[PHOTO] Honest Ed's sign below the lights

This loading dock sign for Honest Ed's glows beneath the strings of lights stretching across the Alley.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• The Dragon's Gaze considers detecting industrial civilizations through their ozone holes.


• Joe. My. God. notes the French National Front's opposition to the Pride parade in Paris.


• Language Log considers English names in China.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer is confused by Spanish policy towards Scotland in the era of Brexit.


• Spacing Toronto notes that twenty years' worth of Fort York's journal are available online.


• Supernova Condensate notes the complexity of the Juno probe's arrival at Jupiter.


• Torontoist shares photos of Honest Ed's in its last months.


• Window on Eurasia notes the domination of Russia by its big cities, reports on a political dissident in Belarus, and suggests the Donbas republics are starting to erode.

[NEWS] Some Tuesday links

• Bloomberg notes political despair in Japan's industrial heartland and looks at Argentina's statistical issues.


• The Globe and Mail reports on Morocco's continued industrialization and describes the fear of a Vancouver-based pop singer for the life of her mother in China.


• The Inter Press Service notes the recent terror attack in Dhaka, Bangladesh's capital.


• MacLean's notes the good relations of Israel and Egypt.


• The National Post reports on recent discoveries of quiet black holes.


• Open Democracy looks at the connections between migration and housing policy in the United Kingdom.


• Transitions Online notes how Brexit has wrecked central Europe's relationships with the United Kingdom.

[URBAN NOTE] "How Brexit could fuel Toronto housing prices"

The Toronto Star's carries Natalie Obiko Pearson's Bloomberg article noting the negative effective of Brexit on the Toronto real estate boom. Thanks a lot.

Realtors in Toronto and Vancouver are pitching Canadian cities as relatively safe property havens now that London, for years one of the world's leading targets of foreign capital, suddenly looks a lot riskier.

Blame it on Brexit.

“Brexit's good for us, not for them,” said Anita Springate-Renaud, owner of Engel & Volkers' brokerage in Toronto, who expects to field calls from clients seeking to redirect their investments. “We are a safe bet.”

If Springate-Renaud is right, there may be heightened demand from moneyed clients for homes and condos, as well as office towers in two of Canada's hottest real estate markets, which already have seen prices soar from an influx of foreign money. There's a record $443 billion (U.S.) in global capital allocated to commercial property that wealthy investors haven't deployed, according to figures from Cushman & Wakefield.

Within hours of the stunning Brexit outcome, Brian Kriter, an executive managing director of valuation and advisory at Cushman & Wakefield, was on a 6:30 a.m. call from his home in Toronto to discuss the potential ramifications of the referendum with colleagues in London and New York.

[URBAN NOTE] "Feds' marijuana task force rules out storefront weed"

NOW Toronto's Barbara Shaw writes about Canada's emergent marijuana laws, ones not apparently going to be friendly to the storefront dispensaries recently subjected to raids here.

With the feds scheduling a pot announcement on the day before the Canada Day long weekend, there were high hopes among cannabis activists. Last time the government made a major announcement on marijuana, it chose 420 as the date.

So when the feds sent out a tersely-worded media advisory June 29 about "an announcement regarding marijuana," it looked like the Trudeau government had finally listened to the advice of legal experts, and was set to decriminalize marijuana as an interim measure while it figures out what legalization looks like. The Criminal Lawyers' Association, among others, has been calling on the government to stay all marijuana-related charges now before the courts. Pressure has been building on the government to act.

Alas, the announcement was a re-announcement of sorts – the official launch of the nine-member federal task force headed by former Chretien-era justice minister Anne McLellan set up to hear public input on federal plans to legalize weed.

McLellan quickly put the decriminalization question to rest, making it clear in a media conference at that National Press Theatre in Ottawa that the government's goal is to "legalize, restrict and regulate access to marijuana." Protecting kids was a recurring theme at the conference attended by representatives for the ministers of health, public safety and justice. Quality, purity and potency will be a big focus of regulation, McLellan said.

[URBAN NOTE] "Gay cop worries first Pride could be his last after Black Lives Matter calls for ban"

Wendy Gillis' Toronto Star article looks at the continuing controversies over the Pride parade in Toronto after Black Lives Matter's intervention.

It was a day of extreme emotions for Const. Chuck Krangle, a Toronto police officer and a former member of the Canadian Armed Forces.

Despite working in the city for eight years, Krangle, who is openly gay, had never been to Toronto’s Pride parade. But this year brought his chance to attend when he was assigned to work Sunday’s parade.

Krangle was blown away — by the spectacle, by the fun, and by the number of fellow officers taking part.

“I was like ‘woah, what a coming together,’ ” Krangle, 30, said in an interview. “I had no idea that there were that many cops that march in this, from all different agencies,” he said, adding that one of the highlights was speaking with Toronto police chief and parade-goer Mark Saunders.

But by the time Krangle, who is a community response officer, finished his shift, there had been a change in tone: following a mid-parade protest by members of Black Lives Matter Toronto, Pride organizers seemed to agree to make a number of changes to improve the event — including banning police floats and booths. (Pride executive director Mathieu Chantelois said Monday that his signing of the demands was not binding on Pride.)

[URBAN NOTE] "Why Toronto Needs a Low-Income Metropass Program"

The idea described by Anders Marshall in Torontoist makes perfect sense to me.

When many Torontonians think of poverty, the first issues that come to mind are housing and food. Mobility is often overlooked, creating a gap in accessibility and services available to those looking to get around the city.

Grassroots organization TTCriders has established the Fair Fare Coalition in an attempt to fill that gap. Last month, members attended City Hall to push for lower TTC prices for the city’s lowest income residents.

The group is lobbying to create a program that allows low-income Torontonians access to a $50 Metropass and $1 single-ride tokens to get on trains, buses, and streetcars.

“Anything else was unaffordable,” says Karin Meinzer, chair of the Fair Fare Coalition. “We looked at doing a price set at a percentage of income, but when you do that you end up with a large percentage no matter what. We felt that there had to be some sort of cutoff.”

Meinzer says TTCriders arrived at these figures when they realized many people living with social assistance end up working low-paying jobs, or end up in positions where they’re working part time, meaning any price based on a percentage of income isn’t the best option on such fine margins.

[URBAN NOTE] "The Scarborough subway and the climate change agenda"

Spacing Toronto's John Lorinc looks at, among other negative consequences of the Scarborough subway extension, the environmental ones.

What will future residents of Scarborough think, 30 or 40 years hence, when they cast their minds back to the craven transit decisions being made today by the likes of Mayor John Tory and his deputy, Glenn de Baeremaeker?

I’m guessing those voters — some not yet born, others not yet living in Canada — will be mightily pissed at us for putting political self-interest and short-term calculation above their needs.

After all, what they’ll see is a city with three major LRT corridors — the Eglinton Crosstown Phase One, the Crosstown Phase Two from Mt. Dennis out to the airport, and the Finch West line — extending deep into the western reaches of Toronto. Not to be overlooked: an important new GO/Smart Track transfer at St. Clair West, and the UP Express stops – 39 stations in all, on a multi-modal, integrated grid.

As for Scarborough? They’ll have the single-stop Scarborough subway extension (SSE), which will soak up pretty much all of the $3.56 billion of available transit funding for that part of the city, plus two or three Smart Track stations and, maybe, an unknown number of stops on the hopelessly mired Sheppard East LRT. In the best case scenario, 14 new stations (or a net eight, if you count the eliminated Scarborough RT stops), with nothing that even faintly resembles an integrated network.

He gets to it, don't worry.