[PHOTO] Hockey Hall of Fame, 30 Yonge Street

Though the NHL season is doomed, the Hockey Hall of Fame at 30 Yonge Street on the northwest corner of Yonge and Front remains, a monument to what is for now still Canada's national sport.

[URBAN NOTE] "Digital Fortresses: A cheat sheet to Toronto papers’ online paywalls"

Toronto Life recently featured a guide to Toronto's online newspapers, the status of their digital paywalls, and--quietly--ways to get around it.

The Toronto Sun, home of Sue-Ann Levy, sexy bikini shots and amusing slip-ups, is the latest Toronto daily to try to mitigate waning print advertising revenue by charging for online content. The paper will erect a digital paywall next week, according to the Globe and Mail, which itself already has digital subscriptions in place. Meanwhile, the Toronto Star and National Post have both announced plans to institute walls in the New Year. Below, we break down all four papers’ plans to help you pick which to shell out for.

For instance:

Globe and Mail
Print versus online: A print subscription costs $35.88 per month, entitling you to unlimited access to all online content. An digital subscription (which the paper is calling ”Globe Unlimited”) on its own will set you back $19.99 per month.
Start date: The digital fence has been up and running since late October.
How it works: Non-subscribers get access to 10 free articles a month, after which the paywall kicks in (though stories accessed through links on social media sites don’t count against your total, and avid readers have already figured out a way to trick the counter).
Subscribe if: You’ve got cash to spare, want full access to Canada’s newspaper of record and don’t mind reading a tarnished Margaret Wente.

[URBAN NOTE] "The Night Shift: A Glad Day’s night"

I've been meaning for some time to link to Paul Aguirre-Livingston's article in The Grid about the ongoing revival of the Glad Day Bookshop. I've frequently blogged about the vissicitudes of the place, most recently noting in August (after a blogTO report) the extent to which Glad Day has relaunched as a neighbourhood hub. This bookstore, for so long barely hanging on, seems set to hang on for a while yet.

Almost nine months ago, Glad Day Bookshop, Canada’s first bookstore targeted to the gay community, was about to close its doors—until it was saved by a group of citizen investors. They’ve since turned a chapter in Toronto queer history, making Glad Day a place for very memorable nights.

Last December, when former owner John Scythe announced that the shop would be put up for sale, high-school English teacher Michael Erickson started a campaign to engage friends and allies from every corner of his Toronto network to invest in the project. “Since it’s an institution and an incredible resource for the community, [Erickson] decided that we should save the bookshop,” says Andy Wang, who needed little persuasion to became one of the 22 people (from white collar to creative class) who bought shares in the company. Wang also acts as the shop’s CFO and event booker. Since this re-incarnation, Glad Day has become a fiercely community-driven initiative, says Wang. “Having a lot of people involved is good for having connections all over.” With so much added outreach, the social calendar has become the backbone of its new direction.

[. . .]

Erickson, Wang and co. wanted desperately for the shop to survive, and, in keeping up with the Indigos, the idea of holding events and launches became crucial to the business model. It was a way of enticing new customers to get acquainted with and raise the profile of the shop—fast. Erickson asked the landlord, who was renovating the unused third floor at the time, if the team could rent the space. “It was modelled after our specifications,” Wang proudly explains, as he walks me through Glad Day’s vast collection of everything from thoughtful memoirs to DVDs to vintage erotica.

Upstairs, I overhear a woman say, “Like, what is this? Are we in Trevor’s apartment?”

It’s easy to see why she says that. The result of the renovation was a charming multi-use loft space, with a bathroom, a kitchenette, and glorious hardwood floors. It’s like the most perfect bachelor apartment you’ve ever seen, with standing room for up to 100 guests, making it expansive, yet intimate. And with rentals starting at $20 per hour, it’s a bloody steal. Its availability spread quickly by word-of-mouth. Campbell says he immediately thought of using the space after visiting for a friend’s launch.

Under the new Glad Day collective, the third floor has hosted countless talented minds. The Toronto Gay Gamers (the “Gaymers”) meet here regularly. There was an AIDS Sunset Service, and a night of remembrance upon the passing of Maurice Sendak. During Pride 2012, Glad Day revived the Proud Voices reading series, a program that lasted for three years before it vanished from Pride programming in 2010. There was the debut of the Kickstarter-funded Human Canvas Project. Last Friday night, they hosted the revue-style Loft Cabaret. (Watch a performance below.) The week before that, it was a caBEARet, a night of bear artists and creators.

