The South Bayview Bulldog

Particip;ants in World Day of Prayer

Manor Road United

Filipino movement

A World Day of Prayer service was held Friday at Manor Road United Church with seven other area churches participating. This year’s guest speaker was M. Esquerra on behalf of the Filipino Women of Gabriela Ontario. It is a chapter of the Gabriela’s women’s movement in the Philippines. The Ontario body was formed in 2012 and seeks to extend the Filipino women’s mass movement to Canada. It campaigns on issues that will uphold womens’ rights and welfare. Their theme for the annual Day of Prayer gathering for 2017 was Am I Being Unfair to You? The day’s events were planned under the leadership of Susan Johnson of MRUC and supported by Reverend Debra Schneider. Churches participating at Manor Road United Church were Bedford Park United, Northlea United, Leaside United, St Cuthbert’s Anglican, St Monica’s RC, Leaside Presbyterian, and St Augustine’s Anglican. The history of the Day of Prayer is ecumenical and worldwide and dates to the latter years of the 19th Century. Each year a group of women from a different nation prepares the service which is translated into many languages and observed all over the world.

Canada has been awarded the ranking of second-best country in the world after Switzerland. It’s very nice but the idea that two places — one a land-locked postage stamp and the other an enormous, largely uninhabited chunk of North America on three oceans — should be compared this way is sort of amusing. The Bulldog adds that any Canadian who didn’t know the quality of first-world life he/she was living really has not been paying attention. This best country contest is in its second year and is run by U.S. News and World Report, Young and Rubicam and the Wharton School of Business. Stuff like this is good for their business too.  All leads

King Edward Junior and Senior PS

Two more cases of mumps have been diagnosed among students at separate public schools in Toronto it was reported Tuesday. With the case reported late last week at Forest Hill Collegiate there are now three students with mumps at three different schools. One of the new outbreaks is identified as being at King Edward Junior and Senior Public School at 112 Lippincott Street northwest of College and Spadina.  City-wide, the number of cases stands at 28, including the outbreaks that originated in west-central Toronto bars a recent weeks. Protocol in the case of infectious diseases like mumps has health authorities trying to trace and isolate those who might be positive. But it isn’t easy.  “People are developing mumps and they don’t know exactly who gave it to them,” Toronto Public Health’s Dr. Vinita Dubey told CBC Toronto on Tuesday. “Now, it seems there must be a broader circulation of the mumps virus throughout the city,” Dubey said.

VACCINATION WEAK BETWEEN 1970 AND 1991

Still, Toronto Public Health remains optimistic that there is unlikely to be a major outbreak because  vaccination among students is above 90 per cent in most Toronto schools. “However, if there are multiple cases in a school…we actually have the ability to exclude students who are not up-to-date with their immunizations from school,” Dubey said. TPH is asking the public to check their immunization records and said people born between 1970 and 1991 may have only received one dose as a child — rather than the now-standard two doses of the measles-mumps-rubella vaccines — and could be more vulnerable.

Dr. San E Tizer and Officer Scrubs were talking to Kindergarten pupils at Davisville Public School about keeping clean this week. A supplemental tweet indicates that those “crunch” apples will be consumed Thursday making the old halls will shiver to the sound apple eating. Could be good.

There is much surprise Tuesday following a survey of Chinese home buyers about how Chinese nationals buy property in Toronto and elsewhere in Canada because they love the education system. This may be, but those who know anything about affluent parents in Shanghai and Beijing will be familiar with the nearly 20-year pattern which starts with their children’s safety. They know first and foremost that their offspring are much more likely to be safe in Toronto than in New York. That and the history of Canada as a friend, more or less, during the tenuous days of Marxist mismanagement of China, make this an easy destination.

Avis Ottey, right

Sgt Ryan Russell

Avis Ottey, a civilian employee of the Toronto Police Service has been given the St. Michael’s Award for her work in assisting members of the TPS recover from the trauma sometimes encountered in their work. Ottey is the liaison to the TPS Employee and Family Assistance Program as well as Critical Incidents Response Team Coordinator. She was nominated for the award by Detective Sergeant Elizabett Cordeiro (left in photo). Ottey recalled the deaths of Service members Ryan Russell in 2011 and John Zivcic two years later, who died in the line of duty, as two critical incidents that have stood out for her. Russell, an 11-year police officer succumbed to his injuries after being struck by a snowplow allegedly stolen at a downtown intersection, while Zivcic died in hospital after being involved in a traffic collision.

