Good news for deal-searching shoppers.

Liquidator Closeout King is moving into the former Zeller’s store at the Kipling Queensway Mall.

Workers have been carting in and laying out boxes of goods of items for sale at the 1255 The Queensway  store space, at Kipling Ave.

Lots of boxes in piles, mixed goods similar to Zellers could be seen inside the store, in addition to  furniture and household items, according to area resident Ian Robertson.

The store, which has three locations in the GTA, bills itself as ‘Canada’s largest closeout liquidator.’

The liquidator features many online deals and is getting some good reviews.

“Nice place to shopping for variety of items on wholesale prices,“ according to one reviewer online.

Another wrote “great bargains friendly staff lots of great deals“

“Great stuff,” another person said.

The liquidator fills a huge space that was one of Canada’s first Zeller stores, that was opened for decades.

You can see some of the deals on their website closeoutking.ca.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Etobicoke residents are cheering loud and proud for their young swimmers who are now competing in the Tokyo Olympics 2020.

Teenager Summer McIntosh, at 14 is the youngest member of the Canadian Olympic team.

The Grade 10 Student at Silverthorn Collegiate finished fourth and set a Canadian record in the women’s 400-metre freestyle in Tokyo last Sunday night.

McIntosh, along with Katrina Bellio and Ruslan Gasviev, are representing the Etobicoke Swim Club at the Olympics.

McIntosh finished the race with a time of 4:02.42, breaking the national record she set in the event on Saturday night, when she finished in 4:02.72. The previous record was held by Brittany MacLean, at 4:03:43, set at the 2016 Rio Olympics.

McIntosh is scheduled to race in the 800 heats on Thursday.

She is the daughter of Jill Horstead, who swam for Canada in the 1984 Olympic Games. McIntosh made a name for herself last June by edging Penny Oleksiak in the 200-metre freestyle final of the Olympic qualifier to earn a spot on the team.

The strong showing was Canada’s second impressive performance in aquatic events on the night, coming just on the heels of Maggie Mac Neil claiming the country’s first gold medal of the Games.

“It’s definitely just the beginning for me,” McIntosh told The Canadian Press in Tokyo. “It’s amazing that I can have this experience under my belt for the coming years.”

She had to deal with the death in June of her long-time coach Kevin Thorburn.

Katrina Bellio was the lone Canadian in the women’s 1,500, which is making its debut at the Olympics. She briefly held the Games record as the winner of Monday’s first heat in 16:24.37 to shatter her personal best by over five seconds.

However, the 16-year-old from Mississauga, didn’t advance to the final as Australia’s Kiah Melverton, the eighth and final qualifier, clocked a faster time.

“It’s a great feeling to be part of history,” Bellio told reporters. “To be swimming at the Olympics at such a young age is incredible.”

Bellio and McIntosh had been teammates for several years at Etobicoke Swim Club, one of the top teams in Canada, before McIntosh made the jump to the Toronto High Performance Centre.

Bellio won the 1,500 freestyle at the Canadian Olympic Trials, with a time of more than two seconds.

Etobicoke’s Ruslan Gasviev, 21, finished third in the 100-metre freestyle in the 2021 Canadian Olympic swimming trials that took him to Tokyo.

Etobicoke has placed 31 swimmers on Canadian Olympic Teams since 1956.

 

 

 

 

Music fans are calling for Yonge-Dundas Square to be renamed the Oscar Peterson Square in honour of the famous Canadian jazz musician.

Peterson, a former Mimico resident and global music icon, is being suggested by his fans to rename the popular downtown Square after Dundas is removed.

City council have said Dundas Street and other references to Dundas will  be removed due to his connections to the slave trade.

Plans are underway by City staff to rename all the references to Dundas, who had no connections to Canada.

Toronto city council voted in favour of renaming Dundas Street in a bid to promote inclusion of marginalized communities. After a lengthy debate on July 14, council voted 17-7 in favour of a motion to change the name of the street, a major artery running east-west through the city.

Council approved the renaming of Dundas Street due to its namesake’s connection to slavery. Council voted in favour of removing Henry Dundas’ name from the street as well as other civic assets such as Yonge-Dundas Square and Dundas subway station.

Councillor Michael Thompson said he will be the first to suggest that the Square be named after the world-famous jazz musician, who made Mississauga his home.

Thompson, in an interview, said the Square should be named after the Montreal-born musician.

The award-winning pianist lived in Amadeo Gardens in Mimico briefly in the 1980s and loved the area parks. He was honoured by the community in a portrait that hangs in a Lake Shore Village Wall of Legends, with others who helped to transform the area.

Peterson, who died in 2007 at the age of  82, was a Canadian jazz pianist, virtuoso and composer. Called the ‘King of inside swing,’ he released over 200 recordings, won seven Grammy Awards, as well as a lifetime achievement award from the Recording Academy, and received numerous other awards and honours.

Born in the Caribbean, he is considered one of history’s great jazz pianists, who played thousands of concerts worldwide in a career lasting more than 60 years.

In 1997 he received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and an International Jazz Hall of Fame Award. His friend, politician and amateur pianist Bob Rae, said, “a one-handed Oscar was better than just about anyone with two hands.”

Yonge–Dundas Square is a one acre outdoor public and event space at the intersection of Yonge Street and Dundas Street.  The Square draws visitors from across the city and around the world, bringing a vibrant energy to the neighborhood.  The space has been host to thousands of events ranging from community festivals to product launches, international celebrations and more.

 

A number of businesses in Etobicoke and 12 other municipalities were targeted for police searches as part of an international drug ring that smuggled hundreds of kilos of cocaine and other drugs  into the Toronto area hidden in clothing.

Police said the cocained were soaked into clothing imported from Colombia and then processed in a laboratory to remove the cocaine from the garments so it can be sold when it arrives at its destination.

The OPP said Project Southam was a 15-month investigation that wrapped up this week with the arrest of 22 people from a number of  Greater Toronto area crime groups.

“The GTA-based organized crime groups have been importing high volumes of cocaine into Canada for the purpose of trafficking as well as other criminal activities,” police said in a release.

The OPP Organized Crime Enforcement Bureau (OCEAB) said they targeted two groups whose members were working together to smuggle and sell the drugs in the GTA.

“An organized crime group was responsible for importing and trafficking cocaine from Colombia, concealed in textiles,” police alleged. “They would then establish a clandestine laboratory to process the cocaine into a sellable state.”

The groups allegedly conspired to import cocaine from the Caribbean and export cannabis from Canada to the U.S., police said.

Officers said 44 search warrants were executed on July 7 against 25 locations in Toronto, Innisfil, Mississauga, Oakville, Vaughan, Thornhill, Brampton and Ancaster.

Police said businesses were searched in Etobicoke, Vaughan, Hamilton and Mississauga.

The major investigation also involved the Provincial Intelligence Bureau (POIB), York Regional Police and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

Police during the probe seized 92 kilograms of cocaine; 1 kilogram of methamphetamine; 249 kilograms of illicit cannabis; 1.3 kilograms of psilocybin; 21 litres of gamma-hydroxybutyrate; 980 oxycodone pills; a 5 mm handgun; a bar of silver worth $2,600, $372,000 in Canadian and $7,600 in U.S. funds and seven vehicles.

All the accuseds are before the courts.