All about the kids for Toronto's newest Raptor, Demarre Carroll announces new children’s charity and says he’s ready to bring his defensive game

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You had a great year with the Atlanta Hawks, one of the top teams in the east. What made you decide to leave?
There was already a winning program, great individuals, all-star guards in Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan. The organization came in and made me and my family part of the organization. And Toronto fans are some of the best in the world. Basically, those were the key things for me. And they also offered me a bigger role.

Upon your signing with the Raps, you invoked the name of one of the most popular players in team history, Jerome “Junkyard Dog” Williams. Why him?
Yup, that’s my game. It reflects my game. Junkyard, he’s shown me great respect and allowed me to, you know, use that name, Junkyard 2.0. He’s really engaging me, and he understands how hard I play when I step on the court. Having JYD 2.0 just adds a little flavour, and hopefully people can get behind that from the first game.

Have you spent much time in Toronto yet?
I went there for the press conference, and I’m looking for housing for me and my wife. We had a nice group of media. I can only imagine how many fans are going to show up.

Atlanta had some rough years, a lot of empty arenas, and you’re coming to a pretty good basketball town. What’s job number one for you to show the fans you mean business?
First and foremost to do the nitty-gritty things. That’s what the Junkyard do, the little things to protect the junkyard and protect my team on the defensive end.

You had a quiet start to your career and bounced around a bit before Atlanta, and now you’re considered one of the better defensive players in the league. What happened?
I think the NBA is all about opportunity. I didn’t have a lot of opportunity early in my career. I’m a strong believer in making the best of your opportunities.… If you make the best of it, you’ll be successful is always my mindset. When it came knocking at my door, it came knocking in the middle of my career. But I have no regrets. I had a lot of obstacles and that helped me take advantage of the opportunities I got.

Tell me about your own experience with liver disease and your thoughts when first diagnosed.
It was definitely a scary moment.… My family really got involved and helped me understand I still can be successful and can continue to have great life with the disease. It really eased my nerves, and I’m trying to reach out to people in a similar situation and let them know the same thing.

Why did you decide to start a kids’ foundation to raise awareness and funds for research into pediatric liver disease?
Basically, bringing awareness of the disease to individuals is near to my heart. I’m a living witness of the condition, and I understand you can be successful with this type of disease. It’s something dear to my heart.

What do you hope to accomplish?
Reach out to individuals and put a smile on those kids’ faces going through the same thing. Just be a role model.

Who were some of your basketball heroes growing up?
My heroes growing up were more family based. My dad was a big role model to me. My older brother who passed away. My cousin, T. J. Cleveland, who coaches in Arkansas, stepped into my brother’s place, when he passed.

What can you tell us about yourself that we don’t already know from the stat sheets and highlight reels?
Off the court and outside of the arena, I like to bowl. I’m going to get some bowling tournaments going in Toronto for the fans.

Food Crawl: Where to eat while checking out the revitalized Queen’s Quay strip

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Between Sugar Beach east of Yonge and the new Queen’s Quay on the west side, Toronto is starting to establish a waterfront that we can be proud of. While the weather is sunny and warm, this is the place we’re drawn to for a Blue Jays game, awe-inducing aquarium visits or leisurely rides along the waterfront bike trail.

Stay well-fed — with both food and excellent beer — at these five harbourfront gems.

Amsterdam Brewhouse
The food at this over 700-seat behemoth is inconsistent, but the trad pretzel and charcuterie are bright spots.

Here “Adventure Series” is code for the “astonishingly high-quality creations by Iain McOustra and his team of brewers — some of the best beers in the city.” They can be sour, barrel-aged or especially hoppy — but they are always top-notch.

Try to arrive at an off-hour to snag a seat on the lakeside patio, offering a surprisingly relaxing view of planes landing at Billy Bishop Airport. 245 Queens Quay W., 416-504-1020

Pearl Harbourfront
“Have dim sum from a cart.” This advice probably makes every short list penned by Torontonians for their foodster friends visiting our city. Combine the rolling service with a knockout view of the harbour, and Pearl is the area’s best bet for this staple.

