Jul. 10th, 2016

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With the demolition of Honest Ed's scheduled for the end of the year and the subsequent shift of the Toronto Fringe Festival's Fringe Club to the Scadding Court Community Centre at Bathurst and Dundas, last night was my last chance ever to photograph the Fringe Club in the habitat where I first encountered it. So, I did.

In front of the Alley #toronto #honesteds #thealley #fringe2016 #fringeto


Last night #toronto #honesteds #thealley #fringe2016 #fringeto


The lights aglow #toronto #honesteds #thealley #fringe2016 #fringeto


By the wall posters #toronto #honesteds #thealley #fringe2016 #fringeto #posters


Amid the tents #toronto #honesteds #thealley #fringe2016 #fringeto


Box office by night #toronto #honesteds #thealley #fringe2016 #fringeto


Fringe at Mirvish Village #toronto #honesteds #thealley #fringe2016 #fringeto #mirvishvillage


Heading home #toronto #honesteds #thealley #fringe2016 #fringeto
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  • James Bow writes about the importance to him of Toronto's Bakka-Phoenix bookstore.

  • The Dragon's Gaze considers the search for the debris disk of HR 8799.

  • The Dragon's Tales notes that, early in the solar system's history, Venus may have been much better for life than Earth.

  • The Russian Demographics Blog shares a map noting the names for "tea" in different European languages.

  • Savage Minds considers the ethnography of danger and risk for tourists at the Rio Olympics.

  • Window on Eurasia notes the degeneration of the Donbas conflict.

  • The Financial Times' The World notes Obama's expressed concern for Polish democracy.

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I shared Shane Ross' CBC report on my Facebook wall yesterday night, and the general reaction was one of amusement. I was told that many of the lobster fishermen will go back and retrieve the deposited lobsters themselves--apparently that sort of practice, the recovery of food animals released by Buddhist monks into the wild, is common in Southeast Asia, too--but the gesture counts, right?

More than 600 pounds of lucky lobsters were spared the pot Saturday, thanks to compassionate monks on Prince Edward Island.

The monks bought the lobsters from various places around the Island, said Venerable Dan of the Great Enlightenment Buddhist Institute Society in Little Sands.

On Saturday, they boarded a fishing boat and released them back into the ocean off the coast of Wood Islands.

"Hopefully, we can find a spot where there are no cages waiting for them," said Dan.

The purpose is to cultivate compassion not just for the lobsters, but for all beings, he said.
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CBC News' Kevin Yarr goes into detail, and includes some striking photos.

A cottager in eastern P.E.I. will be spending time this summer sailing the coast in a boat of ancient Chinese design.

The junk-rigged boat design dates back to the second century, and they are still built for recreational purposes today, though mostly in Asia.

Monte Gisbourne, who owns a cottage in Montague, has never sailed before, but there was something about junk-rigged vessels that attracted him.

"If I was going to learn how to sail, and make the effort and enjoy the art of sailing I really wanted to do it in a junk-rigged ship. I just think that they're such cool boats. That's the one for me," he said.
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The Globe and Mail carries James Turner's Canadian Press report.

A former member of a religious colony told the first Pride parade ever held in this small Manitoba city how important it is for gay people to speak up and share their stories.

“I expose my life so that others can know that they are not alone they too deserve a happy, fulfilling life,” said Tyrone Hofer before a cheering crowd.

Hofer, a former member of a conservative colony of Hutterian Brethren, said he wished he’d had someone to talk to as he was growing up and struggling with his sexual identity. That’s why, he said, he and other openly gay Hutterites are now speaking publicly.

“Instead of asking yourself, ‘what would Jesus do?,’ ask yourself, ‘what did Jesus do?’ ” he said.

RCMP estimated 3,000 people attended the Pride march, far higher than the anticipated 1,000. Police had to open a second street to accommodate everyone.

The city’s population is roughly 14,000.
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The Toronto Star's Noor Javed reports on the potential for the Bowmanville Zoo, one of the oldest in Canada, to survive the summer. Or not, as the case may be.

A sudden burst in attendance and outpouring of support for the Bowmanville zoo is sparking hopes that the embattled facility may be able stay open after all.

The privately owned zoo, which is home to a number of exotic animals including lions, lemurs and tigers, announced last month that it was shutting down at the end of the 2016 season.

Zoo officials said allegations made by animal rights groups, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), around the mistreatment of animals at the hands of the former director, had kept crowds away and attendance was down by more than 65 per cent from the previous year.

But since the June announcement, the zoo has seen a “strong swell of support from the community” and attendance is now only down “about 25 per cent from prior years” said spokesman Angus Carroll.

“I can tell you that attendance is up in recent days and that is great,” said Carroll. “Nevertheless, we are not out of the woods. Attendance is still below last year and not where it needs to be make the zoo viable,” he said.
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Spacing Ottawa's Dwight Williams notes an odd, and reparable, lacuna in the list of figures commemorated on Ottawa's streets.

If you’ll permit some historical stage-setting: around the time frame of 1990-‘91, the former city of Gloucester began the process of building City Park Drive, a side street looping southwards off of Ogilvie Road near the Gloucester Centre Mall. There would eventually be side streets branching off within that loop for condominiums to be built and called home by hundreds of our neighbours.

Around the same time frame, construction began on the north side of Ogilvie on the current headquarters of the first of its best-known – and perhaps least understood – neighbours: the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service. A decade or so later, their military-affiliated counterparts, the Communications Security Establishment, would set up their own shop right next door. Both buildings are striking in terms of design for different reasons, and not the kind of design that one might expect or prefer for the headquarters of intelligence services. That matter of architectural taste can be argued another time in other venues.

To the point: however misunderstood the work of those organizations may be, it can nonetheless be argued that their work – and those of their forebears in the structure of the Canadian government – has at times been vital to Canada…and particularly when it comes to discussing World War II. One Canadian citizen in particular has been honoured with some justification for his work in that field. I’ve checked and discovered that his name has yet to be commemorated anywhere within the current city limits, and perhaps it is time that was now remedied.

That person is Sir William Stephenson, better known even now in some circles as “the Man Called Intrepid” thanks to his autobiography of the same name.
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Bloomberg's Lisa Freisher looks at why one Welsh steel town dependent on EU funding counterintuitively voted for Brexit. Desperation, blind desperation, seems key.

On the eve of the Brexit vote, nearly all official voices were nudging residents of the steel town of Port Talbot, Wales, to vote to remain in the EU: A healthy chunk of the steel produced locally was shipped into Europe, and the EU sent millions of pounds to aid the local economy.

The message came from management at the giant mill, owned by Tata Steel. Union bosses. Local politicians. But those voices from above seemed to only repel residents fed up with the status quo.

Protesting decades of industrial decline while London thrived, 57% of the 75,652 people who voted in this once proud region of steel production decided to take a chance and leave.

“All I’ve ever seen was a decline in the steel works,” said Andrew Clarke, 30, who finally got a job at the plant two years ago as a crane driver, only to watch his father laid off from the plant this year. “People might maybe losing pensions, maybe losing bonuses, maybe losing holidays.”

The town was one of many places across England and Wales where people voted against what a host of experts and government officials said were their own self interests, in favor of an unknown alternative. In Sunderland, where Nissan employs 6,700 autoworkers on the northeast coast of England, Leave won 61% to 39%. In Cornwall, after its residents voted to leave, local officials asked for reassurance after the vote that £60 million ($80 million) in annual EU support would be replenished.
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