[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Halifax, Montréal, Detroit, Bonn, land prices

• Halifax, despite being the best candidate in the Maritimes, is not going to try to get a new CFL team. Global News reports.


• Will repairs to the Olympic Stadium of Montréal be enough to bring back that city's Expos? The consensus seems to be that it won't be. Global News tells the story.


• This report on how community activists and non-profits are trying to establish Internet access in Detroit for people neglected by big telecoms is actually inspiring. VICE reports.


• The former West German capital of Bonn, politico.eu reports, has built a new international role for itself as a UN-linked centre for environmental organizations.


• Justin Fox at Bloomberg notes that not only are rising prices for land and real estate a global problem, but that no one knows what to do about this inequality-aggravating issue.

[PHOTO] Emu, looking back, High Park Zoo

I love visiting the High Park Zoo to see its resident emus, I have lately realized, because emus provide visual proof that dinosaurs have continued to the present day. Dinosaurs are not, as the consensus of a few decades' ago would have had it, a vast grouping of life that went extinct. Dinosaurs have, rather, continued, evolving after the Cretaceous into a plethora of new and highly capable species. Some of these species look at a first glance less like their distant fossil ancestors than others, but others--the emu and other flightless birds--like so like the dinosaurs of old that it is surprising it was ever thought birds were not dinosaurs.

Things hang around--it's just a matter of looking for them.

[PHOTO] Six photos of two swans of Grenadier Pond, High Park, Toronto

On this cold chill night, I thought I would revisit and share some photos I took in the warm green hot fall of two swans feeding on the shore of High Park's Grenadier Pond. They may not be native to North America, but they are lovely, all white and grace.