[TOR] Some Monday news links

• An issue of major concern to cyclists like myself is the astonishing scope of the accused bike thief Igor Kenk, "the long-time used-bicycle dealer facing a raft of charges in a sweeping probe that has so far uncovered nearly 2,500 stashed bicycles, many believed stolen." He admitted to a journalist that he goes so far as to change the pedals and seats so as to make sure that the owners of bikes really know them.


• It's official: This summer is Toronto's rainiest summer ever, with huge volumes of rain and an unusual number of thunderstorms. People seem to be taking this with a bit of incredulity, especially given the
  spectacular lack of rain in a famously (if somewhat inaccurately) rainy Vancouver.


• Construction has begun on the Spadina subway extension, which sonjaaa mentioned will include extend north from the Downsview station at the northern end of the western branch of that line to (among others) stops at at relatively isolated York University, the other large Toronto university but hitherto isolated from the TTC subway lines. It will end deep in suburban York Region.


• The above extension coincides with the apparent decision to abandon subway development along Eglinton Avenue, a major west-east corridor. Already, plans for an Eglinton West subway have been abandoned, and Mayor David Miller says that an Eglinton subway isn't going to happen now.


• Murray Whyte's article in The Star, "Is highrise farming in Toronto's future?", speculates that farming might be shifted from open fields in the country to high-rise buildings in the city. It's science fictional, but if it minimizes pollution ... If.


• Royson James at The Toronto Star argues that if Toronto won the 2008 Olympics Toronto could have remade itself in the same way as Barcelona when it won in 1992.


• See also David Topping's daily selection of a photo from the Torontoist flickr pool and his summary of other of Toronto news events today (Toronto's very expensive, no one's quite sure what's going on with the tourism industry in Toronto, the David Dunlap Observatory that discovered Cygnus X-1 won't be torn down after its sale, cyclists can still look for their stolen bikes, and some kids were arrested and charged with looting an apartment building emptied by an explosion last week).

[URBAN NOTE] There's some of the gold

The--apparently--unofficial headquarters of the Royal Bank of Canada, the Royal Bank Plaza in Toronto's Financial District, host a particularly eye-catchingSouth Tower which rises 41 stories or 180 metres. The picture below gives you a bit of an idea of what the entire building looks like, at a more human scale. Pictures of the skyscraper are available everywhere, but below is a picture of opart of the tower at a human scale. Wikipedia explains why the glass hass that cast.

The exteriors of the structures are largely covered with glass; together they have more than 14,000 windows. Each of these windows is coated with a layer of 24 karat (100%) gold. At a cost of about $70 per window, the total value of gold in the windows is over $1,000,000 but, due to the manufacturing technique used to make the glass, the gold is unrecoverable. The gold gives the windows a distinctive colour. Gold was used as an insulator to reduce heating costs.

The Royal Bank's gold.
Originally uploaded by rfmcdpei

Prestige, of course, has nothing to do with the decision to do this to the windows. They also look pretty, mind.

(Oh, and that's me photographing myself.)

[LINK] "Not invited to the party"

The Globe and Mail's Billy curry has an article up ("Not invited to the party" exploring how the Algonquin people, a First Nation now residing mostly in western Québec, is marginalized, using Québec City's quadricentennial celebrations as a frame.

Samuel de Champlain wrote fondly of his adventures with the Algonquins, the native allies who helped the founder of Quebec navigate the dangerous white-water rapids of the New World and fought at his side against the Iroquois.

"I wished to help them against their enemies," the French explorer recalled in his journals of his 1609 encounter with more than 200 Algonquins as he explored the St. Lawrence River. "They had asked all the Indians I saw on the river's bank to come to meet us for the purpose of making an alliance with us. ... And that they now besought me to return to our settlement, for them to see our houses, and that three days later we should all set off on the war-path together."

On the war path they went, winning the first battle of the Iroquois Wars at what would come to be known as Lake Champlain. The explorer famously sketched the battle, depicting himself in the heroic lead defeating the Iroquois with the Algonquins - as well as Montagnais and Hurons - backing him up with bows and arrows.

This summer, Champlain has come to the fore again, as rock concerts, fireworks and foreign dignitaries toast the 400th anniversary of his founding of Quebec City. His Algonquin allies, however, are now even further in the background.

"They're celebrating, but what most of the [Algonquin] people are looking at ... is 400 years of misery," says Algonquin elder Hector Jerome, a long-time activist on the Barriere Lake reserve, three hours north of Ottawa.

Go read the rest.