thespec

Maple Leaf to build distribution centre at Puslinch

Maple Leaf Foods is going to have a distribution centre up and running south of Guelph in Puslinch by 2014.

The company made the announcement Thursday.
Maple Leaf cited access to 400 series highways, as well as its new 402,000-square-foot prepared meats facility in Glanbrook.

The new distribution hub is to be commissioned during the first half of next year and will consolidate existing facilities in Burlington, Kitchener and Moncton, adding 80 jobs at in Puslinch Township.
Wellington county also issued a statement that it has learned construction is to begin this spring and the new facility is expected to create 80 jobs.

Rail service disrupted after bridge fire

THOROLD – Service across a bridge operated by a short-line railway has been suspended after it was damaged in a $100,000 fire Niagara police say was started by two young boys.

The boys, age 12 and 14, and both from St. Catharines, have been charged with arson in connection with the fire on the bridge owned by the Trillium Railway Co., which operates on former Canadian National Railway lines west of the Welland Canal.

The bridge runs alongside the canal and is south of Lock 7. Police say it is about 200 metres south of Ormond Street South and Beaverdams Road and crosses over a small channel into the canal.

Police say they were called to the bridge fire at about 5 p.m. Thursday and that witnesses reported seeing two boys running from the blaze. Officers responded and quickly arrested the two boys, who they say are responsible for “a reckless act of arson.”

The Thorold Fire Department attended and extinguished the blaze.

Police say an initial damage has been pegged at $100,000. Service has been suspended until the structural integrity of the bridge can be determined. An investigator from the Office of the Fire Marshal is set to attend the scene Friday.

The boys have been released into the care of their parents under a promise to appear in court at a later date.

Trillium operates the Port Colborne Harbour Railway, which serves 18 customers between Port Colborne and St. Catharines. It began operation in 1997.

Trillium also operates the St. Thomas and Eastern Railway. It serves five customers on a former CN line between St. Thomas and Delhi.

The Hamilton Spectator

Most feel the penny can go to heaven

What do you think of doing away with the penny?

 

“I would say I’m all for it. If it does cost more to make, that’s crazy. I constantly have to put them in jars and roll them and they’re a pain. I’m happy with it. I’m not going to miss it all. I can’t see any reason to keep it.”

Bruce Provencher, 49, Waterdown

Budget keeps Canada pro-business

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

OTTAWA A penny-pinching Conservative government is loosening the reins on Canada’s business community in a budget it says will position the country for unbridled commercial opportunity.

With an eye to the long game after years of politically attractive, minority budgets, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is trimming $5.2 billion in annual federal spending — scrapping the money-losing penny in the process — while raising the age of eligibility for old age security to 67 from 65, starting a decade from now.

Thursday’s federal budget, the seventh since Stephen Harper took office, is the first with an overtly pro-trade and resource development bent and a dearth of voter-friendly goodies.

 

“We are a moderate, pragmatic government that responds to the facts as they are, and not as we might wish them to be,” Flaherty said in the budget lock-up Thursday.

Generations of Corrie fans meet idols

Ron Albertson/The Hamilton Spectator

Colin McNeil

Emily Gibel eagerly waits in line with her mom for a VIP meet-and-greet with four of her favourite celebrity idols. But she’s not here to see stars from Twilight or Harry Potter. She’s here for Coronation Street and at 14, she’s the youngest fan in the place.

Gibel was one of hundreds of Hamilton-area “Corrie” fans who turned the Redeemer University College auditorium into the Rover’s Return Thursday night. Four stars from the legendary British soap were in town, sharing stories and answering fan questions in Tales from the Street, a month-long, Canada-wide tour event.

Actors Steve Arnold (Ashley Peacock), Julia Haworth (Claire Peacock), Nick Cochrane (Andy McDonald) and Charles Lawson (Jim McDonald), shook hands and took photos with a crowd that spanned generations of the show’s fans.

Memories on the fly

Wartime navigator Bert visits warplane museum on his 90^th birthday

 Molly Hayes

 The Hamilton Spectator

The memories flooded back as Bert Sparrock slowly shuffled his way up toward the front of a massive DC-3 airplane Thursday on his 90^th birthday. 

The Hamilton veteran and his family visited the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum for lunch and a tour of the plane, nearly identical to the one Sparrock flew in almost 70 years agoas a Second World War air force navigator in Burma almost 70 years ago.

