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What could be a more iconic sight of the Beach than that of a TTC streetcar passing east in front of the Kew Beach Fire Hall (1904 Queen Street East)?
Mar. 4th, 2016
What could be a more iconic sight of the Beach than that of a TTC streetcar passing east in front of the Kew Beach Fire Hall (1904 Queen Street East)?
Bloomberg's Matthew Campbell makes the excellent point often missed by Brexit proponents, that cities can fade. Quite frankly, anti-cosmopolitanism can't be fine-tuned: a United Kingdom that rejects the European Union is hardly going to be automatically receptive to the rest of the planet, Commonwealth or otherwise.
Cities don’t stay on top forever. Just look at Venice in the 15th century, Philadelphia in the 18th or even Vienna in the 19th.
It’s a lesson some Londoners worry is being forgotten when it comes to the U.K.’s membership of the European Union. As banks underpinning London’s wealth raise the alarm over leaving, the man who runs the city disagrees: Mayor Boris Johnson has declared support for the “out” campaign, as has his aspiring replacement, Zac Goldsmith.
There’s no doubting London’s standing. Its $650 billion economy accounts for almost a quarter of Britain’s output and rivals that of Argentina or Poland. The crux of the anti-EU argument is that its success as a center of business, finance and ideas is global and enduring, regardless of changing circumstances.
“I’m sure the Venetian bankers were saying the same,” said Christopher Cummings, chief executive officer of TheCityUK, which lobbies on behalf of the financial industry. “Icebergs melt from the bottom, and these things can slowly get away from us.”
Steve Munro is unimpressed by the detachment of the Union-Pearson Express from the GO Transit network.
Among the mysteries of the internal organization at Metrolinx is the presence of separate “divisions” for GO Transit (the commuter rail service), Presto (the fare card service) and UP Express (the premium fare airport shuttle service). Rather than using the GO brand for the airport service and integrating its operation and fares, Metrolinx treats UPX as a completely separate entity, no doubt so that it could isolate the operation as a profit centre on the books. We now know that “profit” is the furthest thing from a UPX future where just finding riders now takes precedence.
Soon, fares on UPX will be much lower and this might encourage some to incorporate the UPX into their journeys. However, there are two glaring holes in the new arrangement.
UPX, being a separate operation, does not have fares integrated with connecting GO services at Union. Riders transferring between these services will pay separate fares for each leg of their journey. Presuming that UPX fares stay low, this should be corrected, at the latest, in the next annual review of GO’s tariff.
But the really bone-headed decision (or lack of decision) lies with the TTC. Although GO fares discourage “local” travel within the 416, there is a legal transfer move a rider can use called TTC Times Two. A trip can start on the TTC, transfer to GO, and then back onto the TTC again using the original TTC transfer.
With UPX moving to lower fares and the likelihood that it will attract commuter trade within the city, the question becomes “is TTC Times Two valid for UPX”? I asked the TTC’s Brad Ross and Chris Upfold this question at the recent TTC Board meeting. Their answer? “No” because (a) UPX is not a GO train and (b) a TTC policy change would be required.
The Globe and Mail's Marina Strauss reports on how Target Canada is approaching a settlement with its various creditors, with the help of the parent company.
[Target Canada]'s original recovery plan in late November had proposed that many unsecured creditors would be paid 75 to 85 per cent of their proven claims. But it would have meant much less for some of its landlords, who vigorously opposed the plan. In an unusual move, the Ontario Superior Court struck down the plan in January.
On Thursday, U.S. parent Target Corp. was ready to kick in an additional $30-million-plus for the former landlords, industry sources said. And the latest proposal would reduce the amount other unsecured creditors – mostly suppliers – would get by about 8 per cent of their proven claims from what they would have got in the original proposal, and directs those funds to the landlords, sources said.
Under the latest proposal, unsecured creditors would get between about 67 and 77 per cent of their proven claims rather than between 75 and 85 per cent, as had been proposed late last year, sources said.
The parties were in confidential talks late Thursday and the agreement could still be revised. Target Canada is to present the court on Friday with a landlord deal.
Target Corp. has also agreed to let creditors get their hands on a controversial $1.4-billion of intercompany claim that could have landed in its corporate coffers. In the original plan, Target, in exchange, had proposed that landlords accept a formula of payments that would have released the parent company from having to guarantee future lost rents for some landlords.
Justice Geoffrey Morawetz rejected the plan for reneging on a promise Target had made to the landlords to cover their future losses in the event that the retailer collapsed here.
Heejin Kim of Bloomberg notes that Chinese upset at the South Korean deployment of an anti-missile defense system might derail the two countries' close relationship.
