Random Access

Sorry about the hiatus. Obviously have some catching up to do. This will be shotgun start... as well as middle and end.
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How do you think most Mississaugans will react when they hear about the proposal to reduce Lakeshore Rd. from four lanes to three lanes, make the centre of those three lanes reversible (eastbound traffic in the a.m./ westbound in the p.m.) and use the fourth lane for a physically-separated two-way bike lane?
There will probably be howls of protest from we car-obsessed Mississaugans, who denounce gridlock from behind the wheel as we wait in a long line of commuters headed for the gym.
Gil Penalosa and his Walk&Bike For Life group are out this week with a brave and intriguing report called Creating A Great Mississauga Community. It details the outcome of a public meeting January 17 and subsequent discussions with ratepayer and community groups in the lakeshore corridor and makes some recommendations that will be rejected out of hand by many, but probably shouldn't be.
Penalosa, the former commissioner of recreation and parks in Bogota, Colombia, has a long history of success in encouraging people to do things once considered madness: such as closing over 91 kms. of main roads on Sundays and holidays in Bogota. The result? Some 1.5 million people get out and moving around when they don't have to take their life in their hands to do so.
Also included in the new report, which will be going on-line soon at www.walkandbikeforlife.org, is a recommendation suggestion to close two of Lakeshore's two lanes Sundays, at least from the beginning of May to the end of September for walk 'n rolling.
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Rambo remembered, in case there was any doubt.
Gabriela Nowakowska's dog — breed to be determined by a court later this month — was very, very excited to see her again when she visited him at Mississauga Animal Control again Tuesday. So excited he had a little accident in his quarters during the visit.
"It was good," reports Gabriela. "I want him to get used to it and I think he is." The weekly visits to the canine hoosegow were approved by City council a couple of weeks ago.
The only problem, of course, is that dog and owner have only an hour or so to get reacquainted. "Every time I leave, I want to take him home with me," says Gabriela.
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So, there will be a nomination in Mississauga South for the federal Tories after all. The riding was finally "released" this week for a nomination, with a likely cutoff for new memberships of May 20, and a nomination the week of June 10.
Biggest question, can the last man in the race be the last man standing? Many observers feel the party brass may be most comfortable with Major Ted Opitz, an Etobicoke resident who came into the contest long after the four other contenders (Tom Simpson, Hugh Arrison, Don Stephens and Raya Shadursky) had all but given up pleading for the contest to be called.
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And a musical footnote.
Alex Pangman, the Mississauga jazz singer who is venturing into western Swing, Torch 'n Twang, bluegrass and the lovely absurdist country vein pioneered by Roger Miller, in her new band called Lickin' Good Fried (after a line in Miller's England Swings) says the debut CD is about 75 per cent finished.
"I think we'll be looking at a fall release," says Pangman.
You can hear examples at http://www.myspace.com/lickingoodfried.

The gun just went off for the official start of the Mississauga South Conservative federal nomination campaign and one of the contestants has already pulled up lame.
Don Stephens, the ward 2 Peel District School Board trustee, said today that, "I have decided to step aside at this time." The decision was made for personal reasons, on which he chose not to elaborate.
"No one was pushing me," Stephens explained this afternoon. "But this is not a good time for me to run. To beat Paul Szabo, it is going to take a 100 per cent effort and I just can't devote that amount of time."
That reduces the field to four: lawyer Tom Simpson, international financial consultant Hugh Arrison, credit union manager Raya Shadursky and the guy everyone seems to assume the party wants: latecomer Major Ted Opitz, a reservist with the Royal Canadian Regiment.
Stephens politely declined to handicap the rest of the field, who are all trying to sell memberships like mad for the June 10 meeting.
Opitz would seem to be the wild card. He has good credentials, but the wrong postal code.
Mississauga South stalwarts have always been fussy about having their community represented by native sons or daughters (see Tim Peterson for details.)
Arrison, a personable and steady type, may be the beneficiary of being everyone's second choice in this kind of race. Something like the way Bob Horner came up the middle and knocked off some heavyweights (Ron Starr, Alex Jupp) to win the Mississauga North nomination so many years ago.

