[PHOTO] Canada goose on the beach, Humber Bay Park East

This Canada goose, one of a flock happily ensconced just off shore a beach on the eastern spit of Humber Bay Park, seemed almost to be posing for me.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

• Anthropology.net notes that schizophrenia is not an inheritance from the Neanderthals.


• D-Brief notes a recent study of nova V1213 Cen that drew on years of observation.


• Dangerous Minds shares a Simple Minds show from 1979.


• The Everyday Sociology Blog argues in favour of educating people about how they consume.


• Far Outliers notes the mid-12th century Puebloan diaspora and the arrival of the Navajo.


• Marginal Revolution's Tyler Cowen reports on the Faroe Islands.


• The Planetary Society Blog notes the impending launch of the OSIRIS-REx probe.


• Spacing Toronto examines through an interview the idea of artivism.


• Strange Maps notes the need to update the map of Louisiana.
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• Torontoist introduces its new daily newsletters.


• Understanding Society examines liberalism's relationship with hate-based extremism.


• Window on Eurasia notes that Russians are concerned about their country's post-Ukraine isolation but not enough to do anything about it, and looks at the generation gap across the former Soviet space.

[URBAN NOTE] Daily Xtra on the sale of Little Sister's

Daily Xtra's Jeremy Hainsworth notes the end of an era in Vancouver.

Vancouver’s iconic gay bookstore Little Sister’s has been sold.

Jim Deva and Bruce Smyth opened the store in 1983, when they had trouble finding gay books for sale anywhere else.

Within two years, Canada Customs agents were seizing their shipments, leaving the store’s shelves increasingly bare and jeopardizing its very ability to survive as a business. Undeterred, the couple fought back and very publicly took Canada Customs to court.

The court battles that ensued spanned nearly two decades, as Little Sister’s championed gay voices, challenged censorship, fought for our stories and sexual freedom and became a key community gathering space in Vancouver.

But now it’s time to sell, Smyth tells Daily Xtra.

[URBAN NOTE] "Man charged after shooting Pokemon Go video on TTC"

blogTO notes this non-story.

"POKÉMON GO PROBLEMS" (Watch on YouTube)

How far would you go to catch 'em all in Toronto? Well, one man is heading straight to court. Yes, Mark Correia, the guy who was filmed playing Pokemon Go on the subway tracks is now facing a $425 fine and a charge under the TTC's bylaws. He's slated to appear in court on September 16.

Correia wasn't actually on the tracks chasing Pokemon. Instead, he was creating an online video, which aimed to poke fun at the great lengths players go to become Poke Masters.

[URBAN NOTE] "City of Toronto challenges Queen's Park over affordable housing"

The Toronto Star's Jennifer Pagliaro reports about an Ontario affordable housing proposal that, infuriatingly, is off just enough to be a problem.

The city has put the province on notice that proposed legislation to build affordable housing will leave communities without desperately needed amenities such as community centres, park improvements and child care spaces.

While Toronto city council has long pushed for provincial rules that would force developers to create affordable units, a proposal from the province to do just that would exempt developers from paying for other community benefits.

Councillors and city staff say the province is asking them to make an impossible choice — build badly needed affordable housing or secure every day amenities that make communities livable and are increasingly necessary as the population balloons.

The city submitted its official response this week to the province’s proposed legislation, first announced in May, for what’s known as “inclusionary zoning.” The city’s housing advocate Councillor Ana Bailao said they’ve written to “strongly oppose” the province’s plans.

“By creating affordable housing, you’re not getting rid of those pressures,” Bailao said. “Those pressures are still there and having affordable housing competing for what we think are just as important city-building initiatives, I don’t think it benefits anybody.”

[URBAN NOTE] "A Love Letter to Light-Rail Transit"

Tricia Wood's Torontoist post is an ode to light rail that looks to the example of Dublin.

Dear LRT, please be mine.

I want to say a few things about light-rail transit (LRT)—really, it’s a love letter—but this is not meant to be a comment on any specific project under discussion in Toronto. This column is not about what we should build in Scarborough. It’s an effort to celebrate a great mode of transit that has been sadly misunderstood.

It seems appropriate that I am writing this from Dublin, Ireland, where there is, at present, a significant expansion of their LRT system under construction. I live in Toronto, but for research I spend a lot of time in Ireland.

When I am in Dublin, I often have to travel outside the city, and one of the things I appreciate about travel here is how easy it is to disembark from an intercity train at Heuston station, walk for no more than two minutes, and step on an LRT train that zips me into the central city.

No stairs, no tunnels, not even a real road to cross.

Let me tell you why I love LRT, using Dublin’s Luas system as an example. Spoiler: it has nothing to do with construction costs.

The Luas (Irish for “speed”) is a new system in a very old city. There has been some kind of permanent settlement on the site of Dublin for well over 1,000 years, and it has lots of old, narrow, winding cobblestone streets. The entire city centre could be considered a heritage district.

And it works, well.

[URBAN NOTE] Steve Munro on TTC Service in 1928

Steve Munro last month had a great post researching the history of TTC service in 1928, drawing from all kinds of sources to come up with a detailed profile of the service.

