[PHOTO] Three photos of merchandise from Avonlea Village, Cavendish

I visited Cavendish's Avonlea Village, an imagined recreation of the sort of late 19th century village centre that Anne Shirley would have lived in, on this trip. The entrance fee that had applied in past years was not in evidence on this trip, but the abundance of Anne-related merchandise--at this site, and at others--shows that Anne is still a moneymaker.

[PHOTO] Six photos from Trinity Bellwoods Park

Last evening, I took a quick walk in a roughly diagonal direction, from the steps in the southeast up to Dundas and Shaw, through Trinity Bellwoods Park.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• blogTO notes the all-gender washrooms of the CNE.


• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly looks at ways people can preserve themselves.


• Dangerous Minds shares photos of homeless people, by themselves and dressed in their childhood dreams.


• False Steps looks at a proposed Soviet orbital tug.


• Far Outliers looks at the Navajo, at their pastoralist lifestyle, at their adaptiveness, and at their 1864-1865 deportation east and their 1868 return.


• Marginal Revolution notes the extreme dependence of Australia on China.


• The Planetary Society Blog considers the question of scale in a Mars photo.


• Towleroad notes the impending success of Frank Ocean's album.


• Window on Eurasia suggests Russia is undercounting Ukrainians, despairs for the future of Russia-Ukraine relations, and notes the Hitler-Stalin alliance's legacies.

[NEWS] Some Wednesday links

• Bloomberg talks about Poland's problems with economic growth, notes that McMansions are poor investments, considers what to do about the Olympics post-Rio, looks at new Japanese tax incentives for working women, looks at a French war museum that put its stock up for sale, examines the power of the New Zealand dairy, looks at the Yasukuni controversies, and notes Huawei's progress in China.


• Bloomberg View is hopeful for Brazil, argues demographics are dooming Abenomics, suggests ways for the US to pit Russia versus Iran, looks at Chinese fisheries and the survival of the ocean, notes that high American population growth makes the post-2008 economic recovery relatively less notable, looks at Emperor Akihito's opposition to Japanese remilitarization, and argues that Europe's soft response to terrorism is not a weakness.


• CBC notes that Russian doping whistleblowers fear for their lives, looks at how New Brunswick farmers are adapting to climate change, and looks at how Neanderthals' lack of facility with tools may have doomed them.


• The Globe and Mail argues Ontario should imitate Michigan instead of Québec, notes the new Anne of Green Gables series on Netflix, and predicts good things for Tim Horton's in the Philippines.


• The Guardian notes that Canada's impending deal with the European Union is not any model for the United Kingdom.


• The Inter Press Service looks at child executions in Iran.


• MacLean's notes that Great Lakes mayors have joined to challenge a diversion of water from their shared basin.


• National Geographic looks at the elephant ivory trade, considers the abstract intelligence of birds, considers the Mayan calendar's complexities, and looks at how the young generation treats Pluto's dwarf planet status.


• The National Post notes that VIA Rail is interested in offering a low-cost bus route along the Highway of Tears in northern British Columbia.


• Open Democracy notes that the last Russian prisoner in Guantanamo does not want to go home, and wonders why the West ignores the Rwandan dictatorship.


• TVO considers how rural communities can attract immigrants.


• Universe Today suggests sending our digital selves to the stars, looks at how cirrus clouds kept early Mars warm and wet, and notes the discovery of an early-forming direct-collapse black hole.


• Variance Explained looks at how Donald Trump's tweets clearly show two authors at work.


• The Washignton Post considers what happens when a gay bar becomes a bar with more general appeal.


• Wired notes that the World Wide Web still is far from achieving its founders' dreams, looks at how news apps are dying off, and reports on the Univision purchase of Gawker.

[URBAN NOTE] "Toronto Should Get Angry About How Council Has Failed to Address the City’s Social Hou

Torontoist's David Hains makes the point that Toronto's neglect of social housing is a monstrous failing.

Only five per cent of Toronto lives in social housing, and many of us don’t regularly interact with these homes or know that they’re in our neighbourhoods. That’s a problem because these units—mostly built in the 50s to 70s—are crumbling in the face of political neglect.

This problem will only be exacerbated by Council’s edict to cut 2.6 per cent from every City department and agency. The upshot? More units will be shuttered and fewer repairs will get done at a time when the agency’s tenants—including some of the city’s most vulnerable citizens—need the help most.

The Saturday edition of the Star explores the Grassways community located at Jane and Firgrove, where walls and brick are literally crumbling, and 22 units have already been closed down. The buildings were slated for much-needed repairs, and, in September 2015, John Tory held a press conference to tout progress at the site.

Now TCH’s CEO says that they don’t have the funding to make the necessary repairs, and more units will have to be closed if the financial situation remains the same. The Star article goes through the sad state of affairs in detail, and it’s worth a read.

