[PHOTO] Rosedale Valley Road at night

[URBAN NOTE] "The KKK Took My Baby Away"

Torontoist's Jamie Bradburn describes the most notable effort of the Kuy Klan Klan in Ontario, an attempt to prevent an interracial marriage in Oakville.

They saw themselves as valiant white knights of an “invisible empire,” avenging wrongs against good, solid, upstanding white Protestants. Others would say they were a sad sack collection of bigots indulging in, as American historian Frederick Allen Lewis put it, “the infantile love of hocus-pocus and mummery, that lust for secret adventure, which survives in the adult whose lot is cast in drab places.” For an interracial Oakville couple in 1930, the Hamilton branch of the Ku Klux Klan tried, but ultimately failed, to drive a wedge into their relationship.

Annie Jones turned to the Klan when she felt like she was running out of options to break up the impending nuptials of her daughter Isabel to black labourer and First World War veteran Ira Junius Johnson. When Mrs. Jones asked Oakville police to intervene, they noted their hands were tied because Isabel was legally an adult. She wanted her peers in the Salvation Army to talk sense into the couple, but Ira and Isabel refused to acknowledge house calls. Mrs. Jones later told the press she was heartbroken over the situation.

[. . .]

To the Klan, Mrs.Jones’s tale of woe sounded like a case of a Negro holding an innocent white girl captive. The couple moved into Johnson’s home on Head Street for a few days in late February 1930, until friends told him their cohabitation was causing a stir. While he stayed at home, Isabel moved into his aunt Viola Sault’s home on Kerr Street, which also housed Johnson’s parents and uncle. Despite Ms. Jones’s objections, the couple planned to marry on March 2.

When Ira and Isabel drove to New Toronto the afternoon of February 28 to get a marriage license, the Klan decided it was time to act. Around 10 p.m. that night, a caravan of 75 robed men from Hamilton drove into Oakville. They marched into downtown and planted a cross on a main street. “Maintaining order throughout,” the Globe reported, “not a word was uttered by the gowned visitors, who stood around until the last bit of timber had been consumed by the flames.”

Happy ending, fortunately.

[URBAN NOTE] "TTC to receive four streetcars a month starting in April"

The Toronto Star's Tess Kalinowski notes that Bombardier is stepping up its delivery of streetcars to the TTC.

The TTC says Bombardier is promising that Toronto’s new low-floor streetcars will start arriving at a rate of about four a month in April.

Earlier reports had suggested the expedited schedule would begin in March. But that included a “ramp-up period,” said TTC spokesman Brad Ross on Monday.

“We believe their schedule is achievable. We will hold them to it. That is the schedule they provided to us and that is the schedule that we have accepted,” he said.

The TTC is also holding firm on its expectation that all 204 streetcars included in the $1.25 billion order will be delivered by 2019.

“That is non-negotiable so they are going to have to catch up on the back end for sure,” said Ross.

[URBAN NOTE] "Boccaccio restaurant a hidden gem inside Toronto community centre"

Thanks to Robert for sending me a link to this Toronto Star review of the Ristorante Boccaccio, and the art gallery associated with it at the Columbus Centre up at Dufferin and Lawrence. It's literally on my street. Why not go?

Eating at the community centre usually involves casseroles, dartboards and stacking wooden chairs.

Such is delightedly not the case at the Columbus Centre, where Toronto’s Italian community gathers for fitness and culture.

Here, you will find white tablecloths and truffle oil at Ristorante Boccaccio, a fine-dining restaurant like many others — except with a pool in the building.

The restaurant is open to the public. Tall ceilings save the basement space from feeling squat. A recent facelift of the 30-year-old room brought oversize black-and-white photos of Italy and modern tableware. It looks like a model home, no surprise given how many of the centre’s founders are construction magnates.

“I want to keep it simple and traditional,” says chef de cuisine Nicholas Huey, a 27-year-old who learned to cook in Venice.