Keep an eye out for the Pan Fried Hockey Pucks ($6), shrimp and scallion dumplings that taste intensely of green onion. The steamed scallop dumplings ($6) are also a strong suit and are a welcome change from shrimp har gow. 2, 207 Queens Quay W., 416-203-1233

Indian Roti House
This bare-bones lunch counter survived years of construction, based on the strength of its food. The veg or meat rotis are generous portions and well spiced, but a favourite — especially for a multi-stop crawl — is the samosa chaat ($4.95). The crispy pastry of the three triangles balances nicely against the sweet and sour notes from the tamarind sauce and yogurt dressing.

If you’re not taking away, skip this stop if it looks like rain. The patio is an absolute necessity: inside, it’s as hot as Chennai in June. 256 Queens Quay W., 416-260-6666

Harbour 60
The classic steak house is back in style, and this venerable restaurant has long held a reputation as one of the finest in the city. Located in the historic Harbour Commission Building, Harbour 60 serves fine cuts of steak but also a surprisingly vast selection of seafood, both as entrees or as smaller plates for nibbling including halibut ceviche, as well as an iced shellfish and raw bar. 60 Harbour St., 416-777-2111

Jaipur Grille
Long a midtown favourite for South Asian cuisine, Jaipur Grille has recently opened up a second location on Queen’s Quay.

The harbourfront location’s menu includes many Indian favourites, such as chicken makhani and shrimp vindaloo, as well as a wide range of offerings from the tandoor beyond the usual chicken, such as king prawns, grouper and seekh kebabs. Jaipur Grille, 208 Queen’s Quay W., 416-368-7272

Against the Grain
Billed as an urban tavern, Against the Grain offers up a menu filled with comfort food classics as well as a number of interesting sharing plates such as sake beef tartare and beef cheek tacos served at their restaurant inside the Corus building and beside the popular Sugar Beach Park. Against the Grain also has a fine craft beer and wine selection, perfect for whiling away an afternoon on its massive lakeside patio, which includes both table seating and comfortable couches. Against the Grain, 25 Dockside Dr., 647-344-1562

Championing brain health

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Before I met Lynn Posluns at Queen’s Park last month, I was unaware that 70 per cent of new Alzheimer’s sufferers will be women. When I repeat this statistic, men and women alike are startled.

Posluns has launched the Women’s Brain Health Initiative to raise awareness about the inequality in brain-aging research funding for women. Medical researchers often assume that men and women only differ in the area below what is termed the “bikini line.” A dynamo who brings her fundraising experience at Baycrest Foundation to this new cause, Posluns is on a mission to raise awareness of gender differences in brain health.

Apart from exercise and a healthy diet, experts warn us to get adequate sleep and improve our stress coping mechanisms. Youth should also be aware that maintaining a healthy lifestyle in their 20s is a significant indicator of future brain health.

York Region residents affected by dementia are fortunate to have local support through the Alzheimer Society of York Region. Executive director Loren Freid visited me at Queen’s Park to raise awareness of the struggles faced by family members caring for loved ones. Joining Freid were two gentlemen from our community — one caring for his wife, the other his mother. We agreed that more could be done to help those who struggle emotionally and often financially while caring for their loved ones. Both men rely on day programming provided by the society’s nine locations in York Region. Although age and genetics — significant risk factors in the onset of Alzheimer’s — can not be altered, we can all do much more to protect our brains.

City OK’s Spadina streetscape study for Forest Hill Village

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A report recently approved by Toronto City Council outlining urban design guidelines for Forest Hill Village will help protect the small-town character of the low-rise, mixed-use neighbourhood, said councillor Josh Matlow.

But Peter McClelland, chairman of the Forest Hill Village BIA, said the BIA was largely unrepresented in the planning process.

While McClelland said city planners did speak to him about the study, adequate time was not granted to consult the rest of the membership (tenants and property owners of the strip) and provide feedback.

“There seemed to be a push to have the guidelines adopted at the May council meeting,” said McClelland.

According to Matlow, this was due to an urgent desire to get the final report approved before a nine-storey development proposed for the corner of Montclair and Spadina (390-398 Spadina Rd.) went through.

Matlow became aware of the development (by Armel Corporation) in 2014, which he believed was too tall, and it inspired his motion to initiate the urban design study at city council.

The study area pertains to properties fronting onto Spadina Road, between Montclair Avenue and Thelma Avenue. It outlines the appropriate design, building materials (brick and stone) and height (no more than four storeys) of future developments.

