[PHOTO] Looking north, streetcar platform, St. Clair station

Looking north from the streetcar platform at St. Clair station towards the streetcar entrance from St. Clair Avenue on the evening of the 30th.

[URBAN NOTE] "Will Karen Stintz survive as TTC Chair?"

blogTO's Derek Flack notes the ongoing carnage inside city government. Keep in mind that Karen Stintz was one of Ford's major allies, at one point.

In a move that amounts to an open revolt against TTC chair Karen Stintz, Ford supporters on the TTC board voted yesterday to prevent the study of further above ground options for the Eglinton Crosstown Line.

This almost surprisingly partisan vote — remember it's not as if Stintz hasn't played ball with Ford on the 2012 budget and where the $5 million in additional funds the Commission received should be directed — comes on the heels of news that Ford had no authority to unilaterally cancel Transit City and a subsequent letter from Metrolinx that asks for clear direction from the City of Toronto before it can proceed with the construction of the Crosstown (see below).

So what happens now? Stintz's compromise-based plan clearly had some support from city councillors (if not staunch Ford supporters). As Steve Munro explains, that means council could theoretically bring the debate on the Eglinton LRT to the fore by calling special meeting. In a post on his website (cross-posted to Torontoist), he notes that council could effectively overturn the Commission vote and get the alternate options for Crosstown back on the agenda.

"Some councillors are now talking openly of calling a special meeting of council; they need a majority of councillors to agree in order to convene one, but the mayor's approval is not required. The agenda for such a meeting would be set by those who call for it, not throttled by the mayor's cronies at Executive Committee (who often keep items they don't like off the agenda for regular council meetings). This would allow for a discussion of transit alternatives, disposition of the MoU [the Memorandum of Understanding Ford entered into with Metrolinx], and many other actions such as reconstituting the TTC with a better balanced group of councillors."

What else is to be said?

[URBAN NOTE] On the closure of Ontario Place

News that Ontario Place, a waterfront entertainment complex, is set to close for five years as part of a general revamp actually hasn't gotten much reaction from my Facebook friends. I'm not overly surprised myself, since I've never felt pulled to the complex in my eight years in Toronto, passing by only once as part of a longer walk on that part of the waterfront and being impressed by the state of decrepitude. I'm surprised it's stayed open this long.

"Ontario Place has been a drain on the government treasury for many years … it’s no longer sustainable," [Tourism Minister Michael Chan] said during a news conference at the legislature.

To that end, the government will close the portions of the park that are not generating revenue, while it tries to redevelop the site over the next five years.

Chan said the Cinesphere, as well as the water park and amusement rides, will be among the parts of Ontario Place to close.

The Molson Canadian Amphitheatre, the Atlantis Pavilion, the marina and the parking lot will remain open.

Finance Minister Dwight Duncan, who was also present at the news conference, said the province would save $20 million a year by closing down the money-losing attractions.

[. . .]

The government has appointed former Ontario Progressive Conservative leader John Tory to head the advisory panel that will look at ways to make Ontario Place into a popular tourist destination once again.

The panel is due to report back to the government in the spring.

Tory said the panel will be able to make use of a number of studies that have already been completed, when reviewing the options for revamping the park.

"There's been I think 11 studies and that's probably about nine more than there needed to be, and now it's time to act and get on with doing something," said Tory, who was not at the press conference at Queen’s Park.

"I want it to be excellent, a people place, something that will help to create jobs and enrich the cultural and social fabric of Toronto and takes advantage of what is a jewel of a location."

I'm reminded of how I was saddened back in 2005 by the closure of Rainbow Valley, a children-oriented amusement park in Cavendish in the heart of Prince Edward Island's North Shore tourist district that shut down for want of traffic. Apparently, tourism on Prince Edward Island has moved away from the family-trip model geared towards amusement parks towards higher-value-added tourism, directed at points of cultural or ecological interest.

What will be made of Ontario Place?

And, does anyone reading this have any memories of the complex?

[BRIEF NOTE] Notes on possible pre-Columbian migration to Viking Iceland

The headline of Traci Watson's National Geographic News article sensationalizes the news a bit--it would have been a one-time migration to Iceland, on medieval Europe's extreme western periphery, and the effects are limited to Iceland--but it's still fascinating to think that there might have been pre-Columbian migration between the two hemispheres of the world with lasting effects.

Five hundred years before Columbus sailed the ocean blue, a Native American woman may have voyaged to Europe with Vikings, according to a provocative new DNA study.

Analyzing a type of DNA passed only from mother to child, scientists found more than 80 living Icelanders with a genetic variation similar to one found mostly in Native Americans.

This signature probably entered Icelandic bloodlines around A.D. 1000, when the first Viking-American Indian child was born, the study authors theorize.

Historical accounts and archaeological evidence show that Icelandic Vikings reached Greenland just before 1000 and quickly pushed on to what is now Canada. Icelanders even established a village in Newfoundland, though it lasted only a decade or so.

The idea that a Native American woman sailed from North America to Iceland during that period of settlement and exploration provides the best explanation for the Icelanders' variant, the research team says.

"We know that Vikings sailed to the Americas," said Agnar Helgason of deCODE Genetics and the University of Iceland, who co-wrote the study with his student Sigrídur Ebenesersdóttir and colleagues. "So all you have to do is assume … that they met some people and ended up taking at least one female back with them.

[. . .]

Through genealogical research, the study team concluded that the Icelanders who carry the Native American variation are all from four specific lineages, descended from four women born in the early 1700s.

Those four lineages, in turn, likely descended from a single woman with Native American DNA who must have been born no later than 1700, according to study co-author Ebenesersdóttir.

The genealogical records for the four lineages are incomplete before about 1700, but history and genetics suggest the Native American DNA arrived on the European island centuries before then, study co-author Helgason said.

The DNA in question doesn't have precise parallels with any existing First Nations population, although many similar mutations do exist.

The whole story is remarkable inasmuch as the historical consensus is that relations between the Vikings and the First Nations of the Arctic and Newfoundland, the so-called Skræling, were profoundly hostile.

Complicating matters, the historical record contains no evidence that Icelandic Vikings might have taken a Native American woman back home to their European island, scholars say.

"It makes no sense to me," said archaeologist and historian Hans Gulløv of the Greenland Research Centre in Copenhagen.

For one thing, experts say, nothing in excavations or the Icelandic sagas—thought to be rooted in fact but not entirely reliable—suggests a personal alliance of the kind reported in the new study, published online November 10 in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.

The Saga of Erik the Red does tell of four Skraeling boys—the Norse term for the American Indians—who were captured by an Icelandic expedition and taken back to Greenland, said Birgitta Wallace, an emeritus archaeologist for Parks Canada who has written extensively about the Norse.

But Icelanders spent little time in North America, and their relations with the people they found living there seem to have been mostly hostile, she said. The stories "talk in not very flattering terms about [Native Americans'] looks," Wallace said.

One saga, she added, tells of explorers "who found some sleeping natives—and they just killed them."

"What we have is a big mystery," study co-author Helgason admitted.

But still, the DNA evidence suggests that all it took was a single woman's child. Spike on Facebook, who linked to the article, theorized that the woman likely belonged to either to the Dorset in the Arctic or the Beothuk culture in Newfoundland, both areas contacted by the Vikings in the medieval period. I'd be inclined to bet on the woman coming from the Dorset culture, since the Viking pattern of occasional trade with the inhabitants of the Arctic would support migration better than the violently failed settlement in Newfoundland.