[CAT] Shakespeare, head turned

[CAT] Lion with glasses, Fairmont Royal York

While giving two new friends a quick tour of Toronto yesterday, we passed by this lion statue at the Fairmont Royal York. Some wit had thoughtfully provided this big cat with a pair of glasses--poor vision, it must have had.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• blogTO shares photos of Toronto streets in the 1960s, cluttered by signage.


• Crooked Timber and the LRB Blog respond to the death of Fidel Castro.


• Far Outliers looks at the exploitative but functional British treatment of servants.


• Language Hat notes the insensitivity of machine translation and examines the evolution of the Spanish language.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money advocates for an energized public response to racist displays in Trump's America.


• The Map Room Blog looks at a controversial Brexit art exhibition.


• Marginal Revolution notes a pay by the minute coffee shop in Brooklyn.


• The NYRB Daily shares images of Hokusai.


• The Planetary Society Blog shares beautiful space photos.


• Window on Eurasia notes how terror famines were used to russify peripheral areas of the Soviet Union, reports on strengthening religion among younger Daghestanis, and suggests there will be larger Russian deployments in Belarus.

[LINK] "Conservative MP Kellie Leitch calls for CBC to be dismantled"

The Toronto Star's Hina Alam reports on Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch's call to take apart the CBC entirely, going one better on Maxine Bernier's call to defund and reorganize the broadcaster.

Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch is proposing to sell the CBC, saying she doesn’t believe the broadcaster should be “propped up by taxpayers.”

“What I’m proposing is that it either be subject to an asset sale or an IPO, whichever will salvage the best value for Canadians with the intention being we get the best value for money for taxpayers,” said Leitch (Simcoe-Grey) on Thursday.

The pledge was dismissed by the NDP as “ridiculous.”

“We’re back in the 1920s,” said MP Pierre Nantel (Longueuil-Saint-Hubert). “How about going back to Morse code?”

Leitch linked her proposal to another of the major policy items she has put forward — instituting a cap on government spending. This means that every department will have to play its part, she said.

[URBAN NOTE] "John Tory’s road toll epiphany"

Spacing Toronto's John Lorinc looks at John Tory's rationale for making the Don Valley Parkway and the Gardiner Expressway toll roads. He deserves some credit, but he hasn't confronted deeper structural issues with revenue collection.

There’s no question that Mayor John Tory deserves credit for hitching his political wagon to road tolls — on the Gardiner and the Don Valley Parkway — at a time when populist fires are raging all over.

The case for such user fees is amply documented, and there are precedents everywhere, not least on the freeways of our tax averse neighbours to the south. Tolls are good for the environment and they can serve to underwrite other social goods, like transit lines designed to ameliorate congestion.

You know the arguments.

Tory, moreover, wasn’t shy about laying out his own political calculations: lots of 905 drivers use these City of Toronto-owned highways and don’t pay a penny for their upkeep or reconstruction. Economists hate externalities, but externalities are most useful if the people hurt by such decisions won’t be voting for you no matter how they feel about road pricing. Commuters can shout all they want at talk radio, but they can’t vent at the ballot box.

Indeed, the thinking behind Tory’s (latest) conversion on the toll road to Damascus brings to mind the reasoning behind David Miller’s advocacy of the land transfer tax, the last great cash cow approved by Toronto city council. In any given year, the constituency most affected is tiny, and unlikely to sway an election.

[URBAN NOTE] "Highway toll plan prompts anger, sense of inevitability, from 905 politicians"

The Toronto Star's San Grewal reports pon the generally negative reaction in Toronto's suburbs, among politicans and the general population alike, to the proposed road tolls. I feel relatively little sympathy with this argument: Making people from the 915 area code pay for some municipal services they use in the city of Toronto makes sense to me.

GTA politicians in the 905 say Toronto’s decision to push a toll on the Gardiner Expressway and the Don Valley Parkway, which are used heavily by 905 residents, is, at the very least, disappointing because there was no consultation, and, at worst, a move that will enrage commuters.

“I think this is a short-sighted solution to Toronto’s problems — they’re literally taxing the 905 to pay for Toronto’s problems,” said Durham Region Chair Roger Anderson.

He said with all the special municipal revenue tools only Toronto has, such as a land-transfer tax, under the Toronto Act, many aren’t being used or are used at rates that don’t capture fair market pricing.

“But they want to keep property taxes so low. A $500,000 house in the 905 pays almost double the property tax that a $500,000 house in Toronto pays,” he noted.

Anderson said tolls will end up hurting Toronto businesses. “I think this is going to backfire.”

[URBAN NOTE] "Cost to revamp Gardiner Expressway goes up $1B: report"

Global News' David Shum reports on the rapidly ballooning cost of repairing the increasingly decrepit Gardiner Expressway. Even if, as Tory proposes, the funds from the new tolls are put towards this project, repairing it will be a huge cost. Perhaps it would be better to tear it down and try something new.

The total revised estimated capital cost of the ‘hybrid option’ for the Gardiner Expressway is going up $1 billion, a city staff report reveals.

