[PHOTO] Facades across Yonge Street in the condo era

These two buildings, currently housing most of an Aroma coffee shop are part of the Five St. Joseph condo project at Yonge and St. Joseph. I remember when these two buildings, and more further down the street to left, were functional standalone buildings. (The one on the corner housed, among other businesses, a Second Cup coffee shop.) They ended up being bought out by the Five project, added to the complex but with their facades preserved.

Richard Longley in NOW Toronto worries that this strategy towards preserving an appearance of Yonge Street's past will do little to preserve its actuality.

Mark Garner, executive director of the Downtown Yonge BIA, is worried about “the usual Toronto facadism.” Quoted in the blog YongeStreet, he says: “The HCD is good to preserve the built heritage component, but it may not have enough teeth to protect the lived experience.”

What about the cultural experience of life on Yonge Street, the loan, vape and condom shops, fortune tellers and massage parlours that contribute so much to the strip’s anarchy? Are they doomed to succumb to gentrification?

[. . .]

FIVE condos at 5 St. Joseph gives a glimpse of Yonge’s future. It’s a huge project – a 48-storey condo tower by Hariri Pontarini Architects above nearly half a block of heritage buildings that, between 1905 and the late 60s, were occupied by Rawlinson Cartage.

Fifty years later, this site has emerged from “the largest facade retention ever undertaken in Toronto.” Supervised by ERA Heritage Architects, it involved suspension of the facade over the excavation pit until the condo tower was built to its four-storey height. Thanks to the gap required for access to underground parking (and Eldon Garnett’s sculpture Artifacts Of Memory), the setback between the FIVE condo tower and the Yonge streetwall is 30 metres, three times more than the 10 metres recommended for other parts of the Yonge Street HCD.

East of FIVE, in the shadow of its looming condo tower, the restored buildings at 606-618 Yonge accommodate a Victorianized Royal Bank and an Aroma Espresso (but so far, no pet spa) steps north of more traditional businesses: a tattoo parlour, nail salon, perfume outlet and Glad Day Bookshop.

Is it a defense to say that something is better than nothing?

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• A BCer in Toronto Jeff Jedras describes a culinary event put on in Ottawa by Nova Scotia.


• James Bow examines Minneapolis-St. Paul's light rail network.


• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly writes about friendship.


• The Dragon's Gaze notes the discovery of comets around HD 181327.


• The Dragon's Tales notes reports of Russian nuclear missiles to be launched from rail cars.


• Language Hat describes how the Texan Republican Party said most Texans were gay.


• Language Log notes the rediscovery of five languages of pre-colonial Massachusetts, reflecting a high language density.


• Window on Eurasia reports an economics-associated downturn in Russian haj participation.

[NEWS] Some Monday links

• Bloomberg notes that Brexit proponents are now saying leaving the European Union will create more jobs in the financial sector, and describes the continued rise of fertility rates in Japan to German levels.


• CBC reports on how a Croatian vintner helped California wines gain international recognition in 1976, notes that Fort McMurray evacuees outside Alberta can't access that government's relief funds, and looks at how an Iqaluit man is using Amazon's free shipping to feed people in smaller Nunavut communities.


• The National Post reports that Egyptair flight 804 appears to have been destroyed by an internal explosion on the right side of the aircraft.


• Open Democracy reports on the appalling practice of a British property company that has assigned red doors to asylum seekers who are then attacks.

[URBAN NOTE] "Meet the Montrealer who gave Uber a jolt"

Sunday, the Toronto Star printed Sandro Content's article about a Montréal businessman who is challenging the Uber model with a fleet of electric cars.

Alexandre Taillefer’s father taught him to read a newspaper upside down at the age of 5. It seemed no more than a game at the time, certainly less practical than the lessons that soon followed in how to play the stock market. But it taught him to look at things differently, an ability that helped make him a rich man.

As with so many of Quebec’s public figures, Taillefer’s high profile is largely restricted to the province. But that could soon change. He’s the Quebec poster boy for the battle against Uber, a crusade he plans to bring to Toronto next year.

