Birch Cliff traffic safety meeting planned By Kasy Pertab
Volume 47 No. 21
BEACHMETRO.COM
January 22, 2019
SCARBOROUGH SOUTHWEST Councillor Gary Crawford will be hosting a community meeting this month regarding traffic safety issues in the area of Birch Cliff Public School. The meeting is set for Jan. 29 at 6 p.m. at the Birchmount Community Centre, 93 Birchmount Rd. Crawford will be joined by representatives of Toronto police and the City of Toronto transportation
department at the meeting. “Safety is a priority for me. I’m holding this Traffic Safety Meeting for Birch Cliff Public School parents and staff in order to build consensus and cooperation regarding traffic congestion and safety during intake and dismissal times,” he told the Beach Metro News. “Many, if not most schools, share these concerns. While schools actively promote walking to and from class, parents’ schedules sometimes leave little time for this
activity. I’m positive that when we all work together, resolution and improvements are achievable.” When asked about the importance of the meeting, Crawford replied via Twitter saying, “There have been ongoing concerns about parking and driving around the school, overall safety in the neighbourhood, and speeds along Kingston Road.” Crawford said he hopes the meeting will provide some solutions and strategies.
Petition to ban handguns available locally
PHOTO: KASY PERTAB
Artist Jeffrey Sprang with his painting of swimmer Penny Oleksiak, who won four medals at the Rio Olympics in 2016, at the unveiling of the portrait at Monarch Park Collegiate last week.
Portrait of Olympian Penny Oleksiak unveiled at Monarch Park Collegiate By Kasy Pertab
MONARCH PARK Collegiate has unveiled a portrait of one of its most famous students. The watercolour painting displayed is of 18-year-old Olympic champion Penny Oleksiak. Oleksiak is a competitive swimmer specializing in freestyle and butterfly events. She won four medals in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games as a member of the Canadian swim team, and became the first athlete born in the 2000s to achieve an Olympic gold medal in an individual event. Her Olympic medals consisted of a gold in the 100-metre freestyle, a silver in the 100m butterfly, and two bronzes in the women’s free-
style relays. She was a student at Monarch Park Collegiate during the time of the Olympic Games in Brazil. To commemorate her victory, Canadian artist Jeffrey Sprang created a painting of Oleksiak proudly wearing her medals from the Rio Olympics. Sprang explained that there are also 100 prints of the portrait available for sale. The prints are signed by both Sprang and Oleksiak and are being sold for $200 each. “I am so pleased with how this turned out,” Sprang said at the unveiling ceremony which was held on the morning of Tuesday, Jan. 15 at the school. “I hope that people will view this as a commemorative piece because
it really is something quite unique and special.” The proceeds from the sale of the prints will be going to swim programs at three different schools across Toronto. These schools include Monarch Park, Carleton Village, and Sunny View. Oleksiak’s high school Phys. Ed teacher, Bryan McAlpine, shared his appreciation for how dedicated his star student was. “Penny would come to our fitness class and work her absolute heart out,” McAlpine said. “When she touched that wall at the end and made this nation proud, that was the result of her hard work.” Students from the school’s swim team also spoke about Oleksiak,
praising her for how much training she would put in before the Olympics. Others also spoke about her kindness towards students at the school, and the way she would help time the other swimmers as they practiced. Monarch Park’s principal, Virginia Pang, added that having Oleksiak’s painting displayed will help to inspire other students as well. “She will continue to grace our school, and hopefully we’ll have another Olympian in the works,” Pang said. Oleksiak’s portrait will be put in a display case and set up in the halls near the swimming pool entrance, where students and members of the community can view it before they swim.
A LOCAL resident is hoping to make it easier for area residents who wish to sign a national petition calling for the federal government to implement a ban on the civilian ownership of handguns and military assault weapons. The petition is being sponsored by a Toronto MP, Julie Dzerowicz of Davenport. Birch Cliff resident Patricia Gresham said she was inspired to try and get more signatures on the petition in the wake of the shooting that took place on a Sunday afternoon earlier this month at Woodbine Avenue and Kingston Road and by subsequent stories about it in the Beach Metro News. Two men suffered non-life threatening injuries in that shooting which took place in the busy intersection at about 2:30 p.m. on Jan. 6. A column in the Jan. 8 edition of the Beach Metro News said people should not only be outraged about the dangerous use of guns by criminals on our streets, but that residents should also be pushing politicians at all levels to do something about it. To that end, Gresham decided to see what she could do to make a difference and discovered Dzerowicz’s petition. She went online to sign it, and said she found the process fairly complex and is worried that people without a lot of computer skills or confidence might be unable to access it and let their feelings on the issue be known. “I’m worried the petition is losing a whole demographic of seniors who can’t navigate the petition online,” Gresham said. So, to make it easier for those who wish to sign it, Gresham was able to get a printed copy of the petition made and she has been distributing it to locations around the community for people to sign. Those locations include a number of local churches including St. Nicholas Anglican Church in Birch Cliff, at 1512 Kingston Rd., and the Church of St. Aidan in the Beach at 70 Silver Birch Ave. A copy of the petition is also available at the Beach Metro News Continued on Page 3