[PHOTO] Was someone bored?

Someone bored?
Originally uploaded by rfmcdpei

I leave it to this photo's viewers to come up with a narrative explaining this sight.

[LINK] "Bloor Street's Perpetual Construction"

Guest columnist at blogTO Lana B. writes about how cosntrucction at Bloor Street West near Yonge has changed the neighbourhood for the worse, and for an extended period of time.

I started working in the area about a year and a half ago. From what I remember, you could still park at the meters on Bloor Street in 2007. However, in May 2008 construction went full-blast and the transformation of Bloor Street began.

A part of the street has been taken away from the traffic in order to accommodate crowds of pedestrians and flowerbeds. My daily trek to work became increasingly interesting, as construction fences were moving constantly from one side of the street to the next, and you could never predict what route you might be taking the next day! But the noise and the dust from drilled asphalt became contributing factors to an onset of headaches, and even the free facials from The Bay couldn't alleviate the stress.

Never mind the things that are a work in progress... given that financial and scandal problems are abounding, there are growing (perhaps premature?) concerns that what was supposed to be erected at the corner of Yonge & Bloor (the Bazis International condo aka 1 Bloor East) may never come to be. Remember, a whole block of old townhouses housing local restaurants and retail had to be knocked down in order to make way for the Bazis mega-tower project. What would go it its place were it to all fall out?

Go read the whole thing, and look at the pictures.

[LINK] "In Defense of the Island Airport"

Now that the end of the Toronto city workers strike has opened up the Toronto Islands again by restarting the ferries, the whole controversy over the Toronto City Centre Airport located in the islands is likely to start up again as islanders and others complain about the noise. Andrew Barton blogs in support of the airport.

[P]ersonally I don't think air travel, in its most common form, has staying power. Those big turbofan jetliners, the Boeings and the Airbuses and Ilyushins, are not the cheapest machines in the world to operate. There's an old joke: what's the easiest way to become a millionaire? Be a billionaire and buy an airline. The environmental cost is no less, even if it's not commonly thought of; a 2006 Guardian piece reported a "general consensus" that aviation was responsible for 4% of global carbon dioxide emissions.

Here in Toronto, I think the Island Airport - officially, Toronto City Centre Airport - provides a much-needed alternative. For the last three years, Porter Airlines has been the sole passenger airline operating from YTZ, flying Bombardier Q400 turboprop aircraft on short-haul routes in eastern Canada and the northeastern United States. When I was planning for my trip to Montreal next month for the 67th World Science Fiction Convention, Anticipation SF, I was only interested in VIA Rail or Porter Airlines because the two of them offered the lowest environmental impact.

Nevertheless, the Island Airport has historically had a fractious relationship with the city of Toronto, both old and new. The controversy goes back to the late 1970s, when the first whispers of passenger service out of YTZ reached City Hall, and reached a fever pitch in 2006 when Porter Airlines began its operations. Mayor David Miller, you see, doesn't like the idea of the Island Airport, and was elected on a platform that included a halt on the construction of a bridge across the narrow Western Gap to the airport - perhaps out of the hope that ferry-only access might choke Porter's profit margins like Hercules in the crib.

It hasn't really worked out that way, but Miller still opposes the idea of passenger aircraft flying from the Island. Personally, I think the city should encourage development and use of the Island Airport. No matter how much Pearson's management might want it to be otherwise, there is no reason to believe that the status quo will last forever. Short-haul flights on efficient aircraft like the Q400 are far more sustainable a mode of transportation than modern jetliners.

Go, read.

[BRIEF NOTE] A possibility re: the Scottish clan system

When I was very young, I joined my mother and grandmother at festivities hosted by her Scottish clan association, in her case Clan Matheson. In Scotland proper, it seems that the clan system is facing new challenges in adapting to the 21st century.

Robert McWilliam, president emeritus of the Council of Scottish Clans and Associations, said {Facebook] was the best way of communicating with young people.

However, the special meeting at Holyrood also heard that some clan chiefs do not take their duties seriously and consider the system outdated.

It was held ahead of the world's largest clan gathering and Highland games in Edinburgh on Saturday.

More than 20,000 people with Scottish heritage from around the world, along with the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall, are expected to attend the events.

Thousands of tickets have remained unsold, however, with new figures revealing that a million fewer tourists visited Scotland last year.

Mr McWilliam, from the US, told the other chiefs that he had a message from American Scots that they need to use modern forms of communication.

[. . .]

Donald MacLaren, chief of Clan MacLaren, said: "A minority of chiefs think this is not for them. It's a great disappointment for those who look upon them as the head of their family."

He said some thought the clan system moribund since the mid-18th Century, but he disagreed and insisted it still had a future. North America alone has a clan membership exceeding 100,000.

