[OBSCURA] On the misleading and changing meaning of the North in Canada

For the past couple of winters, I've been feeling as if I live in a foreign country.

Canadians self-define their country as a northern one, verging on the Arctic. This is true, and yet, most of the major population centres of Canada--the great Windsor-Québec City corridor, the Maritimes, Vancouver, Winnipeg, even--are concentrated in the extreme south of the country. In terms of latitude, all of these cities are located considerably further to the south than many European cities we think of regularly, not just as peers but as warmer destinations. It is the Gulf Stream that keeps Europe warm, that gives Tallinn (for instance) the chance to enjoy a climate significantly more clement than the northern Manitoba port of Churchill.

This has been changing in the past couple of years. It hit me most strongly last year, just before Christmas, when I went out for lunch with a friend (hi Mark!). He was wearing bike shorts, and comfortable wearing them. Why not? It was 15 degrees out. Afterwards, I got out of the TTC at Spadina station and just stood for a moment, looking at the Annex around me. It was 4 o'clock, and starting to get dark, and yet it was warm.

Canada, unlike Europe, doesn't have a Gulf Stream. It does share in the greenhouse effect that is already contributing to record winter highs in the Arctic, and elsewhere.

[PHOTO] Fourteen photos from the Toronto Christmas Market, Distillery District

Last night, I paid my $C 6 to get into the Distillery District for the Toronto Christmas Market. It was worth it, for the energy of being out among the crowds enjoying a winter night just cold enough to numb unprotected hands.

[BLOG] Some Monday links

• Apostrophen's 'Nathan Smith tells the story of how he and his husband got the latest ornament for their tree.


• blogTO looks at Toronto Instagram star Aimee Hernandez.


• Language Hat parses the language of Wallace Stegner's fiction.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the worrying spread of smears and lies.


• Marginal Revolution looks at a musical highway in New Mexico.


• Torontoist describes biking in Toronto in the 1970s.


• The Volokh Conspiracy takes issue with the new Gilmore Girls.


• Window on Eurasia notes that Russia would not accept Ukraine's Finlandization and reports on dissent among Russia's Muslims with the idea of a new state-imposed hierarchy.

[URBAN NOTE] "The life cycle of a gay refugee in Vancouver"

Daily Xtra carries Ahmed Danny Ramadan's lovely autobiographical essay drawn from his experience of how he, a refugee, came to feel himself Canadian and Vancouverite.

Butterflies are beautiful creatures. Their journey from caterpillar to cocoon to colourful butterfly illustrates the beauty and dynamism of life.

Like butterflies, refugees to Canada have their own evolution, one I’ve experienced first-hand living for the last two years in Vancouver.

I think we should respect that evolution. An assumption that gets on my nerves is that gay refugees will shed their old skin, covered in scars from the homophobic communities they left behind, and replace it with a new colourful skin that fits into Canadian society.

I can tell you this is not true; this change takes time, effort and painful transformation. This is not because Canadian LGBT society is not welcoming, or because refugees don’t want to integrate. It’s a simple fact of life: Change is not easy. Immigration is a sudden change, and accepting and celebrating it requires time and hard work, from both the newcomer and society.

I believe this change happens in three stages, just like the transformation of a butterfly.

[URBAN NOTE] "How John Tory went from calling tolls ‘highway robbery’ to crusading for them"

The Toronto Star's Betsy Powell explains how John Tory came to embrace the idea of road tolls for the Gardiner and the DVP.

To Mayor John Tory’s trusted advisers, it seemed an incongruous end to months of internal debate and strategizing on how to address Toronto’s financial challenges, build transit — and not hurt his shot at re-election.

Jet-lagged and still wearing the Christmas-themed, Don-Cherry-style jacket from his appearance at the Santa Claus parade, Tory delivered an impassioned speech on his willingness to back road tolls, even if it meant putting his political career at risk.

“This is the right way forward. This is the right time and it’s the right thing to do,” Tory told his relieved staffers gathered in the boardroom of his second-floor office at city hall, four days before announcing the proposal publicly in a speech to the Toronto Region Board of Trade.

The road to that watershed moment — and raising Tory’s comfort level to make the boldest, most significant decision of his mayoralty — took months of preparation of all those assembled: chief of staff Chris Eby; principal secretary Vic Gupta; Siri Agrell, director of strategic initiatives; Amanda Galbraith, director of communications, and Luke Robertson, director of council and stakeholder relations.

They began laying the groundwork with Tory’s call for 2.6 per cent reductions from city departments and agencies. But that narrative of the right — cutting waste and finding efficiencies will solve all fiscal challenges — doesn’t build subway lines.

[URBAN NOTE] "Pickering pedestrian bridge ran into trouble early on"

The Toronto Star's Azzura Lalani describes Metrolinx's dispiriting venture into building a pedestrian bridge in Pickering.

