[PHOTO] Ten photos from Victoria-by-the-Sea, Prince Edward Island

As I wrote two years ago, the village of Victoria, located on the southern Northumberland Strait shore of Prince Edward Island roughly midway between the capital of Charlottetown to the east and the second city of Summerside to the west, is a lot like Ontario's community of Port Hope. Once a regional centre located directly on a major travel route, both were bypassed by the beginning of the 20th century by road changes (in Victoria's case, by the Island's branch of the Trans-Canada Highway moving north to Crapaud), leaving vintage Victorian town centres intact for late 20th century tourists to discover. Victoria (branded by locals now as Victoria-by-the-Sea) is much smaller than Port Hope, being home to barely a couple hundred people in tourist season, but the general principle is the same.

The village of Victoria is compact and walkable, a 2x2 grid. The overall ambiance is attractively sedate, with well-maintained wooden houses and trees rising high into the sky.

[PHOTO] The Toronto-Dominion Centre, Bay and King

The Toronto-Dominion Centre, the Mies van der Rohe obelisk on the southwest corner of Bay Street and King, rises proudly among the towers of the Financial District.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Centauri Dreams looks at odd binary AR Scorpii.


• Crooked Timber examines connections between demographic change and religiosity in the United States.


• A Fistful of Euros reports on the IMF response to the Eurozone bailouts.


• Joe. My. God. notes the outrage of families of survivors of American military dead at Trump's treatment of the Khan family.


• The LRB Blog calls for England to secede.


• Out There interviews Tabitha Boyajian about KIC 8462852.


• The Planetary Society Blog features Marc Rayman's explanation of Dawn's remaining at Ceres.


• Peter Rukavina notes a book exploring the lost Quaker settlement of New London, on the north shore of Prince Edward Island.


• Strange Maps looks at the cartographic imprint of Spain on the streets of Barcelona.


• Torontoist notes that tickets for the Toronto Islands ferry can now be bought from smartphone apps.


• Window on Eurasia suggests Russia is running out of money to sustain its economy, looks at the Russian propensity of emigration, and notes that rising unemployment is contributing to internal migration.

[NEWS] Some Monday links

• Bloomberg notes Amazon's development of a portal in Japan for Chinese tourists visiting that country, reports on an unexpected decline in Russian manufacturing, and looks at Poland's conflicts with the European Commission on legal and democratic issues.


• Bloomberg View notes Trump's social security plan depends on immigrants, and looks at the geopolitics of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.


• CBC looks at plans for a greenhouse in a Nunavut town that might bring down the prices for fresh food substantially, and reports on a Brazilian town home to descendants of Southern migrants who are mystified by Trump.


• The Globe and Mail reports on a South African discovery suggesting ancient hominins practiced burial and reports on a British Columbia judge who threw out the convictions of two people charged with terrorist plots, saying they were entrapped.


• MacLean's reports on how transit companies and airlines respond to abusive posts on social media.


• The National Post reports on the impending return of hundreds of jihadists to the North Caucasus.


• Open Democracy reports on the state of affairs in Hungary.

[ISL] "P.E.I. Pride parade called 'largest yet'"

CBC News' Shane Ross reports on the Pride parade recently held in Charlottetown.

Hundreds of people lined the streets of Charlottetown on Saturday for what organizers are calling P.E.I.'s largest Pride parade yet.

There were about 40 floats. Churches, community groups and all three political parties participated.

"We have so many new floats today," said Tyler Murnaghan of Pride PEI. "I mean, even the fire department is here, the navy, the military. I'm blown away with the incredible people that have showed up."

Zak Court said while the parade is about having fun, it's also an opportunity to tackle some of the challenges that still face the LGBT community.

"Coming from P.E.I., we are more of a rural setting, and discrimination and prejudice shows a little more on the surface and it's really good to come together and show solidarity where people who maybe haven't come out of the closet or teens can come and have a safe place to talk and be themselves."

[ISL] "P.E.I. home sells for $4.7M"

CBC News' Shane Ross reports on one of the most expensive real estate sales on Prince Edward Island.

It went for $3 million less than its original asking price, but a mansion on P.E.I. is now officially off the market.

The six-bedroom, eight-bathroom home — which features a whale watching tower — sold on Friday for a little under $4.7 million. In 2009, it was listed for $7.75 million and had the distinction of being the only home on P.E.I. listed through Sotheby's in New York.

The 13,500-square-foot home is located on 4.5 hectares of land in West Cable Head on the Island's north shore.

"It's the most expensive residential sale on the Island to the best of my knowledge, based on residential MLS data," said real-estate agent Michael Poczynek, who sold the house.

"I mean, if you search for anything in P.E.I. above a million dollars, they're few and far between, you could count them on one hand."

[URBAN NOTE] "Toronto to test mobile ticketing app for island ferry"

The Toronto Star's Jennifer Pagliaro goes into more detail</> about the new use of a mobile ticketing app for the Toronto Islands ferry.

If you’re reading this in line under the sweltering sun at Jack Layton Ferry Terminal, you are doing it wrong.

That’s the message from Mayor John Tory as the city looks to tackle line-ups in the rush of summer.

For the month of August, the city will be trialing ferry ticket sales through established Toronto-based mobile phone app Ritual. Those destined for Centre Island rides, picnicking and beaches will have a new way to buy tickets in advance or on the spot to avoid lines. The ticket will be scanned from the purchaser’s phone.

“We want people in Toronto, every single person, to feel that their island is accessible to them in every way,” Tory said Friday outside the gates in announcing the new partnership in a photo-op ahead of the long weekend.

If the trial goes to plan, Tory said the city will look at extending the availability of tickets on the Ritual app.

