Man About Canton: Lions Pancake Breakfast
By Joe DeFeliceThe Canton Lions Club will hold its 36th annual Pancake Breakfast on Sunday, March 24 (Palm Sunday), from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. at the Canton American Legion Post 24. Tickets are $4 for adults and $3 for children and seniors. Proceeds will benefit eye research and blindness prevention as well as other Lions’ charities.
The first annual Foley’s Backstreet Grille 5K Road Race to benefit the Mass. Hospital School will be held on Sunday, April 21, at 12 noon, starting and ending at the Mass. Hospital School, 3 Randolph Street in Canton. There will be a post-race party at the finish line. To sign up, go to www.coolrunning.com or www.racewire.com. The first 500 people to register will get a free race t-shirt.
Foley’s Backstreet Grille will also hold its second annual Backstreet Open Golf Tournament on Monday, May 6, at the Easton Country Club in Easton. It will be a Florida-style format. Shotgun start is 9:30 a.m.; check-in is at 8 a.m. The cost is $125 per person/$500 per team of four. Dinner and an awards banquet will immediately follow at Foley’s Backstreet Grille in Stoughton. All proceeds go to the Mass. Hospital School. Register at Foley’s Backstreet Grille or at www.backstreetgrille.com. The deadline to register is May 1. For further information, contact Dave Foley at 781-297-0100 or backstreetgrille@verizon.net.
The Blue Hills boys’ hockey team recently won its 14th straight Mayflower League title. The other teams in the league must be getting tired of it.
The Blue Hills girls’ basketball team also coasted to the Mayflower title this season, finishing 14-0 in the league and 22-0 overall in the regular season. The Lady Warriors, led by Canton resident Margarita Delaporta, defeated Hull in the Division 4 south sectional tournament before falling to eventual champion Greater New Bedford in the tournament semifinals.
The general consensus around town is that the Canton Public Works employees have done an outstanding job plowing and handling all the snow we have been getting this past month; and recognizing that the DPW workers have had their hands full, the downtown merchants have been especially complimentary. It took only two days after the 2013 blizzard of February 8-9 to completely clear the center of town of all the snow.
Holly Swinamer, age 10, daughter of CHS graduate Mike Swinamer, and Brianna Cummings, age 13, captured bronze and silver medals for freestyle figure skating in their respective age groups at the Bay State Games held in Williamstown February 15-17. Holly and Brianna, skating for the Franklin Finesse Skating Team, each earned berths in the State Games of America to be held in July in Hershey, Pennsylvania. For Holly, it was her 15th medal in six competitions, eight of which have been gold medals. The Bay State Games have been held yearly since 1982 and feature more than 12,000 athletes from Massachusetts ages 8 and above, covering over 30 different summer and winter sports.
It is interesting to note that the boys’ and girls’ CHS hockey teams ended the season with almost identical records. The boys’ record was 15-3-2 and the girls’ record was 16-2-1, which are very impressive records for the regular season.
The CHS boys’ basketball team made the Division 3 south sectional tournament even though their final record was 7-13. Dedham also made the tournament despite an overall record of 3-17. According to MIAA rules, teams that finish .500 or better within their own division are eligible to make the tournament, and both Canton and Dedham accomplished that feat.
MAC congratulates Canton High School junior Quinn Merrigan, who rallied from a 6-2 deficit late in the second period and went on to pin Hudson High’s Pat O’Connell to win the Division 3 state wrestling championship in the 138-pound class. Teammate Chris Sullivan (132 pounds) lost his first match of the season to undefeated Abbas Tamaradze of Hampton Charter in the finals of the Division 3 state championship.
Towns in Massachusetts are beginning to impose zoning restrictions on medical marijuana dispensaries. Some of the zoning bylaws proposed are “prohibiting medical pot shops from opening within 1,500 feet of a residential neighborhood, schools, other dispensaries, and sites licensed to serve alcohol.” Perhaps it’s time that Canton officials look at putting zoning restrictions on marijuana shops.
In the meantime, voters will be asked to consider a temporary three-year moratorium on medical marijuana treatment centers at the upcoming May town meeting. The proposal was submitted by the Board of Selectmen (not the Planning Board as MAC had incorrectly reported in his February 28 column).
On Friday, February 15, Canton police made the largest marijuana bust in the department’s history when they apprehended Thomas Kim of Brooklyn, New York, and seized about 300 pounds of marijuana valued at approximately $1 million. The drugs were believed to have originated in California and shipped to R&L Carriers Company, off Route 138 in Canton. A shipping clerk at the company opened a suspicious package, found the marijuana, and called the Canton Police.
Centerfield’s Bar and Grill at 2 Forge Pond in Canton has been shutdown for various reasons, including allegedly unpaid rent and taxes.
Veteran Channel 7 reporter Victoria Block, who back in 1991 interviewed MAC for a lengthy story on the Canton Little League, is hanging up her microphone after working for the station for 32 years.
Free income tax assistance is available again to low- and moderate-income senior citizens through the Tax Aid Program by the AARP. A trained volunteer will be at the Council on Aging office. Appointments are necessary and can be made by calling 781-828-1323.
The Canton Police Department is one of 25 local departments participating in a program sponsored by the Norfolk County District Attorney’s Office offering free disposal of over-the-counter and other medications. Bring medications, including pet medications, to the Police Department lobby. All collected drugs will be safely destroyed.
Finally, Sophie Kurys, 87, recently died. Sophie, nicknamed the “Flint Flash,” played in the All American Girls Professional Baseball League. She played for the Racine Belles, one of the teams featured in the 1992 move “A League of Their Own.” In 1946, Kurys stole 201 bases out of 203 attempts. She led the league in steals for seven straight years, swiping 1,114 bases in her career.
The race is not always to the swift but to those who keep on running.
This is all for now folks. See you next week.
Joe DeFelice can be reached at manaboutcanton@aol.com.
Short URL: https://www.thecantoncitizen.com/?p=19637
Posted by Joe DeFelice
on Mar 21 2013. Filed under Featured Content, Man About Canton, Opinion.
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