City Executive is meeting Tuesday and approval will be sought by Mayor Tory and others for approval of the newly-revised $3.35 billion estimated cost of the Scarborough subway. The folly of this project is widely known and it is expected that those who object to the cost and inefficiency of the scheme will also be heard.  Also at City Hall, proponents of so-called ranked ballots say they will renew their efforts to see this form of voting implemented for the 2022 municipal election. The concept permits voters first and second choices. This allows for a run-off count if the leading candidate fails to obtain 50 percent of the popular vote. City council had committed to ranked ballot for 2018 but then reneged.

Bank the Thai Turtle

Yecch! Coins she ate

Surgeons in Thailand have removed 915 coins from inside Bank the Sea Turtle and the 25-year-old is recovering nicely. The coins were tossed into Banks pool by visitors looking for good luck. The swallowed coins formed an 11-pound (5 kilograms) mass in the sea turtle’s stomach and the weight of the metal eventually cracked Bank’s ventral (underside) shell, leading to infection, the AP reported.

The City News story on the development next door to John Fisher School on Erskine Avenue contains facts that might reasonably make your blood boil. The monster is 35 floors high and sits a snowball’s throw from the school it will forever darken with its shadow. The Councillor, Jaye Robinson, tells City News that 80 percent of the Ward 25 applications by developers to the Ontario Municipal Board last year were approved by the OMB over the objections of the City. Lastly, Ontario is the only province with a municipal board between the developers and the elected council. City News

The Toronto and District School Board has confirmed a case of mumps at Forest Hill Collegiate. The case came to light late Thursday. Parents were notified Friday. The total number of cases in Toronto now stands at 26, according to the Board of Health. Parents are being told that there is little risk of catching the disease if a child has been vaccinated.

Sunny Food Mart

Cash Now and Filipino Boutique

Ten languages

Stewing and stock pot

Sacks of rice

Salmon

Hard at work

Scrubby’s Coin Op

It’s not far to the Flemingdon Park Shopping Centre at 747 Don Mills. You have to cross over to get there however. When you do, it’s necessary to poke your way back along Gateway Blvd. past the Tim’s, Subway and Shoppers Drug Mart to get to the soul of the place. These would be enterprises like Sunny Food Mart, Scrubby’s Coin Laundry and Dry Cleaning, WebFusion Internet Cafe and the 180 degree Vape Store. It’s a collection of businesses both local and chain-owned forming a primer on the neighborhood they call Toronto’s landing-place. It is the home to thousands from countless lands, many of them in need of places like Cash Now. There are no banks or credit unions here. The pay-day counter is located at the rear of the Filipino Boutique on an interior (but still open air) walkway. Sunny Food Mart is owned by a Chinese family which has just opened the third Sunny in Markham. Walking among the groceries — bags of fried onions, coconut milk, sacks of rice, pork belly and cans with unreadable labels — puts you on the periphery of life here. The sign says they speak ten languages at Sunny and we’re betting there’s an eleventh, Tagalog, in there too. Of course the Philippines is a largely bilingual nation (Tagalog and English).

There’s nothing wrong at Marineland, says the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in its most recent inspection of the park. Marineland continues to face 11 cruelty to animal charges from previous inspections.  And Marineland denies all the allegations which relate to the treatment of the park’s land animals that include black bears, elk, red deer, fallow deer, guinea hens and a peacock. The park says an external veterinarian recently conducted an examination of all of Marineland’s animals and found no problems.

GM QUITS EUROPE

General Motors is selling its unprofitable European car business to the French maker of Peugeot, marking GM’s retreat from the continent and raising concerns of job cuts there. The price was $2.33 billion US for Opel in Germany and Vauxhall in Britain. In recent years, GM has failed to beat back the  native German hegemony in Europe — Mercedes, Volkswagen, BMW and Audi. It has also been out-played by Ford. GM says it will concentrate on the American and Chinese markets. In China, the lowly Buick (by North American standards) remains the best-selling car in that land of nearly one and a half billion souls.

CHECKING HYDRO MATH

And the Ontario budget watchdog will examine Liberal government arithmetic which claims it will cost a mere $25-billion in additional interest costs to bringing down the monthly cost of electricity. Premier Wynne recently announced 17-per-cent reduction in hydro bills thanks to the move Liberals say is like refinancing a mortgage over a longer period of time.