[PHOTO] Welcome to Toronto colouring book, $C 20 each

When I went into the Aga Khan Museum yesterday evening, I saw the Welcome to Toronto colouring book . The Toronto Star's Louise Brown described the project in February.

What colour is Toronto?

Syrian refugee children will have the chance to decide, with a new colouring book created to let them shade in images of the city they now call home.

With captions in Arabic and English, the collection of drawings — some intricate, some whimsical — feature points of interest from the Royal Ontario Museum to the Toronto Islands, Grenadier Pond to the Toronto Zoo, from Lake Ontario to Canada’s Wonderland, all ready to be brought to living colour by young newcomer hands.

The sketches were donated by some 30 Toronto artists as a way to give Syrian refugee families a visual introduction to the city, said Rafi Ghanaghounian, one of three arts supporters who spearheaded the “Welcome to Toronto” colouring book project.

“The idea is that while kids are colouring, they’re exploring the images and learning about the city and also getting a little English as well,” said Ghanaghounian, who organized the book with fellow art supporters Andrea Pearce and Nicole Baillargeon, following the lead of a Windsor high school teacher who created a similar colouring book for that city’s Syrian refugees. He and his partners call their arts group Keep 6 (named for the five senses, plus a person’s own experience of art.)

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• Beyond the Beyond notes that electronic newspapers just don't work.


• blogTO notes that the Eaton Centre's HMV is closing.


• Crooked Timber notes that it will be shifting to moderated commenting.


• D-Brief notes a new sharp image of Eta Carinae.


• Dead Things notes that some monkeys are apparently making stone tools.


• Joe. My. God. shares Le Tigre's new pro-Clinton song, "I'm With Her".


• The LRB Blog is critical of Britain's hostility towards refugee children.


• The Map Room Blog links to a new historical atlas of Tibet.


• The NYRB Daily examines Assange's reasons for using Wikileaks to help Trump.


• The Planetary Society Blog notes that New Horizons target 2007 OR10 has a moon.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer notes the reasons for Ecuador's clamping down on Assange.

[URBAN NOTE] "Bonnie Crombie vs Mississauga’s race-baiters: Are symbolic gestures enough?"

Spacing Toronto's Fatima Syed looks at how a spat involving online racism and Mississauga's mayor illustrates failings in that city's multiculturalism/

Earlier this month, Mississauga mayor Bonnie Crombie was lauded for standing up against racism for the second time in a year. On Sunday Oct. 9, she filed a hate hate-crime complaint with Peel police after a local website published an article claiming she “is converting Mississauga into a dangerous Islamic war zone” so “they can kill her son just for being gay.”

The article comes a year after Mississauga council approved the zoning application for the Meadowvale Islamic Centre. During one council committee meeting, Crombie shamed Kevin Johnston, owner of the website that published the article, for distributing flyers denigrating the Muslim community and strongly petitioning against the construction of a mosque.

“Racism and flat-out lies have no place in Mississauga,” Crombie told the Toronto Star, in a statement that was widely celebrated as strong leadership.

Denouncing racism, however, is a reaction that occurs only after it has reared its ugly head. Crombie’s moves, both times, outwardly demonstrate her intention to tackle racism head-on. But they are little more than symbolic gestures, underscoring Mississauga’s preferred image of itself as a seemingly open and welcoming multicultural city. The fact is that her denunciations don’t address the reality that the Mississauga council continues to both govern and plan in a way that marginalizes its new immigrant communities, explicitly creating political spaces for racism to exist.

Like most multicultural cities, Mississauga embodies a great display of urban diversity, with 47% of residents reporting a mother language other than English. For many, it is an advertisement for global urbanism, where ethno-cultural pockets exist side by side, each with their own sounds, smells and signs.

But the city’s social diversity isn’t working as well as it may outward appear.

[URBAN NOTE] "Mega-projects reshaping Mississauga sprawl"

San Grewal at the Toronto Star describes how Mississauga's transformation is starting to get attention outside of Canada.

At an international biotechnology conference in Philadelphia last year, Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie heard that a Brazilian multinational pharmaceutical company was looking to set up an operation in New Jersey.

“So I pitched them on the GTA — Mississauga,” says Crombie, talking about her city’s growing confidence as a global player, while an unprecedented number of multibillion-dollar projects get set to launch in Canada’s sixth largest city.

Crombie went to Brazil and met with officials of the company, Biolab. “They rolled out the red carpet. Then they grilled me on Mississauga,” she says.

After hearing about the LRT project along Mississauga’s central commercial corridor, a new institute of management and innovation and a new medical research facility at the University of Toronto’s Mississauga campus, as well as a number of large, vertical residential projects in the city, Biolab was sold. It is investing $56 million in a new Mississauga research and development facility.

[URBAN NOTE] "Private donations for Don River Valley Park could be 'blueprint' for future parks"

CBC News' Chris Glover reports on the philantrophic donations set to create a megapark in the Don Valley. The park appeals, but I'm unsure as to the broader soundness of this method.

Mayor John Tory introduced six donors Tuesday who have given a combined $3.5 million to help the city develop the first phase of Don River Valley Park — a move the Toronto's mayor says could be a "big blueprint" for developing parks in the future.

Philanthropist Andy Chisholm — along with his wife Laurie — is investing in a public park for the first time, and he couldn't be prouder.

"My wife has always been a strong advocate, with myself, of these natural spaces and this felt like a good way to invest in that," Chisholm said.