A recent comment sent me looking for service levels early in the TTC’s existence (post 1921), and I was pleasantly surprised to rediscover that this information is in a book, now long out-of-print, by John F. Bromley called TTC ’28. This book provides a view of the system when the electric street railway in Toronto was at its height.

In a recent presentation to the TTC Board, staff argued that the streetcars were an integral part of the growth of Toronto, but their viewpoint was comparatively recent, from the 1950s onward, and even that did not fully show the former extent of the transit network which was once almost entirely operated with streetcars.

I often get questions about the streetcar system as it was, and this article is intended to consolidate the bits and pieces in one place. The route histories will give some indication of why there is so much streetcar track in apparently odd places today. Remember also that the downtown one-way streets date from the 1950s when the DVP/Gardiner recruited several streets as on/off ramps to the expressway network and “optimised” them for use by motorists.

Information for 1928 is taken mainly from Bromley’s book. Other sources are Rails From The Junction by James V. Salmon, Riding the Radials by Robert M. Stamp, and The Toronto Trolley Car Story by Louis H. Pursley.

Much more is at Munro's site.

[ISL] "Haida clan strips titles from two hereditary chiefs for supporting Northern Gateway pipeline"

Postmedia News' Jeff Lee reports about the very strong Haida reaction against two Haida chiefs who supported the Northern Gateway Pipeline.

The extraordinary decision by a Haida clan to strip two of its hereditary chiefs of their titles for secretly supporting Enbridge Inc.’s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline is being closely watched by First Nations across Canada.

The rebuke, which was delivered last week in an elaborate ceremony witnessed by more than 500 people, came as the Haida nation rejected what they say is a growing trend by companies to enlist the support of hereditary chiefs as a way of claiming broad First Nations support.

“This is an absolutely huge decision and I think it is a wake-up call to the hereditary system of governance and leadership,” said Grand Chief Stewart Phillip of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs.

“I think First Nations across the province and throughout Indian country in general are paying attention to these developments.”

On Aug. 15, members of the clan stripped Carmen Goertzen and Francis Ingram of their titles, effectively removing them as representatives of two houses, the Yahgulaanaas Janaas of Daadens, and the Iitjaaw Yaahl Naas. Goertzen, a well-known Haida artist, had held the position for 25 years. Ingram had only been appointed a year ago.

The men were part of a group of eight, including two other hereditary chiefs, who signed a letter to the National Energy Board in March supporting Northern Gateway’s request for a time extension to its proposal for the oil transport pipeline. Earlier this summer the federal government overturned Northern Gateway’s application, leaving the company with only one more “faint hope” opportunity.

[ISL] "Fear of Rattlesnake Island"

The NYR Daily's Christopher Benfey reports about the controversy surrounding the reintroduction of snakes to a Massachusetts island.

We were sitting, my wife and I, at a summer dinner party by the pool, in honor of a mother and her college-age daughter visiting from Chicago. Just for a moment, as night was coming on, the subject of rattlesnakes—our Massachusetts Timber Rattlesnakes, Crotalus horridus, to be precise—edged out the incessant talk of Trump Trump Trump. Our visitors, full of the police troubles in Chicago, were unaware of the Great Rattlesnake Controversy, and Tara, our well-informed hostess, weighed in first.

Four towns in central Massachusetts, she explained, were deliberately flooded during the 1930s, their entire population—along with 6,000 graves, she added ghoulishly—“relocated” to create the Quabbin Reservoir, and bring water to Boston. Some quaint houses were salvaged from the general destruction and moved, wall by wall, to prosperous towns like Amherst (where we now live), but stores and other businesses, a state highway, even a railroad, were lost forever.

As two huge dams were set in place and the waters rose, eventually covering thirty-nine square miles, some of the higher elevations—like Mount Ararat after Noah’s flood—became islands in the vast expanse. One of these islands, closed to public access and located in the middle of the reservoir, is named Mount Zion, and it was here that the state of Massachusetts has proposed to introduce a small colony of Timber Rattlesnakes, beginning in 2017, to the vehement outrage of many local residents, who treasure the banks of the Quabbin for fishing and its pristine waters for boating.

Tara is a local, unlike the rest of us urban transplants, and I respected her sense of solidarity with the displaced. Their parents and grandparents were not asked if they were okay with abandoning their homes; they themselves were not asked if they wouldn’t mind having a few rattlesnakes as neighbors. But I myself would not have begun the story with the eradication of the four towns by government fiat, and the scattering of their population.

[ISL] "P.E.I. potato growers welcome rainfall"

The Guardian of Charlottetown's Eric McCarthy tells about Prince Edward Island's drought, something just beginning to hit by the time I left. Apparently the west was particularly badly hit.

Prince Edward Island might be small, but it can offer up a mixed bag of weather at different places in the province at the same time. Just ask a potato grower.

St. Louis and area grower, Francis Shea, said the extreme western part of the province suffered through a very dry summer.

“The O’Leary area was getting rain; they were getting rains in the evening and we never got a drop up here,” he said.

That changed on Wednesday when the whole province got a generous soaking from Mother Nature.

“The Island’s small, but she’s got some weird weather patterns,” Shea acknowledged. He noted the O’Leary area is normally drier than the tip of the province, but that’s not the case this summer.