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Dec. 6th, 2016
The Globe and Mail features Stephen MacGillavray's interview with Kaye Chapman, a centenarian who at the age of 5 witnessed the Halifax Explosion 99 years ago today.
Nearly a century ago, five-year-old Kaye Chapman said goodbye to her four brothers and sisters as they rushed out the door of their north-end Halifax home. She collected her Bible and hymnbook and was about to play Sunday school, when a deafening boom swept her off her feet.
It was Dec. 6, 1917, toward the end of the First World War, when Halifax was the epicentre of the Canadian war effort.
Just before 9 a.m., the French munitions ship Mont-Blanc was arriving in Halifax to join a convoy across the Atlantic. The Norwegian vessel Imo was leaving, en route to New York to pick up relief supplies for battle-weary troops in Belgium. Both vessels were in the tightest section of the harbour when they collided, igniting a blaze that set off the biggest human-caused explosion prior to the atomic bomb.
The Halifax Explosion devastated the north end of the city, killing nearly 2,000 and injuring 9,000. The blast released an explosive force equal to about 2.9 kilotonnes of TNT. Shock waves were felt as far away as Cape Breton and Prince Edward Island. The Mont-Blanc was blown to pieces, its half-tonne anchor shaft landing more than three kilometres away.
Today, few survivors are left, likely none with the vivid firsthand recall of 104-year-old Mrs. Chapman, who lived on Clifton Street, about two kilometres from ground zero.
“As young as I was, I can see everything and I can even tell what we were dressed in,” she said at her assisted-living apartment in Saint John. “I had a little white outfit on – a tiny white dress and white stockings.”
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CBC News reports from Montréal about how the École Polytechnique is commemorating the 27th anniversary of the 1989 Montreal massacre.
Polytechnique Montréal held a simple ceremony today to mark the 27th anniversary of Canada's worst mass shooting.
On this day in 1989, 14 women were shot and killed at the engineering school by a gunman professing to hate feminists.
The school says it wanted its commemoration to have a more personal touch this year.
In a ceremony this morning, staff members placed 14 white roses at the memorial plaque on the south west side of campus.
Flags at the school have also been lowered to half-mast and will remain there until dusk.
In another ceremony at the Mount Royal chalet later today, 14 beams of light will shine, one by one, into the night sky.
Reuters's Peter Henderson is one of many journalists linking the terrible death toll of Oakland's Ghost Ship warehouse fire to the unaffordability of rent in Oakland, a city that is one of the more affordable in the San Francisco Bay area.
The two-story warehouse engulfed by a deadly Oakland fire at a Friday night dance party was typical of the collective spaces artists and musicians say they have increasingly looked for to cope with rising rents.
[. . .]
Officials have not confirmed whether people were living in the building, which had first floor spaces divided by home-made partitions and a staircase to a second level fashioned with wooden pallets.
However, high rents have forced many artists and musicians to overcrowd houses, take such accommodations and hold concerts and open houses to make ends meet, members of the artistic community said. They are also reluctant to ask landlords to bring living quarters up to fire code standards for fear of eviction.
"If you have multiple roommates (in a house), it is still $1,000 a month," said rock musician Courtney Castleman, 33, who left Oakland for nearby El Cerrito because of unaffordable rents.
Renting a space in an Oakland warehouse, by comparison, could cost $600-$700 per month, she said.
The Village Voice's Sophie Weiner argues that the aftermath of the Oakland Ghost ship fire should not lead to a crackdown against artists crowded in unsafe buildings, or at least that this should not be the only thing done. There needs to be affordable places for artists to live and create.
As the death toll rises from a devastating fire that tore through the Ghost Ship arts space in Oakland, California on Friday, opportunistic publications have begun spinning. Their assessments of the tragedy emphasize the illegal nature of the space, which was neither zoned for housing nor permitted to host events. The New York Times called it a "fire trap;" the Daily Mail, always searching for opportunities to sensationalize, called the space a “death trap” and a “commune”, describing the party as a “rave”—a term that’s nearly impossible to define.
To those outside this tight-knit scene, it may seem bizarre to attend a party in an unpermitted warehouse without sufficient exits or even a proper staircase. But understanding why spaces like Ghost Ship exist—and why they’re so important—is essential as we grapple with the future of grassroots arts spaces in the Bay Area, New York, and beyond.
