[PHOTO] The tulips of Queen's Park

Towards the northwestern edge of Queen's Park, where Queen's Park Crescent curves into Hoskins Avenue and the University of Toronto campus, there is a concrete circle, a flower bed. Monday, this bed was packed with orange tulips, brilliant in the early evening sun.

I'm only happy with the photo of the single tulip taken from above. I don't think that I quite adjusted for the evening light with the group tulip shots, that I didn't not capture their intense brilliance. Perhaps I'll go back. Until I do, consider these photos as indicative.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• blogTO notes that the Canadian government has prevented Conrad Black from selling his Forest Hill mansion on account of taxes.


• Dangerous Minds shares a beautiful 1981 live performance by The Church.


• Language Log notes the inclusion of Singaporean and Hong Kong English words into the OED.


• The Map Room Blog notes the four Italian nuns who helped the Vatican map prt of the sky.


• Marginal Revolution notes the increasing concentration of the Quakers in Kenya, and by extension other Christian denominations in Africa.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer looks at the success of solar energy in Mexico.


• Strange Maps notes the history of Middle Eastern migration into Europe.


• Torontoist looks at a Kensington Market project displaying graffiti from around the world.


• Towleroad notes Donald Trump's refusal to reveal his tax returns.


• Window on Eurasia looks at the role played by Vladimir Zhirinovsky in Russian politics.


• Zero Geography links to a paper co-authored by the blogger looking at the online representation of Jerusalem.

[NEWS] Some Friday links

• Bloomberg notes that cutting back on immigration would not boost a post-Brexit United Kingdom's living standards, reports on Uber's fight with taxi companies, and observes that the new president of the Philippines vows to continue his predecessor's economic policies.


• Bloomberg View argues China should want a Taiwan with a higher international profile.


• CBC notes the status of Dilma Rousseff's impeachment and reports on the discovery of a bacterium lacking mitochondria.


• MacLean's interviews Poland's president on everything from Ukraine to Second World War history wars.


• The National Post suggests the Arabian peninsula may have been a refugium for human beings during the last Ice Age and notes an American judge's condemnation of the Pentagon for not releasing torture photos.


• Wired reports on a coast-to-coast road trip, in the United States in a car, circa 1903.

[URBAN NOTE] "Prince’s Sign O’ The Times: Back On The Big Screen For One Last Blast"

NOW Toronto's Norman Wilner describes this showing Sunday of Prince's concert film Sign o' The Times. I think I will be trying to make it.

His name was Prince – and Christ, was he funky.

There is no greater filmed evidence for this than his amazing 1987 concert movie Sign O’ The Times, which is pretty hard to find in most of the world. There wasn’t even a DVD release in the US, thanks to a rat’s nest of rights issues; in Canada, Alliance Atlantis put out a decent disc but it’s gone out of print and now fetches a fortune. If you have a Blu-ray player, you can always import the Japanese edition – Japan is in the same region as North America – but it ain’t cheap.

I can feel you getting depressed. Well, don’t! I have great news for you: the Canadian theatrical rights for Sign O’ The Times are still in place, and my friends Matthew Price and Sasha James have secured an honest-to-god 35mm print to screen on Sunday (May 15) at The Royal as this month’s Musicale! feature.

And it is an absolutely fantastic concert movie, organizing performances of his 1987 concert tour into a thrilling, coherent whole. Prince (who also directed the film) captured himself at an absolutely electric point in his career, just after breaking up The Revolution and exploring every possible direction he might take in the years to come. You honestly won’t be able to tell whether that’s sweat dripping off of him, or just excess talent.

[URBAN NOTE] "Why Toronto needs to use open data to improve apartment safety"

Spacing Toronto's John Lorinc talks about how open data can improve apartment safety in Toronto.

When I went on Kijiji Thursday morning, I quickly found the following listing: a basement apartment in a bungalow for $515 a month, to share with two other male tenants. It is located in a part of the city (North York) where so-called “secondary suites” are legal, but rooming houses are not (for now).

Less clear is whether this unit, like thousands of others across Toronto and the GTA, complies with the existing fire, health, and building code regulations that ostensibly exist to protect tenants, but are routinely flouted by landlords trying to cut corners. The price suggests a compliance challenged environment, to say the least.

Anecdotally, there’s been a huge increase in the number of such grey-zone apartments — sort of legal, sort of not — for reasons that have everything to do with the lunacy of Toronto’s housing market. Real estate prices are skyrocketing and buyers are betting the farm on outrageously expensive homes or condos in the hopes that their investment will deliver some kind of future pay-off.

At the same time, rents in the private market are soaring, largely because of the dearth of new rental units and gentrification in downtown neighbourhoods that once had plenty of rooming houses. But if you’re up to your earlobes in a mortgage you’ll never pay off, there’s a powerful incentive to do a quick-and-dirty basement conversion and defray some of those crushing monthly costs with rental income.

But while basement units and illegal or semi-legal rooming houses represent a substantial and indeed important segment of the affordable housing sector, the City can’t really say how many Torontonians are living in such dwellings; existing statistics show that about 50% of the city’s residents live in detached or semi-detached houses, but they don’t reveal the proportion of owners versus tenants.

[URBAN NOTE] "Canoeing Down Toronto’s River Conservation Success Story"

Torontoist's Catherine McIntyre has a great photo essay, with photos for Josh Allsopp, noting the history of degradation and revival of the Don River.

