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[PHOTO] Yolele!, by Pierre Thiam
Sep. 15th, 2015 11:34 am
Pierre Thiam's cookbook of Senegalese cuisine caught my eye at the Royal Ontario Museum's gift shop.
Sep. 15th, 2015
Pierre Thiam's cookbook of Senegalese cuisine caught my eye at the Royal Ontario Museum's gift shop.
This is very good news.
It's been observed elsewhere that Olympics work best for cities in countries newly emergent on the world stage, that the Olympics not only show off their successes but that they can which are emerging on the world stage. The Seoul and Barcelona games are just this sort of thing. Other games do not do this, however. Montréal's 1976 example is a good example locally, while Athens stands out as a global negative example. The boosterism of Bob Hepburn's Toronto Star opinion piece is, I think, fundmentally misplaced.
Do we need to further intensify a potential construction bubble? And if we need new services and neighbourhoods, why do we not pay for them directly?
Toronto Mayor John Tory says he's not saying no to an Olympic bid forever, but it won't happen in 2024.
Tory — as expected — announced Tuesday morning that Toronto will not submit a bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. But there's no reason Canada's largest city can't explore making a future bid when the timing makes more sense, he added.
"I believe that one day Toronto will be a great venue for the Olympic Games, but not in 2024," said Tory at a news conference held at Nathan Phillips Square outside city hall. "Time was against us in building the kind of support you have to have from the community in order for this to work.
"I am not saying no to the Olympics. I am saying not this time."
The timing Tory referred to was caused in part by a sudden, and somewhat unexpected, groundswell of support for an Olympic bid that grew during Toronto's successful hosting of this summer's Pan Am and Parapan Am Games.
Those games wrapped in mid-August, leaving little time to muster support and answer all the questions about funding and infrastructure in time for today's deadline to submit a letter announcing Toronto's intention to bid.
It's been observed elsewhere that Olympics work best for cities in countries newly emergent on the world stage, that the Olympics not only show off their successes but that they can which are emerging on the world stage. The Seoul and Barcelona games are just this sort of thing. Other games do not do this, however. Montréal's 1976 example is a good example locally, while Athens stands out as a global negative example. The boosterism of Bob Hepburn's Toronto Star opinion piece is, I think, fundmentally misplaced.
The Games created thousands of construction jobs, boosted the economy, business activity and tourism and left a legacy of sports facilities from Hamilton to Welland, Scarborough, Markham, Ajax and beyond.
They also kick-started a wave of transit improvements, including the new rail link between Union Station and Pearson airport and expanding Go train service, that seemed forever stalled. In addition, the Games resulted in hundreds of affordable housing units in what was the athletes’ village.
Many of these projects would not have gotten off the ground, or would have been mired in bureaucratic graveyards for years and decades, if it had not been for the city winning the Pan Am Games.
Do we need to further intensify a potential construction bubble? And if we need new services and neighbourhoods, why do we not pay for them directly?