Philip Alves

The lives of many Vaughanians — human and animal — were changed forever by last week’s tornado. The Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was on scene the morning after the storm to help care for pets evacuated from their damaged homes.

What began as a story about the awesome and indiscriminate power of nature quickly became a story of neighbour helping neighbour. Last Thursday, sometime before the supper hour, a ferocious F2 tornado packing a minimum punch of 180 kilometres an hour skipped across Vaughan, tearing roofs from houses, uprooting trees and scarring the communities of Woodbridge and Maple.

It’s a development so bright even the Vatican is keeping an eye on it. Woodbridge’s St. Jean de Brebeuf Catholic High School officially launched its new solar photovoltaic system Monday. The system, which includes five solar panels arranged in the shape of a cross above the school’s main entrance, is the first of its kind in the York Catholic District School Board.

The colonel’s chicken this ain’t. But it does have people lickin’ their fingers and coming back for more. Roasty Chicken Churrasqueira celebrated its grand opening in Maple this month, though the eatery’s Portuguese-style rotisserie birds have been flying out its open doors for a couple of months. Since opening, owners Dean Drumonde and Darlene Paolucci [...]

Like a soapbox cart hurtling downhill toward the finish line, the 2008 Great Maple Cart Derby is coming up fast.

An application to the provincial environment ministry to let a Maple transfer station increase the amount of waste it handles met with unanimous disapproval at city council Monday.

Councillors voted to send the ministry a strong message regarding opposing a loosening of the 61 regulations placed on the station at 10525 Keele St. — across the street from a residential neighbourhood.

Woodbridge tot Matthew Caggiano, 18 months, wanders through the pumpkins at Southbrook Farm and Winery in Maple on Wednesday. In addition to the Halloween gourds, the site has bales of hay, cornstalks, costumes and other seasonal items for sale — as well as offering hayrides for the kids — as Vaughan starts getting ready for the end-of-October celebration.

It could’ve been a scene right out of a Simpsons episode. On Saturday, dozens of people descended on the stretch of Major Mackenzie Dr. between Keele St. and Eagle Rock Way to watch kids race their home-built cars in fierce competition at the Great Maple Cart Derby.

Magazine selects Maple’s own Lord Beaverbrook as one of 10 worst Canadians Successful? Sure. Ruthless? Perhaps. But evil? William Maxwell Aitken, the first Lord Beaverbrook and Maple’s most famous son, is among the recent class of inductees into Canada’s Hall of Infamy as selected by an expert panel in the August/September issue of The Beaver. [...]