[PHOTO] The bare earth of High Park

I was struck by the sight, just south of Bloor Street West on the northern edge of High Park, of the bare earth of this wooded area left exposed to the sun by largely leafless branches.

[LINK] "Duffy claimed Senate expenses while election campaigning"

The sad story of PEI Senator Mike Duffy keeps getting worse.

Conservative Senator Mike Duffy submitted expense claims while Parliament was dissolved during the last federal election, reporting he was on Senate business on days he appeared to be campaigning for the party.

The full extent of Duffy's Senate expenses during the writ period remains a mystery — the Conservative government is refusing to reveal the full breakdown of the senator's claims and his repayment of $90,172.24.

But independent auditors at the firm Deloitte listed Duffy as being in Ottawa on Senate business and claiming a daily expense for seven days in April 2011, a month that was dominated by campaigning for the May 2 vote.

[. . .]

On April 29, former cabinet minister Lawrence Cannon tweeted a picture of Duffy at an event outside of Ottawa that same day. The Deloitte audit listed Duffy as being in Ottawa on Senate business and claiming a per diem.
If Duffy collected daily Senate expenses while on the Conservative campaign trail, taxpayers may have paid twice: Conservative candidates who paid for Duffy's hotel stays would have received federal rebate money for those expenses.

Duffy's campaign events did not end there. On at least five other occasions documented in media reports, Duffy campaigned with Conservative candidates. He did not tell Deloitte about his campaign calendar, forcing Deloitte to list his activities as "undocumented."

Meanwhile, the public Senate attendance register does not cover April or May 2011, the period that Parliament was dissolved.

[URBAN NOTE] Two blogTO links on development at Yonge and Eglinton

blogTO has had a couple of interesting features about Yonge and Eglinton, the midtown neighbourhood that is boomed. Just yesterday, Sarah Ratchford profiled a new penthouse condo in the Quantum Condos development at 2182 Yonge Street, just south of Yonge and Eglinton.

Just shy of $4 million, this place would be a great option for the shopaholic in your life, as it looks exactly like a boutique where they would sell things like diamond-studded shoes. I want to bash this kind of opulent living, but let's face it, I'm just jealous. There, I said it on the interwebs. This glittery condo is stunning, the perfect place to dream — and to store your unicorn collection.

The artists' depictions of the condo's finished rooms speak of opulence.

Meanwhile, Chris Bateman profiles in images and text the plans for the modernized Yonge Eglinton Centre.

Leading the intensification plans is RioCan's $100 million overhaul of Yonge Eglinton Centre on the northwest corner, currently home to two stern office towers and a small underground shopping mall. New renderings show the in-progress project replacing much of the grey concrete with angular glass and steel while adding a significant amount of retail space.

The most noticeable changes are happening at street level on the site of the current public square. A new three-storey glass "cube" (their term) will create a new entrance to a renovated shopping area while providing a public rooftop patio in exchange for the open space devoured by its footprint.

The twin office towers will remain but be extensively altered inside and out. When work wraps, both will be several storeys taller and clad in a reflective "curtain wall." The existing retail space above and below grade will also have been expanded by around 3,700 square metres.

[. . .]

Yonge Eglinton Centre opened in 1974 and currently sees more than 30,000 daily shoppers, according to figures posted on the RioCan site. The development company purchased the property in 2007 and moved its corporate headquarters to the office towers a year later. Since then several minor tweaks have been made to the retail space and parking garage.

Prior to that a similar proposal for a two-storey addition in the space currently occupied by the public plaza was withdrawn in 2005.

The builders were criticized earlier this year for hammering, sawing, and drilling on the site 24 hours a day, disturbing residents of a nearby apartment building. A complaint to City Hall eventually silenced the late night construction and RioCan was denied an exemption to the noise bylaw.

[LINK] "World’s oldest water bubbling into Northern Ontario mine"

Postmedia's Margaret Munro has a fascinating article recounting life-supporting veins of water buried for billions of years beneath the Canadian Shield that's only now surfacing. The implications for geology, for the study of life on our planet and on others, are fascinating.

An international research team reported Wednesday that miners near Timmins are tapping into an ancient underground oasis that may harbour prehistoric microbes. The water flowing out of fractures and bore holes in one mine near Timmins dates back more than a billion years, perhaps 2.6 billion, making it the oldest water known to exist on Earth, says the team that details the discovery in the journal Nature.

“This is the oldest (water) anybody has been able to pull out, and quite frankly, it changes the playing field,” says geologist Barbara Sherwood Lollar, at the University of Toronto, who co-led the team.

[. . .]