Sharlene Lamarsh has a demoralizing mystery on her hands.
Why do so many of the birds who come to her Lakeview home to eat the birdseed and bread she puts out for them, have nylon ties attached to their legs?
"I've noticed it over the past three or four years," says Lamarsh, who regularly feeds the birds. "But now, there seem to be more and more of them."
The plastic tags that are tied around one of the birds' legs come in a variety of colours. They are a type of tie-down strips, with little plastic teeth that you use to tighten something down with. You loop the plastic through a ring, pull it as hard as you can and then snip off the end.
But how could someone ever get close enough to a bird to do that, wonders Lamarsh?
"For a while I thought it might have something to do with West Nile and maybe they were being tagged for some reason like that," says the Eastmount Ave. resident, who has lived in Mississauga since 1994.
But if that were the case, of course, the ends of the tags would have been cut off so that they didn't drag behind the birds and potentially catch on things.
Surely there is no way that the birds could accidentally be getting their legs caught up in the tags somehow? That just doesn't make sense to Lamarsh.
"It's really heartbreaking to see the birds struggling around the yard," says the bird lover. "You want to catch them and cut it off but, of course, you can't get close to them."
On the weekend, Lamarsh took some photographs of the birds including the one of the grackle above who is a regular visitor. You can see part of the plastic tie behind the bird's tail in the photo.
The resident called authorities for help last year, but even figuring out who to call and trying to get a straight answer out of anyone proved difficult. "They just sloughed me off," she says.
Her conclusion is that, "someone must be trapping these birds and tagging them, but then why not cut the tie off?"
Seeing so many birds hobbling around and in distress has Lamarsh upset, angry and frustrated that she can't get any answers. Worse yet it's difficult to know where to begin to ask the right questions.
She called Toronto Wildlife Services today in a bid to get help with her unlikely problem.
"There's one bird I saw the other day who won't even put his one foot down on the ground," she says. "They can't fly properly. It breaks your heart to see these birds just flopping around."
If anyone has any ideas about what's going on here, please let us know.

"Leadership Through Action" is the motto splashed across the top of the web site of Conservative Party of Canada candidate Major Ted Opitz.
Some of the other candidates for the Mississauga South nomination taking place June 10 at St. John's Hall on Stavebank Rd. think he's taking the motto a little too seriously these days.
That's because Optiz pre-empted some of his opponents — yes with military precision — by buying up web domain sites that prospective voters at the nomination might be visiting to learn about the candidates.
Financial consultant Hugh Arrison's real web site is http://www.voteforhugh.ca/ but if you tried http://www.hugharrison.ca earlier this week, you'll be redirected to the site of the Opitz, of the Royal Regiment of Canada. That's because the owner of the domain is Theodore John Peter Opitz.
Same thing with the third candidate still in the race, Orchard Heights ratepayer president Raya Shadursky. Her real web site is http://www.rayascampaign.com/ but if you searched http://www.rayashadursky.ca, you'd get Major Ted again.
"There's nothing illegal about it," Opitz said this morning, pointing out that this has happened before in other nomination contests. "It's not evil or nefarious," he said. "It's a strategic tactic that is effective and quite legal. It's an electoral tactic."
Web sites are a critical front in nomination battles, so the more people you can point in your direction, the better off you are, argued the candidate.
A wise candidate would secure all of the domain names that could be potentially used as web sites for their candidacies as he did, said Optiz.
"It may be legal but it's unethical," retorted David Brown, Arrison's campaign manager. "Is this the way you should try to get votes? He wants to sneak them through Hugh rather than going out and getting them on his own," said Brown, the former Canadian tennis champion who still appears to enjoy a well-placed (political) overhead smash.
"I think this will be perceived by the members as a little underhanded and unethical," he said. "It wouldn't even be considered by Mr. Arrison. It's not the way to represent the party and it's not the way to conduct yourself with the other candidates. I think people will use this to judge the character, or lack of character within this individual. This is not the way we feel Conservative candidates should be operating."
Then Brown proceeds to play the Tim Peterson card, suggesting that Mississauga South Tories do not accept interlopers well. Opitz, of course, doesn't live in the riding which means he has to work twice as hard to prove himself to the 400 or so core members of the association, who will likely end up holding the balance of power in the contest.
Opitz, on the other hand, said he doesn't think anyone will be voting based on postal code.
The race is now down to three after Clarkson lawyer Tom Simpson, the first into the race, bowed out because — ironically enough — he is moving out of the riding.
Ward 2 Trustee Don Stephens withdrew a couple of weeks ago for personal reasons.
In a late development this afternoon, however, after Arrison and Shadurksy chatted with Opitz, things suddenly took a completely different turn.
"We're all adults," explained Opitz. "We had a discussion, they registered their concerns" and there will be no more redirections to his web site. "We ultimately all have to get together on the 11th of June and work together," Opitz said.
"I don't apologize for my aggressive tactics. I'm an aggressive guy. We had a chat and we're all friends.
Is the concession an admission of poor judgment on his part?
"Not at all," says Opitz. "It's just an accommodation. I'm a team player. I'm an army guy. To achieve a goal, you have to work together."
Brown called back to say things have been cleared up and there is no more issue.
Just one big happy Tory family, for a few more days at least.