[. . .]

The head of Montreal’s board of trade, Michel Leblanc, calls Taillefer the bearer of a “third way” business philosophy between scorched-earth “disruption” and ossified status quo. The best example, Leblanc says, is Taillefer’s fledgling taxi company, called Téo.

It’s a bizarro-world reflection of both Uber and the traditional taxi industry. Its name a French acronym for “optimized ecological transportation,” Téo’s only similarity to Uber is the app-based hailing and payment service.

The differences begin with Téo’s fleet, which are all electric cars owned by the company. App software glitches since the launch last November often kept its initial 60 cars off the road until fixes were completed in early April. Taillefer plans to have 1,000 cars by 2018, a total investment of $250 million.

The more radical difference is Téo’s model of drivers as company employees. They earn $15 an hour ($4.25 more than Quebec’s minimum wage), work eight-hour shifts, receive benefits including two weeks of vacation and company contributions to Quebec’s pension plan, and are eligible for workers’ compensation in case of injury.

[URBAN NOTE] "It's reefer madness all over again"

NOW Toronto shares Christian Mittelstaedt's article critical of current criminal campaigns against marijuana use and possession, in Toronto and elsewhere in Canada.

All I can say is that this should have been done long ago. As for the matter of dispensaries, the city has an obvious right to regulate businesses.

The war on the drugs is supposed to be coming to an end in Canada as far as marijuana is concerned, but you wouldn’t know it from the number of pot charges still making their way through Toronto’s Old City Hall courthouse. Or, for that matter, Mayor John Tory's threat to shut down what he describes as the "alarming" number of medical marijuana dispensaries cropping up around the city. It's reefer madness all over again, even as the federal government has promised to establish a regime for legalized weed by next spring.

On a recent morning at Old City Hall, 40 people were scheduled to appear on various drug possession charges. The accused varied from drug dealers to a 19 year-old from North York with his parents in tow.

[. . .]

Marijuana use has become increasingly mainstream in Canada. Prospective growers are looking to get a head start in the cannabis industry when it's legalized, with dispensaries popping up in Toronto. Now those too face legal sanction after operating in a legal grey zone.

The city had reportedly been working on regulations for dispensaries. In Vancouver, for example, dispensaries pay fees and can only operate in certain proximity to schools and other dispensaries. But last week Tory dropped a bomb, threatening a crackdown on the operations and to levy fines of up to $50,000. The city's medical officer of health, David McKeown, also weighed in on the issue, calling for strict regulation of dispensaries when marijuana is legalized.

The crux of the government’s legalization argument is that it will keep money out of the hands of criminals. The problem is that as we wait to get there, organized crime is not the group feeling most of the burn – it’s ordinary Canadians receiving criminal records for minor offences, and the taxpayers footing the bill for enforcement and charges making their way through court.

[URBAN NOTE] "The story of the Niagara River: The water wonder of the world"

Roy MacGregor's latest in an installment on river valleys of note in The Globe and Mail takes a look at the Niagara River, a wonder of nature shared by two countries. (I do have to get there, and soon. It is in Toronto's hinterland, after all.)

[T]he falls have moved, a remarkable recession chartered by scientists to have shifted 11 km upstream in the past 12,000 years. Every year, more breaks away, sometimes rock chunks the size of a sixteen-wheeler.

“The shape of the falls is always changing,” says Environment Canada’s Aaron Thompson, who also serves as chair of the International Niagara Board of Control. “The rate has slowed down because so much of the flow goes to the power plants.”

And this, it turns out, is what separates the falls the tourists photograph today from the falls that First Nations knew, which so impressed the likes of Hennepin and Lincoln.

The power of Niagara was such that it created the first great industrial centre of North America. By diverting the water into tunnels leading to turbines, industrialists were able to create electricity, first of all direct-current. Once Nikola Tesla invented alternating-current – a discovery Thomas Edison campaigned against as being too dangerous – it allowed for electricity to travel distances and the great industrialization of the Niagara region spread.

