[PHOTO] Ten photos of the harbour of Victoria-by-the-Sea at low tide

It was low tide at the harbour of Victoria-by-the-Sea, and underneath the bright summer sky the exposed sandbars and forests of seaweed stretched out past the boats and swimmers.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• blogTO looks at 1970s representations of Toronto on television and in film.


• Centauri Dreams looks at the genesis of antimatter propulsion.


• The Dragon's Gaze links to a paper asking if we might be one of the first intelligent civilizations to arise.


• Joe. My. God. notes the questioned future of Orlando's Pulse nightclub.


• Language Log reports on a fascinating-sounding concert of the Turkic world's music.


• Understanding Society's Daniel Little considers ethnographic studies of far-right movements and their memberships.

[NEWS] Some Tuesday links

• Bloomberg looks at the messy process of Brexit and considers possible directions for the ANC after South African local elections are concluded.


• The Globe and Mail notes the revival of industrial policy in Theresa May's Britain.


• The Inter Press Service looks at the lessons Latin America can take from Germany's transition to renewable energy.


• National Geographic reports on the discovery of a cache of pre-Second World War Japanese maps of Asia.


• Open Democracy examines the differences and similarities between Turkey 2016 and Egypt 2013 and calls for a united left in Europe.


• Wired looks at how Facebook sets the standard for online commerce.

[URBAN NOTE] "Councillor Carolyn Parrish fires back at ‘cranky constituent’"

I'm inclined to sympathize with Carolyn Parrish's actions, as described in San Grewal's Toronto Star article. Fair criticism is one thing, but if you're making allegations of malfeasance you should prove them, and take responsibility for them.

Mississauga Councillor Carolyn Parrish is standing up for her profession, after sending a letter to a resident calling him a “cranky constituent” for suggesting she took a “bribe.”

“As politicians all we have is our reputations,” Parrish told the Star. “The best way to get me riled up is by claiming I’ve ever taken a bribe. In my 32 years I’ve never taken a nickel. We are not steel-coated people. We do have emotions. You should treat me with a similar courtesy that you should use with your doctor, your teacher and others who work to make ours a better society.”

In her July 8 letter to resident Frank McGurk, Parrish wrote: “You are a cranky constituent — insulting to say the least. The Cliff Gyles reference was obnoxious. I suspect from your tone, others may find your opinions equally rude so I’m not concerned greatly regarding your opinions of me.”

The Malton resident had earlier sent Parrish a letter regarding the planned demolition of a local shopping plaza to make way for a mixed-use residential development that would include affordable housing units, which has been a priority for Parrish.

“I’m very disappointed as I read the minutes of the meeting regarding Netherwood plaza,” McGurk had written to Parrish two days earlier. “The plaza is a mainstay in this community where I have lived for 40 years plus. I smell another Cliff Gilles (sic) move here. We do not need 30 more detached homes with front yards the size of postage stamps.”

[URBAN NOTE] "Bombardier gets $428M order for GO Transit rail cars"

As a Torontonian aware of Bombardier's failure to deliver, I'm entitled to be surprised by the article by Ben Spurr in the Toronto Star. More late deliveries?

Metrolinx has placed another order with Bombardier, despite being locked in an ongoing dispute with the Montreal-based rail manufacturer over the delayed production of vehicles for Toronto LRT lines.

Bombardier’s rail division announced Monday that Metrolinx, the provincial transit agency, had exercised an option for 125 additional two-level commuter rail cars to run on GO Transit.

The order is valued at $428 million, and is an extension of a $279-million deal announced in 2014 for 65 GO coaches. The new cars are necessary for Metrolinx’s plans to increase GO service across the GTA.

Last month, the Star reported that Metrolinx had issued a notice of default to Bombardier that claimed the company was in breach of contract for failing to deliver vehicles for the Eglinton Crosstown and Finch West LRT lines on time. The agency was originally expecting the first light rail vehicle in the order for up to 182 vehicles in the spring of 2014, but Bombardier has yet to supply one.

[URBAN NOTE] "Why you need to take a day trip to the McMichael Gallery"

Sonya Davidson's article at the Toronto Guardian, with beautiful photos, makes me want to go up north.

I have a new found appreciation for Canadian artists. Not to say I didn’t appreciate it before but with the latest Lawren Harris exhibition “The Idea of North” now on at the Art Gallery of Ontario, it’s brought back the urge to rediscover the artists, like the Group of Seven, once again. I embarrassingly cannot remember the last time I had visited the McMichael Canadian Art Collection and having chatted with a few others, it appears that I’m not the only one. Located in Kleinburg just on the outskirts of Toronto, there’s really no excuse. It’s also McMichael’s 50th anniversary. So, when Ford Canada invited an intimate group of media to their Art of Fusion event in Kleinburg recently, how could I resist? It was time for me to hit the road for a day of rediscovery.