In 1969, the Don River was declared dead. A solemn procession made its way along College street, guiding the Don’s remains—buckets of polluted water—in a green Cadillac hearse to its final resting place. The funeral, arranged by the nascent environmental group Pollution Probe, attracted dozens of bereaved citizens who bade the river farewell that cold Sunday in November.

Forty-seven years later, nearly 1,000 people gather to pay their respects to the Don. But the mood is distinctly different on this particular Sunday. This is not a day to mourn, but to celebrate Canada’s most urbanized watershed. Once deemed contaminated beyond salvation, through years of concerted conservation and advocacy, the Don has been resurrected.

For the past 23 years, hundreds of Torontonians get together and paddle a 10.5-kilometre stretch of the Don River, from Leslie and Eglinton to the Toronto Harbourfront, and cherish what was once lost.

The Manulife Paddle the Don is one of myriad fundraising efforts to help restore the river and its surrounding watershed to the healthy ecosystem it was before intense urbanization nearly decimated it.

The degradation of the Don Valley Watershed is entwined with Toronto’s origin story. John Graves Simcoe, Upper Canada’s first Lieutenant-Governor, chose to establish the city—then the Town of York—west of the Don, largely because of the valley’s abundant timber and for being “admirably adapted for a Naval Arsenal and Dock Yard.”

[URBAN NOTE] "Roly poly pandas hit 7 months, stealing hearts at Toronto Zoo"

CBC reports on the Toronto Zoo's twin pandas. I do have to go out there this year, I think.

They could teach a lesson in cuteness.

The Toronto Zoo's panda cubs Jia Panpan and Jia Yueyue hit their seven-month birthdays Friday — and celebrated with a playdate outside.

For those in a library or other hushed office, you might want to avoid scrolling any further; there's some serious potential for squealing.

[. . .]

The pandas got their names in March: Jia Panpan, above, means Canadian Hope...

... While Jia Yueyue means Canadian Joy.

The video of the two pandas at play comes from he Toronto Zoo.

"Jia Panpan and Jia Yueyue at Seven Months Old" (Watch on YouTube)

[URBAN NOTE] "Toronto looks to Vancouver for help licensing medical marijuana dispensaries"

CBC News' Amanda Grant looks at how Toronto is trying to borrow from Vancouver's experience with marijuana dispensaries, to better manage this new retail sector.

Toronto is looking west to Vancouver as it considers implementing some regulations on illegally operating medical marijuana dispensaries across the city.

The decision comes after a rapid growth in the industry in Toronto, with dispensaries opening on the Danforth, in Kensington Market, in Bloordale and on Dundas Street West, to name just a few neighbourhoods.

"We just can't have allegedly medical marijuana dispensaries popping up on every street corner in a completely unregulated manner," said Mayor John Tory.

"We can't have the Wild West of marijuana distribution," he said.

[URBAN NOTE] "Story of Toronto’s 19th-century sex trade uncovered by professor, students"

The Globe and Mail's Catherine Phillips reports on an enterprising team of professor and students at the University of Toronto who have reconstructed the history of the late Victorian sex trade in Toronto.

Late one December night in 1887, police were making their way through the streets of Toronto, cracking down on “palaces of sin” in the city’s red-light district. They were headed for Madam Alice (Allie) Miller’s house, one of the best-known upscale brothels in town.

Barging into No. 2 Sheppard St., officers expected to find a houseful of illicit sex and boozing, but were shocked by what they didn’t find. There were hardly any men in there at all, not a drop of liquor and no Ms. Miller. She must have been tipped off.

Toronto used to be a very different place.

Professor Laurie Bertram, along with 12 students and a team of library staff members, spent several weeks examining archives and digital databases from 1865 to 1915 to reveal the well-hidden history of sex work in Toronto. It was all part of Ms. Bertram’s fourth-year history seminar at the University of Toronto, called The Oldest Profession in Canada.

By sifting through old court and newspaper reports and comparing them with archival maps, city directories, diaries and memoirs, the researchers were able to create an interactive map that pinpoints places in Toronto formerly associated with the sex trade, from courthouses to brothels, including Ms. Miller’s house.

[URBAN NOTE] "Borel’s counterpunch blindsides Henein, knocks out Ghomeshi"

I've already linked to Sandy Garossino's National Observer opinion piece on Facebook. My reaction remains the same: Borel can fight back, and how!

Jian Ghomeshi and Marie Henein never saw it coming, and neither did we. The rookie Kathryn Borel entered the legal Thunderdome and beat Henein at her own game without breaking a sweat.

Round 1 of the greatest legal rope-a-dope* in Canadian history took place Wednesday inside Toronto’s Old City Hall courthouse. It was there that Borel must have appeared on the defensive, watching as the Crown dropped all criminal charges in exchange for a measly peace bond. Oh, and an apology.

In legal terms, this doesn’t even rate as a plea bargain. The apology seemed like a sop, potentially designed to give cover to a demoralized prosecution in no mood for a second helping of Henein’s trademark dish. The unmistakable inference was that the Crown lacked confidence in its complainant and star witness.

But she was just warming up.

Kathryn Borel then held Round 2 on the steps of Old Toronto City Hall all by herself. Over the course of four minutes and twelve seconds she delivered blow after merciless blow to Ghomeshi’s reputation and future. His evisceration was so swift and devastating that, had this been a real boxing match, the ref would have stopped the fight.

But no one was there to cover for him. No well-heeled lawyer could leap to his defence, intimidate Borel with smeary details of long-forgotten transgressions, or spring some hidden surprise.

She was the surprise.