[PHOTO] By the inukshuk, Battery Park, Toronto

Located in Battery Park, west of Bathurst Street and Coronation Park on the Toronto waterfront, is an inukshuk built to commemorate World Youth Day 2002.



A 14 June 2002 press release from the City of Toronto goes into detail about the process of construction and design.

The Toronto Inukshuk, the City of Toronto's legacy project to commemorate World Youth Day and the visit of Pope John Paul II in July, began its last stages of construction today with the placement of the critical granite pieces.

Councillor Joe Pantalone, co-chair of the Toronto Inukshuk project, said, "The Toronto Inukshuk will be a magnificent addition to Toronto's waterfront and a timeless reminder of when the world came to Toronto."

An Inuit stone structure, the word Inukshuk means, "that which acts in the capacity of a human." Found often in the arctic landscape, the Inukshuk serves as a guide to travellers on land and sea, providing comfort, advice and spatial orientation.

Located at Battery Park, the Toronto Inukshuk is one of the largest of its kind ever built in North America. The structure, including the base, stands 30 feet high with an arm span of 15 feet. Approximately 50 tonnes of mountain rose granite from Dryden, Ontario, is being used to create the Inukshuk. Kellypalik Qimirpik, the internationally acclaimed Inuit artist consulting on the project, selected the mountain rose stone as it is a similar colour to a type of stone found in his home of Cape Dorset.

The estimated cost for the project, including design, engineering, site preparation, materials and construction, is $200,000. City Council approved $50,000 for the City's share of the project. Fundraising efforts led by Councillor Pantalone and Tony Dionisio, Project Co-chair and Business Manager, Universal Workers Union, Local 183, were successful in reaching the financial goals set for this legacy project.

"Individuals and organizations responded with an unexpected level of generosity and community spirit. This spirit will be forever captured in stone," said Dionisio. "The workers and employers of Toronto's building industry have come together to lend their support to this initiative. They understand that a city is not just its infrastructure. The culture, the people and the very life of the city is what truly makes Toronto great."

The City of Toronto selected the Inukshuk design because for centuries, the Inukshuk structure has acted as a guardian to keep vigil over the land and remains a powerful symbol of safe harbour in an uncertain world. Enacted in 1984 by Pope John Paul II, World Youth Days reflect the same values of peace and friendship.

"Congratulations to the City of Toronto for taking the leadership to build this monument as a cultural symbol of Toronto, Canada and its original inhabitants," said Councillor Pantalone. "The Toronto Inukshuk will become a significant landmark, reinforcing our history as a place where people gather from around the world."

[BRIEF NOTE] On the apparent lack of Earth-size or larger planets at Barnard's Star

Over at Facebook, James Nicoll shared the paper by Jieun Choi et al, "Precise Doppler Monitoring of Barnard's Star". Barnard's Star, for those of you unfamiliar with this object (Sol Station and Wikipedia have much more to say), is a dim, ancient red dwarf star about ten billion years old, more than twice the age of our our sun and only a small fraction of a percent as bright. 6 light years away, Barnard's Star is the second-closest star to our own sun after Alpha Centauri and so has been a common target of study for astronomers and a setting for science fiction writers--Robert Forward's Rocheworld is the most famous book set about Barnard's Star, but I can think of others.

Because of its proximity, Barnard's Star has been a target for planet-hunters for decades. Most famously, in the mid-20th century American astronomer Peter Van De Kamp claimed to have detected two gas giant planets orbiting Barnard's Star. As the state of the technology advanced, however, these very early claims have been disproved. At present, using the latest data, it's uncertain if any substantial worlds orbit Barnard's Star.

We present 248 precise Doppler measurements of Barnard's Star (Gl 699), the second nearest star system to Earth, obtained from Lick and Keck Observatories during 25 years between 1987 and 2012. The early precision was 20 \ms{} but was 2 \ms{} during the last 8 years, constituting the most extensive and sensitive search for Doppler signatures of planets around this stellar neighbor. We carefully analyze the 136 Keck radial velocities spanning 8 years by first applying a periodogram analysis to search for nearly circular orbits. We find no significant periodic Doppler signals with amplitudes above $\sim$2 \ms{}, setting firm upper limits on the minimum mass (\msini) of any planets with orbital periods from 0.1 to 1000 days. Using a Monte Carlo analysis for circular orbits, we determine that planetary companions to Barnard's Star with masses above 2 \mearth{} and periods below 10 days would have been detected. Planets with periods up to 2 years and masses above 10 \mearth{} (0.03 \mjup) are also ruled out. A similar analysis allowing for eccentric orbits yields comparable mass limits. The habitable zone of Barnard's Star appears to be devoid of roughly Earth-mass planets or larger, save for face-on orbits. Previous claims of planets around the star by van de Kamp are strongly refuted. The radial velocity of Barnard's Star increases with time at $4.515\pm0.002$ \msy{}, consistent with the predicted geometrical effect, secular acceleration, that exchanges transverse for radial components of velocity.

