[PHOTO] Design Exchange, wrapped, Bay Street, Toronto

The Design Exchange, housed in the old Toronto Stock Exchange building, looked glorious on this warm summer day.

[BRIEF NOTE] On eating Canadian Chinese food in Toronto in 2015

Beef with ginger and green onions

Celia Hatton's report for the BBC, "Why Shanghai's first American Chinese restaurant is taking off", caught my attention.

The Fortune Cookie is the brainchild of two friends, Fung Lam and Dave Rossi. Fung was born on the doorstep of New York's Chinatown.

"I was in the playpen of the kitchen of my parents' restaurant, of my grandparents' restaurants," he recalls.

"All my earliest memories were of the woks going, my dad coming home with the smell of Chinese food."
Fung met Dave at graduate school. Outside of class, they soon discovered a shared love of American Chinese restaurants.

"Friday night was Chinese food night in the Rossi household," Dave explains. With more than 40,000 American Chinese restaurants in the United States, families of all ethnic backgrounds grew up eating New World Chinese classics.

When visiting Shanghai as tourists, Fung and Dave missed their usual versions of noodles and stir-fried classics, and thought others might too.

I'm personally much more familiar with Canadian Chinese cuisine than its American equivalent, for obvious reasons. Just last night, on the occasion of my parents' first night of their visit in Toronto, that's what we ate, as Ho Jan Chinese Restaurant (45 Carlton Street) just across the street from their hotel.



Sweet & sour chicken with pineapple

The food was great. I know full well that the food produced in Chinese restaurants in North America for unknowing North American audiences exists at a distant remove from actual Chinese food. I know this: I've ate local, reasonably authentic, food living in Toronto over the past decade. As someone from small-town Canada for him Canadian Chinese food was perhaps the first culinary experience I had coming from outside, this food has strong, positive nostalgia value. More, I'm prepared to argue that this food can actually be good, if adapted and presented successfully. Such was my experience last night; such will be my Yelp review. Soy sauce and sriracha can co-exist in the Toronto of the 21st century.



(No, I did not order an egg roll.)



(I did have one of these.)

[URBAN NOTE] "Brunswick House may make way for ... Boston Pizza?"

The Toronto Star's Verity Stevenson reports on this, a noteworthy sign of the corporatization of the Annex.

The Brunswick House, one of Toronto’s legendary drinking establishments, may be about to become history.

“The owner of the building has terminated [the bar operator’s] lease, and as of Dec. 31 the Brunswick House will remain only on a month-by-month basis until a new tenant is found,” according to a post on the website of the Harbord Village Residents’ Association.

The association says Boston Pizza is interested in moving into the historic building, located at the corner of Brunswick Ave. and Bloor St. W., but first wants assurances from neighbours that they won’t oppose its plans for an outdoor patio.

To that end, the building’s owner and Boston Pizza are hosting a community meeting at the bar on Monday night to answer questions about the proposal.

“It’s unfortunate because it was a legendary place . . . but it ceased to be a local place a long time ago,” said HVRA chair Tim Grant.

[URBAN NOTE] "Mississauga aims to prevent LRT from pushing out poor"

San Grewal at the Toronto Star notes the efforts of Mississauga to prevent that city's new LRT from driving away affordable housing. I think it's open to doubt that enough will be done.

Facing an affordable housing crisis in Mississauga and the spectre of poor families being displaced by a new $1.3 billion light rail system, council has moved to force developers to build a minimum number of units for low-income residents in all future projects.

“This line of blue along Hurontario (St.) is what’s freaking me out,” Councillor Carolyn Parrish told colleagues at Wednesday’s meeting. She was referring to a map of the city that showed where the highest concentration of low income families live, highlighted in blue, right along the new LRT’s route on Hurontario.

“That is where the people who need the LRT are living now, and they’re all going to get pushed out.”

Parrish said the province’s $1.3 billion funding commitment to build the LRT will have the effect of “displacing” the people who need transit most. She authored a motion that passed unanimously Wednesday, asking staff to report back by January on a plan that will mandate a minimum number of affordable housing units in future buildings, with a focus on the Hurontario corridor.

Council members, including Mayor Bonnie Crombie, were in agreement, that the LRT will likely see lower priced apartment buildings along Hurontario replaced by much more expensive condos and rental units, as property values are already skyrocketing.

[LINK] "Controversial Nicaragua canal project delayed"

Al Jazeera reports that the China-backed Nicaragua Canal project has been delayed. Is this a sign of the times, I wonder?