Matlow cited the LCBO building as an example of the kind of design the study aims to discourage.

“Most of the buildings are a yellowish or red brick, and then the LCBO looks like this big silver metal box,” he said. “It just sticks out like a sore thumb.”

The design guidelines will be a useful reference for City of Toronto planners, and Matlow said it will strengthen the city’s position if the need to fight a developer arises at the Ontario Municipal Board.

But McClelland said he still isn’t sure how greatly this will impact current owners on the strip who may want to make changes to their property.

Rise in Toronto bike deaths cause for concern

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It happened to 26-year-old Adam Excell when he was biking home one Saturday night in Yorkville. It happened again to a 44-year-old resident in North York. And it happened in Rosedale to 75-year-old Roger du Toit, a Toronto-based architect who played a pivotal role in the design of the CN Tower.

Three cycling fatalities in the first six months of this year — the same number of cyclists that died in all of 2014. And while the conditions that cost the lives of each of these men may vary, one thing can’t be denied: these deaths were preventable.

For Megan Torza, one of these fatalities meant losing a personal friend. A partner at the architecture firm DTAH in Toronto, she was a colleague of Roger du Toit, one of the three founding partners of the studio.

She recalled the memorial bike ride she and her colleagues did before visiting the white “ghost bike” installed by Advocacy for Respect for Cyclists at the site of the accident.

“It was a really nice gesture, I think. And I think a number of people who knew him felt that the exercise of participating in the memorial bike ride was a very helpful thing to do with respect to the process of mourning,” said Torza. “He was an avid cyclist.… And certainly as someone who knew him, [I know] he was very full of life.”

Creating a safe system for cyclists is much needed in a city where 54 per cent of residents are choosing to cycle. And the number of cyclists in our city streets is only expected to go up. After all, between 2001 and 2006 alone, the number of people biking to work went up 30 per cent, according to Canada Census data.

“It’s very concerning to us and to everyone that with the increased cyclists on the road we’re seeing these kinds of terrible tragedies,” said Robert Tarantino, chairperson of the board of directors of Cycle Toronto. “For us, it’s just part of a larger concern to do everything we can and ensure that the city and province are doing everything they can to improve safety for cyclists and everyone.”

Although the City of Toronto made a number of changes to improve cycling safety in 2014 — such as adding cycle tracks, bike lanes and sharrows — many of these changes occurred in the downtown core on streets like Adelaide Street, Simcoe Street and Wellesley Street.

With each of the three cycling fatalities occurring outside of Toronto’s core, the question begs to be asked: Is midtown Toronto simply not equipped to handle our city’s cyclists? Or, were these three fatalities just a coincidence?

According to Tarantino, the lack of cyclists in the midtown area could have been a contributing factor to the fatalities. “In terms of increasing safety, more cyclists on the road is a big help,” said Tarantino. “If there are drivers who aren’t downtown a lot, for example … they might be less used to sharing the road with cyclists.”

To help increase this cycling visibility, Cycle Toronto has been campaigning to ensure the Eglinton Crosstown LRT will include separated cycle tracks along Eglinton Avenue.

“I think that [separated cycle lanes] will be the catalyst to bringing riders out in midtown [and] for drivers seeing them,” said Tarantino. “That’s the crucial piece.”

Nonetheless, he acknowledged the lack of cycling infrastructure in the area, a sentiment echoed by Yvonne Bambrick, author of The Urban Cycling Survival Guide and executive director of the Forest Hill Business Improvement Area.

“For years, residents in [Rosedale] had been requesting stop signs and a correction to that intersection because they saw it as hazardous,” said Bambrick, referring to Roxborough Street East and Wrentham Place where one of the life-taking collisions took place.

Although the city had approved additional stop signs and signage changes at the intersection in February, such improvements hadn’t been put in place at the time of the accident, said Bambrick.

“The week we put up a memorial, the city finally got the infrastructure in place. That’s a real problem,” she said. “Anything that’s related to safety I think can’t just sit around in a queue of things that needs to be done.”

And yet, according to Jacquelyn Hayward Gulati, manager of City of Toronto, Cycling Infrastructure and Programs, exclusively blaming these deaths on a lack of infrastructure excludes a big part of the picture: human error.