[URBAN NOTE] "TDSB approves cutting teacher jobs as enrolment dips"

The Toronto Star's Kristin Rushowy notes that changing demographics in Toronto--specifically, falling enrollment--mean cutbacks at the Toronto District School Board.

Toronto public schools will have 102 fewer teachers, lose 45 early childhood educators and eliminate 46 lunchroom supervisor positions this fall as enrolment is expected to continue to drop.

At a special meeting of Toronto District School Board trustees on Wednesday, the cuts were passed after a few questions about how the losses could affect special education — they are not expected to — and concerns about the dearth of guidance counsellors in light of a report issued Monday that said they are “missing completely” from Ontario elementary schools.

Trustee Pam Gough asked board staff what the ratio of students to counsellors is, noting they handle much more than just high school course choices for Grade 8 students.

At 700-to-1, “my message to the (education ministry) is that is simply not good enough for our students,” she said.

Trustee Sheila Cary-Meagher later noted the board itself added 10 elementary guidance counsellors over and above what it is funded for, and without that the ratio would be 919-to-1.

[LINK] "Low loonie a 'silver lining' for province's tourism operators"

At least Newfoundland has this. From the CBC:

Several industries in Newfoundland and Labrador are seeing a silver lining in the low Canadian dollar, including the province's tourism operators.

Peggy Fisher, whose family runs Fisher's Loft in Port Rexton, told CBC Radio's On the Go that according to her bookings, the 2016 tourism season is looking up.

"They are about 25 per cent ahead of what they were last year — and last year was our best year ever," she said.

"I think we are getting a lot of Americans, the dollar exchange rate is definitely in their favour. Also, the geopolitical situation in Europe is making Newfoundland a very attractive place. We're sort of the safest and least expensive place to visit in the world."

Ken Thomas, co-owner of Sea Side Suites and Bonne Bay Inn in Woody Point, said Americans have started to take notice of the low loonie.

[LINK] The Economist on the Wallenberg industrial dynasty of Sweden

This fascinating Economist article looks at how the Wallenberg family makes its family business keep on working, contra the general rule with family businesses.

Credit Suisse, in its annual report on global wealth in October, pointed to findings that the richest 1% of Swedish households control 24% of the population’s total wealth, making it only a bit less unequal than India (25.7%). In contrast, Spain’s 1% control 16.5% of the wealth, and Japan’s only 4.3%. As in many countries, family-controlled businesses are the norm in Sweden. But as Randall Morck of the University of Alberta in Canada has noted, Sweden is an extreme case among rich countries in that one particular family, the Wallenbergs, holds such sway in business.

The foundations were laid for the dynasty’s fortunes 160 years ago when André Oscar Wallenberg, the globe-trotting son of a Lutheran bishop, returned from America with a book on how to set up a bank, and founded Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken (SEB). The bank flourished, and began buying chunks of distressed industrial firms, leading the family to set up a holding company, Investor, 100 years ago.

At the height of the Wallenbergs’ pre-eminence, in the 1970s, their various firms together employed 40% of Sweden’s industrial workforce and represented 40% of the total worth of the Stockholm stockmarket. Like most modern manufacturers, the industrial firms in their portfolio, including ABB and Atlas Copco (engineering), AstraZeneca (drugs) and Electrolux (appliances), are no longer huge employers. But Investor, plus SEB and the other listed firms in Investor’s portfolio, still account for about a third of the stockmarket’s value. And they generally do better than the rest: in the past decade, Investor’s shares have doubled, whereas the OMX Stockholm 30 Index rose by just 40%.

Swedes often talk about the collection of companies as Wallenbergsfaren, “the Wallenberg sphere”, and to its smaller local rivals as “systems”. One of the largest systems is Industrivarden, whose portfolio includes Handelsbanken and the maker of Volvo Trucks. It has passed through several hands down the years, including those of Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of the IKEA furniture stores; its leading investor nowadays is Fredrik Lundberg, the son of a construction magnate. The Wallenbergs and Industrivarden both have large stakes in Ericsson, a maker of telecoms equipment.