The party Friday was a showcase for the Los Angeles-based electronic label 100% Silk, whose artists focus on updated versions of classic house music, the genre from which nearly everything we think of today as dance music has evolved. It began in Chicago at a utilitarian venue called The Warehouse, opened by the promoter Robert Williams in 1976. DJs like Frankie Knuckles used multiple turntables to piece together disco songs into a continuous, thumping beat. This style became known as “house music,” a name derived from the venue where it was born.
From the beginning, this new form of music was demonized and persecuted by authorities and the public. "Disco sucks" became a rallying cry among mainstream rock fans, who said they simply disliked the sound of the music but often actually hated it for being effeminate and flamboyant, and for its fans, who were in large part queer people of color. Even openly gay discos sometimes turned away black patrons.
The Warehouse, on the other hand, was based on inclusivity. "My fondest memory is the mixed crowd. Racially, ethnically, sexually. That was the best thing,” Frankie Knuckles told Resident Advisor in 2012. For these people, The Warehouse was a utopian escape where, for a few hours, all that mattered was the music.
Writing for NBC News, Mary Emily O'Hara looks at the queer casualties of the Oakland Ghost Ship disaster.
The fire at an Oakland artists' warehouse on Friday night was so devastating, officials said the current death toll of 36 people comes after only 70 percent of the building was searched.
[. . .]
As of Tuesday, 22 victims had been positively identified and their families notified. Most of the bodies were so badly burned in the fire, identification has been difficult to accomplish.
On social media and in shared Google Docs, people are still searching for their missing family and friends. The LGBTQ community has been especially impacted by the realization that many who attended the ill-fated event on Friday identified as queer or transgender. In a year that saw the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history take place at an Orlando gay bar, the mass casualties at Ghost Ship have left many in the LGBTQ community distraught.
San Francisco resident Elisa Green told NBC Out she had planned to attend Friday night's music show at Ghost Ship but was tired and decided to stay home at the last minute.
"If I had gotten more sleep the night before or if my friend had called and encouraged me, I would have been there," said a stunned Green, who counted multiple friends among the Ghost Ship community and said she was grieving.
"It was such a positive, open community of people," Green added, "At this time in the world, it really hurts."
Torontoist's Tricia Wood takes issue with the idea of imposing road tolls on the Gardiner and the DVP, arguing it would be an unfair tax and that it would not necessarily encourage people to shift to transit.
Road tolls are unfair. Several people have raised the good point that more wealthy citizens drive—but if we manage to tax the wealthy more than the poor with a road toll, it’s by luck or by accident, not by design. Lots of low-income people drive, too.
Correlations aside, road tolls tax usage, not wealth. If we’re taxing an essential service necessary for well-being, which everyone should be able to access regardless of wealth, and if indeed that essential service—mobility—is key to the acquisition and maintenance of wealth, then it should not be taxed based on usage.
A tax or fee on an essential service that is not based on ability to pay is regressive. Period. Mobility is essential in a city. Revenue for the operating and capital costs of transportation infrastructure should come from taxes on wealth.
Keep saying “$2” instead of “$1,000” and you hide the impact of this tax grab. Call it a user fee if you want, I don’t care. For those who have no choice, it doesn’t matter what it’s called.
Those who need to drop off children at daycare or school, get groceries on the way home, or work non-negotiable hours often have no choice but to drive.
A $2 toll is the same as adding a 40-cent gas tax—per litre—for someone who fills their tank each week. Imagine the province telling us they’re raising the price of gas from $1.10 to $1.50/litre. Would city council respond, “Well, rich people drive more”?
CityLab's Laura Bliss shares a video describing how Vancouver managed to transition to a substantially car-free existence. Policy sustained over the course of decades is responsible for this success.
Vancouver's Multi-Modal Success Story from STREETFILMS on Vimeo.
