Tuesday, November 23, 2004
Rivers dies
I grew up on AM radio - and was slow to switch to FM. Therefore, I liked Tom Rivers and his ilk, and am sad to hear he died.
Everything about Tom Rivers was big: His size (6-foot-8 “in round figures,” as he’d say), his genuine talent for mayhem and his impact on Toronto.
Saturday, October 30, 2004
Stop humping
Only in Toronto would they consider building more fire and ambulance stations to get around the constantly reproducing speed bump epidemic. (The saying cut off your nose to spite your face comes to mind.)
“Nobody wants to talk to the fire department about this stuff until it’s their house on fire and their lawyers are after us about why are response time was what it was,” Cowden said.
I’ve found the speed bumps rather enjoyable in a large vehicle with good clearance and suspension, but a big heavy vehicle can sustain major damage on these nuisances.
Tuesday, October 5, 2004
What property rights?
Michael wonders who owns his house anyway, him or the state?
Owning a house makes one fully experience the looting nature of statism. As a homeowner in Toronto, I do not enjoy many rights. The government, at gunpoint, every year collects thousands of dollars in property taxes from me.
Saturday, October 2, 2004
More bad laws
The taxi industry has every right to be furious with this latest law to further hinder the business.
TORONTO’S TAXI drivers have been driven into a rage by a new by-law forcing them to buy only new cars when it’s time to replace their cabs. The cab industry is irate because they will no longer be able to buy cars that are a year old after city council changed the bylaw on Thursday night.
I don’t understand why the industry is so heavily regulated. It can’t be to protect passengers, since they pay and will pay even more dearly for their fares. Clearly, the city needs to allow anyone with a recent car and a clean criminal/driving record to run a taxi. The courier industry survives this way, and the prices stay (too) low. The bigger government grows, the more it has to add layers to justify its existence, like a cancer.
Monday, September 27, 2004
Toronto the grim
Oldtimers like Downing lament the good old days when Toronto was clean and efficient.
Many feel betrayed, frustrated and embarrassed, annoyed that one day they had really looked at their streets and found that underneath the familiarity, they were frayed. Just how did the city’s face become so blotched?
Saturday, September 18, 2004
Dump the bumps
They should be removing the speed bumps from all residential streets, not just the rich ones leading to Sunnybrook. Look at the streets leading to Toronto Western on Bathurst. Bathurst doesn’t move, mainly due to the lumbering streetcar, but neither does College and Dundas for the same reason. All the streets around there are reversing one-way and full of humps.
A dozen speed bumps along Toronto’s tony Bridle Path and Post Rd. are delaying critically sick or injured patients from reaching Sunnybrook hospital, say paramedics and residents in the Don Mills area.
Humps don’t slow down SUVs anyway, so in reality, they are simply wastes of money.
Monday, September 13, 2004
Streetcar blues
I’ve always been against streetcars - they look pretty, but cost a fortune and do nothing to ease gridlock. Therefore, I am against the latest streetcar megaproject on St. Clair. They say $50 million - you know it will be $100 million. Hundreds of much needed new busses could be bought for that figure - and benefit all routes. They can even keep running when just one gets disabled on the line! What a concept!
The countdown to save St. Clair Ave. W. is on.
Thursday, September 9, 2004
This makes sense
Wednesday, September 8, 2004
Told ya
Even a blind man could see this one coming.
The Rochester-Toronto ferry will no longer be crossing the waters of Lake Ontario — at least not for a while.
Honestly, even if it was sailing to NYC instead of Rochester, it still would have had a tough time breaking even (half the year the lake is frozen, at least partially). Rochester, plain and simple, is not a destination. I should know - I have relatives there.
Sunday, September 5, 2004
Poverty propagandists
It doesn’t look like City Hall will be cleaned up anytime soon.
The poverty propagandists who purport to speak for the city’s homeless were in fine form last week, making a spectacle of themselves and the poor people they use as their pawns on Nathan Phillips Square.
Tuesday, August 31, 2004
So guilty
You’d have to be an idiot to not think Jakobek is as guilty as sin.
TOM JAKOBEK has some explaining to do. The former city budget chief swore in an affidavit he used money from his millionaire father-in-law, not MFP salesman Dash Domi, to pay off $21,000 in American Express bills.
Thing is, I wonder if police will ever lay formal charges against him.
Wednesday, August 25, 2004
Good shot!
The Toronto Police Force is doing very good work lately.
A gunman was shot dead by a police sniper and his female hostage freed after a rush-hour standoff outside of Union Station on Front St. this morning.
The question all you Liberal voters need to ask, again, is, was the gunman’s gun registered?
Boy, capital punishment can be very efficient.
Monday, August 23, 2004
How can you not like him?
More proof dumping Fantino was more a left wing snub than anything else.
Uniform police officers, including Chief Fantino, were alerted by the public to this man’s behaviour.
When the officers went to arrest him, a struggle ensued and he fled. He was caught after a short foot pursuit and began to struggle with the officers. Members of the public joined in and assisted in subduing the man.