After all, a 22-year-old now faces a slew of charges after the incident in North York, including impaired driving.

“When we look at cases [with an] impaired driver, that’s an enforcement and a driver behaviour issue. That’s not because of the infrastructure there,” said Gulati. “We find that 80 to 90 per cent of collisions are taking place because of human error.… The driver or the cyclist is making an error in judgment by either not following the rules or speeding or not being aware.”

Statistically speaking, she added, these deaths shouldn’t be a cause for concern. Although there are about 55,000 collisions per year in Toronto, approximately 1,200 of those involved cyclists. In other words, cycling collisions only account for two per cent of all accidents.

The number of cycling fatalities has also remained quite stable given the increase in cyclists. Between 1999 and 2009, North York saw 25 per cent more cyclists on the road, said Gulati.

But for Robert Tarantino, three deaths is still “three too many,” which is precisely why Cycle Toronto held a demonstration at city hall on June 19.

“We were calling for what’s called a Vision Zero Policy,” said Tarantino. “It’s a policy that’s geared toward cities aiming to reduce road fatalities to zero — and that could be cyclists or transit users or pedestrians — and to do everything that needs to be done to get to that goal.”

With a similar target in mind, the City of Toronto is creating a 10-year cycling network plan that will provide a road map of what can be built to improve cycling safety, said Gulati.

“It’s got to be safe for a 10-year-old and a 75-year-old to be able to ride on a street, not just a physically fit 30-year-old who’s used to riding,” said Tarantino. “And as long as we keep those in mind and build infrastructure around that idea, then I think it will work for everyone.”

BY THE NUMBERS

31
The percentage of residents in the Netherlands who list the bike as their main mode of transportation.

6
The width, in feet, of a new bike lane cutting through the middle of downtown Los Angeles.

600
The number of kilometres of bike lanes in Montreal, compared to around 400 in Toronto.

1,700
The number of bike share stations in Paris, up from 750 in 2007. Toronto’s bike share has 80 stations.

500,000
The number of New Yorkers who use a bicycle at least once per month.

122
The percentage increase in the number of Calgary residents commuting to work by bicycle.

Sami Sharif is one of Toronto’s advanced care paramedics participating in potentially life-saving study

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A few months ago, advanced care paramedic Sami Sharif responded to a distress call not far from his station at Avenue Road and Davenport Road. Upon arriving at the scene, he found a man lying in his backyard with no pulse, and he quickly began attempts to resuscitate him.

Five or six minutes later, he was able to elicit a pulse and raise the man’s blood pressure. Sharif then opened an envelope from his bag, read what was in it and proceeded to cover the man’s body in gel packs, administer chilled saline into his IV and get him to the hospital.

The patient made a full recovery, with no neurological complications — which could all be thanks to what was in that one envelope.

The 27-year-old has been with City of Toronto Emergency Medical Services (EMS) for six years and is one of a number of Toronto paramedics qualified to administer a special experimental treatment.

Stowed away in Sharif’s bag are several unopened envelopes with instructions that read “cool” or “do not cool” for each cardiac arrest patient he encounters. The selection is completely random. It is all part of the trial-based ICE-PACS study being conducted in Toronto by Rescu, an Ontario-based research program.

The study aims to prevent brain damage in cardiac arrest patients by lowering body temperatures as soon as medically possible. At the end of the study, researchers will compare patient outcomes, and if positive, the treatment will become protocol for all cardiac arrest patients in Toronto.

“If we can do anything to help benefit the outcome of the patient, we should do it,” Sharif said.

Real Estate: Home theatres, basketball courts and in-ground pools in three estates perfect for entertaining

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259 Dunvegan Road
Listed at $6.495 million, this Forest Hill mansion’s amenities include a retractable screen and overheard projector for movie night enthusiasts, an entertainment room with wet bar and wine cellar, billiards room, exercise room with spa and pool. Not to mention the basketball court in the backyard.

53 Highland Crescent
This European-style estate comes with its own gym, wine cellar, fully lit tennis court, in-ground pool, home theatre and spa. What more could you possibly want? Currently on the market for $8.8 million, this Hogg’s Hollow residence is the perfect spot for a party.