[LINK] "Belgian heart of French resistance"

Colin Randall's article--found in the UAE's The National--describes how the obscure Walloon village of Néchin has become a destination for migrants from France, for wealthy French citizens seeking to escape high taxation in France.

I'm curious: Why Néchin? What attracted Frenchpeople to this particular village in the first place?

A small Belgian village has become an unexpected symbol of French resistance for wealthy refugees from the high-tax policies of François Hollande's socialist government.

Néchin, just 3 kilometres from the French border and a little more than an hour by road from the Belgian capital Brussels, is no Monaco or Geneva.

The surrounding countryside is pleasant but hardly breathtaking. There is a medieval fortified castle, a centrepiece church built after the original was destroyed in the First World War and a cafe whose name translates as "friendship".

But this unprepossessing fringe of Belgium's French-speaking Wallonia region has become a magnet for French people determined to keep Mr Hollande's hands off their fortunes.

Prosperous French families have bought homes there, enabling them to take advantage of a fiscal regime that was already less punitive of the rich; more are reportedly intent on following as the socialists prepare to introduce a 75 per cent tax on all earnings above €1 million (Dh4.7m) a year.

The flight of wealth coincides with fierce debate in which Mr Hollande and ministers passionately defend their policies as critics portray France and its economic management - or, as they would have it, mismanagement - as central to the euro crisis.

Prominent socialists have reacted angrily to a cover story in The Economist likening the French economy to a time bomb.

The prime minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, said that France was "not at all impressed" and the Hollande-supporting daily newspaper Libération ran a sequence of past covers of The Economist critical of French politics.

One showed the former British conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher in 2006 with the slogan "What France needs". This year, "the rather dangerous Mr Hollande" was depicted on the eve of his election as a slightly shifty figure emerging from behind the French tricolour.

[. . .]

But back on the Franco-Belgian border, one in four of Néchin's population of about 2,000 is already French. High-profile residents include members of the Mulliez family, the owners of the Auchan supermarket chain.

The actor Gérard Depardieu, who has starred in scores of films in a career spanning more than 40 years, is reported by the Belgian press to be on the point of completing the purchase of a mansion in Néchin for €520,000. Depardieu, who grew up in a poor family and was a delinquent truant in his early teens, supported Mr Hollande's centre-right predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy. He has not commented on the Belgian link but news of his gesture, if correct, speaks volumes.

[LINK] "Merkel leaving east Germany in cold"

This Reuters article taking a look at life in the East German border city of Eisenhüttenstadt, besides making the point that Germany's not a homogeneous country in the sense that all Germans are winners from European integration, takes a look at the ways in which East Germany remains a peripheral area of unified Germany. Even two decades after reunification, East Germany is less prosperous than the former West, and East Germany's demographic considerably less promising--birth rates aside, it sounds like Eisenhüttenstadt, at least, is a place that people come from.

This fading industrial city, like many in Angela Merkel's former East German home, is stony ground for the chancellor's message of European integration and fertile soil for opponents trying to stop her winning a third term next September.

[. . .]

Originally called “Stalinstadt”, it was built in the 1950s as an industrial complex and “the first Socialist city in Germany”. The pride of the GDR, it was renamed in 1961 and had 50,000 inhabitants in its heyday.

In a familiar story across east Germany, reunification meant mass unemployment as communist-run industry failed to compete on the free market. About 40 percent of the town's population went west and much of the housing for GDR workers stands empty.

In a country whose conservative chancellor dedicates a lot of time to blue-sky thinking about the future and demographic change, the most demographically-challenged areas of Germany do not feel their plight is a political priority.

“Future? We have no future,” said Suzanne, wheeling her bicycle past an abandoned prefab tower block with broken windows on the banks of a canal. She would not give her surname, like many people in a country with historic sensitivities about privacy.

Merkel's plans for a third term, if she wins, are typically undramatic and give the impression of fine-tuning a well-oiled machine. The Christian Democrats (CDU) will make her the focus of a personality-based campaign which will be new for Germany.

“The election will be won by whoever is most convincing that our currency and jobs are safe,” said one senior Merkel ally.

Judging by what people in Eisenhuettenstadt would like to see discussed - a legal minimum wage and greater job security - there is still a lot of work to be done convincing people in the east, where unemployment is way over the 6.9 percent national rate and incomes are a fifth lower than the average in the west.