[PHOTO] Harbord Fish & Chips

I took this picture of Harbord Fish & Chips standing in the aisle of the eastbound 94 Wellesley bus. I really should try this place.

[NEWS] Some early Brexit reaction links

• Bloomberg notes the leaders of the other 27 member-state governments will be meeting soon to discuss their response, while China calls for calm.


• In the blogosphere, Crooked Timber, Joe. My. God., Marginal Revolution and the Volokh Conspiracy react.


• Bloomberg View calls for civil negotiations, and notes the need for EU reform.


• MacLean's notes that the UK might well find itself staying anyway.


• Open Democracy calls for a "reverse Greenland", allowing Scotland to stay after the United Kingdom leaves.


• Charlie Stross mourns what will be happening to his country.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Centauri Dreams considers the oceans of Pluto and Enceladus.


• The Dragon's Gaze notes a disintegrating exoplanet.


• The Dragon's Tales notes that the American military can't afford Iron Man suits.


• Language Hat notes a study of fragmented language.


• Language Log looks at multilingual signage in Manhattan.


• The Map Room Blog shares a typographic map of San Francisco.


• Marginal Revolution's Tyler Cowen reports from the Belgian neighbourhood of Molenbeek.


• Steve Munro looks at SmartTrack.


• The New APPS Blog considers Brexit in the context of regulations and austerity.


• Torontoist notes the importance of Pride for people just coming out.


• Understanding Society looks at how organizations deal with their errors.


• Window on Eurasia argues Georgia is sacrificing its relations with the North Caucasus.

[NEWS] Some Friday links

• Bloomberg notes Venezuela is considering dollarization in order to save its auto industry, and looks at the possibility of an OAS intervention.


• Bloomberg View looks at the anti-immigrant mindset.


• The Inter Press Service notes political crisis in Nicaragua and examines the plundering of African fisheries by foreign fleets.


• MacLean's notes Conrad Black's seeking an emergency hearing to let him sell his home.


• National Geographic investigates the origins of the stars which produced the first detected gravitational wave.


• The National Post notes Bolivia's interest in a new chronology.


• Open Democracy examines the British Chinese perspective on Brexit and looks at the tremendous alienation in British society.

[URBAN NOTE] "What Brexit Means for the City of London"

The Wall Street Journal's Simon Clark and Anuj Gangahar report on the potential for catastrophe in the post-Brexit London financial industry.

London risks losing thousands of finance jobs to other European cities following the U.K.’s historic vote to leave the European Union.

Keeping those jobs here depends on the U.K.’s ability to strike a political deal that allows it—now as an outsider—to access the trading bloc’s single market, according to a senior official at the City of London Corp.

The City of London Corp. has governed the square mile around the Bank of England and St. Paul’s Cathedral for centuries. Its leaders campaigned to remain in the EU in the run-up to Thursday’s referendum. Their stance was backed by many executives at the big global banks and other financial companies. Together they wanted to retain access to the EU’s single market of more than 500 million citizens.

Hundreds of thousands of people work in the City of London district, and thousands more work in finance jobs elsewhere in the U.K. capital.

“The City will remain a major international financial center whatever, but clearly the nature and its size will depend on what we can negotiate,” Mark Boleat, the City of London’s policy chairman, said in an interview on Friday morning after the result of the referendum became clear. “There was never going to be a mass exit of banks in terms of numbers. The question for us is whether they are here with 15,000 staff or 5,000.”

[ISL] "Meddling with Invisible Borders? How Brexit will affect the island of Ireland"

Open Democracy's Polly Lavin writes about how Brexit will hit the divided island of Ireland.

With the advent of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 new opportunities opened up for cross border cooperation and trade. At the time border checkpoints and military lookouts were positioned across the North and border counties of the island. These days, the checkpoints and military towers are long gone. If you drive from Northern Ireland into Southern Ireland, blink and you will miss the fact that you have crossed an ‘invisible’ international border. You would be in good company though, a total of 14 million trips are made across the border every day between Dundalk in Ireland and Newry in Northern Ireland for business and shopping and more. The two economies of the island are inextricably linked and commerce is strong with Tourism equating to 2.1m visitors (1.7m North to South/400k South to North) and Cross Border trade in manufacturing accounting for €3.1 billion in 2014 (€1.75bn North to South and €1.3bn South to North). Agri-food sectors are also vitally important to both jurisdictions and trade in food and drink moves both ways.

In terms of jobs almost 15,000 people commute to work on a daily cross border basis consisting of 8,300 North to South and 6,500 South to North. The 2011 Census highlighted that ‘Proportionally twice as many (0.4 per cent) Northern Ireland residents commuted to Ireland to work or study as commuted from Ireland to Northern Ireland (0.2 per cent)’. A total of 3,064 students are studying in both jurisdictions from either side of the border which breaks down into 719 North to South and 2,345 South to North. The north of Ireland is reliant on the Southern Irish economy and cross border trade is up 7% since 2013 an economy that was in recovery since 2010.

Infrastructure initiatives have also benefitted both sides of the island and facilitated cooperation such as the development of the Dublin-to-Belfast transport corridor, the fibre optic communications networks “Project Kelvin” and investment by both governments into City of Derry Airport which sees 38% of its passengers being from the Republic of Ireland. The Single Electricity Market (SEM) is also under development and will lead to lower costs which at present are some of the highest in Europe. The Good Friday Agreement also saw the creation of 7 new North / South Bodies amongst them InterTrade Ireland and Tourism Ireland. Economic benefits have also come by cross border programmes including Interreg, Peace, European Fisheries Fund etc. and a total of nearly £2.5billion came into Northern Ireland during the last EU funding round (2007 – 2013).