A Chinese company said Wednesday it is delaying the start of construction on a controversial $50 billion inter-ocean canal across Nicaragua until late 2016.

China's Hong Kong Nicaragua Development (HKND) Co. obtained approval for environmental studies of the canal earlier this month. But on Wednesday, a company statement said, "The construction of locks and the big excavations will start toward the end of 2016."

The company gave no reason for the delay, but said, "The canal's design is currently being fine-tuned."

Nicaraguan authorities have already approved the proposed 172-mile route for the canal a mega-project — widely reported as the world’s largest civil engineering enterprise — that has outraged indigenous communities and citizens around the country. The plan has drawn protests from farmers who fear their land will be seized for the project.

Crews broke ground on access roads for the project last December, but have yet to start digging the waterway itself.

[LINK] "Memo to Putin: Syria Is Turkey's Ukraine"

At Bloomberg View, Marc Champion makes the obvious observation that Syria is to Turkey what Ukraine is to Russia. Neither ex-imperial hegemon should be surprised at the strong support for the others' proxies.

Russian leaders have evidently been shocked by Turkey's deliberate decision to shoot down one of their planes, which they say was motivated by Turkey's alleged support for Islamic State and greed for the proceeds of smuggled terrorist oil. A simpler explanation is that Russia would have done the same.

Here is the hypothetical: What would President Vladimir Putin do if civil war broke out in a neighboring country, which had been part of the Russian empire for centuries before breaking away under circumstances, and with borders, that Russians still found difficult to accept? What would he do if, in that war, some of the rebels were ethnic Russians at risk of being brutally crushed by the armed forces of the neighboring state?

Actually, that's not so hypothetical; it pretty much describes eastern Ukraine. And we know what Russia did -- it became heavily involved in a poorly concealed invasion.

Syria was under Ottoman control from 1516 until the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The Russian Empire took over the Donbass region in the mid-1700s. The "Turkmen" rebels that Russia's Su-24 aircraft was bombing at the time it was shot down are ethnic Turks. They ended up on the wrong side of the border when it was imposed by a 1921 treaty (shortly before the Donbass region was incorporated into Soviet Ukraine).

Even the strange psychology of how former empires feel they still have a special right, even responsibility, to intervene in long-since amputated parts is similar. When pro-democracy protests began in Syria in 2011, Erdogan said Turkey had to view the turmoil in Syria as a domestic issue. He was affronted when President Bashar al-Assad refused to do as he was told.

[LINK] "Russia raiding Turkish firms and sending imports back"

Al Jazeera's Umut Uras notes how Russia is retaliating against Turkey by shutting down economic connections. This was probably inevitable, given that the two sides have foresworn military conflict. I just wonder how many economic partners Russia will have left.

Russian police have been raiding Turkish companies in different regions of Russia and, in some cases, have suspended their operations, two Turkish businessmen with investments in the country have told Al Jazeera.

Moscow has also started sending back Turkish trucks loaded with exports at the border and stopped Turkish tourists - who normally do not need visas - entering the country, at least two businessmen said.

[. . .]

Moscow's move comes after Turkish fighter jets shot down a Russian Sukhoi Su-24 warplane on Tuesday for allegedly violating Turkish airspace.

A senior Turkish official, talking to Al Jazeera, stressed that downing of the Russian plane was an automatic response, but declined to comment on the Russian move against Turkish nationals and goods.

"At this point, we are deliberating what specific steps may be taken, but we are approaching our relations with Russia and other countries in a responsible and constructive manner. The international community cannot afford to be distracted from the key task of fighting ISIS in Syria. We must refocus our attention on this matter," he said on condition of anonymity.

[LINK] "Iran's Nuclear Past May Remain Unclear Even as Atomic Probe Ends"

Bloomberg's Jonathan Tirone notes how, even in the aftermath of the nuclear deal, the extent of Iran's nuclear program is likely to be unclear for some time.

Questions will probably be left unanswered when International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors conclude their assessment of Iran’s past nuclear activities next week.

Investigators’ conclusion on whether Iran’s nuclear work has contained possible military dimensions “won’t be black or white,” IAEA director general Yukiya Amano said Thursday at a press briefing in Vienna, declining to provide details. The agency confirmed reports earlier in the day that its findings will be published next week.

“This is like a jigsaw puzzle,” Amano said. “We have the pieces now. I have a better understanding of the whole picture.”

