Inside Caledon, Ontario

Orangeville Police are looking for Sonia Varaschin, 42, whose car was found bloody and abandoned in the downtown area Monday morning. Blood was also found at the woman’s Spring Street home, confirms police chief Joseph Tomei.

“We’re hopeful the search comes to a good fruition for us, but it is suspicious,” he said, stating the incident appears random, but it’s “too early” to say with certainty.

At the moment there are no suspects and the search continues.

“There’s a lot of police officers here, both Orangeville and the OPP,” Tomei said, adding there’s no reason for the public to be concerned for their safety.

Family members reported Varaschin missing Monday; she had not been seen since Sunday evening. After canvassing the area and speaking to Varaschin’s neighbours on Tuesday morning, it was clear local residents were a little unsettled by the incident. Kim Fievet, 27, has been living beside the missing woman since April.

“I just hope she shows up and that is it,” Fievet said. “She is a very nice person. She was good to me and my son.”

Another one of Varaschin’s neighbours, Laura Barens, was in “disbelief” as the quiet little housing subdivision isn’t accustomed to incidents like this.

“This is a really quiet area, so we’re just kind of in shock,” Barens said, adding residents in the neighbourhood rarely lock their doors. However, Barens will “absolutely” be locking her doors now.

“It is a shock. It is a quiet, quiet area,” she said. “Doors are unlocked all the time, kids are outside playing.”

Her car, a white Toyota, was found in an alley behind a downtown Orangeville business Monday morning. Police taped off an area around Varashin’s car, as well as Alexandra Park. While the Toyota has been removed, access to the area remains blocked.

Anyone with information about Varaschin’s whereabouts or details of her disappearance are asked to contact Orangeville Police Service at 519-941-2522 or call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-87477.

If you are currently looking to adopt a dog let me introduce you to 4LeggedLove which is a dog placement and dog adoption organization originally based from Toronto but operates with many of its volunteers in the Caledon, Ontario area. 4 Legged Love volunteers have been placing dogs from their program for close to 10 years into permanent new homes. All dogs that enter 4Leggedlove’s program stay with us in private homes until they have found permanent new homes.

4 Legged Love works with and helps all breeds of dogs, both pure and mixed breeds, small, medium or large. Many of 4leggedlove’s dogs are from people who find themselves in the unfortunate circumstance of having to part with their beloved companion and can not bear to leave him/her in a pound or humane society or pound with a fate unknown. As well, some of their dogs come to them through volunteers at pounds who can see that a dog deserves a second chance and their lives should not be cut short due to an irresponsible owner.

Click here to view the 4 Legged Love website and read more about their organization or click here to view a list of all current dogs available for adoption.

Just in case you happen to win the $50 Million dollar Lotto Max prize the South Down Farm estate in Caledon, Ontario which lists for $18.5 Million Dollars might be the house for you. The house actually is only the second most expensive house in the Caledon area, the most expensive still goes Eaton family’s famous Hawkridge Farm estate at $24 Million.

The South Down Farm estate is 488 acres in size and entirely enclosed with chain linked fencing and houses the massive 13,000 sq. ft. house designed by Adam Smuszkowics. The mansion features include a 6,000 sq. ft. finished basement, beautiful architecture, 5 ensuite bedrooms plus 2 bedrooms below level and an elevator services all floors. The property also includes another house with 4+3 bedrooms, a 16 stall barn, a greenhouse, a pond with great gardens and a large sugar shack. There are massive rolling hills with hardwood bush and streams over 300 acres. For more info and pictures of the property check out the listing page from Gairdner & Associates Real Estate.

The house has been rumored to have been owned by the late Trivial Pursuit co-creator Chris Haney who passed away earlier this summer. I have no way to confirm this, so if you know anything just let me know.

If you are curious where this property is, its address is 1880 The Grange Side Road, Caledon, ON. Which is just west of Highway 10 and south of Forks of the Credit Rd. and is actually close to the Eaton estate as well. See the Google Maps link below.

This young House Finch eating on one of our many bird feeders was born earlier this spring in front of our house. Every year there is a pair of house finches that builds a nest in one of the shrubs near our front entrance, this year they had three young ones that hatched and now flying around on their own. Photo was taken by my finance with the Olympus 70-300mm zoom lens, click on the image above for a large photo.

This young male deer (antlers) was walking alone in the field behind me around sunset. He was aware of my presence but did not scare away while I’ll snapped a few pictures with my camera and zoom lens. The deer population in the Caledon, Ontario area appears to remain fairly high. Be sure to keep an eye out at night when driving down some of the lesser traveled roads, I have had a number of deer jump out of the woods in front of my car.

Ontario Provincial Police have announced human remains found late last month in Oro-Medonte and Lake of Bays Townships, and in Muskoka belonged to a 45-year-old Bolton/Caledon area man.

Whoever chopped up the body of a Bolton man and scattered it throughout cottage country was likely an amateur and not an underworld figure, a veteran homicide investigator says.