South Korean consumer shares, 2015’s stock-market darlings as tourists from China flocked to Seoul department stores, are now among the nation’s worst performers this year as a missile spat cools relations between the neighbors.
A measure of such companies on the MSCI Korea Index has tumbled 5.9 percent in 2016 through Wednesday after its best annual gain in a decade sent valuations to a four-year high relative to the broader gauge. Orion Corp., a confectioner that earns more than half its revenue in China, and cosmetics maker Amorepacific Corp. are among the biggest decliners as the U.S. and South Korea consider installing the Thaad missile-defense system on the peninsula.
Policy makers in Beijing have objected, saying the shield designed to protect against North Korea’s nuclear threat covers more Chinese territory than the Koreas combined. Kee Hosam, a money manager at Dongbu Asset Management Co., recalls how Japanese stocks were sold off in 2012 amid a spat with China over islands in the East China Sea. The suspension of government-level exchanges or trade sanctions have been used in similar disputes.
“We can’t help worrying about China’s response,” said Seoul-based Kee, who helps oversee $10.6 billion in assets and has offloaded consumer plays linked to China from his portfolio. “We are concerned an unexpected issue could break out due to the conflict over Thaad.”
The Washington Post's Karen Brulliard notes notes that a much-hyped program to help whooping crane populations recover has failed, as it turns out humans can't teach the birds how to parent their young.
For 15 years, whooping crane chicks have been hand-raised by scientists wearing white whooping crane costumes in Maryland, shipped to Wisconsin and taught to migrate by other white-robed people, before they are led south to Florida by costumed volunteer pilots flying ultralight aircraft.
It was one of the most quirky, beloved and interventionist American conservation efforts, meant to build a migratory population of endangered whooping cranes in eastern North America without making them used to humans. This month, the final graduating class of six young birds was released — yes, by people in white costumes — at St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge in northern Florida.
The program is ending, largely because whooping cranes have turned out to be lousy parents.
“They can establish pairs, they know how to mate, they can copulate, and they know how to lay eggs,” said Peter J. Fasbender, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service field supervisor for Minnesota and Wisconsin. “They’re just incapable of parenting.”
In the past 11 years, the eastern population has grown to about 100 birds, but it has managed only to fledge 10 chicks. The culprit, government biologists think, is what made the program the fascination of legions of schoolchildren who followed it: the disguised people and the aircraft leading cranes. Though they never spoke to the birds and also directed them with crane puppets, Fish and Wildlife decided that humans were still too involved in teaching the cranes how to live. In January, the agency announced that this year’s would be the last ultralight-led migration.
[URBAN NOTE] "Toronto’s First Mosques"
Mar. 4th, 2016 02:41 pmIn a Historicist post from last November, Torontoist's Jamie Bradburn looked at the genesis behind Toronto's first mosques, and its Muslim population.
Toronto’s first mosque had little going for it physically. The former leather shop at 3047 Dundas Street West was, according to early attendee Alia Hogben, a “very cheap, very dirty, very crummy little place. But it was ours.”
When the Muslim Society of Toronto (MST) opened its Islamic Centre in 1961, it served a tiny community. The earliest presence of Muslims in Canada was recorded in the 1871 federal census, when 13 people recorded Islam as their faith.
A trickle of Albanians, Lebanese, Syrians, and other ethnicities from the Ottoman Empire crossed the Atlantic in the years leading up to the First World War, adding up to around 1,500 Muslims across the country by the time hostilities broke out in 1914. Many initially found work as unskilled labourers or peddlers.
The Canadian Muslim community barely grew during the interwar years, due to a combination of restrictive immigration policies and those who returned to their homelands following the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire. After the Second World War, numbers were boosted via the arrival of refugees from Communist regimes in the Balkans and a small group of professionals from elsewhere.
Among the early arrivals in Toronto was Regip Assim, who fled Albania with his brothers after participating in a failed independence movement prior to the First World War. Settling in Toronto, the Assims found that their religion’s association with the perceived barbarism of the Ottoman Empire, which fought against the Allies during the war, hampered employment attempts. They settled into candy making, eventually operating the High Park Sweets restaurant on Bloor Street. Assim was involved in the formation of the Albanian Muslim Society of Toronto in the early 1950s, becoming president when it dropped “Albanian” from its name a few years later.
The Inter Press Service carries an article from The Daily Star of Bangladesh, by one Muhammad Azizul Haque, looking at the prospects for a reunification of South Asia. As Haque puts it, there is little chance of this given India's issues with its existing Muslim population.