Andrew Spooner in The Independent seems to claim that the clan system is largely irrelevant in Scotland, and that it's increasingly of interest only to people of Scottish descent. That's what one Margaret Elliot, head of her clan, thinks.

"I was brought up in Suffolk, have quite a plummy accent and while I consider myself a Scot, I see myself as a bit of a hybrid. Aren't we all?

"The chieftainship and clan society were passed to me by my father when he died 20 years ago and all I had to do was carry on what he'd started. We have people from all over the world in the clan society, but mainly from America, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. They join, I guess, for a feeling of kinsmanship, to find out where they came from.

"My role is to be the figurehead and keep it all together. It's a hobby. If I had a full-time job – I would describe myself as a country lady – I probably wouldn't do it. Both the Gathering and the Clan Convention look quite interesting. I'm not sure that being a clan chief is that important, but it's a wonderful thing to do, and quite an honour."

Is all this just another case of diasporas tending to be more conservative than their counterparts in the homeland?

[LINK] "Splitting the 501 Queen Streetcar Route in Two"

The 501 Queen streetcar route is one of those TTC routes, like the Dufferin bus and the various subway routes, that I think of automatically when I think of Toronto. Following the length of Queen Street and then some, the 501 Queen streetcar route is iconic. It's also incredibly, incredibly, erratic, and there has been debate as to whether the route should be cut in two. blogTo's Dennis Marciniak explores this question.

Now that there's a resurgence of the idea of splitting the route into two, I'm not complaining. Although the trip is visually stimulating, there can be severe delays. If you've ever tried to use a schedule on the 501, you'll quickly realize how unreliable it actually is.

Traffic, detours, and construction are among just a few reasons why the 501 streetcars are almost never on time. In October, the TTC is planning to split the route into two - a trial that will be in effect until the end of the year. One route will depart from Long Branch and come back around at Parliament; while the other will start at Neville Park and find loop back from Shaw St. The goal of the project is to see if overlapping routes will alleviate congestion.

Riding the 501 many times, I've witnessed the traffic horrors first hand, but never fully understood how bad traffic can get backed up. I usually jump on the first streetcar that comes - never truly knowing how far back the next car is. This is why last night I decided to sit at the Humber Loop to see how often each vehicle came. I was looking at streetcars going westbound specifically because they would most likely accumulate the most problems.

So during rush hour I waited, and waited some more. After nearly 25 minutes, the first car finally came. As that vehicle was leaving to continue on route, another one came to let passengers off. This second streetcar pulled into the loop as a third pulled in, then to my surprise a fourth. Within 10 minutes, four vehicles had come and gone and for the next 35 minutes Humber Loop was a streetcar ghost town. This pattern would repeat itself for three hours until I called it quits.

Read the whole thing and look at the pictures.

[BRIEF NOTE] On migrant integration

Nicholas Keung has a Toronto Star article, "'Integration a two-way street'", that bothers me just a bit.

Every Wednesday, Peter Li steps out of his Chinatown cocoon for 90 minutes to experience the Canada that thrives beyond the neighbourhood where he lives and works.

It is the only chance he gets to chat with a native English speaker.

Li, 36, isn't the only immigrant who relishes his weekly encounters with "Canadian" volunteers at University Settlement Centre's English Cafe. It's a comfortable place for many newcomers to polish their English skills – and feel like they belong.

"Like many immigrants, I have no Canadian friends," says Li, who came here from China in 2006 and works at a grocery store. "If you can't speak the language well, you feel afraid to open your mouth and talk to others."

[. . .]

Sophie Duan founded a free English culture club last August at a location near Don Mills Rd. and Eglinton Ave. In less than a year, its membership had grown from 25 to 170.

"We are all well-educated. We have solid technical knowledge and English, but it is still difficult to immerse (ourselves) in the work culture and make friends here," says Duan, a medical doctor who left China 12 years ago and now works as a clinical researcher.

"Because of our lack of cultural background and understanding, it's hard for us to do small water-cooler talk," she added.

"There is always this glass wall between ourselves and the mainstream. You can't see or touch it, but it is there."

I'm not at all bothered by the article's theme of setting up NGOs to give new immigrants the social capital necessary for them to live up their potential. The thing that I might find problematic with this article, or at least be commented upon somewhere--like on this blog--is that this process of integration isn't relevant only to immigrants from foreign countries. Even though I am a Canadian citizen and speak English, I found Toronto disorienting on first moving here, and would have been rather disorientation and unhappy if I hadn't had contacts in place, that is, if I hadn't earned some social capital in advance.

It's still an ongoing task for me, if certainly not to the same degree as for the people described: Peter Li leaves his neighbourhood to get in contact with English speakers, I post to the toronto community asking for new interesting walking routes. That's the kind of thing that almost everyone in Toronto does, I imagine, try to find places that they like and that they can make some kind of home, most preferably in conjunction with other people. We're all immigrants in a way.