[CAT] Shakespeare, listening to another cat

[PHOTO] Quiet home in summer, North River Road at Brighton

This scene, glimpsed from a car window on the North River Road in the Charlottetown neighbourhood of Brighton, compelled me to photograph it. It just looked so peaceful, and green.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• The Dragon's Gaze looks at Proxima Centauri b, its atmosphere and its geomagnetics and its history and, of course, its potential habitability.


• The Dragon's Tales wonders about the origins of Titan's channels.


• Torontoist notes mental health care issues for those without a family doctor.


• The Volokh Conspiracy notes European Union rulings on linkage.


• Window on Eurasia notes the poor position of local recruits in the Donbas republics' militaries.

[ISL] "Chinese middle class wants Atlantic Canada's seafood"

The Guardian of Charlottetown reports on the popularity of Atlantic Canadian seafood in China.

With middle class incomes on the rise in China, the demand for Atlantic Canadian seafood products is rapidly increasing.

Atlantic Canada’s seafood companies are ready to position themselves in the Chinese market, with several representatives just returning from this year’s Seafood Expo Asia, which was held in Wanchai, Hong Kong, Sept. 6 to 8.

The Lobster Council of Canada led an Atlantic delegation of 14 companies to the expo, thanks to an investment of $124,133 from the Government of Canada through ACOA’s Business Development Program, and an additional $20,000 in support from the four Atlantic provinces.

“The Asian market has represented fantastic export growth for all sectors of the Canadian lobster industry with both live and processed Canadian lobster featured on menus and in retail/online platform sales throughout the region,” said Geoff Irvine of the Lobster Council of Canada.

[ISL] "Inuit conference will bring traditional art and music to St. John’s"

The Labradorian's Evan Careen reports on the impending Inuit Blanche event in St. John's. This is a fantastic idea!

This October the city of St. John’s will be playing host to a three-day celebration of Inuit art, culture and knowledge.

The 2016 Inuit Studies conference, co-hosted by Memorial University and the Nunatsiavut government, will bring researchers, storytellers, Elders, and artists together to explore the diverse and unique culture.

The conference will run concurrent to two festivals, the katingavik Inuit arts festival and iNuit Blanche, St. John’s first all-Inuit, all-night art crawl.

The katingavik festival will be a three-day celebration of Inuit film, music and visual arts. iNuit Blanche will feature more than 25 performers spread throughout downtown St. John’s.

The theme of this year’s festival is Inuit traditions, with a focus on Inuit inclusion and Inuit ways of knowing. This is the second time Memorial has hosted the conference and it has been held in in Quebec City, the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. and Iqaluit, to name a few.

“(It’s held) anywhere where there’s a great deal of interest in Inuit culture,” said Dr. Tom Gordon, conference organizer. “But in those 40 years it’s never been hosted by an indigenous government. It has always been a university or research institute. For us, what we’re really proud of, is it a full on collaboration with the Nunatsiavut government.”

[URBAN NOTE] On how The Pas, Manitoba, is losing its paper mill

The National Post carries this brief Canadian Press article. I hope The Pas has something to fall back on.

A last-ditch offer to save hundreds of jobs in The Pas has failed, at least for now.

Earlier this week, Mayor Jim Scott offered to exempt Tolko Industries from business, property and education taxes for three years if the company would delay the planned closure of the town’s paper mill.

That would have saved the company roughly $2.5 million.

But Scott spoke to company officials on Thursday morning and said they don’t seem willing to budge on their decision to close the paper mill on Dec. 2.

Scott said the company did ask if they could forward the offer on to potential buyers for the mill.

[URBAN NOTE] "Toronto’s aging Ontario Place on cusp of mini-revival as it hosts dual festival"

I'm entirely in favour of this, as reported by James Adams in The Globe and Mail.

The site, opened in May, 1971, after more than two years of construction, was the brainchild of Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government which, like the rest of Canada, had been enamoured of what Montreal had wrought on the St. Lawrence River with its fabled Expo ’67. The Tories were keen to have something equally far-out and futuristic for Toronto and Ontar-i-ar-i-ar-i-o.

Funny thing about the future, though: it gets old; it gets scuffed; it gets weedy. Or at least its emblems do. What once seemed the very incarnations of the future – at Ontario Place, this would be the geodesic Cinesphere, the pods-on-stilts structures on the centre island and the diamond-shaped pavilions on its west island – become, over time, the fodder of nostalgia, saying more about the era in which they were conceived than what they seemed to portend.

Which perhaps, in part, explains why, after additions and fixes, including a $10-million refurbishment in 2010, then sundry redevelopment and enhancement proposals, Ontario’s Liberal government closed Ontario Place in February, 2012, and punted its future into, well … the future.

Now, however, the site appears on the cusp of a mini-revival, or at least the six hectares that make up the complex’s western island are. Beginning Sept. 15, the former amusement park site is going to host the first In/Future art festival and the 15th annual Small World Music Festival.

A symbiotic exercise, the dual festival is set to run over 11 days and feature at least 60 art installations, indoors and out, plus more than 45 performers appearing in concert and wandering the locale.

[URBAN NOTE] "Vaughan’s new glass and metal marvel is not your grandmother’s library"

Marcus Gee's article in The Globe and Mail makes me want to go see Vaughan. (Did I say that? Yes.)

Margie Singleton started working in libraries when she was 15. Her first, in Kingston, was a solid, traditional affair with hushed rooms, watchful librarians and long drawers filled with cards cataloging the books by title, subject and author.