With time winding down to when sanctions against Iran will be lifted in exchange for caps on its nuclear work, the long-awaited IAEA report is one of the final steps that needs to be taken. Under the accord agreed with world powers, the IAEA’s 12-year probe into Iran’s past should be concluded by Dec. 15.

The IAEA’s report may end one of the most contentious standoffs in the Vienna-based agency’s 58-year history. Inspectors have said they’re in possession of “credible” information showing Iran may have experimented with nuclear-weapons technologies. For its part, Iran accused the IAEA of being a dupe of foreign intelligence agencies bent on framing the country for violations it didn’t commit.

[LINK] Scientific American on the disappearance of the Mesa Verde

The article "The Greatest Vanishing Act in Prehistoric America", by Richard Monastersky and Nature, looks at the latest findings on the disappearance of the Mesa Verde people--known also as the Anasazi--in the 13th century. What happened to this dense population?

Vultures carve lazy circles in the sky as a stream of tourists marches down a walkway into Colorado's Spruce Canyon. Watching their steps, the visitors file along a series of switchbacks leading to one of the more improbable villages in North America—a warren of living quarters, storage rooms, defensive towers and ceremonial spaces all tucked into a large cleft in the face of a cliff.

When ancient farmers built these structures around the year 1200, they had nothing like the modern machinery that constructed the tourist walkway. Instead, the residents had to haul thousands of tonnes of sandstone blocks, cut timber and other materials down precarious paths to build the settlement, known as Spruce Tree House, in Mesa Verde National Park.

“Why would people live here? That's an important question. It's not an easy place to reach,” says Donna Glowacki, an archaeologist now at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, as she walks among the ruins. Even more perplexing is what happened after they settled there. The villagers occupied their cliffside houses for just a short time before everyone suddenly picked up and left. So did all the other farmers living in the Four Corners region of the American Southwest, where the modern states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Arizona meet (see 'Turbulent times').

All together, nearly 30,000 people disappeared from this area between the mid-1200s and 1285, making it one of the greatest vanishing acts documented in human history. What had been one of the most populous parts of North America became almost instantly a ghost land.

Archaeologists have long puzzled over what drove these farmers, the ancestors of the Pueblo people, from their homes and fields. “That is one of the iconic problems of southwestern—and world—prehistory,” says archaeologist Mark Varien, who is executive vice-president of the Crow Canyon Research Institute in Cortez, Colorado. Early scholars blamed nomads, the ancestors of the Apache and Navajo, for violently displacing the farmers. Over the past couple of decades, the main explanation has shifted to climate—a profound drought and cold snap that hit in the 1270s.

But a series of studies by Glowacki, Varian and other researchers reveals a much more complex answer. The scientists have used detailed archaeological analysis, fine-grained climatic reconstructions and computer models to simulate how ancestral Pueblo families would have responded to their environment. The interdisciplinary strategy has enabled the researchers to examine prehistoric societal changes at a level unattainable in most other regions. “We have enormous detail on this archaeologically. Unparalleled detail,” says Steve Lekson, an archaeologist at the University of Colorado Boulder.

[ISL] "Canada's 1st dimetrodon solves P.E.I. fossil mystery"

CBC News' Emily Chung reports on how, after a century and a half, what is by far the most prominent fossil found on Prince Edward Island has finally been identified.

A fossil dug up in P.E.I. in 1854 has finally been identified.

The fossil turns out to be that of a dimetrodon — the first and only one ever found in Canada, reported a team of Canadian scientists this week in the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences.

Dimetrodons are well-known huge, ancient reptiles related to modern mammals that had giant spiny "sails" on their backs. They were top predators that stalked and ate giant salamanders in the steamy, swampy forests of the early Permian period, around 290 million years ago, before the age of dinosaurs. Their fossils have previously been found in Germany and the United States.

The P.E.I. fossil — part of an upper jaw, including several sharp, curved teeth — was discovered by a farmer as he was digging a well in the French River district south of Cape Tryon, near the island's north coast, 166 years ago.

The farmer sold it to the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia so it could be studied by Joseph Leidy, one of the only paleontologists studying animal fossils in North America at the time. Leidy thought the fossil was the lower jaw of a dinosaur and named the species Bathygnathus borealis. (Bathygnathus means "deep jaw" and borealis means "of the north.")

