[CAT] Shakespeare, bothered

[URBAN NOTE] A lobster roll at the Granville Street Diner, Summerside

In 2014, my parents and I had come to Summerside in time for the end of the Summerside Lobster Festival. This time, we came for the beginning.



We had also come for lobster. The simple lobster roll offered by the Granville Street Diner, with sides for $C 9.99 appealed most to us.





The Granville Street Diner's current location, on 454 Granville Street in a strip mall across from the County Fair Mall, is a relatively new one, the restaurant having downsized in 2015 from an overly large location at 519 Granville Street just to its north. The new space is bright and clean, but it also has disconcertingly high ceilings.



As for the lobster roll, it was perfectly good. The roll itself featured the meat, mixed with some pleasingly sharp celery chunks, served in a hot dog bun, next to a side of coleslaw and two mounds of potato salad served on thick lettuce leaves. It was a good way for me to be reintroduced to the lobster.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• The Big Picture shares photos from a Newfoundland where the cod fisheries are recovering.


• blogTO notes the bars which will be screening the final concert of The Tragically Hip.


• Centauri Dreams notes a paper finding that KIC 8462852 has been fading noticeably in recent years.


• The Dragon's Gaze notes the detection of circumpulsar disks.


• Language Hat looks at the International Phonetic Alphabet.


• The Map Room Blog notes Australia's updating of its GPS maps.


• Otto Pohl notes the 75th anniversary of the Volga German deportation.


• Torontoist has a lovely map of High Park.


• Window on Eurasia argues Russia is likely to heat up the war in Ukraine by posing as a peacekeeper.

[NEWS] Some Saturday links

• Bloomberg notes the escalating costs of construction in San Francisco, reports that a half-Taiwanese woman is competing for the leadership of Japan's main opposition, notes the impending abdication of the Japanese emperor, and looks at the role of batteries in Australia's electricity grid.


• Bloomberg View looks at how Brexit hurt Britain's soft power and describes why Republican Party defections matter.


• The CBC examines the rise of Brazilian Protestantism.


• The Globe and Mail looks at Canada's options now that prospects of new free trade agreements in the Pacific and with the European Union has been wrecked.


• National Geographic reports on the mapping of Greenland's hidden world beneath its ice caps.


• The National Post looks at evidence for an ancient flood in China that led to the first Chinese state, and describes how Amish children have low rates of asthma.


• Open Democracy notes the new Turkish-Kurdish conflict.


• The Toronto Star remembers Mel Hurtig and describes the drought in parts of eastern Ontario.


• Wired notes a journalist who has been tracking ISIS on social media.

[URBAN NOTE] "Rio Olympics sailor Lee Parkhill says Toronto Harbour 'almost worse than what I see he

Prscilla Hwang's CBC News article says worrisome things about Toronto.

The water conditions in Rio de Janeiro don't appear as bad as what's being reported, and the Toronto harbour is sometimes "almost worse," according to a Canadian Olympic sailor who is in the Brazilian city for his first Games.

"Most of the stuff in the media, I haven't actually seen it in person," Lee Parkhill told CBC News on Thursday.

Parkhill, of Oakville, Ont., has been training in the waters off Rio for eight weeks, preparing for the men's single-handed Laser dinghy competition.

Most of the "rubbish" only comes after big rainstorms, Parkhill says, and he has mostly seen empty water bottles floating around. He said the race courses in Rio look "like normal, like Toronto harbour," where he trained for four years as a teen.

"I've sailed a lot in Toronto harbour and after a big rainstorm, all the debris come from the Humber River," he said. "It's almost worse than what I see here."

[URBAN NOTE] "Motorists are Already Driving in the New Bloor Bike Lanes"

Torontoist reports on the Bloor bike lanes.

In May, Council voted overwhelmingly in favour of the installation of a Bloor Street bike lanes pilot project, much to the joy of Toronto cyclists. The street is an active artery for more than 3,000 cyclists daily, and the fight for a safer ride from Shaw Street to Avenue Road has been 40 years in the making.

The bike lanes are under construction, and while the flexipost bollards haven’t been installed yet, cyclists can test-ride the newly painted lines. Some commuters, however, are not yet accustomed to sharing the road.

Torontoist‘s Corbin Smith took his bike out for a spin yesterday, and found that—to little surprise—being a cyclist isn’t easy in Toronto, even with new bike lanes.

Smith rode from just west of Shaw past Avenue Road, where the the pilot project begins and ends. He ended his commute around Church Street.

At first, it was smooth sailing: the streets were fairly empty, and he had the lanes to himself on the west end.

Thigns changed.

