[PHOTO] Bantry Avenue, from the west

Toronto's is a short near-alley running north of St. Clair West station, one of many in this city.

[PHOTO] One Atlantic Canada Lobster Sandwich

In June, I ate and reviewed the McLobster sandwich. The Atlantic Canada Lobster Sandwich offered by Subway was the next obvious step.

It actually was pretty good, better than the McLobster. There was no use of lemon-flavoured sauce to hide, and the meat itself was not fresh but not bad. (I was appalled that cheese was apparently offered for the McLobster, but that's a matter of individual choice.) At more than eight dollars Canadian this sandwich is one of the more expensive items on the menu, but I don't think it's unworthy of that price. If you can't get to the East Coast, this is not bad.

[LINK] On the bonsai tree that survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima

The National Post carried Faiz Siddiqui's Washington Post article describing a bonsai tree now nearly four centuries old that survived 1945.

Moses Weisberg was walking his bicycle through the National Arboretum in Northeast Washington when he stopped at a mushroom-shaped tree. The first thing he noticed was the thickness of the trunk, estimated at almost a foot and a half in diameter. And then there was the abundance of spindly leaves, a healthy head of hair for a botanical relic 390 years old.

But it was only when he learned the full history of the tree, a Japanese white pine donated in 1976, that he was truly stunned. The tree, a part of the Arboretum’s National Bonsai and Penjing Museum, has not only navigated the perils of age to become the collection’s oldest; it survived the blast of an atomic bomb, Little Boy, dropped over Hiroshima, Japan, during the Second World War.

“For one, it’s amazing to think that something could have survived an atomic blast,” said Weisberg, a 26-year-old student at the Georgetown University Law Center. “And then that by some happenstance a Japanese tree from the 1600s ended up here.”

The bonsai tree’s history is being honoured this week, as Thursday marks the 70th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. But visitors can see the tree as part of the museum’s permanent collection throughout the year.

The tree, donated by a bonsai master named Masaru Yamaki, was part of a 53-specimen gift to the United States for its 1976 bicentennial. Little was known about the tree until March 8, 2001, when — with no advance notice — two brothers visiting from Japan showed up at the museum to check on their grandfather’s tree.

[LINK] "Hiroshima Blast Haunts Korean Survivors"

Bloomberg's Sam Kim reports on South Korean survivors of the bombing of Hiroshima and their issues.

The nuclear bomb detonated as a 16-year-old girl sat in a shanty town cradling her baby, waiting for her mother to return from selling candy.

With Hiroshima in flames behind her on Aug. 6, 1945, the teen raced up a mountain to safety. Her mother, burnt from head to toe, died about 10 days later.

Baek Du Yi, now 86, was Korean. With food scarce at home under Japanese occupation, her family had gone by boat to Japan about 10 years earlier. After the war she returned to her husband’s town of Hapcheon, a farming community known as “Korea’s Hiroshima” where about 600 survivors reside. The town in the southeast of what is now South Korea accounts for nearly a quarter of the Korean survivors of Japan’s nuclear blasts.

While Baek and her family were in Hiroshima out of economic necessity, many of the estimated 2 million Koreans in Japan in 1945 had been forced by their colonizers to work or serve in the Japanese army. That period still looms over how Japan and South Korea view each other, and keeps interaction between their leaders in a deep freeze.

“We wouldn’t have been in Hiroshima had Japan not colonized us, and we wouldn’t have been bombed had Japan not attacked the U.S.,” Baek said through tears at a shelter for survivors in the town. “Before the bombing, the Japanese treated me like an inferior, and after I returned home Koreans shunned me as if I had a genetic defect.”

[ISL] "The Battle of Okinawa, Purple Hearts, and the Atomic Bomb"

Far Outliers' Joel shares a passage from the book Tennozan: The Battle of Okinawa and the Atomic Bomb describing the devastation visited on Okinawa. This, he suggests, explains why the bomb was used.

The battle was the turning point in modern history. That first operation on Japanese soil—Okinawa was politically part of Japan to which it reverted in 1972—was also the last battle before the start of the atomic age. Without the essential facts, it is impossible to understand the decision, made some six weeks after the campaign ended, to use the atomic bomb.

Although no precise assessment of the rights and wrongs of that decision is likely to be made, the debate deserves to be conducted with evidence as well as emotion. The deep revulsion still provoked by the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is of course wholly appropriate. But it is difficult to evaluate the destruction of those cities out of context, without the knowledge that Okinawan civilians, not to mention the fighting men of both armies there, endured worse. The best estimate of the dead in the two obliterated cities is around 200,000. The Okinawan campaign killed fewer noncombatants, some 150,000. But the total number of dead, including servicemen, was significantly higher. And conventional explosives on the island caused far greater damage to Okinawan tradition, culture and well-being than the atomic bombs did to the Japanese. Measure by sheer suffering as well as by devastation of national life, the battle of Okinawa was a greater tragedy. And had the war progressed to the Japanese mainland, the next battleground after Okinawa, the damage would have been incomparable.

I mention this at the start not to stake a claim in some ghoulish competition to crown the greatest catastrophe, but to point out that the Okinawan suffering has never been recognized; proportionately far smaller losses to Japan and America always prompted much greater sorrow. This book was conceived as an account of the fighting men's ordeal that never won rightful gratitude in America. I hope it will convey a hint of the immense exertion, terror, agony and carnage in that battle. But nonmilitary issues that emerged during the course of my research pushed me toward a larger story.