21 The Bridle Path
On offer for $7.65 million, this palatial residence is more than 5,000 square feet on a 66 by 299 foot lot. The in-ground pool with waterfall spa is made all the more appealing by the private resort–like feel of the property’s backyard.

Grammy winner Buckwheat Zydeco plays Hugh’s Room this week

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Over the past four decades and counting, Stanley Dural Jr., a.k.a. Buckwheat Zydeco, has been playing the accordion and bringing his energetic and joyous style of zydeco music to the masses. He’s won Grammy Awards and has recorded with everyone from Robert Plant to Willie Nelson, but his idea of true happiness is bringing smiles to the faces of those in his audience, the people he calls his “family.” Buckwheat checks into Hugh’s Room in Toronto on July 21.

What was your introduction to zydeco?
As a child growing up, my dad, he played every day. I didn’t really understand it, and as part of the younger generation, I wanted to do other types of music, so I played heavy funk music in the ’70s, and in 1971 I started my first band, Buckwheat and the Hitchhikers. We had, like, 15 musicians on stage, man.

And what brought you back?
I played a show with my daddy’s best friend, Clifton Chenier, “the King of Zydeco,” in ’76. And, jeez, I didn’t know zydeco music was like that. I was supposed to play just that one night, take my organ back and say I’d played zydeco and still don’t like it. But man, I stayed with him over two years. He was very inspirational, you know. I knew my dad was right, and I decided to pick up accordion and start playing it, and I decided to build this band, Buckwheat Zydeco.

Tell me about your show, your music.
I do zydeco music and perform for all generations of people — younger 50 per cent, older 50 per cent. My repertoire’s for everybody, some young, some old. Everybody come out at same time, not to separate. That’s why clientele be like it is, you see.

So what can we expect from your show here in Toronto?
I love Toronto, man. We coming to party. We coming to have some fun, like always. That’s what I’m all about.

Hugh’s Room is a sit-down spot. Can you get people up?
Oh, they’re going to get up. I’m not coming there for people to sit down man. Even if they have to squeeze between chairs and tables, somebody is going to stand up and do something.

What’s your favourite part of your job?
Performing, man, that’s my favourite part of my job, seeing people being happy, you know. That’s what keeps me going. As long as I can do this, I will. If I can’t play, I’ll have something to do with music, that’s for sure. I’m like a music fanatic. That’s what I do.

You’ve made your own reality series, Buckwheat’s World?
Yes, well, what’s going on here, I’m out in front of thousands of people, but with this, I’m trying to let you know, I’m just like everybody else. When I’m at home, I work; on the road I work. I don’t come to play. I come to work, you know what I mean. That’s what it’s about. You can see me on my old tractor. That’s what I do, you know. I got to work when I get home here, you know. Out there, I’m working but having fun, but over here, I’m in bondage.

So you’re not the sit-around-and-rest type of guy?
On my rest time, I might go fishing, something like that, you know. But something need done over here, we got seven acres, and my animals — sheeps, dogs, cats — that keeps me going, too you see, always something to do. And I like working on old cars. I’m what you call a shade tree mechanic.

Seven buildings proposed for Leaside raise concern

1:57 pm

The “planned community” proposed for approximately two hectares of land at 939 Eglinton Ave. E. in Leaside is “too big,” some residents say. A rezoning application was submitted to the city in April and is currently under review.

The development by DiamondCorp calls for seven buildings: two residential towers 19- and 24-storeys, connected by an eight-storey, mixed-use building fronting onto Eglinton Avenue East; two residential towers 31- and 34-storeys with an eight-storey building fronting onto the north side of a newly proposed public road; and lastly, a six-storey commercial building at the northwest corner of Brentcliffe Road and Vanderhoof Avenue.

The proposal includes 1,500 residential units, 2,950 square metres of retail space and 9,690 square metres of office space. A two-storey office and commercial building currently sits on the site.

“People are concerned that the infrastructure can’t handle that level of density,” said Kate Whitehead of the Leaside Property Owners’ Association (LPOA).

A previous proposal for the site had been submitted by DiamondCorp in 2013, but according to councillor Jon Burnside, the developer ran into zoning issues. The site, formerly zoned as employment lands, was redesignated mixed use last year.

“Now they’ve come back with one that’s bigger,” said Whitehead.