It began as a lofty venture to give pedestrians a walkway above 14 lanes of highway, linking the GO station south of Hwy. 401 to downtown Pickering north of the highway.

The pedestrian bridge was supposed to be a sleek statement for Pickering, a functional and beautiful bridge that would glow at night with LED lighting.

More than five years after the bridge was supposed to be completed, it is still unfinished and Metrolinx still doesn’t know when it will be.

Dozens of curved metal panels are stacked up with rope along the bridge, outside the glass windows of the catwalk.

“Construction will resume once the contractor is ready to move ahead on all of the structure’s components: the structural steel, the metal cladding and the exterior lighting system,” said Anne Marie Aikins, a spokesperson for Metrolinx.

[URBAN NOTE] "Mayor Tory promises to 'fight against' property tax hike in 2017"

CBC News' Ramna Shahzad confirms that Tory's turnaround on road tolls has not been matched by support for more property taxes.

Toronto Mayor John Tory announced on Monday that he will ensure property tax increases for 2017 will be recommended to city council at or below the rate of inflation.

"We want to allow people to stay in their homes, allow people to have the finances to be in a home when they can, and a big part of that is keeping their property taxes under control," said Tory from the front steps of a home in the Weston neighbourhood.

[. . .]

When Tory ran for mayor, he pledged not to raise property taxes to pay for his SmartTrack plan. This fall, after city staff released a report recommending a 2.1 per cent property tax increase to pay for the transit project, Tory repeated that promise, saying he would look other ways to raise revenue to pay for transit.

"Property taxes are a predictable reliable and fair way to raise money for day-to-day services whether it be fire or policing or parks and recreation programs ... but they are not the right tool for major capital projects," said Tory Monday.

In order to build $33-billion worth of transit and infrastructure projects that are currently unfunded, there would have to be a massive increase in property taxes year after year, Tory said Monday.

[URBAN NOTE] "High Toronto rents 'life or death' for transplant patients"

CBC News' Laura Howells describes how critical rental availability, in the right area, can be for prospective transplant patients. I had no idea this was the case.

When Tina Proulx needed a double lung transplant, moving to Toronto was a matter of life or death.

But with no income and a red hot rental market, just getting on the transplant list was a mountainous struggle costing her and her husband more than $40,000.

"It was very high stress," she said.

"Finding a place to live was extremely difficult," she said.

In order to get on the transplant list, patients need to live within a two-hour radius of Toronto General Hospital — although they're encouraged to live as close to the hospital as they can.

"As soon as they put you on that list it could be an hour before they get a set of lungs," said Proulx.

"Or it could be three months, four months, it could be a year. They don't know."

[URBAN NOTE] "More schools needed near Toronto condos to keep up with family boom"

The Globe and Mail's Caroline Alphonso describes the new challenges for Toronto's newly condo-heavy neighbourhoods, now full with families with young children. Where exactly will these go to school?

Among parents living in Toronto condominiums, Natasha Tysick counts herself lucky.

School boards have struggled to keep pace with the boom in high-rise construction, meaning many children are bused several kilometres through city streets because existing schools have been filled to the brim.

But there is a giant hole in the ground near Ms. Tysick’s condo, so she is hopeful.

A Catholic and a public elementary school are scheduled to open steps from her downtown complex in 2019. Her five-year-old daughter, Sofia Spoltore, will be a three-minute walk from school, as opposed to a 10-minute drive. The complex, known as CityPlace, is near the base of the CN Tower.

“It will bring this community together,” Ms. Tysick said. “When we first moved [here], there weren’t too many children. Now you see so many kids.”

[LINK] "Why peace won’t come quickly for Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador"

MacLean's shares this Canadian Press report talking about the chilly relations between Québec City and St. John's.

They are arguably the least friendly neighbours in Confederation.

Newfoundland and Labrador has been feuding with Quebec since before the Atlantic province joined Canada, with a barely hidden animosity driven by border disputes and hydroelectric power feuds that have wound through courts for decades.

Which is why headlines were made last month when Quebec began talking about possibly “burying the hatchet” on an epic scrap over the lopsided Churchill Falls hydro deal. Premier Philippe Couillard told reporters that it’s not just energy issues — the two provinces can collaborate on other things and need to build more neighbourly ties.

But there is deep skepticism in Newfoundland and Labrador, which has a population smaller than metropolitan Quebec City and a collective wariness borne of distrust.

Premier Dwight Ball says he’s open to talks with Quebec, if they help his province. But any real rapprochement sounds far off.

[LINK] "Killer whales eating their way farther into Manitoba"

CBC News reports on changing mammal populations in Hudson's Bay, with killer whales potentially displacing not just polar bears but belugas, too. (I really like belugas.)