“It’s exciting,” he said quietly, his eyes darting around the cockpit. “It certainly brings back all the memories.”

Oscar winner builds vibrant garden

Francine Orr/Los Angeles Times

Lisa Boone

LOS ANGELES Jim Rash’s next-door neighbour is concerned. He notices a photographer shooting Rash’s home and wonders if the pictures are for a real estate listing.

“Is Jim moving?” the neighbour asks anxiously. “He is such a nice guy. I worry he’s become too famous lately. I told him, ‘Please don’t move.’”

If Rash wasn’t officially famous before the Academy Awards last month, he certainly was afterward. He won an Oscar for co-writing the screenplay of The Descendants and, perhaps more famously, he scored rave reviews for his fierce portrayal of Angelina Jolie’s thigh onstage during the ceremony.

His TV series Community, in which he plays the quirky Dean Pelton, returned to the NBC lineup last week. And he’s busy writing a “comedy-action” film script for Bridesmaids star and fellow Groundlings alum Kristen Wiig.

When he’s not playing a manic community college administrator, mocking A-list celebs in front of millions worldwide or otherwise being famous, you may find Jim Rash, the nice neighbour, kicking back at home, where he lives and writes with a view of a newly redesigned garden.

Police seek information on sex assault suspect

John Burman

The Hamilton Spectator

Hamilton police are looking for help identifying a man who attacked and sexually assaulted a teenage girl in Hamilton’s east end early Wednesday.

The attack occurred just after midnight when the girl was walking along Woodward Avenue near Walmer Road.

As she walked, a man she did not know grabbed her from behind, spun her around and sexually assaulted her.

The girl pushed the man away and he ran off in a southeast direction. Police said the girl was not physically injured.

A police dog searched the area but was unable to track the suspect.

The suspect is described as white, 20 to 25 years old, and about 5- foot-9 inches tall. He has dirty blond hair, was unshaven and wore a baggy, black zip-up hoodie, dark blue jeans and a white baseball cap.

Sergeant Terri-Lynn Collings said the victims of crime unit is investigating and anyone who may have seen the man is asked to contact Detective Art Lenders at 905-540-6253, or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.

jburman@thespec.com

905-526-2469

Censure story not over yet

The Hamilton Spectator/John Rennison

Andrew Dreschel

The Hamilton Spectator

Bob Bratina handled the unheard-of rebuke with statesmanlike aplomb.

And councillors are clearly hoping the mayor’s conciliatory tone and demeanour will help reset their troubled relationship with him.

But the well-thumbed book is still not quite closed on this affair.

Beneath all the open talk of censuring, councillors have secretly asked staff for a report on the propriety of the $8,000 vacation payout that elevated Bratina’s chief of staff, Peggy Chapman, on to the 2011 sunshine list.

That, of course, is the pebble which set the rippling events in motion leading to the unparalleled censuring of a Hamilton mayor for unbecoming conduct.

The direction to staff was apparently given during an in-camera session following Tuesday’s budget deliberations.

It seems councillors want an explanation of the $8,000 payout, how the figure was arrived at and whether the conditions and circumstances breached or accorded with city policies.

Club 77 bouncer seeks reduced charges in bar beating case

VICTIM LEFT WITH PERMANENT BRAIN INJURY AFTER SEVERE BEATINGS

Ken Peters

Hamilton Spectator

One of three Club 77 bouncers on trial for the near-homicide of a McMaster University student is making a bid to have his charges reduced.

Defence counsel Megan Savard has proposed a judicial motion requesting that the aggravated assault charge facing her client David Sa, 33, be reduced to one count of assault.

Savard told court Sa should have the more serious charge dismissed because there is a lack of evidence that her client had anything to do with the ultimate injury suffered by Chuck Ezeh outside the King William Street bar in the evening and early morning of Sept. 10 and 11, 2010.

Wendal Jones, 49, of Hamilton, and Lynden Anderson, 42, of Burlington, remained charged with aggravated assault in connection with the incident.  

Ontario Court Justice Bernd Zabel has ordered written submissions on the request and is expected to hear oral arguments on June 8. Crown prosecutor Todd Norman said outside court he will oppose the application to have the charges reduced.

Ezeh, 25, was diagnosed as having a major blood clot, bleeding in the brain and a fractured skull after three separate altercations with bar security staff outside the night spot. The Nigerian native was left with a permanent brain injury and has not been able to return to school.