India's ruling BJP’s General Secretary, Mr. Ram Madhav, recently said in an interview to Al Jazeera that the RSS, his core organisation, still believes that one day Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, “which have for historical reasons separated only 60 years ago, will again, through popular goodwill, come together and ‘Akhand Bharat’ will be created”. The idea of Akhand Bharat is a dream of the RSS, and of the BJP, which is a right-wing party with close ideological and organisational links to the former, and of other Hindutvadi organisations and their adherents. I am not going to speak for Pakistan. But, whether future generations of Bangladeshis will reunite their country with India will depend fully on those generations that are probably yet to be born.
If we recall history, we see that despite innumerable attempts by the Muslims of the unpartitioned India, they failed to ensure and protect their politico-economic, socio-religious, cultural and other rights in the midst of the overwhelming Hindu majority population, and under the 27-month-long Congress rule following the general election of 1937. In every Hindu majority province, the Muslims were victims of serious riots and oppression.
A separate State was not in the minds of the Muslims at the beginning. But the Congress’ intransigent opposition to any measure by the British Government aimed at benefiting the minority Muslim population – like the 1905 partition of Bengal, grant of separate electorate for the Muslims, giving power to the Muslims in those provinces where they were in majority – compelled them to demand a separate homeland. The Congress repudiated all British government plans that stipulated power-sharing with the Muslim League – the party that at those times epitomised the aspirations of almost all Muslims of India.
Have the basics of the Hindu-Muslim relations changed in India over the last 68 years? One proof that they have not changed much is the fact that right-wing Hindutvadi cultural and political organisations such as the Hindu Mahasabha, RSS, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, BJP, etc., that envision India as a Hindu country, still wield enormous popular support and influence. In effect, they regard Muslims as outsiders. Even after about 70 years of existence of the democratic and constitutionally secular India, Muslims are killed there for eating beef. The Muslims in India could still be coerced into converting back to Hinduism under the Ghar Wapsi programme. Celebrity actors like Aamir Khan and Shah Rukh Khan felt insecure and alienated in an atmosphere of growing religious intolerance in India in recent months; and they faced severe backlashes for voicing their sense of insecurity.
At the behest of the then Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, a High Level Committee, chaired by Justice Rajindar Sachar, prepared and submitted a report on the socioeconomic and educational status of the Muslims in India in November 2006. It’s not possible to mention all of the findings of that committee in the extremely limited space of this article. But some key ones were: the unemployment rate among Muslim graduates was the highest among all the socio-religious categories and participation of Muslims in jobs in both the public and private sectors was quite low. The number of Muslims in Central Government departments and agencies was “abysmally” low at all levels. “There was not even one state in which the representation of Muslims in the government departments matched their population share (around14 percent)”, states the report.
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The Toronto Star's Jim Coyle reports on something that is past time.
By any measure, it’s a long way from Grassy Narrows First Nation in northern Ontario to a United Nations proceeding in Geneva. But Judy Da Silva long ago proved she’ll go to any lengths for her people and the generations to come.
“I didn’t really know what to expect,” said the 54-year-old mother of five, part of a delegation of indigenous Canadians making presentations to a UN committee this week.
“As the days went by, I started understanding how high that forum is! Our message came out really strong as the indigenous people.”
Da Silva took her community’s case for safe drinking water to the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, arguing that Canada had violated those rights by failing to address mercury pollution in Grassy Narrows.
Canada signed the UN Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 1976. The UN monitors performance by summoning signatory nations for periodic review. Canada was last reviewed in 2006 and this year was up again.
It’s a long way to go for justice. And, since the mercury that poisoned Da Silva’s community was discharged into the English-Wabigoon River system from a pulp and paper mill a half-century ago, it’s a long time to wait.
Al Jazeera's Mark LeVine has an inspiring piece about popular culture and its impact on democratic politics.
In the past five years, the West African nation of Mali has suffered through a military coup, an attempted countercoup and the eruption of a major insurgency in the northern part of the country. But the capital, Bamako, still pulses with the culture of music, from traditional kora and ngoni to slow Songhoy Blues jams and from Touareg rock to West African hip-hop. Two festivals ran concurrently there last month, the Festival Acoustik de Bamako and a Dogon heritage festival.
Meanwhile, Egypt is in the midst of the most invasive crackdown on citizens in its modern history, five years after the overthrow of the dictator Hosni Mubarak. Thousands of people have been killed, and tens of thousands have been imprisoned, tortured and disappeared. Police are breaking into people’s homes around Cairo’s Tahrir Square and searching their Facebook and email accounts, looking for anyone who might still espouse the goals of the Jan. 25, 2011, revolution. On once occupied streets, the music has gone silent. In the Sinai desert, an anti-government insurgency rages on, but the government has little incentive to end it, since it functions as a justification for suspending freedoms.
