[PHOTO] Looking to westward, Bathurst TTC station

When on a Monday night you descend three levels down the elevator in the Bathurst TTC station (the elevator dating to 2000), from street level to the westbound platform, this is what you see.

[OBSCURA] "King Street East, south side, looking west, 1856"

The above is one of eleven very old photos of Toronto featured in Jamie Bradburn's Torontoist post The Oldest Known Photos of Toronto", dating back to 1856.



Bradburn wrote about the genesis of this photo at Torontoist.

For the earliest known photographs of Toronto, we have a sales pitch to thank.

Following the union of Upper and Lower Canada as the United Province of Canada in 1841, Canada’s new parliament drifted from city to city. Kingston, Montreal, Quebec City, and Toronto all hosted the wandering colonial government. On April 14, 1856, the legislature voted 64 to 54 in favour of ending its recent practice of alternating parliamentary sessions between Toronto and Quebec City. The job of determining a permanent capital was handed to Queen Victoria, who examined presentations from those two cities, along with presentations on behalf of Kingston, Montreal, and Ottawa.

While Toronto’s pitch failed to sway the queen (she named Ottawa the capital in 1857), it preserved a record of what the growing city looked like. The photographic and civil engineering firm of Armstrong, Beere and Hime was hired to provide a set of 25 photos for Victoria’s consideration, which were forgotten until an archivist found them by chance in 1979 while researching images of the British Columbia gold rush at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Library in London, England. The photos were exhibited at the Market Gallery in 1984, and a set of copies were presented to the City archives as a gift for the city’s 150th birthday.

What is this a photo of?

King Street East, south side, looking west, 1856.
City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1498, Item 1.

At the left of this row of buildings is the Golden Lion, which rivalled Eaton’s and Simpson’s as one of Toronto’s major department stores during the late 19th century. Officially known as Robert Walker and Sons, the store earned its lasting name when a golden lion statue was placed above its entrance soon after it moved to the location shown here in 1847.

Renovated in 1867 and expanded in 1892, the store appeared to have a healthy future. But when no one in the Walker family was left to carry on the business, it closed in 1898. Some observers had doubts about the site’s future when the store was demolished in 1901. “In Toronto they are pulling down the old Golden Lion to make room for a new White Elephant in the form of a palace,” wrote the Hamilton Herald.

The replacement? The still-operating King Edward Hotel.

Again, go to The Oldest Known Photos of Toronto" for all the photos. It's a wonderful piece of research.

[URBAN NOTE] "47 years of the Bloor - Danforth subway"

Reading my RSS feed this morning, I found out from the Toronto Transit blog's Robert Mackenzie, who found out in turn from the Toronto Railway Historical Association, that yesterday and today are very special anniversaries for the west-east Bloor-Danforth subway line.

47 years ago today, February 25, 1966, the TTC officially opened the crosstown Bloor - Danforth subway. Regular service started 47 years ago tomorrow, February 26, 1966.

The new line, which then only stretched between Woodbine and Keele Stations, effectively doubled the city’s rapid transit system and seemed to herald the end (at least temporarily) of Toronto as a streetcar city.

After the line opened, the TTC abandoned regular streetcar service along many central Toronto streets[. . . ] Streetcars continued to operate along small sections of Danforth Avenue — between the end of the subway at Woodbine and Luttrel Avenue, near Dawes Road — and Bloor Street West — between the end of the subway at Keele and Jane Street — but not for long. By May 1968, the TTC had further extended the line eastward to Warden and westward to Islington. The subway finally reached Kipling and Kennedy in 1980.

[URBAN NOTE] Three links on Rob Ford's rising approval ratings

Torontoist's Hamutal Dotan was the first source I read noting that a new poll indicated not only were his approving ratings rising, but that in the case of an election running against two pairs of left-leaning candidates (George Smitherman and Adam Vaughan, then George Smitherman and Olivia Chow) only NDP MP Chow in the second pairing had a chance of beating him.

The National Post's Natalie Alcoba detailed the poll, performed by Forum Research with 806 people polled last Friday.

The survey by Forum Research of 806 Torontonians on Friday found that 48% approve of the job Mr. Ford is doing, up from 45% a month ago and 42% in mid December. More than half, conversely, disapprove of his performance, the poll found.

Mr. Ford is especially popular among people over 65 (56%), households earning less than $20,000 a year (57%) and those living in Etobicoke, York or Scarborough. The interactive voice response telephone survey is considered accurate plus or minus 5%, 19 times out of 20.

[. . .]

“It appears the mayor’s close brush with unemployment has given him a significant bump. At the same time, while he still defeats his old opponent George Smitherman, he can’t stop a Chow candidacy,” Forum Research president Lorne Bozinoff said in a press release.

Writing for MacLean's, Ivor Tossell says that Ford simply floats over problems.

Ford’s popularity is rising again, despite everything, or perhaps because of it. A series of legal proceedings, each one harder to explain in a soundbite than the last, has supplied him with all the persecution he needs. In Montreal, they stuff safes so full of cash they can’t be closed. In Toronto, the mayor gets investigated for renting an $840 bus just before filing his nomination papers. Public sentiment mysteriously fails to ignite.