Sunday, August 22, 2004
Impressive Tower
The CN tower still dominates our skyline.
via Ground Glass
Saturday, August 21, 2004
Front St. extension
It’s a miracle anything gets done around Toronto, what with all the levels of government bureaucracy and interference. Take this story, for example.
Twenty years ago, local politicians decided to build a road to relieve downtown traffic congestion.
Friday, August 20, 2004
Star burning
What? The Star supporting incineration? Why, that’s practicality and common sense over its usual socialist ideology. What’s going on at 1 Yonge?
But recycling and composting have their limits. Incineration should also be considered. Anti-pollution technologies have made this a far cleaner option than in the past. A Brampton incinerator disposes of 60 per cent of Peel Region’s residential garbage and, in the process, generates enough electricity to power 6,000 homes. Toronto generates too much trash to eliminate with one incinerator. But such an operation would, at least, reduce this city’s dependence on Michigan’s dwindling goodwill.
Toronto the toilet
More by Sue Anne Levy on the sewer that is downtown Toronto, from the perspective of a beat cop.
TORONTO POLICE Constable Mike Case is fed up with city officials “bending over backwards” to look after the homeless.
Thursday, August 19, 2004
Weeds growing everywhere
Here is one growth industry in Toronto:
...and here’s another.The city used to cut the field a couple of times a year, said Gunzel’s father, Alfred Gebert. That kept the weeds down, but it hasn’t been cut at all in at least two years, despite complaints from residents.
“We are as much part of this city as anybody else. We have as much right to be respected,” says Dale, the 18-year-old self-proclaimed “Mayor of Shantytown.”
Toronto is world class alright. It’s turning into a world class dump.
Speaking of dumps, we may need one again.I wonder if socialists will ever be booted out of City Hall? It seems conservatives just don’t participate in local democracy.
Wednesday, August 18, 2004
Those were the days…
Sad when we have to go back 45 years or so to recall the building of some of the most useful roads today in Toronto.
IT WAS on this day in 1959 that the newly completed Bayview Extension opened to traffic. Built at a cost of $3.2 million, the 5.1 km highway was described in the newspapers of the day as running from nowhere to nowhere, dumping traffic into busy intersections, i.e. Moore and Bayview avenues at the north end and Gerrard and River at the south.
Now if they would just link the extension to the Leslie St. stump at Eglinton. Ya, dream on.
My stand on photo radar/RLC
Once more, a Sun letter writer provides my view of photo radar and red light cameras.
ARE THE proposed red-light cameras a cash grab? Absolutely. Should they be installed at as many high-volume intersections as possible? Absolutely. Red-light runners are, for the most part, habitual. Keep taking their money and they will start to think about what they are doing. Is photo radar a cash grab? Absolutely. Should it be implemented just as it was all those years ago? Absolutely not. People driving at 120 kph are not the problem. Morons weaving in and out of traffic at 120 are. Raise the limit and we may see a significant drop in these kinds of accidents. Oh, there will always be idiots out there, but we can’t help that now, can we? Hell, we keep re-electing some of them.
V. Czaplinski
(We couldn’t agree more)
Wednesday, August 4, 2004
But the mail was on time
The Jeep was forced into the garage, which was attached to the house.The estimated damage to the home is approximately value at $80,000.00, and $3,500.00 to the Postal truck.
Sunday, August 1, 2004
FYST - Fight Your Speeding Tickets Page
Jay has a good site dedicated to fighting speeding tickets.
I’ve always hired paralegals to fight for me, like Gary.
Tuesday, July 27, 2004
A job well done
Blatchford writes that it was good police work that solved the Cecilia case. Take a bow, boys in blue.
For the detectives who believe they have solved this case, the message is to follow the evidence, regardless of the rising pressure—internal and external both—to make a quick arrest in a high-profile crime.
Follow the evidence is in fact what Toronto front-line officers did, although sometimes they were being second-guessed along the way by their superiors, who argued that they should look harder at Cecilia’s mom and dad.
City in decline
Coinciding with his move out of town, Derringer says Toronto isn’t much of a destination any more.
:neale:There used to be two things about this city that made visitors (particularly those from the States) choose Toronto as a vacation or convention destination: It was safe and clean.
Sunday, July 25, 2004
Choking an artery
The car haters continue their mission to drive business out of downtown Toronto.
Led by Coun. Kyle Rae, the wannabe smog saviours voted 18-11 at council last week to remove the northbound curb lane from Avenue Rd. directly north of Bloor St. in order to widen the easterly sidewalk.
Update: Here’s the link from the traffic dept. - they are dead against the narrowing without saying it. The wait time will be 3x at rush hour - almost 15 minutes! The good news is that it will back traffic in and out of the Pink Palace, not to mention the ambulances that go in and out of hospital alley. These two facts will stop the madness and revert things back to their original state, one can only hope. Email the mayor and voice your displeasure.