The South Bayview Bulldog

USING FIFTH OF CAPACITY

Toronto District School Board has blocked Snapchat, Instagram and Netflix after it found that those three sites were burning up more than 20 per cent of the board WiFI capacity. In a statement Tuesday TDSB said these sites are making many necessary operational tasks like attendance, registration and report cards nearly impossible to complete.  The “interim measure” will help alleviate congestion and boost network capacity while minimizing the impact on teaching and learning, it said. The board said it was working on providing a faster network, and said regular WiFi access is expected to resume in September.

Denver and region experienced a nasty hailstorm Monday. Take a look at some of the activity. The first video is from a dash cam which chronicles the destruction of a perfectly good windshield as the driver tries to get home.

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It appears there will be a new barber at the 1691 Bayview Ave. address where the late Leo Cornacchia practiced his craft for so many years. The new name is The Ritz Men’s Hair Cutting. Leo’s place updated.

Here we see rally driver Tomasz Kasperczyk escape a surely fatal spin right off a mountain road during the Rally Islas Canarias, part of the European Rally Championship on Friday. Watch as his car is secured by the flexible road fencing from a disastrous drop. Kasperczyk leapt from the passenger seat of the car, which was left teetering above a sheer drop, and signalled he was uninjured by holding up a sign with ‘OK’ printed on it.

The dash camera of Kevin Taylor caught this young man risking his well being at speeds up 64 k/hr on a Mississauga thoroughfare. Dangerous. As police say “if he hits a pothole or even a bump, he’s in trouble.”

It will seem like the height of self indulgence to many, but a NewMarket man defends his decision to clone his ling-time pet Wolfie for reasons of “having a dog that was in line with me … in unison”  CBC

Coach has bagged competitor Kate Spade in a deal worth $2.4 US billion. Coach will pay $18.50 in cash for each Kate Spade share — an increase of nearly 30% from where the stock was trading prior to rumors of a sale. Coach said it expects the transaction to close by the end of the third quarter. It plans to preserve Kate Spade’s “brand independence” and retain key staff.

In the wake of landslides that wiped out at least two backyards Friday, the Moore Park Residents Association will meet Wednesday for its annual general meeting. Ravines are always high on the Moore Park agenda where two great divides run through the area of fine homes, most built there in the 1920s. Friday’s collapse occurred behind at least two homes on Rose Park Crescent north of St.Clair Ave West and west of Inglewood Drive. This land overlooks David Balfour Park and the Yellow Creek. It seems steeper generally and maybe less stable than properties that line the Moore Park Ravine in Moore Park and Bennington Heights. Many such properties on both ravines are landfill, added by residents. The Toronto Conservation Authority spends millions to keep the ravines stable but the repair cost after such landslide is the  responsibility of homeowners. And although owners rightly find such collapses frightening it is said to be the view of the conservation authority that the foundations of homes along the ravine are stable. The Moore Park AGM begins Wednesday at 7 p.m. at OLPH school on Garfield Ave.

The Annual General Meeting of the South Eglinton Ratepayers and Residents Association (SERRA) has heard Josh Matlow (Ward 22) call the planned apartment towers at 18 Brownlow Ave the work of a greedy developer. The City and SERRA are locked in dispute with the Montreal firm whose appeal of Toronto’s rejection of the plan will be heard at the OMB on Monday, May 29.  It calls for two 24 storey towers which Matlow said will “forever change the character of that area of Soudan and leave no reasonable transition from the neighbourhood area (single family homes) to the south and the apartments of the Yonge-Eglinton area. It was, he said, “really bad planning, a really greedy application.”

1951 YONGE

The Councillor had similar harsh words for the Times Group development at 1951 Yonge centred on the now razed former LCBO building at Yonge and Millwood Rd. This proposal asks for towers 25 and 35 floors each. This was an area that is zoned mid-rise (seven or eight floors). The proposal was “inane.”  Matlow also raised the spectre of “blockbusting” techniques seen in the 1960s highrise development. Times, he said, had two houses on Millwood which they were permitting to decline as a form of incentive to the community to see them razed. This was a ruse he suggested. The homes are within a single famly dwelling zone and their demolition would open the flood gates to a challenge of the entire street.  He also said Times has been working on buying the few low-rise properties on the east side of Yonge down to Davisville. The corner property is the original store of John Davis (now a Starbucks). Matlow said he told Times that if they ever tried to knock it down he would “chain myself to the door.”

CANADA SQUARE

This is TTC property on the southwest corner of Yonge and Eglinton now being used as staging land for construction of the Crosstown LRT. Oxford Property Group will build on it and Matlow repeated his determination to see a very large public space on the corner, not a token green space. He said that he insisted on written assurance — apparently not yet  done — that Oxford would not be permitted to appeal any objection by the City to the as-yet undecided development on this public land to the OMB. The well-attended meeting was held in the newly-built meeting hall of Greenwood College School at Mt. Pleasant Rd. and Davisville Ave.

Gullible residents of Midtown are at risk if they swallow the bait arriving in the mail this week from a writer posing as an exile of the African country of Ivory Coast. In the letter, which seems to arrive at homes which still have a landline telephone with a listed address, the writer offers to share 30 per cent of $77.8 million if the sucker who gets the letter helps “my mother and myself” to get the cash out of some sort of political limbo. The recipient is invited to get in touch with the man who claims he is the son of a former president of Ivory Coast, by email or telephone, in the United Kingdom. The letter is postmarked in Malaysia. .

Dandy, a trauma dog has recently completed her training and certification and is set to provide support and comfort for clients of Victims Services Toronto, a non-profit organization associated with the TPS. VST provides immediate crisis response, intervention and prevention services which are responsive to the needs of individuals, families and communities affected by crime and sudden tragedies. Bobbie McMurrich, VST’s associate executive director, conceived the trauma dog program.

Mayor Tory was busy Monday with political programming unlike any seen during his hitch at NewsTalk1010. First he had Andrea Horwath down at City Hall promising to offer Toronto money to fix up social housing (if the NDP is elected). No one from the Liberal cabinet found this prospect threatening enough to dash down to Nathan Phillips Square and gripe about the challenge to Grit hegemony. Then, a tight-rope act to beat them all as his honour said he favours giving Pride its full measure of taxpayer funding this summer, even if it does ban the police from the parade. The mayor issued a statement which said: “This year, our Police Chief Mark Saunders decided in the prevailing circumstances, to withdraw police from marching in this year’s parade – and to focus on working with the LGBTQ and Black communities to ensure that we have a strong foundation of trust and partnership going forward.” Yeah. It’s the chief’s fault. Such a troublemaker.