[PHOTO] Alexander Wood on Church, 2012 and 2014 and 2016

On the weekend, I took a photo of the statue of Alexander Wood that lies on the northwest corner of Church and Maitland.

is one of several orphan pictures of mine taken during Pride.

I remembered that I had taken a photo of the statue in 2014.



In October 2012, during Nuit Blanche, I took some night-time photos of the statue. Below is one of the photos, and what I wrote at the time.

On the night of Nuit Blanche, I went to the northwestern corner of Church and Alexander--just two blocks south of the fabled intersection of Church and Wellesley--to take photos of sculptor Del Newbigging's statue of Scottish-born merchant Alexander Wood, unveiled in 2005. Located next to the compass painted on the sidewalk at the same corner, Newbigging's statue of Wood has become something of a community landmark, quite literally a touchstone--apparently some locals rub the statue for good luck before dates.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• blgoTO notes how the Guild Inn was once a popular resort.


• Centauri Dreams notes the import of real scientists in Arrival.


• Crooked Timber notes that anti-Trump Republicans did not seem to matter in the election.


• The Dragon's Gaze looks at cutting-edge options for studying exoplanets.


• False Steps notes a proposed American spacecraft that would have landed on water.


• Far Outliers notes the pointless internment of foreign domestics in Second World War Britain.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the potential impact of a Michael Bloomberg presidential run.


• Marginal Revolution looks at the development of apps which aim to find out the preferred songs of birds.


• Steve Munro and Transit Toronto look at ongoing controversy over the 514 Cherry streetcar line's noise, including upcoming public meetings.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer suggests the election of Trump could lead to the election of a similar populist to the presidency of Mexico.


• The Volokh Conspiracy deals with the odd and seemingly meaningless distinction made by Americans between "republic" and "democracy".


• Window on Eurasia wonders if Trump's negotiating style might lead to worse Russian-American relations and looks at his business history in Russia.

[URBAN NOTE] "Project Marie is shocking, but at least as gay men we know how to respond"

In Daily Xtra, lawyer Marcus McCann talks about his plans to defend the arrestees of Etobicoke’s Marie Curtis Park against their sex-related charges.

The news was shocking: Toronto Police Service spent the fall of 2016 soliciting men for sex and then ticketing or arresting them.

On Nov 11, 2016, we learned that Toronto officers had conducted an undercover sting operation in a cruising area of Marie Curtis Park in Etobicoke. Dubbed “Project Marie,” the sting netted some 72 people, charged with 89 offences.

Many folks see this as a gross overreaction and a misuse of public money. After all, the underlying activity — propositioning someone for sex — is altogether legal. That’s why most of the tickets are for bylaw infractions such as nuisance or trespassing, and others for provincial offences, not for violations of the Criminal Code.

If police wanted to control hanky panky in the park, there are many less intrusive ways to go about it. This kind of undercover sting operation has the potential to ruin the lives of these men and their families, all over something that, in most cases, is as serious as a traffic ticket.

At least we have a template for how to respond. After each successive police incursion into the ways we have sex — and most remarkably after the 1981 bathhouse raids — the script for dealing with these stings remains the same.

[URBAN NOTE] "Proposals could add ‘significant’ new park space at Bathurst and Front"

The Toronto Star's Jennifer Pagliaro notes a very good proposal for a new park on Bathurst below Fort York.

The King-Spadina neighbourhood is poised to get a significant boost in park space if two proposals along Front St. W. are approved at city hall.

The pitch for a new 2.3-acre park at Bathurst and Front streets is the latest attempt to clear open space in the increasingly crowded and parks-deficient downtown core.

The move from Councillor Mike Layton would turn a vacant city-owned property that’s sometimes used as a parking lot into public space.

The west-end neighbourhood has recently been subject to much attention as staff study the possibility of decking over the rail corridor from Bathurst St. to Blue Jays Way to create a new park.

[. . .]

In the interim, Layton, who plans to introduce the plan for the 28 Bathurst St. site at Toronto and East York Community Council on Tuesday, says the proposed park is a “great deal” for the city, which already owns the land.

“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know this is probably a better deal than purchasing land or suspending a park over something else,” he said.

[URBAN NOTE] "The Appeal of Co-op Living"

Torontoist's Samantha Lapierre describes co-op living as an alternative to high rent prices.

The Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada defines housing co-operatives as providers of not-for-profit housing for its members. Members who live in co-ops do not own equity in their housing, and the house is returned to the co-operative once its members move. Some co-ops charge rent that is geared to their member’s income, while some members pay the full monthly charge.

The appeal of co-op living is the affordability and autonomy it provides. Rent paid by each member goes directly into the co-op’s operating costs. Members make all decisions about their housing, from who governs the co-op to how the annual budget is spent. Since a board of directors eliminates the need for a landlord, members work together to guarantee that their housing remains maintained and affordable.

Since 1978, the Co-operative Housing Federation of Toronto has worked to create and preserve over 6,000 affordable homes in the GTA. The CHFT’s biggest boost occurred from 1991 to 2000, when over 2,900 homes were sustained.

However, since 2001, numbers have dropped significantly; the group has sustained 400 new co-op homes during a 15-year period. The CHFT cites recent federal government subsidy cuts to its declining numbers.

Despite this decline, people are still turning to already established housing co-ops as a means for community and, of course, cheap rent.

[URBAN NOTE] "Toronto still 'child poverty capital' of Canada, warns report"

CBC News' Solomon Israel reports on high levels of child poverty in Toronto, poverty concentrated in particular neighbourhoods at that.

Toronto remains Canada's "child poverty capital," with 133,000 children living in poverty according to a new report.

"Divided City: Life in Canada's Child Poverty Capital," released Monday by a partnership of local non-profit groups, describes Toronto as a "deeply divided city" in terms of youth poverty.

"In some neighbourhoods child poverty is almost non-existent, as low as four per cent," said report co-author Michael Polanyi on CBC Radio's Metro Morning on Monday.

"In other neighbourhoods, three neighbourhoods in the city, it's 50 per cent or higher."

Regent Park is the Toronto neighbourhood with the highest rates of child poverty, according to the report, with 58.1 per cent of children living in low-income families, followed by Thorncliffe Park in East York and Oakridge in Scarborough.

In comparison, less than five per cent of children live in low-income families in affluent neighbourhoods like Leaside-Bennington, Lawrence Park South, and Lawrence Park North.

[URBAN NOTE] "How the Mayor’s “Sad, Desperate and Shameful” Scarborough Subway Op-ed Came to Be"

Torontoist's Jessica Smith Cross uses E-mail records to look at how, this summer, John Tory came to write such an offensively-worded article against a Scarborough subway, accusing opponents of racism.

[I]t wasn’t always like that. The original draft was a somewhat boring Tory-esque recitation of the merits of SmartTrack and the Scarborough subway extension. But, somewhere inside the mayor’s office, it changed.

Torontoist received a copy of that first draft of the op-ed and email correspondence about it in response to a Freedom of Information request, as part of the FOI Raccoon project. The email chain provides an interesting peek into the twin roles of the mayor’s office: to make policy decisions and to sell them to the councillors whose support must be obtained for anything to get done and voters in the next election.

The records don’t show why the mayor’s office went for a rhetorically charged attack on subway critics over a sober presentation of facts. They do show that the mayor’s staff was under time pressure to deliver the op-ed to the Star, and only managed to “put it in front of the mayor” an hour before it was sent to the newspaper—two-and-a-half hours after they’d promised to deliver it.

The email records also show that the Star’s editors, before seeing a word of the op-ed, had warned the mayor’s staff the paper wouldn’t publish a “warmed over press release” for the mayor, so the piece would have to add to the debate.

[. . .]

Here’s how it came together. Tory’s chief of staff, Chris Eby, emailed the original, rather mundane, draft about SmartTrack and the Scarborough subway—which bears almost no resemblance to the published product—to colleagues in the mayor’s office on Thursday, June 23, marked as a draft. The following Sunday, director of communications Amanda Galbraith contacted the Star to see if the paper would be interested in running an op-ed from the mayor on SmartTrack and the Scarborough subway. She agreed to send it in by 1 p.m. on Monday to run in the Tuesday morning paper.

By 3:30 Monday afternoon, the Star followed up to see where the op-ed was, while senior Tory advisor Siri Agrell emailed her colleagues the version that was eventually published and wrote that she’d received staff edits and “put it in front of the mayor.” It was no longer about SmartTrack, only the Scarborough subway, and the tone had dramatically changed. An hour later, the mayor’s staff sent it to the Star, and it was published online that evening and in the paper the next morning.

