[PHOTO] Postal Station K, Yonge and Eglinton, from the north

Postal Station K, currently housing an outpost of the Canada Post empire, is an architecturally-significant building just north of the intersection of Yonge and Eglinton. It is also at the center of a notable neighbourhood controversy, as Canada Post has just sold the building and its site to a condo developer.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• The Burgh Diaspora's Jim Russell notes how Brazil is using the Afro-Brazilian majority legacy of the transatlantic slave trade to justify the construction of new transatlantic links with Africa.


• Crooked Timber comments upon the Irish anti-abortion laws that just cost a woman her life and the homophobia of the Reagan administration that made HIV/AIDS a laughing matter.


• Daniel Drezner wonders if the ongoing expanding Petraeus scandal will end up diminishing the American public's regard for the military.


• Eastern Approaches notes that no one in the Balkans seems to be commemorating the one hundredth anniversary of the First Balkan War.


• Far Outlier's Joel quotes from Matthew Restall's Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest to describe how Christopher Columbus was really riding on the coat-tails of Portugal's successful long-range maritime exploration.


• Geocurrents observes efforts by some Arab Christians in the Levant to revive Aramaic.


• The Global Sociology Blog reviews Laurent Dubois' Haiti: The Aftershocks of History, highlighting the extent to which Haiti's catastrophes are the products of foreign meddling.


• At Lawyers, Guns and Money, Erik Loomis maps Detroit. The extent to which the borders of the City of Detroit overlap with African-American majority populations, and to which the sprawl of Metro Detroit is constructed so as to detach the suburbs from any responsibility for the city at their region's center, is noteworthy.


• The Planetary Science Blog's Emily Lakdawalla reports on Carl Sagan's feminism.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer summarizes what's going on with Uruguay's decriminalization of marijuana for personal use.

[URBAN NOTE] On the transformation of Postal Station K and the Masonic Temple into condos

My choice of photos this morning, of Postal Station K, was intentional. The building has been sold off.

It’s not clear what the developer plans to do with the property, but it won’t be a post office for much longer. A sign is posted in the building to notify customers the post office will be relocating.

Jack Winberg, CEO of the Rockport Group, extended an olive branch to the community and said he wants to work with the residents to find a suitable solution to develop the heritage site.

“We know it’s a special site,” Winberg said. “I’ve been reading the press, I know there are a number of constituencies that think the building is important and I agree … but I want consult with the community, the planners and try to come up with a plan that works for everybody.”

“We’d like to be able to do what we can to preserve the front of the building, the true heritage part of the building. Maybe the back will go and we’ll put a condo of some kind behind it,” Winberg added.

A group of residents is vowing to continue to fight to maintain the historic integrity of the building and public access to it.

“It was sold like a piece of meat,” [local MPP Mike] Colle said outside Postal Station K on Friday afternoon.

So, too, Toronto's Masonic Temple.

After 95 years, the iconic Masonic Temple — the concert hall where Frank Sinatra, the Ramones and Led Zeppelin once rocked out — may permanently shut its doors and be turned into condos.

Bell Media confirmed Friday they “are considering all options,” including selling the historic building to developers, after they move their MTV Canada studios out of the six-storey landmark at the northwest corner of Davenport Rd. and Yonge St.

“We are moving the MTV studios to 299 Queen St. and, as a result, there will be no further production done at the Masonic Temple as of now,” Scott Henderson, Bell Media’s vice-president of communications, said.

“Staff were notified of it in September. The future of the temple has yet to be decided. They’re considering all opportunities, including potentially selling it. The real-estate team is trying to determine what the future will be.”

Filming of MTV-related shows stopped as of Thursday, Henderson said, adding there’s no deadline for a decision on the building as of yet.

According to the City of Toronto, the Masonic Temple was added to the list of heritage sites in March 1974, which protects some historical aspects of the building, including the facade and some interior features.

