[PHOTO] Looking north, Church towards Wellesley

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Beyond the Beyond shares an early 17th century Catholic Church communication doubting the Earth went around the sun.


• blogTO notes the sympathy cards placed outside the American consulate in Toronto.


• Crooked Timber argues that liberal progressivism hasn't been tried in recent years and so can't have failed.


• The Dragon's Tales shares one model explaining the contradictions between the faint young sun and a warm early Mars.


• Far Outliers reports on the roles of different types of British servants in India.


• Language Hat shares a history of Canadian English.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes Richard Rorty's prediction of a Trump-like catastrophe and argues that economics do matter.


• On the anniversary of the Bataclan, the LRB Blog reflects on the music of France.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer notes the grim predictions of Hans-Joachim Voth as to the degeneration of American life likely under Trump.


• The Russian Demographics Blog notes the relatively low population growth of France in the 19th century.


• Towleroad notes Trump's statement that gay marriage is settled.


• Window on Eurasia notes that Belarus will have less maneuvering room under Trump.


• Arnold Zwicky considers the colours of the pride rainbow.

[URBAN NOTE] On those signs in East York calling on whites to mobilize against multiculturalism

This news item from Global News highlights how the US-Canadian border, a thin line even on the map, is in reality wholly imaginary. Counting on the border alone as a defense is a poor idea.

Toronto police have launched an investigation after residents in the city’s east-end found “ultra right wing” posters that urged white people “tired of political correctness” and “questioning when immigration will stop” to join an online movement they suspect arose out of Donald Trump’s election win.

The signs have a bold headline that reads “Hey, WHITE PERSON” and ask, “wondering why only white countries have to become ‘multicultural’?” and “figuring out that diversity only means less white people’?”

They also called for those with similar thinking to join the “alt-right” political movement on several conservative Canadian and American websites.

“I found the posters very disturbing, residents in my ward sent it this morning. I think the sentiments expressed in the poster are totally unacceptable in this city and it’s very worrisome,” Coun. Janet Davis told Global News Monday, after the signs turned up in Ward 31 Beaches-East York.

“I’m quite worried that the Donald Trump election has legitimized this kind of ultra right wing viewpoint and encouraged these kinds of expressions of hate.”

[URBAN NOTE] "Avenue of change: Meet the new kind of street coming to Toronto"

Oliver Moore's article in The Globe and Mail explores some exciting changes in the designs of Toronto streets.

There’s a new kind of road coming to Toronto. A road that uses the space differently, recognizing that it has to do more than just move cars. One that is “beautiful and vibrant” and puts safety first – a crucial move in a city struggling with a rising tide of pedestrian deaths.

They’re called “complete streets,” and while elements of their planning philosophy have already shown up in Toronto, they have never been formalized into an urban design goal. Next week, city staffers plan to pick a handful of streets to redesign under the new guidelines as pilot projects that they hope will be the start of a decades-long remaking of the city.

“We know designing our streets differently saves lives,” chief planner Jennifer Keesmaat says. “The question is: Are we prepared to tolerate, are we prepared to live in a city where preventable deaths are not prevented?”

The scale of this change would be difficult to overstate. In North America, cars have enjoyed primacy for decades, while pedestrians and cyclists were left with crumbs. But the tide is turning.

In New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C., among other places, there’s a growing sense that the public right-of-way – the space from building front across to building front – is among a city’s most valuable assets. And sharing that space in new ways can bring big benefits to the city. When New York turned Times Square into a pedestrian plaza, climbing commercial rents showed the growing desirability of the area. The Square also made its first appearance on a ranking of the world’s top-10 retail districts.

A draft internal copy of Toronto’s new complete-streets guidelines lays out dozens of ways to make changes to this city’s roadways. They specify that the safety of vulnerable road users has to be considered “at every stage.” Noting that people hit by faster vehicles are much more likely to be killed, the guidelines call for speeds to be rethought with safety in mind.

[URBAN NOTE] "Toronto police cracking down on public sex in Etobicoke park"

The Toronto Star carries Cynthia Reason's article in the Etobicoke Guardian noting a police campaign against public sex in a south Etobicoke park. Is this in fact a marker of gentrification in the neighbourhood, as at least two people on my friends list have suggested? I'm completely unfamiliar with the neighbourhood, myself.

The month-and-a-half-old police operation, aimed at “taking back” the park, has netted 84 charges against 65 individuals in just the last few weeks alone, said Const. Kevin Ward of 22 Division’s Community Response Unit.

“We started Project Marie off with high-visibility presence in the park: stepping up our patrols, riding through the trails, and talking to everybody about what’s been going on and what we’re doing about it,” Ward said.

“Then we stepped into the enforcement period of the operation, where we have been operating in plainclothes in the park. And what has happened is that male patrons have been approaching our officers and soliciting them for sex.”

Some undercover officers, including Ward himself, have even had male patrons expose themselves to them in the Forty Second Street park’s secluded trails, pond area, and busy parking lot.

[. . .]

Jake Yoo, who lives close to the park with his wife and 21-month-old son, is one of those frustrated residents who has decided to work with 22 Division officers to help “take back” Marie Curtis Park.

