A Scarborough man and a company have been fined $1 million in court for operating a smuggling ring that snuck expensive gold jewellery into Canada.

The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) said Rahu Sinnathamby, and a company called Lovely Gold Inc., pleaded guilty in Brampton court last March to breaching two counts each under the Customs Act.

The smuggler was fined a total of $760,000, and he and the company ordered to pay $246,614 in regulatory penalties, according to a release from the CBSA.

They said a two-year investigation revealed that in October 2018 the parties enlisted travellers to bring gold jewellery as earrings, bracelets and other items from India to Canada.

The CBSA said evidence gathered during a two-year long investigation lead to the conviction of the man, and a corporation, for gold smuggling activities.

Investigators determined the ‘jewellery smuggling operation’ had been in operation for about 17 months and many smuggling trips were conducted.

The CBSA said in July 2018 the investigation identified a link to a separate traveller attempting to smuggle an even greater quantity of jewellery into Canada.

Court heard that the smugglers paid for the airline tickets of the travellers and ordered them not to declare the jewellery to border officials when they touched down at Pearson airport, where the scam was discovered.

“This successful prosecution highlights the tireless work and great investigative efforts of both CBSA border services officers and our criminal investigations team,” said Lisa Janes, the CBSA
Regional Director General. “The discovery of this jewellery smuggling scheme demonstrates our commitment to ensuring the integrity of Canada’s border laws and economy.”

Police said if you have information about the exploitation of the border for criminality, call the CBSA Border Watch Toll-free Line at 1-888-502-9060

 

 

 

This flashback is for the Toronto Maple Leafs failed run again for the Stanley Cup 2021.

Toronto comedy legends Johnny Wayne and Frank Shuster loved hockey and their highly-rated show dominated Canadian radio and then TV for nearly four decades.

The duo were members of Harbord Collegiate’s Oola Boola Drama Club, who wrote and produced their shows before signing a one-year contract with CBC radio in 1941.

They placed their promising careers on hold by signing up for the Canadian Army as infantry officers during WWII. Before long their comedic skills had them writing and producing The Army Show to entertain the troops.

The pair wrote hundreds of hugely funny skits, but one of their most memorable made Mimico residents proud of their imaginary hockey team called “The Mimico Mice.”

Wayne and Shuster would perform a 1946 mock match between the Mimico Mice, a two-player team, who would face-off against Toronto Maple Leafs, complete with authentic sound efforts from Maple Leaf Gardens and the late and legendary Foster Hewitt calling the play-by-play, using the names of actual Maple Leaf players of the era.

The sketch was a blast and guarantee to fetch a gut-busting laugh from hockey fans.

Shuster once said fans always remember and wanted to talk about the Mimico Mice. Here is a sample of their great comedic writing skills and love of Canada’s national sport.

“He’d go, ‘Wayne passes to Shuster, and Shuster goes down the ice.’ We’d lose about 110-0. Sometimes we got one goal for neatness,” Shuster said. “I still bump into people who say, ‘How are the Mimico Mice doing?'”

“We loved hockey anyway,” Shuster says. “I played pickup games and sold Eskimo Pies at Maple Leaf Gardens when I was in high school. Johnny was a regular at the games. He considered himself the number one Maple Leaf fan.”

Johnny and Wayne performed the hockey sketch for a U.S. audience on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1958. The bit involved brawling, yet highbrow, hockey players, and it ended with four players pulling out musical instruments to form a string quartet in the penalty box.

Through the late 1940s and early ’50s, Wayne and Shuster appeared on many Canadian and U.S. television programs but their breakthrough in the States came from The Ed Sullivan Show. Sullivan was so impressed by the Canadians that he invited them back 66 more times, a show record.

Wayne and Shuster, along with other artists, made it easier for other Canadian artists to penetrate the U.S. market.

The success of SCTV and their retirement in the 1980s finally opened English Canadian television to new voices of humour. Codco, Kids In The Hall, This Hour Has 22 Minutes, Red Green and The Royal Canadian Air Farce were some of the successful shows launched in the 1980s and ’90s.

Here’s hoping The Mimico Mice bring home the Stanley Cup.

 

 

It’s time to define what defunding the police means. It’s a question of ‘framing.’ If it means reducing the size of the Service – no!  If it means, RE-TASKING or restructuring the Service, we answer yes.