I'm inclined to think that these transitions, form heritage buildings to condos, are good things for Toronto. If these buildings aren't serving a useful function any more, or if other buildings could serve the job better, why not transform them, especially if the facades are kept?

[LINK] "Washington's green light for gays may take bite out of B.C. weddings"

I'm glad that at least one sector of Canada's tourism industry is facing failure. (The Vancouver Sun's Tara Carman explains what I mean.)

As same-sex couples in Washington state celebrate Tuesday's referendum win, some Vancouver-area event planners are anticipating a smaller piece of the wedding cake.

"I do think that it's going to affect my market for destination weddings here in B.C. quite a bit," said wedding planner Christine Rock, owner of Viva Las Weddings.

About 40 per cent of Rock's clients consist of same-sex couples, almost all of whom are American, she said. A few have come from Washington state, but most hail from farther south.

[. . .]

Gay marriage was already legal in six states plus the District of Columbia heading into Tuesday's U.S. election, when Maine, Maryland and Washington state brought the total to nine.

Washington, however, is similar to B.C. in terms of geography and culture, making it all the more important for this province to amp up tourism marketing efforts in order to compete, Rock said. This week's reincarnation of defunct Crown corporation Tourism B.C. as Destination B.C. is timely for her industry, she said.

"Before this ... same-sex couples had a reason to come to Canada to get married. Now more than ever we need something like Destination B.C. to promote B.C. on its own merits rather than just a destination choice for same-sex marriages that are legal."

[LINK] "Archaeologists banned from referring to ancient humanoids as “hobbits”"

io9 reported that the company holding intellectual copyright to the term "hobbit", from Tolkien's novels, isn't letting the term be used in connection to human subpsecies Homo floresiensis. See this

Guardian report.

Dr Brent Alloway, associate professor at Victoria University, is planning a free lecture next month at which two of the archaeologists involved in the discovery of Homo floresiensis in 2003, Professor Mike Morwood and Thomas Sutikna, will speak about the species. The talk is planned to coincide with the premiere of The Hobbit film, and Alloway had planned to call the lecture "The Other Hobbit", as Homo floresiensis is commonly known.

But when he approached the Saul Zaentz Company/Middle-earth Enterprises, which owns certain rights in The Hobbit, he was told by their lawyer that "it is not possible for our client to allow generic use of the trade mark HOBBIT."

"I am very disappointed that we're forbidden … to use the word 'Hobbit' in the title of our proposed free public event … especially since the word 'Hobbit' is apparently listed in the Oxford English Dictionary (and hence apparently part of our English-speaking vocabulary), the word 'Hobbit' (in the Tolkien context) is frequently used with apparent impunity in the written press and reference to 'Hobbit' in the fossil context is frequently referred to in the scientific literature (and is even mentioned in Wikipedia on Homo floresiensis). I realise I'm in unfamiliar word proprietry territory (as an earth scientist) … so I've gone for the easiest option and simply changed our event title." said Alloway.

My opinion is that of the io9 writer. (Also, how does using the word in this context depreciate the company's intellectual property?)

On the one hand, I can see a company that has a trademark interest in the word “hobbit” worrying about that word becoming generic. And Alloway acknowledges that he organized the lecture specifically to coincide with the release of The Hobbit film and capitalize on the name. But Alloway and his fellow scientists are clearly using the word in a different market—scientific, rather than storytelling—and the very fact that they call it “The Other Hobbit” acknowledges Tolkien’s invention of the word.

But regardless of whether the Saul Zaentz Company is legally obligated to protect its trademark interest in the word “hobbit,” it strikes me that this conflict could have had a very simple resolution. The company could have licensed the use of the word to the lecture organizers for a nominal fee. Even without the company’s blessing, however, Homo floresiensis remains a “hobbit” in much scientific literature—and in our hearts.

[DM] "On the Albertan advantage over the United States"

I've a post up at Demography Matters noting the attractiveness of Alberta's labour market for American workers.

(Please tell me the formatting worked this time.)