Anti-Semitic health inspectors close Steeles Deli

Took a drive down to the city yesterday, the day a bunch of not very Canadian b-ball players were putting Toronto on the map, to have lunch with Junior. He’s just finished his third year at U of T, and since I haven’t had a face-to-face with him for some time I thought this would be a day well spent.

He lives downtown but subbed up to the Finch station, the last stop on the Yonge line. We headed for the Steeles Deli, which has for over thirty years been a haunt for the Jewish side of the family.

It was closed. We ended up having lunch at the Red Lobster on Yonge about a mile north of Steeles. That was something of a selfish decision, since Junior doesn’t care for seafood, whereas I like a fix of lobster every now and again.

On the way back to the Finch subway station we stopped at Centre Park to let Boomer have a romp before our drive back to the boonies. Boomer is the last survivor of our hound pack. At fifteen she doesn’t really “romp” that much, but she appeared to have an enjoyable waddle.

Across the park was a house with a for sale sign. We speculated as to what it might be worth. We guessed a million and a half to two million. We were a little light in our guesswork, as you can see in the link.

That property is obviously being marketed as a tear-down. Somebody will spend two and a half million to buy that house, rip it down, and then spend another million putting up a 3,000 foot McMansion. This has become the norm in that neighbourhood.

What’s truly remarkable is that Yonge/Steeles is by no stretch of the imagination a “posh” neighbourhood. In fact, it was developed as a typical middle-class suburb, where teachers and nurses and the like might build their nests.

But Toronto is a “world class” city now. If press reports are to be believed, folks were paying up to $60,000 for a chair at last night’s Raptors game.  I assume those would be the same kind of folks who pay two and a half million for a house just to knock it down and put up a new build.

I don’t mean to fire up a fresh conspiracy theory here, but has anybody else noticed what’s happened to Toronto housing costs since the U of T lured urban planning guru Richard Florida to town?

It’s obviously his fault…

When I got home the Farm Manager was keen to hear how lunch went at the Steeles Deli. When she heard the sad news, she had an immediate response; obviously the health inspectors on the north side of Steeles Avenue are anti-Semites.