Okinawans' punishment and suffering continue to this day as a direct result of that conflict, although they, the accommodating, exceptionally peaceful islanders, were among its chief victims then. That was one of the war's plentiful ironies—or inevitable consequences: the weakest and poorest usually bear the greatest burdens.

[LINK] Philippe Authier in the National Post on the problems of the Bloc Québécois

Philippe Authier writes about the problems of the Bloc.

Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe[, a]fter watching his party virtually wiped off the electoral map in 2011 — dropping from 47 MPs to two as the New Democrats grabbed the spoils — [has] come out of retirement looking for redemption.

He’s convinced the Bloc has a future, arguing that what happened in 2011 is a case of fickle yet pragmatic Quebecers indulging in strategic voting to get more out of the Canadian experience rather than a rejection Bloc ideas or him.

Plus, as he pointed out this week, the last time Quebecers went to the polls their minds were filled with the “Bon Jack” factor, a reference to the affection for former NDP leader Jack Layton who managed to woo Quebecers into forsaking the Bloc.

“The person who was responsible for us losing many ridings was not (current leader) Thomas Mulcair,” Duceppe said kicking off his campaign Sunday. “It was (the late) Jack Layton.”

Still, as another round of the Battle for Quebec kicks into gear leading to the Oct. 19 federal election, the Bloc has a long way to go to redeem itself while the NDP still appears to have the wind in its sails.

If anything, the Bloc has made itself even less appealing since the last election — a factor linked to language hardliner Mario Beaulieu.

[LINK] The Canadian Press on the collapse of the Liberals in eastern Québec

The title in the National Post of this Canadian Press article, "Eight of 10 Liberal riding association members in eastern Quebec riding resign to join NDP", was certainly arresting.

Eight of 10 members of a Liberal riding association in eastern Quebec have resigned to join the NDP.

The members of the Gaspesie-Les Iles-de-la-Madeleine executive say they no longer believe in Liberal values since Diane Lebouthillier’s nomination victory.

Several of them challenged Lebouthillier’s candidacy and said the party unfairly sidelined a competing candidate.

[. . .]

Philip Toone, the riding’s NDP candidate, says he is ready to work for citizens in the area alongside his new, former Liberal supporters.

Toone took the riding from the Bloc Quebecois in 2011 with 34 per cent of the vote, two points higher than the Bloc candidate.

[URBAN NOTE] "John Graves Simcoe, Napoleon Bonaparte & the politics of horse shit"

Spacing Toronto's Adam Bunch tells the story of how John Simcoe came to grief over the matter of horse shit in the middle of the Napoleonic Wars.

Woodbury Common is high in the gorgeous green hills of Devon. It’s just a few kilometers from the Simcoes’ summer home in the seaside town of Budleigh Salterton. And it’s not too far from their country estate in the Blackdown Hills, either. It’s a beautiful place: gently rolling hills covered with flowers, shrubs and short grass. It’s typical heathland; in fact, if you look up “heath” on Wikipedia, the first photo you’ll see is a photo of Woodbury Common. It’s one of England’s official Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

At the very highest point on the Common, you’ll find a patch of trees. They’re growing on the remains of massive earthworks. The big ditches are what’s left of the ancient Woodbury Castle: an Iron Age hill fort built in the days of the druids; it’s more than two thousand years old. From the lands around the castle, you can see for miles and miles in every direction — all the way back down to the sea. It’s the perfect spot for a military base. In fact, the British army still trains there to this day.

And so about two hundred years ago, you could find thousands of Simcoe’s troops camping on Woodbury Common as they awaited Napoleon’s arrival — and with those camping men came hundreds of horses.

That, finally, bring us to the horse shit.

With all those horses trotting around, there was, of course, plenty of dung on Woodbury Common. And the question of who was ultimately responsible for it — Simcoe’s troops or the local land owner — sparked a fight that nearly ended in a duel. But not for the reason you might think.

The principal owner of the lands around Woodbury Common was a man by the name of Lord Rolle. History would eventually remember him as the man who tripped during Queen Victoria’s coronation and rolled down the steps to the throne. He and Simcoe didn’t get along at all. Rolle was pretty pissed off by the inconvenience caused by all the men camping on the Common. And he was even more pissed off by the fact that they were cleaning up after themselves. Simcoe was making sure that all the horse shit was being collected and taken away. Rolle was furious. He wanted that horse shit for himself. It was valuable manure.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Centauri Dreams notes how the New Horizons probe is maneuvering into mapping orbits of Ceres.


• Crooked Timber examines the decline of inter-generational mobility and class mobility.


• The Dragon's Gaze reports on Jupiter analog HIP 11915b.


• The Dragon's Tales notes Russian claims in the Arctic and links to a comparison of Chinese and American statements on perceived threats.


• Language Hat reports on a project hoping to map the diffusion of ideas over time.


• Language Log reports on the use of the term "mother" in comparative linguistics.


• Marginal Revolution notes the fragility of Greek foreign trade and examines economic dysfunction in Greece and the former Yugoslavia.


• Registan links to a report of an exile from Kyrgyzstan in Ukraine.


• Window on Eurasia notes how the Russian state has not found Western partners willing to partition Ukraine, unlike Stalin's Soviet Union re: Nazi Germany.