Forty-four years later, she is about to preside over the opening of a new library that would have startled her younger self. The Vaughan Civic Centre Resource Library on Major Mackenzie Drive is the latest in library technology and design. Designed by Toronto’s ZAS Architects, it is all glass and metal on the outside, all light and space on the inside. Like the new Fort York and Scarborough Civic Centre branches of the Toronto Public Library, this one throws open the doors and lets the sun shine in.

Ms. Singleton, who is chief executive of the library system in Vaughan, the sprawling suburban municipality north of Toronto, beams at the idea of introducing the $15-million marvel to the public at the official opening on Saturday. It has been open to visitors since May, but she says many people still drive by and say, “What is that? No one would think it’s a library.”

The library’s sweeping, curving walls were inspired by the roller coasters at the nearby Canada’s Wonderland theme park. At its centre is an open-air courtyard with a spreading maple tree.

The open, airy spaces inside are designed to be casual and flexible. Librarians don’t stand guard behind circulation or reference desks any more. They roam around, ready to help, with lanyards around their necks to identify them. Books are displayed in the front lobby the way they would be at a big-box bookstore, a “merchandising” approach designed to draw people in. A staffer even visited a local Chapters to take measurements of the book-display racks so the library could copy them. Ms. Singleton isn’t afraid to borrow.

[URBAN NOTE] "‘Prince of Pot' Marc Emery says landlord trying to evict him"

The Toronto Star's Salmaan Farooqui reports on Marc Emery's problems with his Church Street landlord. I suspect this is all a consequence of the generally poor decision made by so many pot shop owners to set up shop before selling marijuana actually became legal.

Marc Emery, the marijuana dispensary owner dubbed “the Prince of Pot,” says his landlord is trying to evict him from his new Church St. store.

On Friday morning Emery was live-streaming and posting videos of police and his landlord’s representative gathering outside of his Toronto business, Cannabis Culture.

“I think he (the landlord) is definitely responsible for calling the cops,” said Emery on a video posted on his Facebook page, taken inside the store as police gathered outside.

“He’s been trying to get me out from . . . the first day.”

Emery claims he has a five-year lease agreement for a dispensary on the premises with the property managing company Sud Group and “I have not violated or breached our agreement in any way.”

[URBAN NOTE] "About time city embraced demand for Toronto memorabilia"

Edward Keenan writes in the Toronto Star about how the City of Toronto is missing an obvious opportunity to offer for sale Toronto-themed merchandise.

There was a lot of talk about “swag” at the government management committee meeting at city hall Tuesday. The politicians tossing the term around were using it as a synonym for “branded merchandise.” Since swag in that sense generally means “freebies” (or the giveaway “Stuff We All Get” at events or conventions, as Michael Scott of the television show The Office famously said) and they were talking about selling stuff by establishing a gift and memorabilia shop at city hall, they were using it incorrectly.

Yet in another sense, it was the right word for the topic: the newest (already passé, you might say) common usage of swag is as a short form for “swagger,” and the newest addition to Toronto’s evolving reputation is that it has some. Part of the city’s newfound cool can be credited to Drake and the globe-dominating R&B and hip-hop scene he waves the 6 flag for. Part of it is probably the result of the bomb-blasting, bat-flipping Blue Jays of the past couple of seasons, and the underdog “We The North” Raptors playoff drive last year. Part of it is just the result of more than a decade of massive growth and evolution in the city, especially downtown, a pace of cosmopolitan change that inspires excitement. A more earnest local pride has been bubbling up in corners for a generation.

Whatever its component parts, this wave of pride has created a virtual industry in gear: T-shirts that say “Turonno” or “Toronto Versus Everybody”; iPhone cases with images of the streetcar engraved on them and cufflinks made of subway tokens; caps that say “The New Toronto” or “H6ME”; and, of course, those lapel buttons that show the tile patterns and names of subway stations. The list could go on — there have even been bidding wars on the city’s website for old street signs that have been taken down — but the point is there’s a market for Torontophenalia: Matt Blackett, creative director of Spacing, the magazine publisher and retail store that created those subway buttons, told the city committee meeting that his company has sold more than 750,000 of them since introducing them 12 years ago. (I should mention Blackett is a friend of mine and I have written for Spacing magazine in the past.)

Blackett said that if the city proceeds with a plan and seeks an operator for the store, his company would be interested in bidding, and the Spacing store on Richmond St. is a good example of what a civic gift shop can be: instead of just mass-produced CN Tower snow globes, it has toques bearing the names of neighbourhoods, books of local history, toys in the shape of streetcars, vintage TTC posters and die-cut coasters made of city street-grid maps. That the city’s government isn’t cashing in on this market may seem strange.

[URBAN NOTE] Looking back on TTC Transit Stuff

In October of 2010, I had posted my photos of TTC Transit Stuff, the disappointing TTC merchandise store in Union Station displaced by the renovations. The store had closed in June, but it was not much of a loss. As one reviewer caught in 2006 by Transit Toronto noted/u>, this was "a sort of CNE-grade t-shirt store. The merchandise, produced by Woodbridge-based licensee Legacy Sportswear, is of a strictly corporate-giveaway ilk — the items that are not clothing are limited to the odd gift pen; there’s nary even a token holder in sight. Oh, and it’s also in the fare-paid area — so you might want to save your visit for a time when you’re already using the system."





I'd blogged earlier this evening about Edward Keenan's article calling on the City to embrace the merchandising of the city. TTC Transit Stuff must clearly stand as an example of what not to do.

[FORUM] What do you think of the future?

Talking about "the future" is a fool's task, I know. What processes do people use to think about the future? What are their starting assumptions? What role does attitude play?

Nevertheless. What do you think about the future and what it may have in store? How do you think of the future?

Discuss.