[PHOTO] Polkaroo!

I went to Toronto's Word on the Street literary festival yesterday, and had a wonderful time. The streets surrounding Queen's Park were cordoned off from traffic and filled with booksellers and literary events amid photogenic scenery.

One thing I appreciated was the TVO Kids stage outside of the Royal Ontario Museum. There, Ontario's public television station had some of the most iconic characters of their programmers posing and taking pictures. Polkaroo, for instance.

[PHOTO] Whale skull, North Rustico

This whale skull in North Rustico has been the subject of multiple photos, this 2010 lo-fi photo highlighting the garden that springs up there, as did this a 2005 Flickr photo. A commenter at this 2010 Panoramio photo says this skull has been present since 1969. The state of erosion certainly makes this sound plausible.

[LINK] Two articles on the government of Canada not evacuating family members from Syria

The first came from the Toronto Star's Peter Goodspeed.

Mike Wise sold his Toronto home two years ago to rescue his mother in war-torn Syria. He thought he had bought her freedom when she and Wise’s younger sister arrived in Cuba, just a three and a half hour flight from Toronto.

What he didn’t count on was Canada’s reluctance to offer sanctuary to Syrian war refugees.

Despite Wise’s five months of intense lobbying and appeals to senior cabinet ministers, officials refused to expedite his request to have his ailing, widowed mother, Shazia Khail Rashid, 66, and his sister, Sivin, 30, join him and three other brothers in Canada.

Instead, officials with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees had to call on Sweden to rescue Wise’s family.

Now, a once close family is scattered around the world.

The second comes from the CBC's Kathy Tomlinson.

Canadian woman and her Syrian husband are speaking out from a Damascus suburb because they're frightened and desperate to flee the escalating danger together. They're distraught because her government is doing nothing to help.

"All we want to do is leave here. We want to just go to Canada and have a normal life," said Anya Sass, who was born and raised in Calgary.

"We are living in fear every day … I feel like it's not being taken seriously. They are just saying, 'Sorry you are in a war zone — but that's too bad. We have a lot of paperwork to do.'"

Sass said she was travelling through the Middle East three years ago, on a break from post-secondary studies, when she met Habib Alibrahim, fell in love, and married him.

"I never made it further than Syria," she said, with a smile. "It's not easy living here right now — but it's actually a lot harder to be away from him."

Alibrahim is an engineering student who says he is secular and has absolutely no connection to terrorism. He asked Go Public not to publish which sect his family is from, because its members are targeted by both rebels and terrorists.

"I feel my life is in danger," said Alibrahim. "Her life as well. Because we are married. She is married to me. She is married to a person from this religious minority."

These are both recent articles. The Canadian government seems to be taking a very long time to process applications, much longer than other governments.

[LINK] "How Scotland's Spiral of Silence Unwound"

Bloomberg View's Leonid Bershidsky's article describes the reasons why Scotland's separatists seemed stronger than they actually did.

For many days, Scotland's independence referendum seemed too close to call on the basis of opinion polls, making the size of the victory for the pro-union campaign -- by 55 percent to 45 percent -- a surprise. German political scientist Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann explained this paradox back in 1974 with a theory she called the Spiral of Silence.

Noell-Neumann started out as a pollster in post-war Germany. The question of German acquiescence to Hitler's savage policies bothered her; she suggested people have a "quasi-statistical organ" assessing how the rest of society feels. That often unconscious reading steers the answers people give to pollsters. Many are reluctant to go against the perceived majority to avoid disapproval or isolation, preferring to stay silent. That silence, accompanied by insincere approval, encourages the perceived majority to become more vocal, forcing more of its opponents into acquiescence. That creates Noell-Neumann's spiral.

The unspoken doubts can be further suppressed by the press, Noelle-Neumann noted: "The willingness to speak out depends in part upon sensing that there is support and legitimation from the media." The existence of social media competing with, say, television may moderate the spiral by giving people more control over what they see in in their online environments; the theory still works, though, particularly for contentious elections. In Italy last year, polls failed to show the true strength of comedian Beppe Grillo's Five Star Movement, and a recent study shows convincingly that that it was the spiral of silence, working through the online social platforms that were Grillo's chosen campaigning platform, that confounded pollsters.

The spiral of silence suggests the more radical, more vocal side tends to gain the upper hand in opinion polls. In Scotland, that was the pro-independence camp, overwhelming its opponents on Twitter and on Facebook. The more radical activists even threatened (admittedly mild) violence against those opposing secession. Throwing eggs at houses decorated with "No, Thanks" posters may not be particularly smart or effective, but the "quasi-statistical organ" must have registered it, too.