There are some community news stories that truly stand the test of time.
There's the They want to close my local school story, the My neighbour saved my child's life story, the My Mom turns 100 on Saturday story and, of course, the classic, I grew a 50-pound pumpkin in my backyard that looks just like the Mayor story.
Florence Dike, who has lived in Applewood Acres for 40 years and on this planet for 90 years, called The News Friday with another one of the classics.
It's the my neighbour's weeds are four feet higher than the fence, and nobody will do anything about it story.
"I'm 90 years old and I'm trying to keep ahead of those weeds, but I can't do it," Dike said Friday morning (May 23) when she called The News to complain.
Dike lives on Russett Rd. just east of Stanfield Rd. in Applewood Acres. She says there have been weed problems at her neighbour's property, which fronts onto the North Service Rd. for the past several years.
She called the City of Mississauga a week ago today, as she says she does almost every year, to complain about the weeds which include the highly-invasive garlic mustard. An inspector came out, looked at the problem and gave her neighbour an order to remove the weeds by May 31.
"That's over a week and there are going to be a million more seeds blown into my back yard by then," said Dike. "I complain every year and usually they (the City) come and do something about it, but this time I have to wait nearly a week."
Jamie Hinton, the City's manager of compliance and licensing and a veteran of 27 years with the municipality, says a notice of contravention of the noxious weed regulations was given to Dike's neighbour following the inspection. If the offending weeds are not removed by May 31, the City will remove them and charge the cost to the owner.
If the weeds were removed quickly in previous years, it was because the owner quickly complied when given notice of contravention, says Hinton.
But he says there is only one previous complaint against the property on record, from 2006. There's no record of who laid that complaint with the City, but it's a safe bet it was Dike.
Spring is the time of year when weed complaints peak, says Hinton.
At her age, says Dike, she doesn't have time to wait for action.
She can get out to her own backyard to do a little yard work but not much. She has a company come to cut her lawn. She won't have to personally deal with the weeds that grow from the seeds that blow over the fence but that doesn't mean Florence doesn't take the offence personally.
"Every time a car goes by or the wind blows, all those seeds are going to come into my back yard," she says. "What good is a bylaw that gives them another 10 days to fix the problem? Look at all the extra work I'm going to have to be responsible for."
Not only does Florence know what a classic community news story is, she also knows where it belongs. "This story should be on the front page of your newspaper," she snaps.
In the sixth-largest city in the country, where 700,000 people attempt to live together cheek-by-jowl, the old verities still remain.
A yard full of blowing weeds may not be front-page news but it still hits all of the Florences of the world, who built this fair city, in the place where they really live.

Some quick hits on the federal Tory nomination in Mississauga South:
• Phil Green, who ran the past two times for the party and closed the gap a little on each attempt on incumbent Liberal Paul Szabo, has endorsed international financial consultant Hugh Arrison for the job this time around.
In an e-mail to friends and supporters, Green says Arrison has enjoyed a "tremendous" financial and business career and understands the concerns of the riding, because he lives in it.
"Just as important for me, Hugh knows that there can be a big difference between what is legal and what is the right thing to do," says Green, an obvious reference to candidate Major Ted Optiz's recent ploy to buy up web site domains that his opponents could potentially use and redirect people from those sites to his own.
Opitz thought better of the plan after his opponents cried foul. He gave it some reflection and dropped the idea.
• Long-time Tory and two-time mayoralty candidate Roy Willis will nominate the other "in-house" riding candidate — ratepayer president and long-time Tory stalwart Raya Shadursky.
• Opitz must not only fight the reality that he doesn't live in the riding, but the general perception that he is the party's chosen one.
After the provincial party foisted incumbent Liberal MPP Tim Peterson on the riding, with disastrous results last October, it might be a better idea in Mississauga South to be a son, or daughter, of the riding rather than one of the party.
There's a good chance that Optiz will face an "Anybody But Ted" movement if it comes down to a two-person race.
• By the way, a little birdie tells me that Tim Peterson, who has already expressed interest in running provincially again for the Tories against Charles Sousa in Mississauga South in 2014, has his house for sale.
Question: Can Major Opitz move fast enough to take possession before the June 10 nomination meeting?