The report, which will be presented to the city’s executive committee meeting next Thursday, said the renovation project has increased from $2.6 billion in September, 2015 to $3.6 billion as of this August.

City council voted earlier this year in favour for the Gardiner hybrid option, narrowly avoiding an alternate plan that would see the eastern part of the Gardiner removed.

The reconstruction effort would see existing Gardiner-DVP ramps removed and realigned to the northern rail corridor.

The staff report attributes the price hike to higher project cost estimates, lack of federal and provincial funding confirmation and other projects affecting the construction of the eastern portion of the Gardiner.

blogTO has more, including a link to the report here (PDF format).

[LINK] "Ontario SPCA charges Marineland with 5 counts of animal cruelty"

CBC's Amara McLaughlin reports on the charges of animal cruelty brought up against Niagara Falls' Marineland. I would say it's time: Certainly the conditions facing animals there, including the cetaceans on display, have often been criticized.

The Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has charged Marineland with five counts of animal cruelty after a complaint raised concerns about some of the animals' well-being at the Niagara Falls, Ont., amusement park, which features both marine and land animals.

Marineland is facing cruelty charges regarding three kinds of animals — a peacock, guinea hens and American black bears.

The charges include permitting the animals to be in distress and failing to comply with the prescribed standards of care. In the case of 35 black bears, the zoo has been charged with failing to provide adequate and appropriate food and water.

"Reports of animal cruelty are taken very seriously," said Steve Toy, an Ontario SPCA senior inspector in a news release. "When we receive reports of cruelty that involve wildlife or exotic animals, we will utilize our experts as well as industry experts to assist us with our investigation."

OSPCA officers and a veterinarian responded to investigate when the complaint was made on Nov. 10.

[URBAN NOTE] "Everyone loves the CFL (except Toronto)"

The Globe and Mail's Cathal Kelly takes a look at the utter failure of the CFL to get Torontonians interested--or keep them interested, at least--in Canadian football, in the Toronto Argonauts, and in the Grey Cup being held this weekend.

On Sunday, we’ll get to watch how the Canadian Football League celebrates the demise of its franchise in the country’s largest city. It died during summer, but we’ve waited this long for the party. Attendance will be grudging. Then, they’ll play a game no one here cares about.

The only mourners – the rest of the CFL – are still stuck in the first stage of grief, which is denial.

“The goal for me is perpetuating the future of the CFL,” commissioner Jeffrey Orridge said this week, making the league sound rather like a coma patient. “It is really focused on making sure that the next 104 Grey Cups are as successful as the last 104.”

There’s a problem with that sentence. It assumes that this weekend’s 104th Grey Cup is already “successful.” By any reasonable measure, it isn’t. It’s a public-relations disaster. The only way it could get worse is if a piece of space debris crashes into BMO Field during the anthem.

On Wednesday, the Toronto Argonauts announced that there were “less than” 2,000 seats remaining for the game. This was framed as exciting news, rather than what it is – an admission of defeat.

[ISL] "Erosion threatens Toronto Islands, Gibraltar Point feared at the brink"

The Globe and Mail hosts Daniel Rotsztain's article looking at how Toronto Islands, particularly in the area of Gibraltar Point, is facing an existential crisis due to the threat of erosion.

Cradling the city’s harbour like an outstretched hand, the Toronto Islands are more than a place to escape the city – they are the very reason the city exists at all.

Always a gathering place for First Nations, John Graves Simcoe, the first lieutenant-governor of Canada, also recognized the benefits of a protected bay. He laid Toronto’s nascent grid in a nook where the islands – then a peninsula – connected to the mainland in a vast marsh just east of the Don River.

The settlement was safeguarded with a garrison (Fort York) at the narrow opening of the bay to the west and a stone lighthouse at the peninsula’s tip. As tensions simmered between Upper Canada and the United States, Simcoe named the point Gibraltar to evoke the protective force of the massive rock that guards the comings and goings from the Mediterranean Sea between Europe and Africa.

But Toronto’s Gibraltar is a far cry from its namesake monolith. The peninsula-cum-island, created from currents of sediment deposited in the lake from the Scarborough Bluffs and Don River, was – until Depression-era infill projects – a constantly shifting sandbar, changing shape and form with each season and storm.

Historic manipulation of Toronto’s dynamic coastline has put the islands’ beaches at risk of being washed away. Stabilization of the Scarborough Bluffs, cliffs created by erosion, and the filling in of marshes to create the Port Lands have cut the islands off from their replenishing sources of sediment. And the construction of the Leslie Street Spit has blocked what little sediment does end up in the lake. They are part of years of major waterfront projects done before the words “environmental assessment” entered the bureaucratic vocabulary.

“And if no action is taken, Gibraltar Point could sever into two within 20 years” says Ethan Griesbach, project manager at Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA).

[FORUM] Do you think 2016 has any more surprises in it?

Castro's death, people around the Internet have been saying, proves that 2016 still has a lot of life in it yet. It's still taking victims.

Is there anything you expect will happen in the bit more than a month remaining to the year? Do you think there are trends people have been overlooking which may yet surface? Are there particular kinds of surprises you are afraid might come to pass?

Discuss.