[LINK] "Banks to Distillers Weigh Cost of More Scottish Tax Powers"

Bloomberg's article looks at the potential economic costs of federalism, and the continued possibility of separatism, in Scotland. This sounds familiar from Canada, I have to say.

The day after Scotland voted to remain in the U.K., companies began counting the cost of staying together.

Lloyds Banking Group Plc may still consider moving south to England, according to a person familiar with the matter. Diageo Plc, the distiller that makes Scotch whisky including Johnnie Walker, said after the vote that “the future for this sector will remain bright provided there is no further regulation or taxation on the industry.”

While companies expressed relief about the outcome of the vote, they voiced uncertainty about the devolution of more tax powers to Scotland. Conservative U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron said today he will make good on pledges to give more policy-making control to Scotland, known as “Devo Max.”

Proposals outlined by Cameron on handing more power to Scotland and changing the way the U.K. Parliament functions would influence decisions made by Lloyds on where its legal headquarters should be, said the person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private. Tax rates are one factor, as is coming regulation on separating retail and investment banking, the person said.

“There is the potential for Scotland to become a relatively less attractive base for banks, so over time there could be a more subtle and less costly partial drift south,” said Ian Gordon, an analyst at Investec Ltd. in London. “Banks could conceivably consider the possibility of changing domicile when regulations are overhauled, especially when ring-fencing rules are introduced in 2019.”

[LINK] "Scotland vote just the start of a rough ride for U.K."

CBC's Don Murray points out that a Québécois trajectory for Scottish separatism is quite possible if promised constitutional change doesn't occur.

For those with long memories, the morning after in Scotland — indeed the final days of the heated campaign — seemed an eerie replay of Quebec’s first referendum in 1980.

There are differences, of course, some of them major, but consider: the loser, in conceding, hints at another referendum.

Alex Salmond, the Scottish National Party First Minister, said the people had not chosen independence "at this stage." Thirty-four years ago PQ Quebec premier René Lévesque conceded, saying, "If I’ve understood you, ‘till the next time!"

Meanwhile, the winners wait until the last minute to promise huge constitutional change.

In 1980 the man with the promise was Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. In Scotland it was another native son, this time former Prime Minister Gordon Brown. He thundered into the campaign and galvanized the "No" camp with passionate speeches and a sweeping promise of "devo max" – maximum devolution, or in other words a major transfer of powers from London to the Scottish Assembly.

Brown had the green light from British Prime Minister David Cameron, who followed it up Friday morning with a speech in front of 10 Downing Street promising fast-track reform, with an outline constitutional bill ready by January.

But Britain, unlike Canada, has a misshapen federal structure which appears to have been worked out on the back of an envelope — or rather, two.

[URBAN NOTE] "Book lovers shrug off storms at Word on the Street"

Madhavi Acharya-Tom Yew's brief Toronto Star article just touches upon the rather enjoyable time I had at Word on the Street on Queen's Park. (I'll have plenty of pictures in coming days.) When I was there in the afternoon, the weather was happily perfect.

Sunday morning’s thunderstorms didn’t dampen spirits at the 25th annual Word on the Street.

The Toronto book and magazine festival drew an estimated 210,000 people to Queen’s Park Circle, mostly in the afternoon, organizers said.

“During setup at 8 a.m. it was really bad. Lightning, rain. Bad rain. We can handle any weather, but lightning does scare us. But that’s over,” spokesperson Stephen Weir said in an interview.

“I suspect the audience we lost in the morning arrived in the afternoon.”

This year’s roster of over 200 authors included Canadian writers Claire Cameron, Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer, Sean Michaels, and Shani Mootoo.

“The festival is huge now,” said one festival-goer, Sue Peters of Toronto. “I haven’t been her for a few years and I can’t believe how big it is.”

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• blogTO selects the top twenty music videos filmed in Toronto.


• The Dragon's Tales notes that Catalonian separatists have not been put off by the failure of Scotland to separate.


• The Everyday Sociology Blog looks at the false stereotypes behind the child migrant crisis.


• Geocurrents notes the advance of the Islamic State against Kurds in Syria.


• Joe. My. God. quotes an anti-gay American conservative unhappy some people are suspicious of her just because she and hers are attending a conference in Putin's Moscow.


• Marginal Revolution quotes a Japan pessimist who thinks demographics mean the Japanese economy will do well not to shrink.


• Bruce Sterling shares a map of present and future natural gas pipelines in Europe.


• Towleroad notes Nicolas Sarkozy's criticism of same-sex marriage for humiliating French families.


• Window on Eurasia suggests Kaliningrad separatism is a major issue, or at least seen to be a major issue.

[DM] Still here!

I've a brief post up at Demography Matters mentioning that the blog is still active and soliciting readership requests as to what subjects they'd like the blog to cover.

Thoughts, as always, are welcome.