When it comes to nudging drivers out of cars, Vancouver ranks as North America’s biggest success story. Fully 10 percent of commutes to work are on bikes, far exceeding U.S. and Canadian cities of a comparable size. As of 2015, half of all trips within city limits are taken on foot, bike, or transit—a goal the city had hoped to reach by 2020. Ahead of schedule—and way ahead of its peers on this continent—Vancouver’s “active transit” success is the subject of a new short documentary by STREETFILMS. In interviews with key planning officials and advocates in attendance at a summer 2016 placemaking conference, filmmaker Clarence Eckerson traces the city’s remarkable urban trajectory and shows how Vancouver managed to avoid the planning pitfalls that claimed so many other towns over the past few decades.
It all began back in the late 1960s, says the city’s former chief planner (and urban-Twitter celeb) Brent Toderian, when residents rejected a proposed highway that would have torn up the dense urban core and separated it from its famous waterfront. Vancouver is still the only major North American city without a freeway running through it. The open waterfront became the location of the hugely successful Expo ‘86, which was themed around the future of transportation and featured the debut of the elevated SkyTrain, a swoopy automated light rail system. A new extension that opened in December allowed SkyTrain to reclaim its title as the world’s longest fully automated metro system in the world (besting the similarly driverless Dubai Metro). The system also helped pave the way for the dramatic transformation of Vancouver’s waterfront a couple of years later. Hundreds of new residences and offices were built, unified by pedestrian thoroughfares and the city’s seawall—which is “routinely ranked as the best public space in at least Canada,” says Toderian.
The 2010 Winter Olympics encouraged more car-to-pedestrian street conversations, and peppering the in-between years were lots of smart decision-making, such as turning a stretch of Granville Street into a pedestrian mall in the 1970s and the city’s 2008 strategic shift to support cycling as daily form of mobility rather than pure recreation. A mess of new protected bike lanes have pushed Vancouver’s active-transit infrastructure beyond the downtown core: “24 percent of our bike network is now considered [appropriate] for all ages and abilities,” says Dale Bracewell, the city’s manager of transportation planning. A $2 billion plan to expand TransLink, Vancouver’s mass transportation network, was approved last month by the mayor’s council, and stands to bring active transit options to parts of the city that haven’t had them before.
At Open Democracy, Kristian Thorup looks at how class identities can survive the collapse of their economic functions, and how they can inspire new--sometimes threatening--populist ideologies.
In the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election it was clear that Donald Trump's victory relied heavily on the white working class vote. It's well-known that his rhetoric and ideology resonates especially well with this class as he speaks effectively to the feelings and experiences of the victims of a more and more globalised economy and the subsequent decline of the American manufacturing industry.
As the frustrations among these working class voters emanate from the pitfalls of globalisation, it should be clear that the basis for Trump's victory tells us a story much larger than that of the 2016 election. The frustrations among Trump's voters tell us about the fundamental mechanisms of today's more and more globalised capitalism.
Today, capital moves around the globe effortlessly. It easily crosses national borders, finding the most cost effective place to produce its commodities. Free market preachers are excited by the mere thought of how the market with fluid elegance lets itself equilibrate by balancing supply and demand. From their strictly economic standpoint this kind of development only entails advantages from cheaper goods, more efficient production, and allegedly higher economic growth.
But the economic structures do not only produce the material goods of society. They also produce a lot of society's meaning and identities. People's identities to a large extent emanate from their place in the production system. They work as distinguished lawyers, proud and strong coal miners or caring doctors. People tend to find their social value and dignity through their professions.
The question is what happens to people's identities when companies move their production to other countries and thereby remove the economic 'base' of these identities. What happens to the proud worker of a car plant when most of the car plants move to the other side of the globe where labor is cheaper? What happens when a factory worker doesn't have any factory work any more?
NOW Toronto's Malone Mullin reports on what Toronto can learn from Vancouver about the latter's safe injection sites.
In Toronto, three existing needle exchange hot spots, including The Works at Yonge and Dundas, have applied for federal approval to install three to five injection booths at each facility and a “chill-out” room staffed by at least one peer.
Ward 20 Councillor Joe Cressy, who chairs Toronto’s drug strategy panel, defends the site design, pointing to a study that concluded smaller, integrated sites were the city’s best option. Cressy blames federal red tape for any complaints about slow progress and pared-down services.
“We are in the middle of a rapidly escalating overdose crisis, and the research is that [safe injection sites] will save lives,” he says in a phone interview. But “we currently have an overly subjective and onerous federal process that needs to be abolished.”