[URBAN NOTE] "A massive farewell party is happening at Honest Ed's"

blogTO's Amy Grief describes plans for a cultural event to be held February in the emptied Honest Ed's. I, for one, plan on being there.

Honest Ed's will close its doors for good at the end of 2016, leaving a gaping hole at the intersection of Bathurst and Bloor. But before you get all teary eyed, put on your dancing shoes because one Toronto group is hosting a goodbye party of epic proportions inside the massive department store space.

The Centre for Social Innovation is throwing Toronto for Everyone, which describes itself as the first, last and only event at Honest Ed's before it's demolished. This festival, which runs from February 23 to 26 will include a market, a dance party and a slew of multi-disciplinary programs - the organizers are currently soliciting submissions and are open to suggestions from all Torontonians.

That's because, as executive director of the CSI Adil Dhalla tells us, the event's all about inclusivity. "We saw what was really an incredible opportunity to bring the city together and ultimately commemorate something that has been iconic to our narrative of Toronto," he says. "And hopefully do something to kind of carry the legacy forward."

He describes Honest Ed's as a place where everyone's welcome, no matter who you are. It's especially important to newcomers and most Torontonians have a soft spot for the space. He says the CSI hopes the event honours the store's legacy and also creates a conversation about what's happening in Toronto right now.

"We have a lot of new developments, and in order for that to happen, a lot of old things are being closed and broken down and moved out of the way," he says. "I say this is as much about the past and the future as it is about the present. And the present is about us having conversations about the experience of a city in transition.

[URBAN NOTE] "Trump-proofing Canadian communities"

Spacing Toronto's John Lorinc makes the argument that we Canadians need to consciously plan ways to resist the spread of Trump's ideologies into our country.

Amidst the miasma of grief and bewilderment that engulfed the past week, I have found myself pondering the question: are we vulnerable, and if so, how?

Certainly, Conservative leadership hopeful Kellie Leitch thinks there’s political hay to be harvested with knuckle-headed ideas like a values test for new immigrants. More broadly, while the outcome of the presidential election is deeply rooted in the fraught history of U.S. race relations, there’s little doubt that the sort of venom Donald Trump has uncorked is highly contagious, and will serve to further legitimate nativist parties in countries like the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, France and Hungary.

In short, it’s clear that Canadians who reject this kind of politics must not be smug, especially not now.

But is it possible to think through what would be required for Canada, as a society, to inoculate itself from these forces? And what does that project look like?

First, it’s important to say that while Canadians tend to be more collectivist, the country is not now, and has never been, free of substantial and systemic racism. It still exists, and has succeeded in finding political and legal expression (Chinese head tax, “none is too many,” residential schools, racial profiling, etc.)

Yes, Justin Trudeau’s Liberals won last year’s election on a platform/stance that rejected the Harper government’s subtle and not-so-subtle appeals to anti-immigrant/anti-outsider sentiment. Our senior courts handed down rulings that pushed back against bigoted laws. But backsliding and revanchist politics is a real thing in our world, and there’s no reason to assume this country is immune.

[AH] "Days of future past: Science fiction anthology to explore Canada's alternative realities"

Author Hayden Trenholm's proposed 49th Parallels anthology dealing with Canada-relevant alternate histories with points of divergence after 1867, sounds fascinating. Metro News's Haley Ritchie had an enlightening interview with Trenholm on the subject.

Sir Wilfrid Laurier said the 20th century would belong to Canada – to be fair, it didn’t quite turn out that way, but what if it had?

In honour of Canada’s 150th birthday, Bundoran Press Publishing House is planning a science fiction anthology exploring alternative histories and futures – what would have happened if the country took a very different turn.

[. . .]

Trenholm’s anthology, titled 49th Parallels, will be filled with short stories by authors across Canada exploring unexpected twists in the country’s history and future.

Trenholm is crowdfunding on IndieGoGo to raise some extra money to better pay writers. So far he’s raised around $1200 for the project, which will be published in fall 2017.

The writers submitting to the anthology will have 150 years to choose from to warp history – including the invention of penicillin, the first radio transmission across the ocean or even confederation.

“The real purpose of doing that is of course to turn a mirror on the society we now have,” said Trenholm. “People tend to think that the way things are is the way things had to be – but of course that’s not true.”

[DM] "A brief observation on the 2016 US presidential election"

I have a post up at Demography Matters noting how the 2016 American presidential elections shows that demographic change by itself does not guarantee political change.