[LINK] "How China Conquered France’s Wine Country"

The New Republic's Nic Cavell has a wonderful long-form piece looking at how China has wholeheartedly embraced the idea and the culture of French--or, domestically produced French-style--wine.

In 1996, Chinese premier Li Peng surprised his audience at the National People’s Congress by toasting the Ninth Five-Year Plan with red wine: “Drinking fruit wines is helpful to our health, does not waste grain, and is good for social ethics,” he announced. For China’s rapidly growing underclass, this gesture signaled a commitment to rein in the fraud and waste epitomized by party banquets, where officials were known to drink each other under the table with bottles of Moutai Flying Fairy and other spirits derived from grain. For the elites in question, it was an unmistakable signal that business as usual required a new currency. Within a few years, they were using bottles of Château Lafite Rothschild to gain favor and ease transactions.

As Suzanne Mustacich relates in Thirsty Dragon: China’s Lust for Bordeaux and the Threat to the World’s Best Wines, representatives from Bordeaux, France’s largest wine-growing region, saw Li’s endorsement as an invitation to “conquer” the Chinese wine market. It was a goal that they believed themselves uniquely positioned to accomplish. Bordeaux’s wines—such as Château Haut-Brion, Château Latour, and Château Cos d’Estournel—communicated luxury, and Bordeaux’s official classification system, which dates back to Napoleon, was easy to sell as a lengthy gift catalog “ratified by pomp and history.” Although Bordeaux’s 1855 Classification rules created for the Exposition Universelle de Paris in that year were never meant to be permanent, the rankings they generated were considered so successful that only a few changes have been made in the century and a half since. In Mustacich’s words, what began as a price list for visiting tourists became a “calling card” and “an immutable promotional tool” for businessmen seeking to introduce Bordeaux wines into new markets.

Although the Chinese market was just a fraction of a percent of the country’s population, châteaux and their middlemen moved huge quantities of product by offering entrepreneurs a very clear hierarchy of the finest wines already ratified as international status symbols. The precise rankings of each wine could be easily mapped onto the numerous positions within the Chinese bureaucracy, allowing gift-givers to save face by offering the appropriate wine at each level of officialdom. At the time, few Chinese had a taste for wine, but the social liquidity of a First Growth like Lafite—which in China is widely considered the best—was rated sublime. One real estate developer was inspired to commemorate a bottle of the château’s 1982 vintage in verse as both “the greatest treasure” and “the moment of death”—“the appreciation of which is greater than the desire to taste it.”

As well as importing wines and their prestige, China is also building its own formidable wine industry. According to industry analysts, within five years, China will bottle more wine and devote more land to vineyards than any other country. For instance, the government of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region announced its plans to construct 50 new châteaux and a regional classification system modeled on Bordeaux in November 2013. To qualify for a listing, a château must not only meet industrial production quotas but build a four-star restaurant and hotel for guests. The vineyards are to be staffed by ethnic Hui, the Muslim farmers and herders the government has arranged to relocate or “move out” of rural poverty. “In fact, this is incorrect,” Grape Flower Industry Development Bureau director Cao Kailong tells Mustacich. “We have plans to develop one thousand châteaux.”

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• blogTO notes that the Union-Pearson Express is offering big discounts to attract riders, and observes that free WiFi in the TTC has been extended to Sherbourne and Castle Frank stations.


• The Dragon's Gaze links to a paper suggesting hot Jupiters can form in situ.


• The Dragon's Tales notes Japan wants Australia to buy its naval vessels.


• The Everyday Sociology Blog looks back at eight years of output, and suggests it shows the broad scope of sociology.


• Far Outliers notes the rate of mental illness among Soviet Afghanistan veterans.


• Geocurrents looks at the very late settlement of Kiribati's Line Islands.


• Joe. My. God. notes that Cyprus has approved civil unions.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money shares on the shallow roots of the Non-Aligned Movement in the Third World.


• Marginal Revolution notes that highly-educated people keep dropping out of the army.


• Steve Munro notes the relationship between development charges and transit planning in Toronto.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer suggests unlikely ways for a Republican to take Democratic-leaning Michigan.


• Savage Minds shares an ethnographic perspective on the history of Pilgrims in New England.


• Transit Toronto notes that CP will be sending in trains filled with food to promote food banks.


• Window on Eurasia warns about the vulnerability of Belarus to integration with Russia.

[DM] "Four links on Ukrainian migration futures"

At Demography Matters I link to four articles looking at recent changes in Ukrainian migration, particularly the turn away from Russia towards the European Union.