Removing funds achieves nothing; funding new responsibilities and redirecting accountability does. Are police necessary to regulate traffic or act as first responders to non-violent health care calls? Yet, we need skilled officers with better techniques to resolve violent conflict, investigate organized crime and encourage public accountability to our diverse population. It also requires all of us, as an involved community, to work together with the police to identify criminal conduct.

Police are insular, slow to modernize, or accept outside advice. I personally tried developing courses with them and was often met with a polite but reluctant thanks. Policing originated in the 1800s in Europe, The U.S. and Canada, as an arm of the Courts before evolving into its own entity. In Canada, policing is under the Solicitor General and is responsible for laying criminal charges but the decision to prosecute belongs to the Attorney General. It’s a check and balance.

Historically, most laws were written to protect property. In the Southern U.S., it was started to oversee the slave industry. If you have no property you have few rights to enforce; therefore, policing has an historical social-economic focus. An economic Theory goes, “the more people who own property, the less crimes of self-help.”

Today, the ‘street-cop’, still a quasi-military structure has more than the original purpose of property protection on their plate. We have added: social, psychological, health (drugs, pandemics), human rights, intellectual property, hate and such — a multitask. The generalist tries to be everything for everyone. Like many large institutions the Services resist change. In the past, hiring required physically large men to reflect power.

Once a very hefty, retired Long Branch officer, confided, “If I met a belligerent drunk at the old Long Branch Hotel — a regular Friday event, he could choose to have it ‘out’ around back or he could come along peacefully, sleep it off at the jail and go home – his choice, either way, no charges.” It was a Police Force, not a Service.

The term ‘Service’ has replaced ‘Force’ trying to market a new image for its multi-tasks. The street-cop’s role has become too challenging trying to satisfy diverse cultures and modern psychology. It’s too complicated for a generalist. Force is no longer the universal answer. What we need is certified uniform training and licenses to work in a variety of specialities

RE-TASKING, requires more than just a corporate declaration of new roles. It needs the officer’s personal

accountability for the job requirements. Policing is more than a job. It is a profession. Justice Tulloch, in his ‘Independent Police Oversight Review’ recognizes this need. He suggests, a professional body for policing, like England and Wales.”

Policing is a calling in the same way many doctors are called to medicine and teachers are called to teaching. Policing should be seen as a distinguished profession …. the requirements needed to enter and continue in the profession of policing in Ontario remain largely static, ill-defined, and inconsistent.

A police officer may be promoted for various reasons. Unlike some other professions, there is no standard educational requirement …. the hallmarks of a profession are a well-developed code of ethics. It provides members of the public with a clear idea of the values and responsibilities; they also serve as a mechanism for ensuring professional accountability.

Most professions have licensing requirements. This is the case for doctors, lawyers, electricians, architects, accountants, engineers, real estate brokers, teachers, and many other regulated professionals. It should set the standards for policing including standards on police education and training for both new recruits and seasoned officers.

The net effect would redirect the individual officer’s duty to the professional standards and not his colleagues. They would have to meet evidence-based standards of the licensing authority, the ‘College’, and could not work without a revocable license. “The goal of the Licensing Authority, the College, would be to develop a culture of professionalism in policing.” Criminal Conduct would still be enforceable by agencies such as the SIU.

Higher qualifications, means higher costs. We need to re-task not defund; hoping monies are diverted to other social agency is not a political competence. We closed Psychiatric Residential Facilities, promising to divert the savings to community housing. Ask some ‘street-people’ where’s the money. We are the problem. We start thinking taxes when we speak ‘costs. We must recognize — better performance means a price for quality goods. It’s your Ontario, you decide.

Judge Lloyd Budzinski retired after 28 years and was a former Crown Attorney, Defence Counsel and Onario’s Assistant Deputy Minister of Criminal Law. He was Chief Prosecutor in the high-profile trial of ex-RCMP officer Patrick Michael Kelly, who was found guilty of murder for throwing his wife from at 17-floor balcony in 1981.

 

 

Former Reeve Franklin E. Shaver loved cars and is fondly remembered for owning the first vehicle in Etobicoke some 112 years ago.

Shaver, who came from a prominent Etobicoke family, served as the 12^th Reeve of the Borough of Etobicoke, which was created in 1850.

