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Sep. 17th, 2016
[BLOG] Some Saturday links
Sep. 17th, 2016 10:25 am- A BCer in Toronto mourns the declining standards behind the Tim Horton's apple fritter.
- blogTO notes that the Toronto vs everybody T-shirt has been redone in the original Iroquoian.
- Centauri Dreams considers Project Orion.
- Dangerous Minds shares vintage North Korean anti-American art.
- The Dragon's Tales links to a paper suggesting that Mars' climate may have been cold but for impacts and volcanism.
- Far Outliers examines the booming Nanjing of the 1930s.
- Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the Long Island Universiy strike.
- The NYRB Daily examines Hillary Clinton's troubles.
- Personal Reflections uses a bus fire to examine the fragility of modern systems.
- Towleroad shares news, and footage, of a Tom of Finland biopic.
- Window on Eurasia links to a report sharing the costs of Russian aggression in Ukraine, including at least ten thousand people reported dead.
The National Post's Jake Edmiston describes how this Rosedale architectural landmark was put on sale. Beautiful photos of the house can be found via the Post's link.
Integral House, one of the most storied accomplishments in Canadian architecture, has finally found a buyer after 18 months on the market.
It was the vision of the mathematician and musician James Stewart, built with reverence to both those passions. The 18,000-square-foot house is complex, with curved glass and oak overlooking a ravine in Toronto’s Rosedale neighbourhood and a state-of-the-art concert hall that seats 150.
Stewart spent 15 years on it and $34 million. When it was finished in 2009, Glenn Lowry, director of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, hailed it as “one of the most important private houses built in North America in a long time,” during an interview with the Wall Street Journal.
The property was originally listed at $28 million in the spring of 2015, then dropped to $23 million months later. It was reduced again to $19.5 million last month and has now been acquired by one of two interested buyers for an undisclosed price, Sotheby’s International Realty Canada said Friday.
The house was known as a philanthropic hub in the city, where Stewart frequently hosted fundraisers and benefit concerts.
After his death in 2014, his family started the arduous process of finding the right buyer — one who would to continue his legacy.
Phil Villeneuve's photo-heavy blogTO post has convinced me: I will be going to Ontario Place tomorrow.
Ontario Place lives again. The defunct amusement park has been resuscitated this month as part of a massive art project that will reanimate the site's previously dormant features like the Cinesphere and silos.
The in/future arts and culture festival launched last night and will run until September 25. Spread out over 14 acres, it's truly a feast for the eyes, ears and belly (there are food trucks and bars scattered all over the property).
Toronto art curators Art Spin together with dozens of artists and art organizations worked together to populate the abandoned island with all types of activations. It's best to head down over the iconic bridge in the afternoon to appreciate things in the daylight before they light up at night. The festival is open until 11 p.m. every night.
Memories will come rushing back from the minute you enter the main pavilion. If you had never been as a kid, you'll be hit with a different kind of rush, and that's one of strolling onto another planet.
The Toronto Star's Jackie Hong reports.
Ontario is updating its unofficial anthem, A Place To Stand, A Place to Grow, for its 150th birthday celebrations in 2017.
Premier Kathleen Wynne was on hand in Ottawa this morning for a live performance of the updated version of the song — with its familiar “Ontairy-airy-airy-o” theme — by Toronto-based band Ginger Ale & The Monowhales.
The updated song mostly sticks to the original lyrics, save for the hook — “Ontairy-airy-airy-o” now sounds more like “Ontairy-oh-oh-oh” and is repeated a few more times — and half of the second verse is now in French. As well, gone are the jazzy drum beat, orchestra and choir — the band used only acoustic guitars, a cajon and two singers for the performance.
Wynne says she was 13 years old when she first heard A Place To Stand, which she calls a “joyous” song that conveys the clear message that anything is possible.
The song was originally written for a short film of the same name that was screened at the Ontario Pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal for the country’s — and province’s — 100th birthday. Vancouver-born composer Dolores Claman and her then-husband, Richard Morris, were hired to write the music and lyrics for the film; the song sold 50,000 copies. The film, which later toured movie theatres in the United States and Europe, would be seen by 100 million people, be nominated for two Academy Awards, and win an Oscar for Best Live Action Short Subject.
The Guardian of Charlottetown's Dave Stewart reports that Canadian discount chain Giant Tiger is set to open up a store next year. This is good news employment-wise, but I have never actually been at a Giant Tiger store to form an opinion of the chain. Readers?
A Canadian discount store chain which operates more than 200 stores across the country is coming to Charlottetown.
Alison Scarlett, public relations with Giant Tiger Stores Ltd., said they will open their first location in the P.E.I. capital city on July 15, 2017.
The chain, which already has a store in Summerside, will be located at 449 University Avenue, which is University Plaza.
“My understanding from our real estate team is that it is in close proximity to UPEI and currently there is a restaurant in that location,’’ Scarlett said, referring to East Side Marios.
“There will be a bit of construction. They are going to be building an addition on to the existing structure to give the additional square footage that we will require.’’
The Toronto Star's Ben Spurr reports on the TTC's budget crunch for this year's operating budget.