Increasingly, more and more water was diverted into such tunnels. Lord Kelvin, the famous Irish inventor and engineer, said he looked forward to the day when every single drop in the river would be used to create electricity.

Fortunately, wiser heads prevailed. One early suggestion had the power companies ransacking the Niagara as much as they wished six days a week but doing nothing on Sundays so that the tourists could enjoy the falls. That idea, luckily, went nowhere. In 1950, the Niagara Diversion Treaty signed by Canada and the United States specified how much each country could draw for power – roughly half the flow that Hennepin and Lincoln had witnessed.

“They could see that one day there would be no water going over the falls,” Mr. Thompson. says

[URBAN NOTE] "Toronto’s black history unearthed in excavation of landmark church"

John Lorinc reports for the Toronto Star about a fascinating dig on the site of an old African Canadian church, the British Methodist Episcopal church in the middle of Toronto.

It has been called “one of the most important blocks of black history in Toronto,” a place where African Americans, fleeing slavery, found refuge to live, work and worship.

On this tract of land, just north of Osgoode Hall, a handful of African Methodists built a small wood frame church in 1845. It served as the spiritual and political centre of the city’s growing black community, which was asserting its voice in the abolitionist movement and welcoming an influx of families seeking freedom via the Underground Railroad.

Eventually, the congregation outgrew the tiny church and replaced it with a handsome brick temple. But after more than a century, membership dwindled, the congregation moved and the temple was sold off. In the late 1980s, the building was demolished to make way for a parking lot and, until last fall, the church was largely forgotten.

Now, with that same lot being prepared for the development of a new state-of-the-art provincial courthouse, the rich history of Chestnut St.’s British Methodist Episcopal Church has resurfaced, along with that of the 19th-century neighbourhood surrounding it.

Hundreds of thousands of artifacts have been discovered at the 0.65-hectare site — larger than a football field — near University Ave. and Dundas St. Infrastructure Ontario, the government agency overseeing construction, provided the Toronto Star with unique access to the five-month dig, considered one of the most extensive urban archeological projects in North America.

Unearthed ceramics, tools, toys and remnants of clothing are helping to compose a fascinating and largely untold story of the distant origins of Toronto’s diversity.

“Archeology often becomes the voice for the people without history,” says Holly Martelle, the consulting archeologist for the dig.

[URBAN NOTE] "Toronto’s landlord licensing plan faces its first test as tenants rally behind it"

The Toronto Star's Laurie Monsebraaten writes about the new landlord licensing agency being proposed for Toronto. For some people--very happily not me--this may be a saviour.

A proposed landlord licensing system for Toronto apartment buildings faces its first test this week as councillors consider giving city inspectors more tools to ensure tenants have a “safe, secure and decent place to live.”

“There is a common belief in some political circles that tenants don’t vote,” said Councillor Josh Matlow, who has been pushing the idea as chair of the city’s tenant issues subcommittee.

“I believe this is tenants’ opportunity to demonstrate that they are a power to be reckoned with,” he said. “This is an opportunity to do something substantive, something real, that will help the city protect their well-being, their health, their safety and their quality of life in the buildings where they live.”

Tenant activists say they will be pressing councillors to support the move.

“We are very pleased this is coming forward,” said Scarborough resident Marva Burnett, Canadian president of ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) which represents about 80,000 low-income residents across the country, including about 25,000 in Toronto.

“We have been working on this for 12 years and we will continue to fight until we get it,” she said.

[NON BLOG] After a busy day, my feet are a good sore

My Instagram feed should give you an idea of what I've been doing today, going from downtown Toronto to Harbourfront up to the CN Tower and finally to Bloorcourt for dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant with a very good friend. Suffice it to say you'll be seeing the fruits of this trip soon. Hopefully my feet will stop their good aching soon. Bipedalism and warmth are wonderful stimuli, but sometimes there are short-term issues to overcome.