The development will be reviewed in the context of the City of Toronto, City Planning’s Eglinton Connects planning study, which allows for added density along Eglinton Avenue.

An Eglinton Crosstown station is set to go in at Eglinton and Laird Drive, two blocks west of the site.

“There are 1,639 parking spaces [proposed],” said Geoff Kettel of the LPOA. “It doesn’t sound like people will be using transit.”

“It is far too much for the site and neighbourhood,” said Burnside. “But it is still early in the game.”

DiamondCorp did not respond to requests for comment by press time.

Volunteers with Toronto Trailblazers lead the blind on tandem bicycles across the GTA

10:50 am

When Ingeborg Jenkins lost her eyesight 12 years ago, the 75-year-old worried she would no longer be able to keep up with her active lifestyle. But thanks to the individuals from Toronto Trailblazers — the community-based recreational cycling club — she is able to go cycling as often as she wishes, on a tandem bicycle, lead by sighted volunteers like Alan Morrison.

Morrison, a 71-year-old Summerhill resident, takes members out on the tandem as often as possible, since he first spotted the organization’s booth at a bicycle show several years ago (he later returned to staff the booth himself).

“It’s just a great organization,” he said. “I’ve learned a lot about the great courage and stamina so many really fine people who are blind have.”

Ingeborg Jenkins lives right next to CNIB and is what Toronto Trailblazers refers to as a “stoker” — a blind, deaf-blind or vision impaired individual who rides on the back of the tandem bicycle.

Although Jenkins has some vision, she has trouble discerning street signs, lacks depth perception and is unable to navigate around unknown terrain. But with the help of volunteers or “captains” like Morrison, she manages just fine.

“There are certain etiquettes when you’re riding a tandem bike,” she said. It is the captain’s job to alert the stoker when to slow down, when to stop and to relay what’s coming. “You can imagine the trust I have to have in the person in front of me,” she added.

But both Morrison and Jenkins insist that it’s nothing but a good time.

“It’s social, you talk, you go on outings, you have fun,” he said cheerily, while Jenkins heartily declared that captains are “absolutely the most amazing people you’ll ever meet.”

No such thing as free ride when it comes to York Region transit

9:31 am

If you were to take a poll of south York Region residents, I suspect you’d get near unanimous support for the proposed extension of the Yonge subway to Highway 7. But add a few caveats and the answers might change: what if the subway comes with an extra three cents per litre of gas? What if it comes with a one per cent addition to the sales tax? What about a toll on the DVP? Aye, there’s the rub.

Everyone knows that traffic is bad, and everyone knows that building more transit would help, and everyone knows it’s only going to get worse as the population grows, but as soon as you raise the idea that “you get what you pay for,” people start hemming and hawing.

Building the transit we need and paying for it was the point of the province creating Metrolinx and its 25-year plan, The Big Move. They hoped that by putting the shovels in the ground on new projects (e.g., the Viva rapidways now speeding buses along our streets) people would, after a few years, be more open to paying for more of the same. But they weren’t.

Metrolinx spent five years studying what taxes (sorry, “revenue tools”) would be the fairest and best way to pay for building its $50 billion plan. By the time their report finally hit in May 2013, two years overdue, Kathleen Wynne, long a supporter of revenue tools, was facing re-election. She did the smart thing (politically speaking) by passing the buck to an expert panel headed by the estimable Anne Golden.

That panel came up with its own set of recommendations, and although I could bore you with the specifics of the recommendations, it hardly matters. By then, Wynne was actively in an election and no one wanted to touch any new tax with a 10-foot pole, not even the NDP’s Andrea Horwath supported taxes to fund new rapid transit that would create jobs, stimulate investment and support economic development in a region outgrowing its infrastructure.

With the spring budget, the premier found a way around revenue tools by getting transit funds from selling off part of Hydro One, proving she’s learned we just can’t have an adult discussion about this.

Similarly, Canada is the only G8 country with no federal transit funding, so we should be lauding Stephen Harper for including transit funding for cities in his recent budget, but there’s always a catch. First you have to re-elect him, then it will only add up to $750 million for the first two years, climbing to $1 billion around 2020. That’s $1 billion for the whole of Canada, eventually. That’s not enough to get the Yonge extension to Steeles Avenue, much less up to Richmond Hill.