Why are these two countries in opposite circumstances five years after what should always have been understood as an Afro-Arab Spring? In theory, the situation should be the reverse. Egypt’s GDP per capita is triple Mali’s; its human development index rating, literacy rate and level of industrialization are almost double; and its life expectancy is 20 years longer. Egypt has a relatively educated population and a historically strong state that at least has the potential to govern and develop the country. For its part, Mali remains by almost every measure one of the poorest countries on earth.
The two countries both contain ungoverned desert regions, home to disaffected and marginalized populations who for centuries have been engaged in long-distance trade outside the bounds of state control. More recently, as the level of state neglect and broken promises became intolerable, foreign-influenced religious insurgencies have been able to infiltrate and take over some of these areas.
Mali is certainly not the economic African success story it was once described as, and its government and security forces are not free of corruption and abuse. Yet it is experiencing a renewed democracy and a cultural renaissance, both pitted against the religious extremism that nearly ripped the country in half. In Mali some of the most beautiful, complex and virtuosic music on earth is being weaponized in the struggle against Islamist extremism.
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Kate Kilpatrick at Al Jazeera writes about the complex relationship between hair styles, racism, and national identity in the Dominican Republic.
Carolina Contreras still feels the heat smolder beneath her cheeks whenever she recounts the time a bouncer denied her and some friends entry to a trendy Santo Domingo bar because of their hair.
“He said our hair was not appropriate for the bar,” said Contreras, her sideswept bangs tucked beneath a bouncy bouquet of black curls. “My hair is considered informal, unprofessional, ugly. It’s considered dirty.”
In a country where more than three-quarters of the population is of mixed African and European ancestry, it may surprise foreigners that curly hair — pelo rizado — could command such attention, let alone disdain. After all, the Dominican Republic ranks fifth among countries with the largest black population outside Africa, according to the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy, a Berlin-based nongovernmental organization, behind Haiti, with which the D.R. shares the island of Hispaniola.
But in the Dominican Republic, straightened hair is not only big business; it defines the standard of beauty. There, Afro-textured hair is unabashedly called pelo malo, or bad hair. Dominican hair salons are renowned from Harlem to Houston for their smooth blowouts and chemical straightening treatments that coerce the most stubborn curl into submission.
And so Contreras, who was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in the U.S. since the age of 4, is on a mission to teach Afro-Latin women to embrace their natural curls. At her Miss Rizos salon, which opened in December 2014, curls are defined, protected, appreciated — and never straightened. She is part of a broader wave of young Dominicans raised or educated abroad who are bringing a new sense of black identity and pride to their culture. Academics say these transnational Dominicans, or members of the Dominican diaspora, are more inclined to draw parallels between negrophobia they have witnessed elsewhere (for example, how black Americans are treated in the U.S. or Dominicans are treated in Puerto Rico) and the pigmentocracy and anti-Haitianism they witness in the D.R.
“Certainly there are a lot of Dominicans that are aware of their blackness and embrace it. But those are the minority. I think the biggest influence is those of us who lived abroad and come back,” said Yesilernis Peña, a researcher at the Instituto Tecnologico de Santo Domingo who studies race in the Latin Caribbean.
Over the past few months, I have been collecting links about Airbnb.
- In November 2015, Wired noted in "San Francisco Is Ground Zero for an Airbnb Freakout" that Airbnb was trying to avoid a backlash in that city as it successfully opposed a binding referendum that would have limited its influence. (In a subsequent article, Wired noted that Airbnb compared its influence to the NRA's.) Airbnb is trying to look like an ally.
- At the same time, Bloomberg View's Justin Fox argued this whole episode showed the desperate need of San Francisco for more housing, while wondering if the city could become denser.
- Zak Stone's "Living and Dying on Airbnb" draws from the sad story of the accidental death of his father at an Airbnb location, noting that the service does not adequately engage with local laws, local regulations, and local circumstances.
- Bloomberg noted, also last November, that the Russian recession was encouraging many Moscovites to open their doors.
- Recently, Davey Alba of Wired noted Airbnb's push for diversity in its workforce.
- The Guardian has an interview with Airbnb cofounder Nathan Blecharczyk, looking at his life and the challenges for Airbnb ahead.
What newspapers, if any, do you read? What television stations do you watch, on the Internet or otherwise? Do you follow particular magazines? Are there any other news sources you regularly engage with?
Please, discuss.
Please, discuss.