As the paper notes, this is something of an anomaly, since red dwarfs as a class have been found to commonly host planets, including worlds the size of Neptune or even Earth. Barnard's Star, though, perhaps on account of its age and its very low metallicity, does not share in this trend of stars of its class.

[LINK] "Revamping French Guiana for the World Cup and Olympics"

At Geocurrents, Chris Kremer has a post describing the latest scheme of French authorities to jumpstart the decidedly dualistic economy of the French South American territory of French Guiana. Creating sports facilities for training Olympic atheletes for the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil to the south seems redundant to me: Brazil is a large country that can presumably provide spaces for the athletes in question. If France can make a go of it, sure, but is this the best scheme for boosting the economy of an ultraperipheral region?

The overseas region of France will expand its sport, tourism, and transportation infrastructure in order to attract elite athletes to train there for the [2016 Rio Olympics Games]. Earlier this month in London, the government-sponsored group GIP Guiana 2014-2016 promoted the region as a convenient, safe, and scenic place for foreign teams to train away from the hustle and bustle of the main competition venues.

The French government will spend about €35 million ($43 million) over the coming three years on projects that will include the renovation of two soccer stadiums in Rémire-Montjoly and Kourou, as well as the construction of new sports facilities. Future high-end training centers will include an Olympic-grade running track, a swimming pool, and a gym for martial arts, which together would accommodate athletes competing in up to 20 different Olympic events. In addition to a new transport system, French Guiana will also build new hotels, with a capacity of up to 4,000 visitors.

Government officials hope that these activities will boost the economy of French Guiana, which like the Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique and the African island of Mayotte, is considered an integral part of the country of France. The construction jobs and tourism that the project will generate should reduce the region’s unemployment rate of about 20 percent. After the next Olympics, the new stadiums would provide a venue for the cultivation of sports talent in French Guiana, which has a youthful population and many cultural affinities with the Caribbean. Even though the region is considered politically equal to any other in the country—it sends representatives to the French legislature and is part of the EU and Eurozone—it has a much lower standard of living than metropolitan (European) France. While the highest in South America, French Guiana’s GDP per capita is slightly less than half the national average, and the economy is highly dependent on government subsidies and the presence of the European Space Agency’s spaceport.

[URBAN NOTE] "Reel Toronto: Take This Waltz"

The latest installment of a series of Torontoist posts taking a look examines the Toronto-set 2011 Sarah Polley-directed Take This Waltz.

David Fleischer does an excellent job tracking down the different locations and neighbourhoods featuring in the film. Although Toronto's geography is stretched out somewhat spectacularly in the way films do stretch it out, Fleischer thinks Take This Waltz does a very good job of getting into Toronto.

Go, read and see the screencaps.

[URBAN NOTE] "McGuinty government backs John Tory’s revitalization plan for Ontario Place"

The Ontario provincial government has accepted John Tory's proposal to redevelop the declining Ontario Place recreation complex.

The province on Wednesday endorsed a plan to revamp Ontario Place with new housing units, businesses, parkland and an educational research centre.

After two decades of debate and studies on how to make the waterfront park more profitable, Tourism Minister Michael Chan announced the government would accept all 18 recommendations from an advisory panel led by former Progressive Conservative leader John Tory.

“Ontarians had a fond memory of Ontario Place. As you are probably aware, in recent years Ontario Place kind of lost its glory. We have to revamp, we have to redo it, we have to rebuild it and we are going to build on the theme of having people in there,” Mr. Chan told reporters at Queen’s Park.

“People can go in there, perhaps enjoy a hotel or a restaurant, or enjoy shopping in there. At the same time, [be] able to learn something in there…. We are excited.”

The project, a public-private partnership, has a target completion date of 2017 — Canada’s 150th anniversary.

The goal is to turn Ontario Place into an “urban waterfront community,” Mr. Chan said, with certain portions dedicated to housing, retail, parkland and possibly an educational attraction similar to the Ontario Science Centre. Residential units will be the “economic driver,” he noted.

A concrete plan of how the revitalized Ontario Place will look has yet to materialize, but the government will initially spend $5.5-million on completing an environmental assessment and studying the infrastructure and soil — all necessary groundwork before the province can offer the land to businesses for redevelopment.

Ontario Place first opened its doors in 1971, and while about 3.3 million people visited the park annually in the 1980s, that number was down to 327,774 in 2010. Even free admission in 2011 was not enough to attract customers; the province shut down Ontario Place this summer to save $20-million, though the Molson Amphitheatre, marina and Atlantis Pavilion banquet hall stayed open.

Mr. Tory’s July report, commissioned to address the waning attendance and revenues, found Ontario Place had failed to keep pace with Toronto’s changing landscape. When the attraction was built, the waterfront featured little more than empty factories and warehouses. The growth in population has led to a greater need for leisure and recreation space, which Ontario Place could fill, the report said.