He’s referring to the Respect For Communities Act, which imposes 26 conditions an injection site must meet before it’s federally sanctioned. The Harper government passed the act in 2015 as a means of ensuring community-wide involvement, but critics wince at the lengthy approval process. Cressy notes the two years of years of planning and consultation that went into the Toronto sites.
Health Minister Jane Philpott announced in September that she would act to remove unnecessary barriers to injection site approval. At least nine communities across the country have faced similar roadblocks in bringing these sites to fruition. Toronto city council itself first discussed injection sites 11 years ago.
blogTO's Derek Flack has another photo essay up, this one looking at Toronto's many and changing Chinatowns over the decades.
Toronto's Chinese population was tiny prior to the early 20th century, with roughly 200 residents scattered in various areas, including clusters on Queen East near George St. and Queen West near York St. The burgeoning Queen East chinatown was short-lived, but the one to the west of Yonge would eventually migrate north towards Dundas St. and become the city's first major Chinese community.
By 1910, the Chinese population in Toronto was creeping towards 1,000, and storefronts along Elizabeth St. started to bear Chinese-language signage. This was the same period when Chinese restaurants first opened in the city. The laundries still existed, but the community's business interests diversified as it grew.
Over the next 40 years, the Elizabeth St. Chinatown was a robust and thriving community, housing both the businesses and residences of the city's Chinese population, which was now growing rapidly. It's quite possible that this Chinatown would have remained the primary hub of Chinese culture in Toronto had it not been for the arrival of New City Hall, which expropriated many businesses and knocked out whole streets of the old Ward neighbourhood.
Despite the fact that so many Chinese buisinesses were razed for the construction of Nathan Phillips Square, remaining area residents successfully fought city plans to relocate the community outright. Rising real estate prices, however, led to the gradual shift of Chinese businesses west along Dundas St., which gave rise to one of the main chinatowns that we know today.
[BLOG] Some Tuesday links
Dec. 6th, 2016 10:56 pm- Apostrophen's 'Nathan Smith notes that his husky loves the winter that has descended on Ottawa.
- blogTO notes Toronto's continuing housing price spikes.
- D-Brief notes that chimpanzees apparently are built to recognize butts.
- Dead Things reports on discoveries of the first land vertebrates.
- The Dragon's Gaze notes the weird patterns of KIC 8462852.
- Marginal Revolution considers Westworld's analogies to the Haitian Revolution.
- Steve Munro looks at the latest on the TTC budget.
- Window on Eurasia notes the controversial nature of the new official doctrine of Russia's nationhood.
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At Filipino news site Rappler, JC Punongbayan and Manuel Leonard Albis argue in their "Were it not for Marcos, Filipinos today would have been richer" that the Marcos regime had a lasting and very negative effect on the development of the Filipino economy.
The consequences were severe. Had the Philippines not dropped behind its neighbours but instead kept its relative position, it might be the richest large country of Southeast Asia, on the verge of First World status even. Instead, the Filipino economy went into first a pronounced relative decline, then after the early 1980s a pronounced absolute decline that took more than two decades to recover from.
Was the Marcos regime or something like it inevitable, or was it something that could have been avoided? What could a rich Philippines look like?
Although imperfect, GDP per capita is widely recognized as a useful proxy for measuring people’s welfare: The larger people’s incomes are, the more goods and services they can purchase and the freer they are in making choices for their own lives.
It bears repeating that, based on this metric, the Philippines lost two decades of development after the debt crisis in the early 1980s. Figure 1 shows that the Marcosian debt crisis put the country on a lower income trajectory. As a result, it took more than two decades for the average Filipino’s income to recover its 1982 level.
Importantly, no such downturn was observed in our ASEAN neighbors. In fact, their incomes grew by 2 to 4 times during the time it took us to just recover. This suggests that the Philippines’ “lost decades of development” were not unavoidable and were borne directly by Marcos’ policies.
The consequences were severe. Had the Philippines not dropped behind its neighbours but instead kept its relative position, it might be the richest large country of Southeast Asia, on the verge of First World status even. Instead, the Filipino economy went into first a pronounced relative decline, then after the early 1980s a pronounced absolute decline that took more than two decades to recover from.
Was the Marcos regime or something like it inevitable, or was it something that could have been avoided? What could a rich Philippines look like?