[URBAN NOTE] "On Toronto’s Church Street, discover a hidden history of Canadian dance"

The Globe and Mail's Martha Schabas points her readers towards Dance Collection Danse, Canada's only dedicated dance museum on lower Church Street.

Nestled between a nail salon and a strip of shabby pawn shops, Canada’s only dance museum sits on the third floor of a tawny-brick building on Toronto’s Church Street. There’s no sign out front to mark its existence. Passersby are likely to find their eye drawn elsewhere, toward the hulking neo-Gothic Metropolitan United Church that claims the entire opposite block, the ad for blue iridescent fingernails in the adjacent window, or the bustle of commotion just south on Queen Street East.

“We had a sandwich board out front for a bit and that brought in a few curious people,” says Dance Collection Danse co-founder and director Miriam Adams. “But we had to take it down.” She smiles with a touch of irony.

“A bylaw restriction.”

Despite its low profile, Dance Collection Danse, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, is a remarkable repository of the country’s dance history. The museum’s tiny Church Street home consists of three bright and modest rooms – a gallery space, a work space and an office – all open to the public five days a week, with admission by donation. Its collection is as impressive as its housing is humble. In addition to a special exhibition that changes biannually, the museum has closets lined floor-to-ceiling with hundreds of written documents, 1,100 hours worth of oral history on cassettes, cupboards stuffed with aging costumes and quirky artifacts, more than 2,000 video recordings of performances dating back several decades and a vast off-site holding of backdrops and historic Canadian set pieces.

Visiting the museum for the first time last week, I had the sense that I’d happened upon the kind of hidden cultural gem you seek out and fetishize as a tourist. Amy Bowring, a dance historian and DCD’s director of research, dangled all kinds of fascinating ephemera and collectibles in front of me: Early 20th-century pointe shoes with metal toes for tapping, a purple chevron tutu from the 1960s, the red blazer worn by the dance contingent of the Canadian Olympic team in Berlin in 1936.

[URBAN NOTE] "How Can Moss Park Avoid Alienating Residents As It Gentrifies?"

Torontoist hosts Tannra Yelland's brief article on the fear of gentrification in Moss Park. Yelland can offer no solutions to the fear of people in this area that they might be pushed out.

The potential recreational centre in Moss Park ignited opposition and calls of gentrification when it began as a proposal for an LGBTQ-focused sports centre rather than one catering to the residents of the area. That’s since changed. The City and The 519—a city agency “committed to the health, happiness, and full participation of the LGBTQ community” that secured an anonymous donation for one-third of the centre’s costs—have embarked on a series of public consultations ostensibly intended to secure both the input and the support of the many communities represented in Moss Park. There have been the three public consultations and a number of smaller “focused conversations” with youth, Indigenous groups, shelter and service users, and housing and neighbourhood associations.

“Our focus is primarily reaching out and connecting with people in the Moss Park community who historically have been systematically excluded from decision-making,” says Jaymie Sampa, one of the community organizers of the the smaller, demographically focused meetings. She estimated she and her four co-organizers have conducted about 35 meetings.

A recently released report on the results of all the community engagement to date dealt with some of the complexities of improving services without pushing out the highest-need community members. For instance, the study notes that “safety is the most commonly cited concern among people who use the park and its facilities—and it’s a frequent issue mentioned by those who don’t.” Yet the answers to this problem diverge wildly, often based on past experiences with police, the colour of an individual’s skin or their life circumstances. And the answer probably won’t be found no matter how many focus groups the Moss Park community organizers have, because the conditions creating those disparities will remain.

[URBAN NOTE] "After the Games, Rio's Stadiums Won't Rot--They'll Transform"

Wired's Sam Lubell shares the news that at least some buildings in the Rio Olympics will end up being repurposed. Here's to hoping this will actually happen!

The Olympic Games are notorious for leaving burdensome buildings in their wake. Much of the swooping Olympic Park in Athens lies rusting and underutilized. Beijing National Stadium—or the Bird’s Nest, that iconic architectural marvel of the 2008 Games—draws tourists, occasional soccer matches, and little else.

Nearly every city that’s hosted an olympiad lives with a white elephant. This never reflects well on the Games, and the International Olympic Committee has in recent years directed organizers and host cities to be cognizant of “legacy mode”—what happens after crowds disperse, athletes leave, and the torch extinguishes. London offered a glimpse of this approach with the 2012 Games, which featured several easily dismantled stadia. Rio goes further still with structures that can be removed, rebuilt, and repurposed. Mayor Eduardo Paes calls it “nomadic architecture.”

Future Arena, the handball venue, will provide the material to build four 500-student primary schools in the city’s Jacarepaguá neighborhood. Workers will disassemble Olympics Aquatics Stadium and use the components to erect two community swimming centers; one in Madureira Park and one in the Campo Grande area. The International Broadcast Centre will become a high school dormitory. And Barra Olympic Park—a 300-acre, triangular peninsula that features nine Olympic venues—will host public parks and private development after the Games.

“It’s based around not leaving white elephants,” said Bill Hanway of AECOM, which created the master plan for the olympic parks in London and Rio. “We’re at a stage in the Olympics where social and financial responsibility are much more important than they used to be.”

[DM] "Four article links on the aftermath of the 2016 Canada census"

At Demography Matters, I have a post up linking to four representative articles on the aftermath of #Census2016: Tavia Grant of The Globe and Mail's articles "Census response rate is 98 per cent, early calculations show" and "Statistics Canada's tech issues hampering its mandate: chief", Jordan Press' Canadian Press article "StatsCan looking for powers to make all surveys mandatory, compel data from companies", and John Robson's "When statisticians corrupt" in the National Post.