[PHOTO] Caught in the reflection, subway car, westbound from Yonge

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Andrew Barton at Acts of Minor Treason observes that the invade-the-United-States meme hasn't become more plausible over time, the differences between the first Red Dawn (featuring a Soviet invasion) and the second (featuring North Korea) being a case in point.


• Centauri Dreams offers more commentary on the non-detection of Earth-size planets orbiting Barnard's Star.


• Far Outliers posts from Bill Hayton's book on Vietnam describing how the entrepreneurial southern provinces of Vietnam helped save the national economy after reunification.


• Geocurrents notes the revival of Berbera, city in unrecognized Somaliland, over the past two decades.


• Marginal Revolution notes the importance of the shipping pallet.


• Can oil really make things better for Tajikistan, wonders?

[LINK] "Dawson City: big city problems in a small northern town"

In a guest post at Spacing, writer Tim Falconer discusses his perception of the problems of Dawson City, a municipality in the Yukon famous for its origins in the Klondike Gold Rush.

This is not a love letter to Dawson City, though I certainly could have written one of those. After all, the Yukon town is totally charming: distinctive architecture, buildings that date from the Gold Rush of 1898 and wooden sidewalks alongside wide dirt streets—and enough bar seats for every full-time resident (or so the legend goes).

But I suppose we always want to change the people and places we adore, at least a little bit. As a naive urbanite, what surprised me during my three months in this Northern town of about 1,300 is that the problems I wish I could solve are ones I thought were blights only in big cities.

Despite a severe and long-standing housing crisis, for example, NIMBYism and an irrational fear of increased density recently helped scuttle a proposal to build six small, but affordable homes.

Unused—or underused—heritage buildings are another challenge. Several are owned by a private landowner who seems content to watch his real estate portfolio rot; alas, the town can’t do much about that. Others, though, are the property of the federal government, which can be just as frustrating.

Parks Canada owns 26 sites in the Klondike and has faithfully restored most of them to serve as popular tourists attractions, offices or housing. But a few deserve “can do better” on their report cards. Harrington’s Storefor instance, displays a historical exhibit called “Dawson As They Saw It.” Pleasant enough, I guess, but hardly the most productive activity given the prime centre-of-town location.

I visited a few other landmarks during Doors Open Dawson in May. The 1901 post office, a turn-of-the-century jewel, is partially open to the public during summer tours but the Dawson Daily News building, which Parks has done some work on, remains closed, the printing press and other equipment shielded by sheets and tarps. Even more disheartening was the sight of Lowe’s Mortuary and Billy Bigg’s Blacksmith Shop (photo above); without the funds to do more, Parks Canada has been reduced to merely trying to keep these structures erect.

One major problem facing Dawson City is that its population is so much smaller than it was at its peak during the gold rush; at home at forty thousand people at one point, Dawson City is now permanent home to just over thirteen hundred people according to the last census. Keeping even the core of such a vastly reduced urban area intact must be a huge, possibly unconquerable, task.

The climate, too, must be problematic from the perspective of preserving the city intact, since--as a commenter notes--melting permafrost can do serious damage indeed to building foundations.

[URBAN NOTE] On Coronation Park, Toronto

The photo of a painted image of a heart on the pavement I took in May was selected for Torontoist's Vandalist post this week.



It's one of a few different photo posts drawing from time I spent on the waterfront of Toronto's Coronation Park earlier this year, like this one of the duck and ducklings paddling in the harbour, or this one of a treed scene. This park at the foot of Bathurst Street is attractive, and may soon take on a higher profile as its neighbourhood becomes populated. The website for a condo development in the area hosts an essay describing the park's genesis in the twin traumas of the Great Depression's mass unemployment and the psychological aftereffects of the First World War.

[I]n 1917, Fort York was still close to the lake. Over the next number of years, however, the land beneath today’s Fleet Street, Lakeshore Boulevard, and Coronation Park rose from the sandy depths. In a detailed and well-researched article, “A Living Memorial: The History of Coronation Park” (published in Urban History Review in February 1991), John Bacher has documented the subsequent history of the site. What is now Coronation Park remained sandy, and not much more, into the 1930s. The Great Depression then inspired change. Infrastructure projects offering “relief ” pay for otherwise unemployed men became the equivalent of today’s federal infrastructure funds dedicated to keeping some of us at work. Within shouting distance from the Fort, restored as one relief project, other desperate men worked through the summer of 1935 to complete a sea wall that still stands along Coronation Park’s southern edge. (The sea wall, its worth noting, did not expand the earlier filled area, but actually allowed for the dredging of a deeper basin at land’s edge for a new marina.) While steam shovels did the dredging, men with shovels moved most of the dry land, wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow. In the midst of a heat wave, and without any shade on the site, at least one man collapsed, and three horses died.

