There’s a temptation to revert to cliché when discussing pulp romance. Harlequin Superromance author Vicki Essex says this makes writers of the genre cringe.
“‘Bodice-rippers.’ We hate that term! It’s a throwback from the ’70s and ’80s, when historicals were the big thing,” she says. “But today, romance—and contemporary romance especially—isn’t like that. There are so many genres and sub-genres.”
Essex is part of a new generation of young, smart, romance writers who are using the medium to tell compelling, well-written stories that just happen to feature boy-meets-girl scenarios with fleshly pursuits. She stresses that these books are hardly recycled, drop-in-the-detail plot scenarios.
“Another thing people hate is the idea that there are formulas in romance writing,” she says. “If you have to use an ‘F’ word, use ‘framework.’ All stories use a framework.”
I finally saw Les Mis: the movie . I have seen Les Mis the stage musical, including once in German in Berlin. I have not (yet) read the book that inspired the musical, so my review will not involve discussions of Victor Hugo’s original intents. I thought the movie was fine but not fantastic. Because I like to complain, the rest of this post will focus on my problems with the film.
I have two primary issues with the movie. One was that several characters felt either uninteresting or simply wrong. In combination, these problematic characters flattened a show that demands large, distinct personalities to drag the viewer in and make us care about them as distinct entities. The other complaint concerns the film’s treatment of the revolution.
KPMG is set to become the main tenant in an office tower in the heart of Vaughan’s bustling downtown. The only catch is that the downtown doesn’t exist yet.
The space around the proposed KPMG Tower looks like a largely vacant pocket of suburbia just north of Toronto.
[. . .]
“We looked at a variety of locations across the northern corridor, but really the Vaughan Metropolitan Centre was able to offer everything that we were looking for, particularly central access through the subway and growth in the business community,” said Beth Wilson, GTA managing partner at KPMG. Construction on the building is to start within the year.
If the ambitious vision for the Vaughan Metropolitan Centre (VMC) comes to fruition, the expanse of land surrounding the future site of the 15-storey KPMG tower will soon sprout a densely packed urban core where people can live, work, shop and play.
The tower site sits on land that’s owned by Calloway Real Estate Investment Trust and SmartCentres, two firms that have specialized in Wal-Mart-anchored shopping centres, making this an unusual project for them. They’ve been talking about it for years but just agreed last fall on final terms to jointly own and develop 53 acres that they describe as being at centre ice of the VMC.
Key to the project is an 8.6-kilometre subway extension that is under construction (with $2.6-billion of funds from various levels of government) that will connect the VMC, via a new subway station near the KPMG tower, to downtown Toronto’s Union Station. The extension is scheduled for completion in late 2016.
“It must be one of the most unusual projects in the country in that there is this enormous tract of undeveloped land with a subway coming up right in the middle of it,” said Don Schmitt, a principal with Diamond Schmitt Architects who is working with Calloway and SmartCentres. “You’re really designing a piece of the city from first principles, from scratch.”
Mid-month figures for January put homes sales in Canada’s biggest city up 2.5% and prices up 4% compared with the same period in January 2012, the Toronto Real Estate Board said Wednesday.
Those figures appear to buck the softening trend the Toronto housing market has seen over the past year. Just a day ago, Canadian Real Estate Association numbers showed sales in the city sank 21.8% in December from a year ago, while prices climbed 6.0%.
While it may be too early to say if home sales in Toronto are poised to make a solid recovery, the figures are providing market watchers with a dose of cautious optimism.
“It will be important to watch sales trends closely as we move through the first quarter to see if some of the households who moved to the sidelines as a result of stricter lending guidelines are starting to renew their decision to purchase a home,” said Ann Hannah, president of the Toronto Real Estate Board in a statement.
Toronto’s housing market in the first half of January was buoyed by a strong performance in the semi-detached sector, where sales soared 12.2% and prices were up 11.5% compared with a year earlier. Meanwhile, condo sales continued to underperform, declining 4.4% in the first 14 days of the month, with prices down 3.3%.
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