I see your face on television,
Almost every day.
In magazines and on the big screen,
Close yet far away.
I wonder why you chose those others
An you never come to call on me
When I'm the one who's waiting for you,
I really need you, please pick me!
The federal NDP have gained some ground in P.E.I., surpassing the governing Conservatives in the latest poll of voter intentions.
Corporate Research Associates (CRA) released its quarterly poll of Atlantic Canadians and it shows the NDP has the support of 26 per cent of decided voters in P.E.I.
The Liberals dropped 14 percentage points to 45 per cent among decided voters while Conservative support stayed flat at 20 per cent.
Support for the Green Party also went up with an increase from two to nine per cent.
In major addresses to the Montreal Board of Trade and Toronto’s Economic Club of Canada, Thomas Mulcair will pledge an NDP government to reviving Canada’s flagging manufacturing sector.
Voters might be expected to shrug off such claims from a party of social democrats. But with the NDP surging in the polls, Mr. Mulcair has a clear shot at becoming prime minister, if he can reassure voters who worry about letting New Democrats manage the national economy.
[. . .]
All of this follows in the wake of the latest good news for the official Opposition: a Corporate Research Associates poll that shows the New Democrats resurgent in Atlantic Canada – from 14 per cent to 29 per cent in the past three months – at the expense of Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, who sagged from 56 per cent to 43 per cent.
But what really matters is Quebec, where there are strong signs that Mr. Mulcair may be able to repeat the late Jack Layton’s miraculous breakthrough of 2011. An Ipsos poll released last week has the NDP at 41 per cent in Quebec, with the Liberals far behind at 25 per cent.
Perhaps Gilles Duceppe’s decision Wednesday to return as leader will revive the Bloc Quebecois franchise. But from this distance, the Bloc appears to have swapped one dead horse for another.
Neither [Krugman nor Yglesias] mentions that a major part of the Icelandic recipe was letting foreign deposit holders twist in the wind. That’s a transfer of wealth to the domestic economy and furthermore it was politically palatable; it is also a choice which won’t much help any larger country where most of the deposit holders are domestic. It is noteworthy that this kind of choice loomed large for Cyprus, another small country with a lot of foreign depositors.
Iceland is also so small that cutting off these creditors won’t much damage the broader global economy or lead to significant contagion. Today, in a much safer macroeconomic environment, we’re not even sure the same could be said for Grexit, and Greece is a pretty small country in economic terms.
On top of all that, not paying back the foreign depositors was a transfer to Iceland. It is easy enough to see why Icelanders might like that idea, but the objective foreign analyst, who ought not favor the more Nordic peoples above the others, also should consider the loss side of the ledger, namely in the UK and Netherlands.
What else?
Don’t forget that the value of the Icelandic stock exchange fell by 90% – how many other countries could endure that or would accept it? That is easier to pull off when there are only six stocks trading on your exchange and those equities are not central to your savings.
There is a lot of blending between the two, to the point where sometimes you have no idea whether the space you are using is public or private. (This has led to a few instances where a security guard materializes from somewhere to tell me no, you can’t lie down on that lovely stone bench and read your book, you bum.)
The several small parks that make up the block where Winchester Park is located in Toronto’s Cabbagetown neighbourhood (Ward 28) creates that same feeling of blended public and private spaces. It consists of four (I think) public parks set amidst several housing complexes that also have their own (private) spaces that are all connected by various internal walkways that are (I think) private.
One of the two small parkettes that make up Winchester Square Park (south of the bigger park) contains some raised bed gardens and is very clearly a public park. But the second space is a less defined green space that seems more like a private yard for the adjacent apartment building, whose towering blank face rises above the park, begging to have a mural painted on it. There’s even a small garden that borders the park with a green picket fence, but is (I think) a private garden of the building.
Mayor John Tory (open John Tory's policard), elected pledging to bring Toronto together as “One Toronto,” scraped out a 24-21 city council vote to save the east Gardiner Expressway for future generations.
To keep the 1.7-km overhead link to the Don Valley Parkway, rather than replace it with a waterfront boulevard, Tory had to woo two colleagues by agreeing to have city staff reconsider previously rejected options, including a traffic tunnel.
[. . .]
Costing $336 million in capital costs and $919 million when you factor in 100-year maintenance, the hybrid would resurface the deck to the DVP and replace the ramps to Logan Ave. with a boulevard east of the Don River. New ramps would be built at Cherry St. Lake Shore Blvd. E. would be reconfigured.
Council also agreed to have staff reconsider objections to the original hybrid that moved the Gardiner north near the railway corridor, and to replacing the east Gardiner with a tunnel. That won Tory the votes of councillors John Campbell (open John Campbell's policard) and Jim Karygiannis (open Jim Karygiannis's policard) and will bring the Gardiner back to public works committee in September.
Regent Park is Canada’s first social welfare housing project, located two kilometres east of the city’s downtown core. Four blocks wide, by four blocks deep. Established in the late 1940s, it provided low-income families with “affordable” housing. Based on their number of members, families were either placed in row houses, an apartment in one of the many three-and-six-storey buildings, or in one of five high-rise towers. The infrastructure of brick and concrete left no illusion that this neighbourhood was anything but a project. From the onset, Regent Park was regarded as a high crime area, with the highest rates, nearly every year, in the city. Notorious for violence, renowned for illegal substances—outsiders ventured in with great trepidation.
In the summer of 1956, my family took up residence in a row house. I spent the first sixteen years of my life in south Regent Park. Considering the hardships each family endured within their own lives, the neighbours were generally friendly, but aloof. Those more familiar to one another, whether by proximity or social ties, would often converse. People respected each other’s privacy, unless action dictated otherwise; child endangerment definitely prompted intervention. Otherwise, interloping was regarded with disdain.
Men, fathers, were rarely seen. They worked long hours, had died, or were divorced of families who lived in Regent. Children attended one of two elementary schools within the project. The women busied themselves maintaining households while nurturing their young. Like my mother, who raised eleven children, their lives were strenuous. But as a child, ignorant of the outside world or its responsibilities, life was good.
I grew up and spent thirty years in federal custody. Looking back on my past, I hope readers will contemplate my life, and their own mistakes. I hope they also look toward their charges, for the young deserve our interest and attention; they deserve our assistance when they become confused about their life choices. They deserve care, proper direction, and guidance; and intervention when negative influences arise. Everyone knows that children will err. We all were young once, and who among us has never made a mistake in life? Some are just fortunate not to have been noticed. Some are just fortunate to grow up in the right place. It is incumbent to restore a youth upon a proper path, with his or her dignity and self-esteem intact. To do otherwise would be to fail. To do otherwise would be to help create the monsters and demons that lurk in our society.
This is a chronicle of my early life. While much can be supported by government records, these are memories—my memories—and as such, are fact to me. Nothing is meant to glamourize the violence and drug subculture that I experienced. There was no glamour. Every violent act involved some degree of concern and fear. Every high was simply that: an aberration from reality. And every contact with law enforcement was met with deep consternation, and now, deep regret.
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