Challenges exist for both jurisdictions which could be affected by the UK voting to leave the EU. They are both two very different economies and are competing against one another for business/foreign direct investment (FDI) but have shown strong commercial cooperation when they are exporting. Outside of the Belfast/Dublin corridor connectivity is poor across the island and there are significant policy anomalies in some key areas e.g. VAT on tourism is 20% in Northern Ireland v.s. 9% in the Republic of Ireland. There is also exchange rate volatility.

[URBAN NOTE] "Ottawa seeks ways to cool hot GTA, Vancouver housing"

And so it begins? The Toronto Star's Sunny Freeman reports.

Finance Minister Bill Morneau has announced the creation of a working group to study the hot housing markets in Vancouver and Toronto, signaling that concerns about overheating are largely isolated.

“We have real pockets of risk,” he said at a Toronto breakfast speech.

Morneau spoke with the provincial finance ministers of Ontario and British Columbia and called the mayors of Toronto and Vancouver earlier this week to discuss the creation of the working group.

It will study factors affecting supply and demand, affordability and the long-term stability of the housing market. The group will not include officials from other provinces, nor any private sector experts such as bank economists or academics.

“We want people to understand that while the federal government has some levers under its control we don’t have all of them,” Morneau said.

“This is a shared responsibility with provincial governments and municipalities, having regulatory and taxation powers to respond to unique local concerns,” he said.

[URBAN NOTE] "Bowmanville Zoo to close this year"

Noor Javed of the Toronto Star's reports on the impending end of Bowmanville's zoo, open since 1919.

The exotic animals of the Bowmanville zoo — wolves, tigers, and baboons to name a few— will be looking for new homes after the east-end facility announced Thursday it will be closing at the end of the 2016 season.

At a press conference, zoo officials said recent “allegations” made by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) had led to a “catastrophically” low number of visitors— resulting in financial problems.

Earlier this year, the zoo’s director Michael Hackenberger stepped down after being charged with animal cruelty. The charges were due to a video released by PETA in December which appeared to show him hitting a tiger with a whip during a training session.

“Untrue allegations made by PETA in regards to a tiger incident have created a climate in which the zoo can no longer operate,” said Angus Carroll, the zoo’s director of communications, who estimated attendance is down 65 per cent since last summer.

“The zoo attendance is down dramatically, and in fact that hardly captures it. Catastrophically. So, there just isn’t enough money to run this zoo at this time,” he said.

In an interview, Brittany Peet, PETA Foundation’s director of captive animal law enforcement said “the blame lies solely on Michael Hackenberger.”

[URBAN NOTE] "On sobering day for Toronto transit plans, city put on notice to find funding"

The Globe and Mail's Oliver Moore reports.

Ontario is demanding that Toronto show it can pay for its share of Mayor John Tory’s key transit proposal, even as the two governments continue to joust over the scope of his plan and other projects keep climbing in price.

Included in more than 700 pages of transit reports released Tuesday is a sobering picture of the difficulties facing Toronto. Timelines are lengthening and costs are mounting.

The one-stop Scarborough subway extension, costed at $2-billion a few months ago and pegged as recently as Friday at about $2.9-billion, will actually cost $3.16-billion. The additional cost is attributed to the price of extending the life of the current transit serving the region and then decommissioning it. The extension is not likely to open until late 2025, two years later than expected, assuming construction starts in 2020.

The Downtown Relief Line, which experts have long described as the city’s top transit priority, has more than doubled in price. A high-level estimate has long put the cost of the project at $3.2-billion. Staff say now it would be more likely to cost $6.8-billion. This assumes the line would be service by 2031, with construction taking about a decade, though there is no funding currently attached to it.

The bright spot on Tuesday was the province and Mr. Tory announcing four new GO stations in Toronto, two of them in the sections of the rail system that Mr. Tory has dubbed “the SmartTrack network.” A similar announcement is expected Wednesday, offering the prospect of easier access to GO rail service within the city.

[URBAN NOTE] "A Look Inside the Buried Huron Village in the Heart of Toronto"

Torontoist's Erin Sylvester reports on a now built-over Iroquoian settlement in Toronto's Forest Hill.

Around 950 years ago, the summer sun would have risen over a settlement in what is now Forest Hill. The approximately two-hectare site would likely have been surrounded by a wooden palisade, encircling several longhouses. It’s unknown how many people would have lived there, but they were probably a southern branch of the Huron, or Wendat, people. According to Tales of North Toronto, a 1948 history book by Lyman B. Jackes, there was also a fresh water spring flowing by the village. He also claims that the hills in the area are more recent and were created by covering old sites where food was stored.

Today, children play in a schoolyard where longhouses once stood. There’s no indication of what used to be: a tall, brick building houses young students, a Canadian flag flaps in the wind out front, and children and teachers go about their days.

What we know about the site from the few artifacts and from what Jackes writes is probably as much as we will ever know about this settlement and the people that lived there. The Jackes or Eglinton archaeological site, so named because it was on the land of Lyman Jackes’s family near Eglinton Avenue West, where the village once was, has been erased, buried under the Allenby Public School.

The artifacts that were found at the site have been dated from anywhere between 1450 and 1475. In Tales of North Toronto, Jackes writes that some human remains found at the site seemed to have been burned, possibly when a longhouse caught fire and collapsed.

[DM] "Some demographic perspectives on Brexit and the future United Kingdom"

At Demography Matters, I blog about Brexit. Suffice it to say I really do not see ways in which this will work to benefit the United Kingdom in the long run.