“People who are in stressful situations do strange things,” said Mark Mendelson, a former Toronto police homicide officer who now heads Mark Mendelson Consulting Corp., a private investigation firm.

His comments came after the OPP on Monday identified the body parts found in three regions north of Toronto as belonging to Morris Conte, 45, of Bolton, Ontario. Conte, a father of four and recreational drug user, had low-level ties to bikers and mobsters in York Region. Police have ruled his death a homicide.

OPP spokesman Const. Mark Kenney declined to comment on the cause or time of death, or what pieces of Conte’s body were recovered. He did confirm that Conte’s identity was determined through testing at the downtown Centre for Forensic Sciences.

Remains were found May 22 in Oro-Medonte Township’s Sugar Bush area, north of Barrie. Also that day, pieces of his body were discovered in Lake of Bays Township, east of Huntsville.

On May 28, a construction worker found yet another set of remains northeast of Bracebridge, on the shoulder of Stoneleigh Rd. off Muskoka Road 117. All of the body parts were left in plain view.

Mendelson said mobsters tend to be more efficient at getting rid of bodies of their victims, rather than cutting them into pieces and scattering them in places where they’re sure to be found. “Organized crime people (often) put them into barrels and pour in cement,” said Mendelson.

Mendelson also wonders if perhaps more than one person was involved in the body disposal.

A follow-up to the story, Orangeville Mazda Overprices Car $25,000 to Intellectually Disabled Woman; the dealership was quickly terminated by Mazda Canada which resulted in the Mazda logo and signs being covered up immediately (pictured above). Mazda Canada said it ended the franchise with Mazda of Orangeville because it breached the company’s business standards under a sales and service agreement in the transaction and other incidents.

However it now appears that Orangeville Mazda dealer has now re-opened under a new name Motion Mazda and under new ownership. Brampton Auto Mall Inc. which already owns nine other dealerships, confirmed earlier this month that it has bought the land and buildings of Mazda of Orangeville from previous owner Sunny Baines; reached a franchise agreement with the Mazda Canada to reopen the dealership as Motion Mazda.

Glen Alizadeh, head of the Brampton dealership group, said there is some skepticism and concern among consumers about the reopening but they are generally happy with the change. “We’re starting from scratch,” said Alizadeh, who would not disclose financial terms of the deal. “It’s an exciting challenge.” Alizadeh said he retained eight of the previous dealership’s 26 employees and hired new staff from other stores in his network.

Charges are still pending for the former owner and sales person who sold the overpriced car to Madeline Leonard. Luckily Mazda Canada gave Leonard the car without further cost or obligation.

If you drive along Airport Road frequently you may have seen this house which is just north of Caledon East. I am not quite sure what the story is about this house but it has been left abandoned for several years now and the only info I can find about it online is that it was broken into a couple years ago but was still left abandoned at that point. If anyone knows the story behind this house please let me know as I am curious about it. I find that this particular abandoned house is a little unusual given that most of the ones I have seen in the area are old century homes not newer constructions and given the value of the Caledon, Ontario real estate even for empty lots I find it a little weird that someone would just allow it to rot away like this.

This slithering intruder, an adult milk snake some how snuck into garage last month. This was the first different kind of snake I have found around my property other than the more common garter snakes. After taking some photos of him we set him free back into the field behind us.

The Milk Snake is a species of king snake, there are 25 subspecies among the milk snakes including the commonly named scarlet kingsnake. The subspecies have strikingly different appearance, and many of them have their own common names. Some authorities suggest that this species may be split into several separate species. They are distributed from southeastern Canada, through most of the continental United States, to Central America, down to western Ecuador and northern Venezuela of northern South America. Milk snakes grow 20 to 60 inches (51 to 150 cm) long. Across the wide range of this species, habitat varies. Typically, milk snakes live in forested regions, however, in some regions they can be located in open prairies. In various parts of across its distribution, milk snakes often abide in rocky slopes. For more info on Milk Snakes, click here. Click on the images above and below for larger pictures.

The Alton Mill is a late 19th century industrial stone complex located on the bank of Shaw’s Creek in the heart of the village of Alton in the Town of Caledon and us just five minutes south of Orangeville. The Alton Mill was built by pioneering settlers of Alton over 120 years ago and the 3.4 hectare site comprises of the main two-storey stone mill building and three-storey water tower, a brick chimney stack, a stone livery, the remains of the stone wool warehouse, and the adjacent mill pond and dam. For the full history of the Alton Mill click here.

Standing over the falls on the banks of the Credit River, the Alton Mill has been fully restored and brought back to life as a creative arts centre. It is now home to more than 30 artists in their studios, plus galleries, a heritage museum, café and unique retail shops. The Alton Mills Complex has been recognized for its heritage value by the Town of Caledon, By-law number 2004-201. For more info on the Alton Mill please see their website.

The above photo was take back in early April, I processed the original raw image with the Photomatix software to create an HDR image to help bring out the colors better, to see the original pictures untouched click here.