Analyses of isotopes of the compounds and gases in the samples revealed the salty water, which sparkles as ancient gas bubbles out of it, has been trapped in the rocks between 1.5 and 2.64 billion years. The water also contains plenty of hydrogen, comparable to rates found on hydrothermal vents in the deep ocean, which can fuel microbial life.

The rocks in the mines near Timmins were created by a massive hydrothermal vent system on an ancient seafloor 2.7 billion years ago. Volcanic lava and sea sediments are stacked up in the rocks like a “layer cake,” says Sherwood Lollar. “When you go down in the mines you can see some of the pillow lavas structures still preserved in the rock.”

[URBAN NOTE] Two non-crack Rob Ford links

I'll be waiting until tomorrow to blog about the claim that Rob Ford's been caught smoking crack cocaine on camera. It's certainly going to be everywhere. Tonight's Rob Ford linkage will relate to the death of his casino dream and a bizarre fridge magnet escapade.

First, the casino, courtesy Torontoist's Hamutal Dotan.

Breaking with just about every precedent of his mayoralty thus far, Rob Ford has decided to call it quits on an issue he’s championed rather than fight it out (and lose) on the floor of the council chamber: today he proclaimed proposals to build a casino in downtown Toronto “dead” and cancelled the special meeting of city council that had been scheduled for Tuesday, May 21 to debate the issue.

Seeking to overturn his cancellation, just minutes later several councillors said they were going to try and hold the meeting anyway. Those councillors, all opposed to a casino, aren’t satisfied with a cancelled meeting: they want to make sure the matter is well and thoroughly settled, and decidedly vote against the proposal. Officially, it won’t be dead until and unless they do.

Speaking at greater length than he usually does, the mayor convened a press conference this afternoon to say that he remains committed to the idea that a major “entertainment complex” including a casino is a good choice for Toronto if it meets certain conditions, and in particular if the province guarantees to give the municipal government a “fair share” of the revenue it generates—at least $100 million a year. The province has been dragging its feet on confirming how much revenue Toronto would receive, however, and in the wake of today’s announcement by Finance Minister Charles Sousa that the province might not be able to commit to a hosting fee formula before city council met, Ford decided to cancel the debate altogether[.]

Next, MacLean's reports on the magnets.

While the big political story in the country Tuesday was a Liberal election victory in B.C., a much smaller scene played out in Toronto the same evening, as reporters followed Mayor Rob Ford around a suburban church parking lot as the mayor of Canada’s biggest city slapped fridge magnets adorned with his name and phone number on parked cars.

Though the next Toronto election isn’t until 2014, Ford appeared to get a very early start on campaigning when he left a community council meeting in Etobicoke, a west-of-downtown part of the city, to plaster cars with fridge magnets that read “Rob Ford Mayor.”

Inside, residents were discussing a proposed highrise condo development called Humbertown, which many in the community objected to, saying it didn’t mesh with their suburban neighbourhood.

[. . .]

Ford was aided in his magnet-blanketing by David Price, reports The Star, his recently hired director of operations and logistics, who was also his high school football coach at one time. Price also ran interference as journalists followed Ford to ask just what he was doing and why he wasn’t listening to the depositions that he had, presumably, attended the community meeting to hear.

[LINK] "Duffy quits Conservative caucus over expenses as colleagues began turning on him"

The Canadian Press' Jennifer Ditchburn writes about the latest significant development in the Mike Duffy story.

Senator Mike Duffy resigned from the Conservative caucus to sit as an independent Thursday night amid a controversy over his housing claims, leaving a trail of unanswered questions about the expenses and why the prime minister backed him for so long.

The employment status of Stephen Harper's chief of staff, Nigel Wright, remains unchanged — despite his secret gift to Duffy to help repay the improper expenses.

Duffy resigned before what would have been a humiliating showdown for him next week. Conservative sources said the vast majority of his Senate colleagues had signed a petition calling for his ouster from caucus and they were prepared to confront Duffy with that petition at a meeting next Tuesday evening.

It's a stunning change of attitude for the Conservatives, who for the past four years have used Duffy at myriad party events to raise money, promote candidates and slag the opposition.

[. . .]

Only a week ago, the Conservative government hailed Duffy's leadership for repaying the funds the Senate said he owed. Senate Leader Majory LeBreton declared the matter closed.

But then it came to light that Wright had cut Duffy a personal cheque to cover the repayment in March. Harper's office characterized it as a personal gift, but this week Duffy called it a loan.

The Canadian Press reported Thursday that Duffy campaigned for the Conservatives during the April 2011 election while claiming to be on Senate business. That report was said to be the last straw, according to one senior Conservative.

"There are a growing number of questions about Mr. Duffy’s conduct that don't have answers," said one government official who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. "Mr. Duffy will have to answer as an independent Senator."