He served from 1906 to 1908, when he was defeated by prominent cattle breeder John Gardhouse, a farmer who co-founded the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair and Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame inductee.

Back then the Borough of Etobicoke was growing and the businesses were booming.

Many residents had never been close to a car before that day in 1909 when Shaver pulled up in a shiny new Studebaker-Flanders automobile.

The auto was the first in Etobicoke and sported four cyclinders, water cooled engine, 20 horse power, 100-inch wheel base, 32-inch wheels and all-metal body.

It even had a selective sliding gear two speed transmission and reverse, shaft drive.

“The greatest automotive value the world has ever seen,” screamed the advertising for the vehicle. It sold for $750, a princely sum in those days.

The high-flying Studebaker Flanders company boasted to have 75,000 of the vehicles on the road and “every owner is an enthusiastic booster.”

“The Studebaker cars are built for honest everyday service, and will give you service – not excuses,” boasts its promotional materials. “From the moment your Studebaker Flanders is delivered, you have a car that is ready to go.”

Back then, there was little bus service and personal transportation was still primarily by horse-drawn carriage, according to the Etobicoke Historical Society (EHS). “Cars did not predominate in the rural areas until after the depression.”

Dundas Street and Lakeshore Road were both paved in 1917 and “other road were gravel or even mud,” they said.

There was good access to other towns, including downtown Toronto, by train. By 1917, the Toronto Suburban Electric Railway had opened passenger service from Keele Street to Guelph, passing through central Etobicoke.

Shaver’s family had done well. Patriarch Peter Shaver had arrived from Ancaster in 1830 and acquired 200 acres on the west side of Hwy. 427, between Bloor Street and Rathburn Road, according to the EHS.

He hired prominent Weston architect, William Tyrrell to design and build his home, which was completed in 1852. The house is Georgian in style and is built of red and yellow brick with a picturesque verandah across the front.

Many people know the historic “Applewood” house as the place where they or friends were married. It has hosted more than 12,000 weddings.

The Studebaker-Flanders was named after Walter E. Flanders who had been Henry Ford’s production manager in the early 1900s. Production was by The Everitt-Metzger-Flanders Company of Detroit.

Studebaker entered the automotive business in 1902 with electric vehicles and in 1904 with gasoline vehicles. For 50 years, the company established a reputation for quality, durability and reliability.

After an unsuccessful 1954 merger the company could not solve their cash flow problems and was forced to shut. The last Studebaker rolled off a Hamilton, Ont., assembly plant in 1966.

At one time more than 15,000 employees worked for the Studebaker automaker.

 

 

Response has been positive to the newly opened Kipling Transit Hub that can take riders across the GTA in comfort.

Riders seem to love the new $73 million transit hub at Kipling GO Station that has been under construction since 2018.

South Etobicoke riders can now connect to GO Transit, MiWay bus for Mississauga and Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) services at the hub.

It is a massive facility that features 3,000 square feet of indoor waiting area space along with 1,400 parking spaces and 90 bicycle parking spots.

There is also an underground tunnel that will allow commuters arriving at the station access to the nearby Kipling subway station and an elevated pedestrian bridge that will provide access to the GO train platform.

“Transit will be critical for this region over the next decade and that’s why our government is proactively putting the building blocks in place to address those needs,” Associate Minister of Transportation Kinga Surma said in a statement.

Toronto Mayor John Tory said that the transit hub may not be a large project in terms of “the dollar amount” but is a “significant” example of government’s “working together across regional and municipal boundaries” to get transit built.

The bus terminal has accessible elevators, digital displays with schedule information, wayfinding signage, enhanced lighting, PRESTO and pay machines, as well as electric phone charging stations. Outside, the hub features a snow melting system on the bus platform, upgrades to the GO train platform, updated pick-up and drop-off building.

Metrolinx President Phil Verster said they have created a seamless transit journey by bringing together all of the transit services customers depend on.

“With connections to the Milton line, more than 10 bus routes, GO, MiWay and TTC transit providers and express access to the airport, the Kipling Transit Hub will be a new home base as customers travel across the region,” said Verster.

“The transit connections offered at the new Kipling Transit Hub will provide residents with better access to job and housing opportunities, both locally and across the Greater Golden Horseshoe,” said Ontario Minister of Transportation Caroline Mulroney.

Metrolinx says Kipling Transit Hub was designed with the goal to achieve a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold certification.