In July, Council voted to reduce all City budgets by 2.6 per cent. This means a $5 million budget reduction for the agency, which is pretty manageable. But TCH was already starting from a $96 million deficit, much of it due to unfunded repair needs and increased costs as tenants can’t afford more in rent but utility bills go up. So TCH is actually dealing with a $101 million problem, not a $5 million problem. The consequences in a crisis of this magnitude mean that some of the city’s most vulnerable residents, like those in Grassways, live in increasingly deteriorating conditions or get kicked out of their homes.

[URBAN NOTE] "More crumbling Toronto Community Housing units to close amid budget pressures: CEO"

David Hains' previously mentioned Torontoist post refers to Jennifer Pagliaro's article in the Toronto Star. It makes for distressing reading.

Standing on the pathway between townhome complexes in the Toronto Community Housing neighbourhood at Jane St. and Firgrove Cres., Sheila Penny, vice-president of facilities management, holds out a jagged chunk of speckled red brick the size of her palm to demonstrate.

The crumbling brick exteriors, the deterioration exacerbated by water damage, have already left 22 units uninhabitable. One unit has been closed some 15 years, building officials said. Back yards have been quarantined with construction fencing strewn with “danger” signs.

[. . .]

Last year, this community was slated for revival, one of three areas selected for co-ordinated and expedited repairs as part of what’s called the “ReSet” program — a fresh start meant to prioritize needs with help from residents and to save money through bulk purchasing. Mayor John Tory was on hand in September to make the announcement, standing on the Grassway’s basketball court. He called the closure of units due to lack of repairs “not an acceptable situation.”

But heading into budget season, TCH faces a $96 million gap in operating funding and is short $1.7 billion that was expected but has yet to materialize from higher levels of government to make much-needed repairs across the city.

With a council-approved budget direction led by Tory requiring all agencies and departments to find 2.6 per cent in savings, the housing corporation’s CEO Greg Spearn said inevitable cuts will mean cancelling quality-of-life improvements proposed by Tory’s own housing taskforce last year.

[URBAN NOTE] "High-rise living increasingly part of GTA’s high-priced housing"

The Toronto Star's Tess Kalinowski describes the rise of the high-rise home throughout the Greater Toronto Area.

High-rise living and sky-high home prices aren't just for downtowners any more.

Toronto is still the hotbed of condo activity, with more than half of sales occurring in the city. But apartments are a hot commodity all over, with sales across the region rising 52 per cent in July compared to the same month last year.

Low-rise home sales declined 32 per cent last month, part of a 7 per cent drop this year to date. But high rises have risen 25 per cent year over year in 2016.

The average price of a new low-rise Toronto-area home — including detached houses, semis and townhomes — continued edging closer to the $1 million mark last month, hitting $906,508 — up 12 per cent over July 2015.

At the same time, the supply of ground-level new homes has plummeted, according to an Altus Group report for the Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD) released Monday.

[URBAN NOTE] "TTC gets $500M boost from Ottawa"

Betsy Powell of the Toronto Star shares the news.

Ottawa will pump $500 million into the beleaguered TTC in 2016-17 for dozens of projects, ranging from subway and bus repairs to adding bike parking at 40 stations, the Star has learned.

The federal cash is flowing to the province and cities to spend on transit and water, to “make sure what we already have is in a state of good repair and optimizing our existing infrastructure,” Kate Monfette, spokeswoman for the Ministry of Infrastructure and Communities, said Monday.

It’s a substantial down-payment on the $840 million the federal government has earmarked for Toronto transit. “There are more projects to come,” Monfette said.

TTC chair Josh Colle acknowledged the funded projects are not glamorous but said the nuts-and-bolts transit work is needed to reduce breakdowns and delays.

“This kind of work just gets neglected constantly — it’s hard to ribbon-cut for a subway pump but people get angry when we close a line or a station to deal with repairs. With a (repair) backlog so big, we just need help from other levels of government. To have a federal government that gets that and steps up is really encouraging and almost unheard of.”

[URBAN NOTE] "City rules on street sales drive food cart owner bananas"

Toronto's problems with managing non-traditional street food, the Toronto Star's Jessica Botelho-Urbanski notes, have not gone away.

A woman who's selling chocolate-covered-frozen-banana treats by tricycle is feeling too ticked to ride as she tries to navigate what she says is the city's confusing licensing structure.

The High Park resident spent about $25,000 to get her chocolate-covered-frozen-banana-on-a-stick-treat business, coco-bananaz, up and running. After jumping through what she called too many hoops at city hall, she plans to shut down the tricycle-based operation for the season.

In a strongly worded letter to Mayor John Tory’s office, Stanleigh expressed her disillusionment.

“Toronto appears to be against innovation, against any sort of change, ‘CLOSED for business,’” she told Tory. “Why does a small entrepreneur have so much difficulty gaining access to information, markets and opportunities in this city?”

[. . .]

“I’m totally flabbergasted," she said. “It’s a maze to try and get through, and it shouldn’t be this way. It should be clear, it should be easy, and they should give people who are trying to start small businesses access to the market.”