The other major investments come from Frances and Tim Price, the Jackman Family, Judy and Wilmot Matthews, Senator Michael Meighen and his wife Kelly, and Trans Canada Trails.

[. . .]

The private money will help convert the largely untapped stretch of urban valley between Corktown Common and the Evergreen Brick Works into a seven-kilometre network of hiking and cycling trails.

The private donation drive could mark a shift in the way Toronto's wealthiest families donate.

Traditionally, hospitals and cultural and educational institutions have received the lion's share of private money.

[URBAN NOTE] "Condo creep finally arrives in Parkdale"

blogTO's Derek Flack shows how condos are starting to expand west of Dufferin into the heart of Parkdale.

A longstanding question for observers of Toronto's urban landscape has been how long Parkdale can remain a condo-free zone. With the profound amount of development taking place on the eastern side of the Queen Street Subway and the steady increase of popular restaurants and bars, it seems inevitable that condos will infiltrate the neighbourhood.

Concerns about gentrification have been circling for over a decade, and the Parkdale has steadily become an entertainment destination despite considerable efforts by local councillor Gord Perks to maintain a balance between the rise of new businesses and the established vibe of the neighbourhood.

In some sense, new condos (rather than loft conversions) have already breached the dividing line between West Queen West and Parkdale when Q Loft was build at the northwest corner of Queen and Dufferin in 2014, but the real question is when this trend will move further west.

Tentatively speaking, the answer is now. Block Developments has proposed a seven storey development at 57 Brock Avenue on the site currently occupied by the Beer Store. Residents weren't happy with the project at the pre-application meeting in the spring, but the project is proceeding through the various stages of planning.

[URBAN NOTE] "The slow fade of industry on Laird Drive"

blogTO's Derek Flack has a nice photo essay looking at the transformation of Leaside's post-industrial Laird Drive.

Heavy industry has mostly retreated from Toronto in the 21st century, though there remain little pockets around the city where its impact can be witnessed most obviously. The Port Lands fits this description, as does the area around Dupont St. beside the CPR tracks, and most especially Geary Avenue.

These places are so fascinating because unlike so much of the city, they're transitional. Their ties to the past are far more evident than you'll see in a place like West Queen West, where the industrial heritage of the neighbourhood has been effectively wiped clean, and the gentrification process has run its course.

The future has yet to be written in a precious few of Toronto's former industrial zones, and the ultimate character of the streets that comprise them is a process that's playing out before our eyes. You could be forgiven for thinking that you inherit the city in its developed form, but it's always in a state of becoming.

This is perhaps most obvious on a street like Laird Drive in Leaside. There's been enormous change here in the last decade, but there's even more to come as auto garages and remaining industrial tenants slowly give way to redevelopment schemes.

[URBAN NOTE] "Toronto city council takes first step towards regulating Airbnb-style rentals"

The Toronto Star's Tess Kalinowski looks at Toronto's tentative engagement with regulating Airbnb-style rentals.

A Toronto group pushing for the regulation of short-term, Airbnb-style rentals is welcoming a city staff proposal to evaluate the impacts of the rentals and consider what kind of restrictions should be imposed on the booming business.

Fairbnb, which is led by the hotel workers union, says the report is an important step in ensuring there are rules governing short-term rentals. But it doesn’t go far enough in looking at how online rental platforms such as Airbnb can be held to account when that doesn’t happen.

“Platform accountability is really where it’s at if we want to develop regulations that work,” said Fairbnb spokesman Thorben Wieditz.

The city report, before executive committee Wednesday, recommends public and stakeholder consultations be held early next year to look at how to protect the interests of neighbourhoods and property owners and the city’s stock of housing.

It’s a good first step according to Ward 27 Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam, who wishes it had come sooner as it will be at least another year before staff put specific regulation proposals before council.

[URBAN NOTE] "Proposal to licence Toronto rooming houses will face stiff opposition"

The Toronto Star's Betsy Powell shares some of the arguments being made against the recognition of Toronto rooming houses throughout the broader city. I am unimpressed with the claims of regulatory burdens: Allowing legal lacunae to persist, to the detriment of renters, is terrible.

City staff is proposing a zoning and licensing regime for rooming houses across Toronto, a contentious move certain to face stiff opposition in the suburbs where many operate illegally.

[. . .]

“It’s a litany of complaints, they don’t want these houses regulated, they want them to be abolished,” said Norm Kelly, (Ward 40, Scarborough-Agincourt.)

Kelly said anything that adds a regulatory burden and increases the costs for many rooming house operators will “work against a workable licensing system.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me in doing this that in the end you’re going to be getting more illegal (rooming houses) rather than under the proposed guidelines.”

Councillor Jim Karygiannis (Ward 39, Scarborough-Agincourt), said he favors regulation to “guarantee (an) absolute safe environment for the tenants.”

But unless city inspectors can access properties and impose strict penalties, many operators will go underground.

[MUSIC] Janet Jackson, "Nasty"

Janet Jackson's 1986 song "Nasty", saw, according to Engadget, its plays on Spotify surge substantially as a result of Donald Trump's misogynistic comment last night that Hillary Clinton was a "nasty woman".

"Janet Jackson - Nasty (HQ 1080p HD)" (Watch on YouTube)

This song's surge in recognition in the past day is kind of amazing. That this is a good song, and a meaningful song on its own terms and in the context of the week's events, makes it all the better. I own quite a few of Janet Jackson's albums, starting chronologically with the album Control that this song comes from, an album that marks the beginning of her modern artistic and commercial prime and has quite a few songs that, like "Nasty", combine musical verve with a thoughtful mind.