LeasideLife issue 55 final rev_LeasideLifev1 16-11-24 3:17 AM Page 1
No. 55 • December 2016
Leaside Life leasidelifenews.com
Leaside nurse, Angela Leahey, wins award –––
Page 4
Carol Burtin Fripp Co-president, LPOA
Let’s set the record straight – we’re on your side!
INDUCTEES, Page 30
LPOA, Page 7
JEREMY LEWIS
win the Stanley Cup.” It was only in grade 12, Bradwell says, “around the age when people get drafted, that I began to think ‘this might not happen for me,’ and so I thought about trying something different.” Since he was tall and fast, Mike’s friends suggested he try out for receiver on the Leaside High football team. He did and made the team, playing the 2003 season under head coach Jim Georgiadis and assistants Csaba Vegh and Mark Chambers. Georgiadis and Vegh were both in the William Lea Room at the Arena on November 18th to see their former player inducted into the Leaside Sports Hall of Fame. Even when he went to McMaster University in Hamilton a year later,
Occasionally the LPOA hears from Leasiders who either disagree with a position the board has taken or who have been led to believe that we are about to take a position which could harm the community. At November’s monthly LPOA board meeting, a number of residents deputed in support of the amended design for 939 Eglinton Avenue East, agreed to by developer Steve Diamond and the working group initiated by Councillor Jon Burnside. Their fear was that the LPOA, unless it voted to approve the recently amended development proposal, would cause the developer to drop all of the improvements the working group had worked toward and ‘force’ him to go to the Ontario Municipal Board with his original, much more massive, proposal. And it would all be the LPOA’s fault. We replied that the LPOA had not yet taken a position on the new development design; that negotiations with the developer were still ongoing between the Councillor and Mr. Diamond; and that the city planners had yet to finish their reports and analyses. In short, it made more sense to see if there were more concessions before the LPOA took a position. We also tried to make it clear that we were not criticizing the efforts or the motives of individuals on the working group, and, moreover, that the LPOA had no desire to take the matter to the OMB. In fact, we look forward to discussing the final version of the 939 Eglinton East proposals, and to tak-
Former Toronto Argonaut Mike Bradwell with his parents Anne and John Bradwell of North Leaside at the Leaside Sports Hall of Fame induction on November 18th.
Stanley Cup dreams lead to Grey Cup ring By ALLAN WILLIAMS “I was never really that interested in football as a kid,” says Mike Bradwell. It’s a surprising admission coming from the former Toronto Argonaut with a 2012 Grey Cup to his name, who was inducted this past month into the Leaside Sports Hall of Fame. “In fact,” he adds, “I didn’t even play football until my final year at Leaside High School.” Bradwell, who grew up on Rykert Crescent in North Leaside, the youngest of three children to parents John and Anne Bradwell, was, like most Canadian kids at the time, more interested in hockey. “I grew up playing hockey, took skating at the arena, played Leaside Flames house league and then Leaside Kings in the GTHL – the dream was to play in the NHL and