You can take two views about the nature of Rob Ford. One is that he is doomed by his own vices. The other is this: Contrary to all laws of nature, Rob Ford floats.

When negatives refuse to stick to a politician, we typically start talking about Teflon. With Ford, I prefer to think the man has a natural buoyancy. When he is not actively weighing himself down with self-destruction, his support will rise.

The catch with Ford, of course is that the more he tries to govern, the more he self-destructs. So to achieve maximum buoyancy, all he has to do is nothing: Cut ribbons, fulminate on talk radio, lose stunt votes against community spending. The good news for him is that the vaguaries of the mayor’s job description make this entirely workable in practice, and reasonably saleable at the polls.

Metro Toronto's Matt Elliott is not so easy on Ford.

It didn’t escape my notice yesterday that when Ford started to listing his mayoral accomplishments in his post-victory speech, virtually none of them came from the last six months of his term. Aside from a mention of this year’s budget — which he barely commented on as it was put together by former budget chief Mike Del Grande — all the major victories he listed came from well before his legal troubles began. Reading the speech, it’d be fair to assume that the mayor hasn’t really accomplished much lately.

That’s a frustrating reality to live in. Toronto is a city that needs strong leadership. Issues like the Toronto casino or the question of how to improve traffic congestion require a decisive voice. We haven’t had it.

But it also didn’t escape my notice that a new Forum Research opinion poll has Ford at a 48 per cent approval rating. That’s the highest it’s been in more than a year. I don’t expect it to stay in that range, but it seems likely that Ford’s overall popularity has been improved to some degree through his legal troubles.

I’ve got a pretty good guess as to why. When Ford is actually able to focus on the business of being the mayor, the question voters ask themselves is whether he has the right ideas for the city. His popularity rises and falls based on that criteria. But when the mayor is routinely in court fighting to keep his job, the question voters are forced to ask themselves is whether Ford deserves to be the mayor of Toronto.

And the answer to that question is, I think, pretty obvious for a lot of people: Yeah, of course he does. He won an election.

[URBAN NOTE] "TTC keeping pigeons away from Bathurst station with sounds of distressed birds"

Pigeons are some of the most visible animals in urban Toronto's ecosystem. They might be flying rats, and the average pigeon might be less cute than squirrels, but there's still something endearing about their intensity and attractive about their plumage. Are they not just latter-day dinosaurs, and therefore cool? I'm fond of this picture I took in 2011 of a crowd of pigeons enjoying a feedback by a midtown Toronto school on Wychwood Avenue.



That said, pigeons have always infested the Bathurst TTC station. It is pleasantly bright, a large modernistic construction of glass and metal that allows pigeons to easily fly in, and out, of the station. (I've seen a couple at track level.) How can you keep them from roosting? Spiked signs help, like the one pictured below.



As explained by the Toronto Star, recordings of pigeon cries of distress do a better job.

Those screechy, squawky pigeon distress sounds, which TTC riders and staff are hearing with annoying regularity (every 10 minutes, for two minutes), are coming from a device the transit system has bought for a test run and installed on a wall.

The Bird Chase Super Sonic is made by a U.S.-based company called Bird-B-Gone, which sells a slew of products designed to do what its name says.

The Bathurst station pigeons have already got the message, says Brad Ross, TTC communications director.

The dozens of pigeons that used to get into the station and hang around, probably drawn by the smell of the bakery inside the terminal and the tendency of some to share their crumbs, are gone, says Ross. They’ve retreated outside, since the TTC started using the Bird Chase about six weeks ago.

And that’s meant a huge drop in the incidence of pigeon poop, an eyesore and possible hazard to health, not to mention your hat and parka.

In addition, Ross says there are now posted signs asking people not to feed the pigeons and the TTC has installed spikes in areas where pigeons might nest.

The pigeons may not have gone far — Ross says they seem to be hanging around outside on telephone wires — but the distress sounds seem to be keeping them from coming back inside.

Yes, the sounds are irritating.

[LINK] "Some senators silent over questions of spending, residency"

CBC's investigation into the Senate doesn't look good.

Twenty-five senators have either refused to show proof to CBC News that they live where they claim to or haven't responded to questions, as a senate probe into their residency and allowances goes on.

CBC's James Cudmore asked each one of 104 sitting senators to answer:

Where they live.
Where they hold a driver's licence and health card.
Where they pay taxes.
Where they vote.

So far, 96 senators have responded to the CBC's queries.

There are 104 senators right now.

Most — 96 — responded to questions from CBC News: 58 of 64 Conservatives, 34 of 36 Liberals, and four independent senators.

Of the 96 who answered, 17 refused outright to provide proof of their responses. All but one were Conservative, and all but one of the Conservative refusals were from senators appointed by Harper. Eight senators have yet to respond: six Conservatives and two Liberals.

Once contacted, 17 senators simply refused to provide the information requested. Sixteen of those senators were Conservative, and 15 were appointed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.