“As a kid, my parents used to let us go to the local park on our bicycles unsupervised at a fairly young age. I would love to be able to do that with my son when he gets older, but if things stay the way they are, we won’t be able to,” said Yoo, a member of the Long Branch Neighbourhood Watch.

[URBAN NOTE] "Check Out How Toronto’s Heritage Plaques Get Made"

Torontoist's Erin Sylvester describes the fascinating process of how Toronto's heritage plaques get produced.

The plaque team at Heritage Toronto has two core members, Camille Bégin and Chris Bateman, who work with members of different communities around the city to develop, pitch, research, write, and install plaques.

They came to plaque-writing from different backgrounds: Bégin is an historian of urban North America and Bateman is a journalist (and a Torontoist contributor). But they both agree that historical plaques have helped them learn about their adopted city (neither is originally from Toronto) and to appreciate community involvement in history.

Heritage Toronto works on four different kinds of plaques: commemorative plaques (the big enamel ones), heritage property plaques (bronze plaques about a building on the heritage registry), legacy plaques (blue plaques made in partnership with the Toronto Legacy Society), and century home plaques (small plaques that go on houses that are at least 100 years old).

For a century home plaque, anyone with an old house can apply and Bateman or Bégin will look at old maps and tax records to see if it’s over 100.

Although the plaque team sometimes suggests topics for plaques, most of the ideas come from community groups or individuals who apply to Heritage Toronto. They usually come to the organization with some research already done and pay a fee. Then, Bégin and Bateman take the application to the Historical Plaques Committee, which decides which plaques will proceed (most of them get approved, according to Bégin and Bateman).

[URBAN NOTE] "Restaurants struggle in shadow of St. Lawrence Market"

blogTO's Amy Grief reports about how the St. Lawrence Market offers such stiff competition to restaurants in its vicinity.

Toronto's St. Lawrence Market is a popular local spot. Both tourists and locals flock to this food palace that National Geographic once rated as the best food market in the world. But the restaurant owners on the adjacent Market Street tell a different story about the neighbourhood.

A few weeks ago, Italian eatery Cresta shut down, so we decided to speak to its neighbours to see what it's like running a restaurant in the shadow of one of the most well-known foodie destinations in the city.

Aly Somani, who recently took over My Market Catch from Tom Antonosakis, has a unique perspective because he also runs Busters Sea Cove, which is inside the market.

"It's kind of like a different world even though they're right beside each other," says Somani, noting that many of the people who flock to the area want to eat inside the market; being beside it is both a blessing and a curse.

"You're kind of competing with inside," he continues. "You get a lot of spillover, which is great, but you know, it's still not considered the St. Lawrence Market, which makes things tougher." That said, by having a popular spot inside the market, Somani can send customers over to his restaurant - and he does, especially when people are looking to eat around 6 p.m., when the market closes on weekdays.

[URBAN NOTE] "Ojibway tacos land in Kensington Market"

NOW Toronto's Natalia Manzocco describes some very appetizing Ojibwa tacos sound like they could be quite good. (Of course they'd be in Kensington Market.)

POW WOW CAFE (213 Augusta, at Baldwin, facebook.com/CafePowWow). Brunch or lunch $17 per person, with tax, tip and a cedar soda. Open Thursday through Sunday. Access: No step at door, small single-stall washroom on main floor. See listing.

I have questions for Shawn Adler, owner/chef of the Pow Wow Cafe, but as we stand by the service counter chatting, we’re interrupted by customer after customer appearing in the doorway of the tiny Kensington Market kitchen. I should note that this was only the café’s fourth day in business.

That morning, Adler and his tacos, built on Ojibway bannock, or frybread, were featured on CBC-TV, and word (as it does whenever a brand-new food item appears on any table anywhere in the GTA) travelled fast.

Adler’s tacos are $12, and as a few customers learned that day, you only need to order one. His rendition of the classic pow wow snack is more akin to a platter-sized salad built on a softball-sized lump of frybread, which assumed its place in First Nations culture when the Canadian government began issuing rations of ingredients like white flour and lard. “It’s kind of like a savoury apple fritter,” the chef explains.

[URBAN NOTE] "The story behind the first computer in Canada"

Spacing Toronto's Chris Bateman tells a fascinating story. It's difficult of me to imagine a time when these devices were so very new.

In 1949, a team of professors and graduate students at the University of Toronto began building a machine no-one in Canada, and few in the world, had ever seen before.

The University of Toronto Electronic Computer Mark I—UTEC for short—was to become the first and only functional computer in the country, but first it had to be constructed entirely from scratch and many of its core components invented.

“It will be able to read figures, write them down, and come up with the correct answer to a poser in calculus,” the Globe and Mail told its readers of the fantastic machine being planned by the university.

“It will be able to compute income taxes; to tell the trend of business at an electrified glance; to play a passable game of chess, and maybe even to forecast weather months in advance. Any of these operations will be done in less than a second.”

In the late 1940s, practically all major scientific and mathematical number crunching was conducted by the human mind with assistance from mechanical calculators.

The invention of even the most basic electronic computer (by today’s standards) promised to open the door to a new world of discovery and innovation. Calculations that would previously have taken years could be done in hours or minutes.

“The computer is actually an aid to, not a substitute for, the human brain,” the Globe and Mail reassured. “It will only be as good as the men who operate it, and will be able to do only what it is told to do.”