news
Newsstand: December 24, 2014
Dear Christmas shopping lollygaggers: your time is almost up! Merry almost-Christmas! In the news: a Toronto restaurant owner fends off a robber, the Scarborough Subway needs a fourth station according to Glenn De Baeremaeker, two former York School educators make quality education more accessible to a group of underprivileged children in India, and a very special holiday message from Mayor John Tory.
Toronto restaurateur Arron Barberian, known for his enthusiasm for baseball, can now add amateur crime-fighting to his growing CV of headline-grabbing pastimes. The longtime owner of Barberian’s Steakhouse was walking away from one of his two Elm Street restaurants on Monday morning when he was approached by a would-be mugger who attacked him and attempted to pry a cash box from his hands. Barberian fought back, successfully pulling the cash box away from the attacker. The whole scene was captured on security cameras and uploaded to YouTube. Barberian was not harmed in the attempted robbery, and a good samaritan helped collect the cash that had spilled from the box and returned it to him. Sadly, a less-good samaritan made off with his cell phone, which had also fallen to the ground during the tussle.
Councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker (Ward 38, Scarborough Centre) wants the City to consider adding a fourth station to the Scarborough subway extension. De Baeremaeker says another station is needed near Danforth Road and Eglinton Avenue East, an addition that would tack $150 million onto the $3.5-billion transit project. “We should have more stations,” he said. “When you look at Kennedy to the next station that’s approved, it’s about four kilometres. If that was downtown, along the Bloor line, there’d be 800 metres between stations.” Of course, there was once a plan for a fully-funded Scarborough LRT which included seven stations—a plan that De Baeremaeker helped scrap.
Two former Toronto educators from the York School have taken their experience to India in an effort to try and better the lives of poor children in a tiny village. Since 2009, Barbara Galbraith and Barbara Goodwin-Zeibots have been running the Global Pathways School in Chettipalayam, where they educate students living below the poverty line. The standard of education and curriculum they have created for their students has met with such success that higher income families have recently tried to fake neediness in order to get their children into the school. Now, the school is expanding. Currently, 232 students attend, but a new building that is expected to open in the summer of 2015 will allow them to help more young people.
Finally, seasons greetings from Mayor John Tory—quite possibly the only man who can make your eyes glaze over with a holiday message.