrobats, comedians, jugglers, fire manipulators, musicians, high-skill circus performers and others. Woodbine Park is at 1695 Queen St East at Coxwell Ave. Be generous when artists pass the hat.

Toronto school boards say that 21 of their school-bus routes are without permanent drivers just a week before students are to go back to class. There seems to be lack of interest in the work.  The boards say that two of their school bus carriers, Sharp Bus Lines and Stock Transportation, have notified them of driver shortages. There is a “spare complement” of staff to cover daily absences. The report does not specify further numbers.

Political leaders are keeping a straight face as they announce that all things named after or representing John A. Macdonald will not be expunged from public sight  Not this week anyway. Premier Wynne waxed on about learning from history — good and bad — when she demurred to changing the name of who knows how many schools named after the first prime minister. Justin Trudeau has also said that the statue of Macdonald in Ottawa will stay.  However shameful Indigenous activists may find Macdonald, the spectacle of elected leaders having to address these things is humiliating to the country. They might just as reasonably have said that they won’t be demolishing the Ontario Legislature or the Parliament Buildings, scene of much cockeyed “colonialist” behaviour.

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UPDATE – COLLISION
Coxwell Ave and O'Connor Dr, one in custody for impaired driving #GO1560110 ^cb

— Toronto Police Operations (@TPSOperations) August 29, 2017

Where are we Bad Boy?

Tomatoes

Seems happy

New image

Whole Foods stores in Toronto were decked out with signs proclaiming reductions in everything from ground beef to dinner buns Monday, an apparent effort by the new grocer in chief, Jeff Bezos, to shake up the industry and critically, to change the perception of Whole Foods. Who knows where it will go. And while prices have been lowered, they aren’t so low that Whole Foods can’t make money if it can improve traffic. And that may be the key.  WF needs more customers. Of course no one knows the secret dreams of the Emperor of Amazon. Does he want to corner the grocery industry? The fear expressed in the media seemed to suggest this is exactly what Bezos wants. Does he have that much money? What about Competition and antitrust law?  Time will tell. But Monday we saw the prices of ground beef and Atlantic salmon cut down to what a customer might pay at Loblaw.  There are dozens, maybe hundreds of leads at Google News about this story.

City set to remove parking ticket adjudication from courts

Joined City in 2012

Stylish woman

Believes in selling Cities

Jennifer Keesmaat has resigned her position as Chief Planner with the City of Toronto and will leave the office officially on Friday, September 29  Her departure, as set out in the linked news release, gives no hint of where she will go, why she is leaving or who will replace her. CP24 writer Sandie Benitah writes Monday that Keesmaat “notably clashed” with Tory over the future of the Gardiner Expressway when she spoke out in favour of removing the eastern portion of the aging roadway. The mayor wanted a “hybrid” solution that would see only the elevated portion, east of the Don River, removed. Keesmaat was said to have received a “talking to” from Tory. City of Toronto

OPP and Canada Border Services have traced and seized an enormous shipment of cocaine — some 1,062 kilograms worth $60 million at wholesale value and approximately $250 million on the street. It came in through Montreal but its original point of departure is unknown. However police say they “smell” Mexico. This City News video of Deputy Commissioner Rick Barnum is very interesting as to how well the cocaine was wrapped to avoid detection by drug sniffing dogs.

Carolyn Bennett

Jane Philpott

Ginette Petitpas

Seamus O’Regan

It appears that Carolyn Bennett, the long-time member for St. Paul’s,  has been eased aside in a cabinet shuffle that effectively splits her portfolio on the Indigenous file. The former Health Minister and Trudeau favorite Jane Philpott is now the new minister of Indigenous Services, responsible for providing services for non-self-governing communities, while Ms. Bennett, becomes minister of Crown-Indigenous relations and northern affairs. New Brunswick MP Ginette Petitpas Taylor was elevated as minister of health and backbench MP Seamus O’Regan installed as veterans affairs minister. The recommendation to split those responsibilities comes out of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, which submitted its report in October, 1996.

O’REGAN A FRIEND OF PRIME MINISTER

Kent Hehr shifts from veterans affairs to become minister of sport and persons with disabilities, the portfolio previously held by Carla Qualtrough. Qualtrough, from B.C., will head up the public services and procurement department, which is responsible for addressing problems with the Phoenix payroll system and for managing major military procurements. The CBC reports that O’Regan, a 46-year-old former television host and close personal friend of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, will be Newfoundland and Labrador’s representative at the cabinet table. Just months after he was elected in 2015, O’Regan, who co-hosted CTV’s Canada AM for nearly a decade, announced he had entered into a wellness program to “adopt an alcohol-free lifestyle.”

An Indian court has sentenced Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, known to his sometime violent followers as God Man, to ten years in prison for the rape of two of his followers. Then, genuinely surprising news that the boss of the travel firm Expedia, Dara Khosrowshahi, will become the new CEO of Uber. In Texas, the flooding in Houston continues Monday with photos showing disabled elderly people stuck in waist deep water waiting for rescue. Then finally, a BBC writer may be trying to make a point by asking whether it’s “plain wrong” to make sausages out of piglets. The answer could be probably not.