Complained I have, about this travesty but to no avail. I am a regular at one of the City of Toronto’s fitness centres, here in Ontario, Canada. Policy changes within the last year have made these fitness centres not as safe as the were before these policy changes. This regression in safety may seem to not matter, but random violence in society is common, and fitness centres get no exception. I have written letters to City of Toronto staff on up to the mayor, my local councillor and Parks and Recreation staff, to no avail.
The City of Toronto has come out with a cool statistic of CoVid-19 infections as well as infections per 100,000 people. Unfortunately it has no street map labels nor other indicators, leaving you hunting for your area. The map also auto-refreshes, making you start over if you are too slow.
Here is the map, pieced together like a jigsaw puzzle, as well as a City of Toronto electoral divisions map, from Elections Canada. Map rotated -16.67 degrees.
Find your house or area on the Elections Canada electoral map. Point to it on the screen. Scroll upward until it matches up to the City of Toronto CoVid-19 map. There’s your house with the City of Toronto CoVid-19 infection statistics.
City of Toronto uses a specialty sewer sucking truck to clean the sewers. Worker uses a pick axe to remove the grate, plunges the crevice tool down the hole, sucks the garbage out. It takes only about 2 minutes max. Toronto, Canada. Photo 1 by Don Tai
What is that high pitched sound on the street? It sounds like a large vacuum cleaner, and it was. The City of Toronto sewers were being cleaned by the sewer cleaning truck.
City of Toronto internet scraper bot scrapes my site a couple of times per month. Why? Toronto, Canada
I live in the City of Toronto, and write about Toronto-related subjects. What is surprising is that the City of Toronto has an internet bot that randomly scrapes content from my site a couple of times each month. The bot started scraping me near the end of January 2017.
What is interesting was that I, concerned citizen, actually emailed them because I thought they had a Zombie PC taken over by a bot, or some other security issue. I sent the City a log of the relevant entries related to their IP address. Was I naive. Here is their reply (isg@toronto.ca):
City of Toronto arborist and his chipper machine. They prune trees, then chip the downed branches. Toronto, Canada 2017, Don Tai
My neighbour’s tree dropped a large branch during a windstorm. A couple of days later the City of Toronto tree guys, called arborists, are here with their special truck and chipper to tidy things up.
Every spring the City of Toronto has their tree specialists, called arborists, that come around to inspect the city trees. These are trees that grow between the sidewalk and the street, called the boulevard. These trees are not owned by the homeowner. Any tree on the property of the homeowner is their responsibility.
Recycled soap looks like white chocolate with nougat. Yummy it is not. Clean, it is. Macro shot of a cake of soap. Photo by Don Tai
Looks are deceiving, here in Toronto, Canada. This is recycled soap that I partially melted in a double boiler, cooled, then let sit for a couple of months to get nice and dry. It does look like white milk chocolate with nougat bits, but one bite would tell you otherwise. Most of it is made from Ivory soap!
In my quest for more information about North-East Toronto, Canada, specifically Scarborough, here is information about walkability. The City of Toronto has published a report about how easy it is to walk about the city. The theory is that ease of walking contributes to better health and well-being, and therefore better living overall. How does my area of Toronto, heavily biased towards Mainland Chinese, rate on walkability? Overall, not very well.
The Walkability project is interesting to me in that I would rather walk or ride a bike to shop or go places yet I live in the suburbs, a statistically less walkable area of Toronto. While we do have better air and a far greater supply of Chinese groceries, I hope that my neighbourhood’s walkability will increase.
Scarborough, Toronto, Canada bylaw investigation and enforcement can be reached at:
Scarborough Civic Centre
150 Borough Drive
Toronto, ON M1P 4N7
Hours of Operation: 8:30 – 4:30
Information Line: 416-396-7071 Fax: 416-396-5650
Bill Blakes, Manager
Tel.: 416-396-8221
E-mail: bblakes@toronto.ca
I tried calling Bill Blakes, but he does not answer nor pick up his calls. The Information Line took my complaint and said they would dispatch an investigator. Note that it can take up to 70 hrs for an investigator to arrive, but they do eventually arrive.
Bicycle riding prohibited in certain parks in Toronto. The bylaw 319-69 was repealed in 1997.
Sometimes finding certain information on the internet is much more difficult than it should be. I was looking for the City of Toronto, Ontario, Canada bylaw that allows bicycles with less than 24″ tires to ride on the sidewalk. I could not find it. I emailed the city clerk about the bylaw but got no response. This bylaw is heavily mentioned but almost never referenced. After about two years of searching the web, I finally found it.
Toronto Buskerfest 2010: Victor Rubilar's grand finale, juggling 5 soccer balls
Hot was the word of the day on Saturday Aug 28 2010, when we took in the Buskerfest in Toronto. It hit 32C and high humidity. There performers were sweating profusely, as was the audience. Arriving at about 12:45pm we took in the shows of Victor Rubilar from Argentina (juggling soccer balls), Mat Ricardo from the UK (balancing, juggling) and saw a couple of others. It was really crowded and we could not see much, which was to bad.