The day started with the unveiling of the 2017 Ford Fusion Energi Platinum – a plug-in hybrid that marries a gas engine, electric motor, and a chargeable lithium-ion battery – together offers incredible gas savings and the company tells us it’s considered the smartest Fusion yet. While we anticipated a full pitch on all the bells and whistles they simply gave us the top line features and then just handed over the keys and said, “have fun and safe drive! We’ll see you at the lunch stop.” The best way to discover what something can do is experience it, right?

The GPS lead us past the Cheltenham Badlands to the beautiful and picture-worthy stop in Belfountain. As we drove through the quaint little town (blink and you’d miss it) and into the Conservation area, we were inspired. We all went exploring throughout the park and while we were all snapping photos with our phones and cameras, we also knew that we needed to absorb this scenic park with our own eyes. We lingered longer than we should have but hey, us city folks crave this kind of peace of mind. Why haven’t I been here? Note to self, there’s so much to explore in our province.

“Okay, you should probably get moving on to the next stop,” a woman said to my driving mate, Jenn as we were comparing images we had just taken. Did you go on the swing bridge? Did you see the fishermen? Do you think they are on Tinder? Jenn asks me with a smile and I don’t think she’s kidding.

When we arrived at the McMichael Gallery, I had forgotten that this too was a conservation area. We had a guided tour around the grounds and walked past large sculptures. We visited the cemetery where most of the Group of Seven were laid to rest and we were tested on our knowledge. We had visited Tom Thomson’s studio – transplanted from it’s original home in Riverdale. By the way, many people assume that Thomson was part of the Group of Seven. Although he was a highly influential artist, Thomson had passed away in a mysteriously on Canoe Lake in Algonquin Park before the group was formed.

[URBAN NOTE] Toronto Life on Lawren Harris

Jason McBride's Toronto Life article "The Mystic" takes a look at the life of Lawren Harris, the Toronto-born Group of Seven painter currently the subject of a show at the AGO.

Lawren Harris, the Group of Seven’s flamboyant front man, was dashing, oracular, ambitious and enigmatic. Imagine a mix of Merlin, Gauguin and Batman, his utility belt stocked with oil paints, hovering perpetually between high society and artistic outer space. The scion of one of Canada’s wealthiest families, Harris could have been a Photoplay cover boy—squint and you might see Charlie Chaplin, squint tighter and maybe Clark Gable. His buddies were bank presidents, doctors and industrialists, and he built elegant, expensive houses for his family. Still, he always felt more at home in the deep bush.

Lots of rich people collect art, but very few set out to make it, and even fewer with the obsessiveness that Harris did. From his late teens, he painted incessantly, searching for ever more transcendent subjects. He used his mansion at 63 Queen’s Park Crescent as the Group’s headquarters, had a special boxcar outfitted so they could venture, in relative comfort, deep into the wilderness of northern Ontario, and earnestly promoted his radical ideas about art in magazines, lecture halls and private clubs. Harris was a breathless devotee of theosophy—a tricked-out mash-up of Eastern philosophy and self-help—and became convinced that artists were superior beings attuned to a higher reality. He wore his studio smock like a vestment and believed his art could shape the country’s identity. “There is a holiness about them,” Harris’s confidante Emily Carr said of his paintings in 1927. “Something you can’t describe but just feel.”

During Harris’s lifetime, the Group was fêted and fawned and fought over. They became the subject of dozens of reverential coffee table books, biographies, documentaries, novels, postage stamps, calendars and coffee mugs. By the turn of the 20th century, their work was fetching millions at auction, and Harris had become one of Canada’s most collected artists. Last November, his painting “Mountain and Glacier” sold to an anonymous buyer for $4.6 million at a Heffel auction—the highest auction price ever for a Canadian painting.

But nothing confers status quite like Hollywood. The Idea of North: The Paintings of Lawren Harris is an exhibition of 73 Harris paintings, co-curated by the comedian and art collector Steve Martin alongside the AGO’s Andrew Hunter and Cynthia Burlingham of the Hammer Museum in L.A. It opened at the Hammer last October and arrives at the AGO this month. In the show’s catalogue, Martin compares Harris to Edward Hopper, calling them both auteurs of isolation. If Hopper portrayed a familiar urban alienation, Harris’s subject was a shimmering astral plane. He didn’t want to just depict the sublime; he wanted people to enter it through his pictures. Accomplishing that would cost him a lot more than money.