A few years ago Los Angeles overwhelmingly voted for a 30-year tax that will raise $36 billion for transit. But here they won’t even put it to a referendum because they know: you want it, but you don’t want to pay for it.

So, the Yonge subway extension remains in limbo, because no one knows how to pay for it, and even if they did, Toronto wants to build its Downtown Relief Line and SmartTrack first, and no one knows how to pay for either of those either.

I think smart politicians (including Wynne and John Tory) know the deal, but they’re also smart enough not to die on a political cross for it. So, with so little money to go around, the fight becomes an unfair one. Scarborough is getting a subway because its politicians convinced everyone they “deserve” a subway.

York Region did well in the last round of funding, getting the Spadina extension and $1.4 billion for Viva, so some people wonder if we “deserve” another subway, even though Markham, Richmond Hill and Vaughan have all established ambitious plans for transit-oriented development they can hardly be expected to achieve without transit.

The GTA has a long history of coming up with great transit plans and then ditching or undermining them, and it’s sad to see, with the shenanigans of the past few years, how little we’ve learned from past mistakes.

Whether or not you ride transit regularly – indeed, especially if you drive in traffic every day – it should be pretty obvious we’re in a growing region and need more infrastructure to support it, lest the whole thing collapse on itself. And there’s no such thing as a free ride.

Post City Magazines’ columnist David Fleischer is a long-time journalist and currently an urban planner living in York Region.

Restaurant Review: Boralia dishes out delicious O Canada cuisine

9:23 am

I am a proud Canadian. Put me in a room with a few Americans and it rarely takes me longer than seven minutes to break into a rhapsodic (and un-asked for) lecture about the virtues of our health-care system over theirs. And other stuff too.

But when it comes to Boralia, the new restaurant that’s a nonstop ode to Canadiana, I couldn’t care less about the historical provenance of the dishes. Which is mostly what my esteemed colleagues in the food media are focusing on. Did they not taste the food?

’Cause chef Wayne Morris could be cooking in Urdu, for all it matters. This guy (and his wife Evelyn Wu Morris, who cooked at the Fat Duck in England and has a hand in the recipes) can cook the pants off 90 per cent of the other chefs in town. He’s a very fine cook and it doesn’t matter how you label his oeuvre.

Although the Canadiana aspect is kinda fun. It’s sweet that the restaurant’s name comes from the Latin word for “northern” and stems from a name proposed for the new Canada before Confederation.

Most items have a date beside them on the menu for when they were first served in Canada, or what we were before Confederation. Like l’éclade (1605), chef’s most celebrated item: They bring the mussels to the table topped with a glass dome. The server ceremonially lifts the dome and a thick fragrant cloud of pine smoke floats up, thanks to smoke in the cooking butter and under the glass dome. But the thing here is the theatricality of it all.

Image: Jason Finestone

More genuine food thrills are to be had from fewer pyrotechnics. Chef’s stuffed onions (from 1899) are sublime: These are small onions stuffed with silken creamed carrots lightly seasoned with curry spices.

They’re sitting on a pilaf of rye berries. And to the guy who can make rye berries taste sublime, I tip my hat. The dots of uber-creamy creamed onions don’t exactly hurt the rye berries either. Ask for some of their marvelous house-made red fife bread with butter topped with onion powder (!!). Gild the lily.

Chef’s pan-roasted elk is the best meat I’ve eaten in a while: tender, juicy, loaded with flavour. Garnishing it with slices of raw boutique radish and a barely cooked egg crusted in toasted wild rice is putting snap, crackle and pop into that which is already a great delight in the mouth.

Image: Jason Finestone

But do not leave Boralia without eating the pigeon pie (1611). It’s like a tourtière because that’s the only meat pie we know. But quelle tourtière! The flakiest possible puff pastry encloses ineffably tender small chunks of squab dark meat with carrots and onions. Beside the pie sit slices of the squab breast, deep, rich, fork-tender. With sweet roasted parsnips and carrots.

Wayne Morris and Evelyn Wu Morris have created a charming room with clever shtick. But what matters most, always, is the taste of things. And theirs is superb.

Boralia, 59 Ossington Ave., $75 Dinner for two

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