Local residents including Maureen Coram (left), James Alcock, Denis Lanoue and Karl Haab protest a planned light rail transit line along Sheppard Avenue in September 2010. Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford is pledging to replace the LRT with a Sheppard Subway extension to Scarborough Town Centre. – Metroland file photo
The expensive dream of a Sheppard subway extension looping through north Scarborough was all but dead by 2010.
Work on a light-rail-transit line, the Sheppard East, was starting. Toronto transit planners thought extending the little-used subway down to Scarborough Town Centre was a horrible idea.
“The train, so to speak, has left the station,” Adam Giambrone, TTC chair of the day, declared.
But a Sheppard extension remained a cause for a small number of Scarborough activists — some of them connected to the Liberal party — who kept fighting the LRT and demanding a subway.
Municipal and provincial politicians, including former Toronto mayor Rob Ford, listened then. A stalemate ensued.
The Sheppard loop isn’t officially a project the city wants to build, but Ontario Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford, brother of the late mayor, is pledging to build it anyway.
And while a PC victory on June 7 is far from assured — thanks to a New Democratic surge — Ford’s promise seems calculated to win seats in Liberal Scarborough.
Scarborough-Agincourt has stayed Liberal since its creation in 1987, but the riding is shifting in an “amazingly unexpected” way, and “the subway issue is playing a major role,” said PC candidate Aris Babikian.
Babikian has made a Sheppard extension “my first priority,” and said he’s met community association leaders who support it, adding, “some of them are very strong Liberals.”
Jim Karygiannis, a former Liberal MP for Agincourt, thinks if the riding turns blue the promised Sheppard subway “will have a lot to do with it.”
I would like to take this opportunity to extend my best wishes to members of the Buddhist faith in Canada on the occasion of Vesak Day.
Vesak is a significant day in the Buddhist calendar as it marks the birth, enlightenment and passing away of Gautama Buddha.
This major festival is observed in Canada and many countries including Bangladesh, Burma, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Nepal, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam.
I would like to invite everyone in our community to join us for our 4th annual Compost Day. Come out, bring your bags and gather compost for your gardens. I look forward to seeing you there!
I would like to take this opportunity to extend my best wishes to members of the Canadian Guyanese community on the occasion of Guyanese Independence Day.
I am dismayed to learn that mob of six to seven hundred people, watched by local government officials and protected by local police, was allowed to demolish the historic home of Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad and vandalize the adjacent mosque.
From: t Sent: May-24-18 1:11 AM To: jim@karygiannis.net Subject: Thank you
Thank you for sending ward report all these time, it helps a lot since my parent can not read English. Now they have a sense of what is going on in the community, and have a chance to join the activities, thank you for your effort!
Spring is here! As you prepare to enjoy the great weather ahead, we have put together some helpful information in this report. We look forward to welcoming you to my upcoming Community Compost Day on Saturday, May 26th from 10:00 AM until 2:00 PM at Bridlewood Mall. (North – West Corner)
Earlier yesterday evening, we were notified that someone had spray painted racist slurs and defaced the Wali ul Asr Muslim School on Torrance Road.
This is a school for children from Junior Kindergarten to Grade 12. Along with their academic studies, they are taught good manners, mutual respect, peace, kindness, love and tolerance. Tomorrow morning, these children, as they return to school, may be greeted with disrespect, intolerance and hatred.
