Driver arrested at gunpoint after car crashes at Bloor and Emerson

From the Toronto Star:

Toronto police weren't saying much Thursday night after an injured man was arrested at gunpoint following a car crash on a west-end street.

Residents in the area of Dupont St. and Lansdowne Ave. called 911 after hearing what they thought was the sound of gunshots before three vehicles sped south down Emerson Ave. towards Bloor St. W. around 6:00 p.m.

Moments later a grey compact car rammed into the rear of a van stopped on Bloor.

A roofer working on a nearby building said he heard the crash and looked down to see plainclothes police officers with their guns drawn yelling at the driver to get out of the crumpled Hyundai.

[...]

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Is Bloor and Lansdowne safe?
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Are there any problems at Toronto's outdoor skating rinks you would like to see fixed?

Wallace Emerson rink Jan 2
On December 18, representatives from CELOS had a meeting with two members of the City of Toronto's ombudsman's office to discuss the possibility of filing a formal complaint about ongoing problems at the city's 49 outdoor artificial ice rinks. At the meeting CELOS was asked to provide a list of ten problems along with desired outcomes. The ombudsman, Fiona Crean, will then decide if the problems fall within her purview.

CELOS would like to hear from people who use Toronto's outdoor rinks. If you are a skater, hockey player or someone who just goes to the rink to watch your friends skate, you can submit your ideas of what needs to be fixed to mail@cityrinks.ca If you would like to learn more about some of the problems CELOS has discovered read Jutta Mason's Monday rink reports. To learn more about what is happening at your local rink, read CELOS' rink diaries. Find your rink's diary here. There are three outdoor rinks in the Bloor-Lansdowne area: Campbell, Wallace-Emerson and Dufferin Grove.

Dufferin Grove rink at 6:30pm Friday

Dufferin Grove rink at 6:30pm Friday(Click to enlarge)
Teachers had a professional development day on Friday, so many of their students ended up coming to Dufferin Grove, which was one of the few city-operated skating rinks open. There was a non-stop demand for hot chocolate, cookies, mini-pizzas and muffins at the snackbar.

Fortunately, most of the city's other rinks including Campbell, Wallace-Emerson and Christie Pits open tomorrow. This should take some of the pressure off Dufferin which has been packed since it opened on November 22.

Cutting tree branches at Wallace and Lansdowne

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This truck was parked on Wallace Avenue east of Lansdowne on Wednesday. Workers were cutting down tree branches that were interfering with the hydro wires. The camera is facing towards Lansdowne.

Dufferin Grove rink was packed with skaters again last night

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I took this picture last night at Dufferin Grove. There's some blur, but it's good enough to show how crowded the hockey side was. If anything this picture makes the rink seem less packed than it was. When you're actually on the ice there's barely room to move. The pleasure-skating side was full too. People were going in and out of the skate rental room all evening long. Dufferin Grove is especially busy now because it's the only local rink open. Some of the men and boys now playing shinny at Dufferin will be going to Campbell and Wallace-Emerson when they open on Saturday December 5. It's too bad those rinks didn't open at the same time as Dufferin, because the demand for hockey is definitely there.

Although Dufferin is more crowded than usual now, it will stay busy all winter because unlike most outdoor rinks run by the City it offers good food and skate rentals for $2. The cheap rentals are good for people just learning to skate as well as for those who can't afford skates. Many of the people borrowing skates are new immigrants who have never been on the ice before. The rentals are also popular with people who have their own skates but didn't bring them because they stumbled on the rink while visiting the neighbourhood. You can read more about Dufferin Grove on the park website as well as in this Toronto Star article (Porter: The power of soup, skates and simplicity by Catherine Porter, Nov. 21).

Sometimes when I do research for CELOS, City staff tell me hockey and pleasure skating are dying sports because of Toronto's changing demographics. When I tell them the rinks in my neighbourhood are busy, they seem surprised. There is some truth to the claim that immigration is changing the city's recreation patterns. Cricket, for example, is exploding in popularity. The growing interest in soccer is also partly due to immigration, but surely in a place as big as Toronto there's room for more than one sport. To say that hockey and skating are dying is nonsense. City employees need to see what is happening in this neighbourhood. Anybody who thinks Torontonians have lost interest in ice skating and hockey should come by Dufferin Grove on a winter evening.

Saturday morning hockey at Dufferin Grove Park

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This morning I went to Dufferin Grove park and took some pictures of guys playing hockey. The outdoor rink at Dufferin has been open since last Sunday. It was supposed to open a week ago Saturday along with thirteen other outdoor rinks but there were some problems. However, now that Dufferin is up and running, the rink is very busy especially in the evening. (You can read more about Dufferin Grove in a story that appeared in last Saturday's Star: The power of soup, skates and simplicity.)

Altogether The City of Toronto operates 49 outdoor rinks with artificial ice. There is a fiftieth outdoor rink at Harbourfront which is not run by the City.

Some people are the under impression that the outdoor rinks they see in city parks have natural ice that melts in warm weather. That's not true. The 49 rinks have compressors that make the ice. You can't run the outdoor rinks in summer obviously, but in fall and winter the rinks still have ice even on relatively warm days. (There are some natural ice rinks in the city, but they aren't among the 49 that I'm talking about here.)

More important than the temperature is the angle of the sun. Even when the tempertature is the same, it's easier to make ice in autumn when the angle of the sun is low than it is in spring when the angle of the sun is high. CELOS has been pushing the City to open Toronto's rinks earlier in the season and that's the reason Dufferin opened early this year.

Brazen bike thief at Bloor and Russett

On Saturday at 10:30pm I was walking on the north side of Bloor. When I got near Russett, I saw a very angry man standing on the road yelling at another man who was crouched down where some bicycles were chained up to a street pole. The first man was screamed "You have no right to steal that bike!" The second man, who had a saw in his hand, said, "It's my bike. I lost the key." The first man didn't believe him and kept on yelling. The second man got on the bike and said, "Hey, someone stole my bike." The first man yelled back, "And that gives you the right to spend twenty minutes sawing off a chain to get someone else's bike?" The second man said again, "Someone stole my bike" and then road up Russett. Everything happened quickly and it took me a minute to figure out what was going on. By the time I realized what I was seeing, the second man was already on the bike. For a second I thought about chasing him but I didn't want to get into a possibly violent confrontation with a stranger on Bloor. I did try to get a good look at the guy, but I'm not confident I would recognize him if I saw him again.