The food chain in Hudson Bay is drastically changing as killer whales take advantage of less sea ice and eat their way into Manitoba, a researcher in Arctic mammal populations says.

Steven Ferguson, a researcher with Fisheries and Oceans Canada and the University of Manitoba, will be presenting his findings in Winnipeg this week at ArcticNet 2016, the largest single gathering of scientists focused on the rapidly changing Arctic.

"We are seeing a lot more killer whale activity in Hudson Bay and they are a top predator. They are really a magnificent, interesting predator — highly efficient," Ferguson said.

Killer whales are not a fan of sea ice because it bothers their dorsal fins. However, sea ice is melting earlier and forming later each year.

Ferguson said that means killer whales are spending more time farther into Hudson Bay and "they are there to eat."

[WRITING] "Decolonizing the future"

Journalist Kate Heartfield's essay for Article Magazine, "Decolonizing the future", provides an exciting take on how indigenous writers of science fiction are rewriting the genre, on imagining futures for their peoples and their cultures.

Wshe was in eighth grade, Darcie Little Badger read in a book at school that the Lipan Apache people — her own people — were “extinct.”

“Like dinosaurs!” she would joke on Twitter years later.

Now she’s an oceanographer who specializes in phytoplankton genetics and a writer of speculative fiction. In one of her recent short stories, “Né łe”, a Lipan Apache veterinarian travels to Mars.

“It really is for me all about the survival aspect,” she explains. “As I was growing up and reading a lot of science fiction and fantasy, I wasn’t really seeing Native characters. That made me wonder why not. Are they all gone, or are they forgotten? This hit me really hard because my tribe really struggled for a long time to survive and is really still struggling… That act of existing, in a science fiction story, in a futuristic setting, is a triumph of endurance to me and it does go against the narrative of colonialism that we really don’t exist.”

The concept of “the future” only exists in the present. It can be shaped by the same colonial structures and narratives that shape the North American present, or it can affirm Indigenous land and sovereignty.

This global, multidirectional work of decolonization has always been a part of the science fiction (SF) canon it critiques — Afrofuturism, for example, has a long literary tradition. It’s long been part of the work of First Nations, Métis and Inuit writers. But Daniel Heath Justice, a speculative fiction writer himself and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Literature and Expressive Culture, says the Indigenous science fiction of North America is now coming into a “golden age.”

“One of the battles that Indigenous writers had for a long time was to have their work seen as real literature and I don’t think we have that same struggle now in the same way. It’s ongoing but I don’t think it’s as acute as it was. So I think now a lot of writers may feel a little bit more comfort in going into genres that may or may not have been seen as having a lot of literary merit for a while.”

[VIDEO] "The Crow Agenda"

The Crow Agenda (1920 X 1080) from Jason Arsenault on Vimeo.

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The Crow Agenda, as described by its Indiegogo fundraising page, is a recent documentary a half-hour long that takes a look at Charlottetown's crow population and the whole complex mixture of thoughts about them. Apparently these feathered apes are common here.

Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island is known as the birth place of Canadian Confederation. The city also plays a lesser known historic role as a roosting site for over 15,000 crows who have been sharing the city space since the 1800s. The crows affect the residents both positively and negatively, and this dichotomy gives rise to an important question – is this murder of crows a persistent problem that needs to be permanently eliminated or a gift of nature from which to draw inspiration?

For some residents an emotional and spiritual connection has developed with the crows. Stories emerge about grandfathers thought to be reincarnated as crows, crows that talk, residents with pet crows, and people who claim to have been feeding the same crows for over ten years. They are in support of leaving them alone and allowing the birds to be uninhibited in Victoria Park. They draw inspiration from the beauty of the birds daily commute in and out of the city. Local artists, dating back to world-renowned poet and Charlottetown native Milton Acorn, have developed a strong stance on the crows. They are in support of leaving them alone and allowing the birds to be uninhibited in Victoria Park. They draw inspiration from the beauty of the birds daily commute in and out of the city.

Other residents have had their lives turned upside down by what they see as an unwanted invasion. Farmers have had their crops ruined, residents have had the paint jobs on their cars destroyed from crow droppings, children and the elderly are afraid to leave their homes due to the overwhelming number of loud birds in the area. The response from these residents has not been one of acceptance. Instead, they have waged a small-scale war upon the birds: a weapon-like sound cannon has been purchased by the city; some residents fire off cap guns, bang pots and pans and garbage lids together in order to scare the birds away. A crow complaint hot-line and bureaucracy has been established to help deal with complaints and local politicians have made getting rid of the crows a key component of their political platforms in the last local election.

The Crow Agenda is an entertaining short documentary film that examines the people of a small East Coast Canadian city who have a unique relationship with these birds. Love them or hate them, the intelligent and mysterious crows have deeply influenced local art, politics and the relationships between family, friends, and neighbours.