In close-knit Riverdale, no two houses have garnered as much gossip as the side-by-side Victorians on Langley Avenue that were owned by Walter Schimming. Schimming, for the uninitiated, was an octogenarian recluse who lived, Grey Gardens–like, in one of the houses and left the other vacant and decaying for decades until his death in 2006.
In 2008, the houses went on the market together, with an asking price of $1.15 million. When James Faw, owner of a software company, and Michael Schwarz, owner of the restaurants Hair of the Dog and Fire on the Eastside, first saw them, they looked like the set of a horror film: each was divided into a maze of rooming units, a fallen tree had crushed one roof, and raccoon carcasses littered the interiors. At the time, Faw and Schwarz had a two-year-old daughter, Hannah, and were expecting twins by surrogate. Most parents would run screaming from such a huge project, but Faw and Schwarz knew that in one of the city’s most family-friendly neighbourhoods, this was a steal. So they bought the places—one as a rental property, the other as their future home.
As part of the modernization of the streetcar fleet, the TTC decided that it needed a new storage and maintenance shed down at Ashbridges Bay. This will hold half of the new LRVs the TTC ordered from Bombardier. Just one problem: rookie councillor Mary-Margaret McMahon hates the idea and believes it’s going to clog traffic along the Lakeshore every morning at rush hour. She’s been trying to fight the LRV facility, but yesterday night’s marathon TTC meeting dealt her a defeat. Approval of the plan passed unanimously. 
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