[LINK] "Migrants stranded in Greece becoming desperate"

The Toronto Star carries Anthony Faiola's Washington Post article noting the desperation of the refugees now trapped in Greece by border controls.

As Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras puts it, Greece is now “a warehouse of souls.”

In the freshly shovelled earth, lines of white tents stand in rows, the bunks inside filling up as fast as the army can build them. This camp in the north — one of more than a dozen being rapidly deployed to house a logjam of stranded migrants — is only days old. But flies already buzz around trash heaps. Food lines — for sandwiches on mouldy bread — stretch around corners. Breezes bring stenches of sweat and sewage. Babies cry, their mothers soothing them in Farsi, Dari and Arabic.

“Sir, please, can you help me?” a soft-spoken 29-year-old named Mohammad Yousof asks a foreign journalist in excellent English, his voice breaking. An Afghan economics professor, he is running, he says, from the Taliban. “I should not be in this camp. I don’t belong here. I was important. A VIP. I need help. Please. Can you please ask someone to let me cross?”

But in migrant-inundated Europe, the door to sanctuary is closing.

After a year and a half of massive human waves entering Europe from the war-torn Middle East and beyond, the nations lining a 1,600-kilometre road to hope — Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia and Macedonia — have stopped waving through the migrants aiming for the continent’s core. Some Syrians and Iraqis are still slowly crossing. But nearly everyone else — including thousands of Afghans and the many Syrians without rock-solid paperwork — is stuck in bankrupt Greece, a country that can barely afford to feed itself.

This week, European Union leaders reached a preliminary agreement with Turkey to halt irregular migration through the Balkans. Slovenia, Serbia, Croatia and Macedonia started demanding EU visas at their borders, effectively stopping migrants from moving north toward western Europe.

[LINK] "Canadians support visa-free travel between some countries: poll"

The Globe and Mail's Ann Hui reports on the popularity of Commonwealth visa-free travel, here and abroad.

A majority of Canadians support the right – along with Australians, New Zealanders and Britons – of residents to have unrestricted travel between the countries without the need for visas, a new poll has found.

According to the poll commissioned by the Britain-based Royal Commonwealth Society, 75 per cent of Canadians believe that residents of the four Commonwealth countries should have an arrangement similar to the European Union, which allows citizens to travel freely to live and work in member countries. The poll, conducted by Nanos Research, is part of the group’s ongoing efforts to promote greater mobility between the countries.

The results showed 82 per cent of New Zealanders, 70 per cent of Australians and 58 per cent of Britons also support the idea. The survey of 1,000 Canadians was conducted in late January.

Tim Hewish, the society’s policy director, said the group plans to lobby politicians in Ottawa in the coming months. “It’s the responsibility of elected governments to respond to these types of responses from their citizens,” he said.

Currently, Canadians require a visa for all travel to New Zealand and Australia. Canadians visiting Britain for work or study, or on trips longer than six months, also require a visa.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• blogTO profiles a couple who live on a houseboat near the foot of the Scarborough Bluffs.


• Centauri Dreams hosts an argument making the case for eventual human emigration in interstellar directions.


• Dangerous Minds celebates Brian Eno.


• The Dragon's Gaze shares a paper considering what "habitability" means.


• The Dragon's Tales notes a study suggesting Neanderthals were omnivores.


• Joe. My. God. shares a collaboration between Jean-Michel Jarre and Peaches.


• The NYR Daily considers the ethics of drone killings.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer (here) and Crooked Timber (here) appear to have opposite perspectives on the threat posed by Trump to liberal democracy.


• Discover's Seriously Science notes the recent study suggesting that at least one bird species' calls have syntax.


• The Search explores CUNY-TV's efforts to create durable archives.


• Strange Maps notes that Tokelau is an Internet superpower, based in terms of the number of sites it hosts.


• Transit Toronto maps the proposed route for the Downtown Relief Line, which would stretch from City Hall over to Pape.


• The Volokh Conspiracy considers the context in which it could, or could not, be a crime for a speaker to encourage an audience to attack hecklers.


• Arnold Zwicky looks at the social import of clothes.