[URBAN NOTE] "Downed elevators plague Aura condo, residents say"

The Toronto Star's Alex Ballingall reports about the problems at the new Aura condo tower.

Jim McNally lives 77 storeys above Yonge St. Through his floor-to-ceiling windows he looks down on Queen’s Park and the University of Toronto, and on a clear day he can spot distant planes on the tarmac at Pearson. The family physician says he put “all his marbles” into the condominium and much prefers the downtown locale to an alternative in the suburbs.

But life at such great heights hasn’t been so great lately.

It’s the elevators.

McNally doesn’t trust them.

There have been periodic problems since he moved in about a year and a half ago, McNally told the Star in an interview, but since a powerful rainstorm hit Toronto last Monday, the lifts’ lack of lifting has hit a new low. Of the nine elevators that serve the 79 floors of the Aura tower at Yonge and Gerrard Sts.—a building with billboards that boast: “Canada’s Tallest Condominium”—three have been broken for more than eight days, said McNally, who sits on the condo board.

For those like him that live above the 55th storey, only one elevator works—sort of. As of Tuesday afternoon, it was manned by a kindly security guard on a stool, who would pilot the elevator to the requested floor, stopping at every fifth storey on the way down to pick up any departing residents. If you want to go down, you can call the concierge and ask for the lift to be sent to your floor, or you can take the stairs to one of the storeys where the elevator is scheduled to stop.

[URBAN NOTE] "Now and Then: George Luscombe and Toronto Workshop Productions"

Torontoist's Erin Sylvester reports on a person who was a major player in mid-20th century Toronto theatre.

Summer is a great season for theatre in the city. There are outdoor arts festivals and shows inside, if you prefer to escape the heat and bugs. While Toronto has a vibrant theatre scene today, its history is impressive as well.

One of the major figures in Toronto’s theatre history is George Luscombe, who created Toronto Workshop Productions in 1959, when it was originally called Workshop Theatre. The group has been heralded as one of the great early alternative performance troupes, and one of Canada’s first professional alternative theatre companies. According to former-troupe member and drama instructor at the University of Toronto, Steven Bush, “WP was in operation some 10 years before important companies like Factory, Passe Muraille, Tarragon, and Toronto Free appeared,” he wrote in a 2015 journal article. “Theatre-makers in other parts of Canada would acknowledge George’s influence.” Bush says he was also likely the first director in Toronto to “practice ‘colour-blind casting,'” the practice of casting actors for roles without considering their ethnicity.

Luscombe first got involved in the arts when he assembled a song-and-dance troupe with the Canadian Commonwealth Federation Youth Club to perform for striking workers on the picket line. In the 1950s, Luscombe moved to London, England, and worked with the Theatre Workshop under Joan Littlewood, where the company put on classic and modern plays and lived in a commune. Inspired by his time across the pond, Luscombe returned to Toronto and founded his own workshop.

According to Bush, “George was committed to original creation, to new looks at old plays, to strong political content and to building a full time paid ensemble of actors who would train as well as perform together.” Like Littlewood, he developed his work through rehearsals with the troupe.

[URBAN NOTE] On the impending move of Glad Day Bookshop to Church Street

News of the Glad Day Bookshop's impending move to Church Street has spread widely, to Canada's Quill & Quire and to international sites like Gay Star News and New Now Next. I first learned of this from Daily Xtra.

Glad Day Bookshop is moving from a cramped, albeit charming, second-floor on Yonge Street to a massive ground-floor in Toronto’s Church-Wellesley Village — the space currently occupied by Byzantium, a martini bar and restaurant.

“The location and facility we’ve secured is what’s currently known as Byzantium, at 499 Church St,” says Michael Erickson, one of the owners of Glad Day, the world’s oldest LGBTQ bookstore. “We’re taking over the space, the lease, the liquor licenses, the equipment.”

“Byzantium in its current form is closing.”

At 250 square metres, the new location is more than three times larger than the current Yonge space. It also boasts a back patio, bar, large storage area downstairs and is wheelchair accessible. Erickson plans to install a wheelchair-accessible washroom as well.

The owners hope the larger, more versatile venue will allow them to incorporate several new revenue streams. “We’ll be re-opening as a bookstore-coffee shop-cocktail bar,” Erickson says. The current plan is to have the business operate as a coffee shop and bookstore during the day, and a bar and performance space at night. It may even become a boardgame café a few days a week.

People can donate to the bookstore to finance the move here.

This is big. I sincerely hope it works out--I think it can, but still, I need to hope. I think it not inaccurate to say that not only the future of Glad Day, but the future of Church Street as a gay area, depends on this working out.