But by August 1935, the glittering new concrete sea wall and leveled land were complete at less than its projected cost. The park itself would come nearly two years later. In the wake of the death of King George V in January of 1936, the coming coronation of a new king sent officials in a then-still-very-British minded Toronto into planning for celebrations. Thomas Hobbs and Andrew Gillespie, members of the Toronto Ex-Servicemen’s Coronation Committee, joined forces with the Toronto Chapter of Men of the Trees to propose a “Coronation Park” dominated by ceremonial tree plantings. The Men of the Trees, an organization formed by war veteran Richard St. Barbe Barker, rode the rising wave of conservationism in the interwar period to preach reforestation as “the most constructive and peaceable enterprise in which nations could cooperate.” It had appealed particularly well to veterans. And in Toronto, where 90,000 veterans of WWI had held a three day reunion in 1934, veterans apparently carried weight. City Council approved the proposed concept, and left a Coronation Park Advisory Committee, dominated by veterans, to finalize the design and planting details. In short, they created a park that was part avenue of trees, part war memorial. In the centre of the park still stands a Royal oak, planted in honour of King George VI. Around it are maple trees symbolizing the strength and loyalty of the Empire, and of the Canadians who fought to defend it during WWI. The Royal oak itself is ringed by a wide circle of seven maple trees representing parts of the British Empire. Beyond that circle, other trees were planted to represent the four divisions of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, with each tree representing a unit of a division. Trees were also added to represent the veterans of the Fenian raids of 1866, the 1885 Northwest Rebellion, and the Boer War. In all, nearly 150 trees were planted along gently curving pathways during a mass ceremony on 12 May 1937–Coronation Day, and a public holiday in Toronto.

[BRIEF NOTE] On the unlikelihood of a Toronto-Buffalo cross-border Olympics

The idea of a Toronto-Buffalo binational bid for the Olympics does have a certain very superficial appeal. I've blogged here back in 2005 about how Buffalo, among other cities in upstate New York, has been intermittently interested into plugging into the relative prosperity of southern Ontario, southern Ontario and upstate New York belonging (say some) to a a single wider megalopolis notwithstanding the lack of evidence that basic transportation services like a dedicated rail line connecting Toronto with Buffalo would actually be viable. Toronto-Buffalo sports collaboration has been more viable, though thankfully plans to relocate the Buffalo Bills permanently to Toronto have been nixed repeatedly (again, there is no clear financial benefit to having a NFL football team in Toronto, plus stealing Buffalo's team is just sad) and the Bills Toronto Series is enough for most local fans of NFL football.

The whole project of a binational Olympics would ultimately fail on the border question. How likely is it that the US-Canadian border could be made sufficiently permeable to, among others, millions of tourists transiting to and fro across a sensitive border area in any plausible time period? Lesley Ciarula Taylor's recounting of the idea in the Toronto Star last Friday is hopeful but, to my mind, just talks at length about something unrealizable.

A Toronto city councillor’s idea for the first binational Olympic Games in Toronto and Buffalo is gaining steam.

“With the closeness of our two nations, it potentially raises the opportunity,” Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown told the Star on Friday.

“Toronto is a great international city. I am flattered that a Toronto city councillor mentioned the idea of partnering with the city of Buffalo.”

York Centre Councillor James Pasternak floated the idea in an interview about how Toronto could possibly afford to host an Olympics when the current London Games are costing $15 billion.

“The current Olympic bidding and hosting process is unsustainable, as cities can no longer afford to host a multi-billion dollar, two-week Games,” said the first-term councillor, who has a degree from the London School of Economics.

“We believe that Buffalo, with its current sports facilities and resources, and of course with American government backing, could be a great partner.

“I’ve been to Buffalo many times. I think it has great facilities. It is almost like a sister city to Toronto. I think it makes a great choice,” Pasternak said

Flattered as he is, Brown laughed long and hard at the idea of splitting the cost of the 2024 Games with Toronto.

“Believe me, if I had $7.5 billion to spend, I would spend it all in Buffalo and not spend it to bring an Olympics,” said Brown.

Still, he praised Pasternak for “thinking outside the box” and said he’d be happy to talk if a bid ever got past the idea stage.

Brown, elected in 2005, embraced the proposal as Toronto’s acknowledgement of “all the positive things happening in Buffalo,” including a $250-million waterfront project that has been one of his priorities.

Buffalo could also contribute its baseball and hockey stadiums to the Olympic mix, as well as an Olympic-class swimming pool, he said.