The TTC has found additional savings in its 2017 budget, including millions of dollars that will be reaped by a delayed switch to the Presto fare card system, but the agency is still facing a big shortfall next year if it’s to meet the budget target imposed by city council.
In a report released Friday on its 2017 operating budget, the transit agency said that it’s expecting to spend $16 million less on the Presto system next year because it will take longer than expected to phase out older fare media, which include tokens, tickets, and Metropasses. The agency also expects to spend $11 million less on diesel costs.
That will reduce its opening shortfall to $188 million, down from an earlier estimate of $215 million. Coupled with a $15.4-million draw from the TTC stabilization reserve fund, the remaining gap is roughly $172.6 million.
The opening pressure represents increased costs the TTC is facing next year just to maintain existing service levels. They include rising Wheel-Trans demand, the opening of the Toronto York Subway extension, labour expenses set out in the agency’s collective bargaining agreement, and lower than expected ridership this year.
The TTC will have to find enough money to offset the shortfall in order to meet council’s target of reducing its net operating budget by 2.6 per cent compared to this year .The target, backed by Mayor John Tory, is being applied to all city departments.
Janice Bradbeer's long-form article at the Toronto Star explains the sheer novelty, and innovation, of Toronto's Yorkdale Mall. It really is a lovely complex.
The crowded corridors were “like the Friday before Christmas,” when the new Yorkdale Shopping Centre first opened its doors on a cold and cloudy Feb. 26, 1964.
The crush of visitors that Wednesday was so bad, the Toronto Daily Star reported, that a 60-year-old man stepped into a six-foot square plate glass window after mistaking it for a door. The glass shattered and he disappeared into the crowd, rubbing only his nose.
What compelled shoppers to leave their warm homes, hop into their Ramblers, and drive to the rural outskirts at Dufferin St. south of Highway 401 in -9C degree weather?
“The first impression you get is this is shopping in the 20th century,” the Star said about Yorkdale — possibly one explanation for the mall’s popularity, which billed itself as “The new uptown of Toronto.”
Yorkdale Shopping Centre debuted as the largest enclosed mall in Canada and bigger than the original size of any mall in the world. It offered one-third of a mile of shops and services (1.2 million square feet), free outdoor parking and was open from 9:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. daily and Saturdays until 6 p.m.
Toronto had neighbourhood strip malls but nothing like this. Yorkdale was the first Canadian mall to feature two major retailers — Eaton’s and Simpson’s — under one roof, thus dispensing with the parking headaches and congestion of downtown shopping.
The first article, "Nordstrom ready for business in 'vibrant and diverse' Toronto" by CBC News' Ramna Shahzad touches upon the obvious parallels: Why will Nordstrom's expansion not meet the fate of Target's?
David Olive's Toronto Star article "Why Nordstrom is likely to succeed where Target failed" goes into more detail.
The windows are squeaky clean, the mannequins are draped in fresh-off-the-runway attire and the bar is fully stocked.
Nordstrom has finally opened its doors in Toronto's Eaton Centre.
"Toronto is the fourth largest city in North America. It's an incredibly, vibrant, diverse community. Those are the kind of places you want to do business in," said president of Nordstrom stores, Jamie Nordstrom.
The luxury department store has taken its time testing out its Canadian market and slowly opening up locations around the country.
The slow and deliberate move into the Canadian market is what will help them avoid a Target-sized catastrophe, one expert says.
Target decided to close up shop on all 133 of its stores after it failed to impress Canadian customers who were frustrated over the prices and lack of merchandise in the store.
David Olive's Toronto Star article "Why Nordstrom is likely to succeed where Target failed" goes into more detail.
At a time when Canadian household debt is at near-record levels, the Target Canada post-mortem of analysts that Canadian consumers are skin-flinted would seem to augur poorly for Nordstrom. The same applies to Lowe’s, the U.S. hardware and home furnishings chain, and the venerable Quebec department store chain La Maison Simons, also rolling the dice on Canadian expansions.
But that hasty Target Canada post-mortem was wrong.
A Target struggling with unprecedented problems in its home market failed to do its homework on Canada. It offered prosaic goods available cheaper at Walmart Canada, and was chronically out of stock because of a dysfunctional distribution system. And it over-reached in its first non-U.S. market, starting out with 124 Canadian stores. That included haphazardly retrofitted former Zellers outlets in rundown malls, or hidden behind abandoned warehouses.
So far, Nordstrom has plans for just six Canadian stores, in Calgary, Vancouver, Toronto and Ottawa. Two years passed between the opening of Nordstrom’s first Canadian store, in Calgary, and the GTA store openings this month. Another year will pass before the 2017 opening of a third GTA store, at Sherway Gardens (another MVP mall).
“We have a healthy dose of humility,” co-president Erik Nordstrom told Toronto Star business reporter Francine Kopun ahead of the firm’s Calgary opening. “We will look to respond to customer comments right off the bat.”
In fact, Target’s loss of its entire investment in Canada, some $2.6 billion, said little about Canadian consumers, and a great deal about a Target coping badly with the first major reversals in its then 49-year history.