A Bit More Detail

• Ostensibly bilingual New Brunswick is not having a French-language leaders' debate this election because of the weak language skills of the PC leader. Global News reports.


• A man from Québec was able to hitchhike across Canada, as far as Alberta even, using only his French. The Toronto Star ,a href="https://www.thestar.com/edmonton/2018/08/22/quebec-man-hitchhikes-across-canada-speaking-only-french.html">reports.
  
• Québec Solidaire created a minor political storm over a tweet regarding the official languages of the province. The Montreal Gazette reports.


• Québec Solidaire also wants to give Quebec Sign Language official status. The Huffington Post reports.


• Amazon is working hard to give its Alexa Canadian French language support, making the device fluent in the local dialect. IT World Canada reports.

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• Global News outlines the state of the Machias Seal island territorial dispute between Canada and the United States.


• Faced with mounting costs owing to an aging and dispersed population, is Newfoundland and Labrador headed for bankruptcy? What would happen then? The National Post reports.


• The selection of names of beers from the new brewery of Dildo, NL, has been undertaken with great care. Global News reports.


• The Island Review shares an extract from the new book by Robin Noble about the Orkneys, Sagas of Salt and Stone. http://theislandreview.com/content/sagas-of-salt-and-stone-orkney-unwrapped-robin-noble-extract
  
• Ayanna Legros makes a compelling argument for the recognition of Haiti and Haitians as not being somehow foreign to their region, but rather for including them in Latin America.

• A Casavant pipe organ in a church in Saint John, New Brunswick, is up for sale, with an uncertain future. Will it be played again? CBC reports.


• Syrian refugees resettled in a Hamilton highrise tower have encountered bedbug-related nightmares. The Toronto Star reports.


• Radio Canada suggests that the substantial Francophone minority in Winnipeg--the largest such community in western Canada--may have helped the city attract investment from France and Québec, here.


• JSTOR Daily notes the disastrous experience of Atlantic City with casinos.


• Egypt is planning to deal with congestion and pollution in its capital city of Cairo by building a new capital city. The Guardian reports.

• The story of how the murder of Alain Brosseau by gay-bashers in Ottawa nearly thirty years ago led to lasting change is important to remember. The Ottawa Citizen reports.


• This rather unique statue of a cow in Markham is still standing, despite neighbourhood discontent. The Toronto Star reports.


• The closure of Saint-Louis-de-France Roman Catholic Church in Moncton surprises me somewhat, since Moncton is one of the few growing centres of the Maritimes. Global News reports.


• The Belgian port city of Antwerp is looking to find some advantage from Brexit. Bloomberg reports.


• The impact of sea level rise on San Francisco and the wider Bay area may be devastating. Wired reports.

• Wired notes a bill proposed at the state level in California to force cities to provide affordable and accessible housing through non-NIMBY zoning.


• The Toronto and Vancouver housing markets, perhaps uniquely among the markets of Canada's major cities, are not seeing as much new supply as others. The Globe and Mail reports.
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• The population of Saint John, New Brunswick, has fallen by a quarter since 1971. The city government wants to change this, somehow. Global News notes.


• VICE reports a new census of homelessness in Los Angeles, amid fears of locals that prior estimates might be undercounts.


• The mystery of what happened to Princess Pamela, a famous soul food cook whose Harlem restaurant was famous to those in the know, is explored in this thought-provoking essay.


• At Slate, Annie Risemberg explores how old connections to Liberia and ethnic restaurants helped a corner of southwestern Philadelphia become "Little Africa", a destination of note for West African immigrants.

• The mayor of Saint John, in New Brunswick, wants to attract migrants from Canada's richer but more expensive cities. Global News reports.


• Vancouver wants to keep old businesses in its Chinatown going, so as to keep as much of the old community as active as possible. Global News reports.


• Peterborough's low-income community now has a periodical, The River Magazine, to represent their issues. Global News reports.


• Assembly of the first Arctic patrol ship in a planned program has been completed in the Halifax Shipyard. CBC reports.


• The Alaskan community of Point Hope now finds itself, at least partly because of global warming and the interests of financiers, with all of the Internet bandwidth it could ever want. The New York Times reports.

• CBC notes sea urchin aquaculture could be a thing for New Brunswick, but it is tricky.
  
• UPEI is attempting to help restore the Gulf of St. Lawrence Aster to a viable position in the PEI National Park, CBC shows.


• Even a decade after Halifax Harbour was cleaned up, Michael MacDonald reports for the Canadian Press, locals are still don't swim in it.


• Gaspé and the Iles-de-la-Madeline are among the Québec regions most vulnerable to a changing climate and ocean, Morgan Lowrie notes for the Canadian Press.

Not every house hunter would see the potential in a partially renovated, century old, long uninhabited house in Saint John, N.B.'s old north end.

But Daniel Gable, 36, isn't a typical buyer.

Gable, a musician and former tree planter, became frustrated with real estate prices in his former home of Squamish, B.C., where he said the price of a single-family home starts around $500,000.

He started "searching around the country looking for — not the cheapest home I could find, although that's what it ended up being — but for an affordable house, basically."

The search led him to Saint John's old north end.

Looking online, Gable saw an old red house on Victoria Street listed at a mere $10,000 — a price, he said, that was too good to pass up.

• Bloomberg notes that Brexit may be good for European criminals, looks at the negative impact of Brexit on Japan's retail chains, examines the way a broken-down road reflects India-China relations, looks at Russia's shadow economy and observes Ukraine's effort to attract shippers to its ports.


• The Globe and Mail notes the mourning in Québec for the Nice attacks.


• MacLean's reports on a New Brunswick high school overwhelmed by Syrian refugees and examines the dynamics of Brazil's wealthy elite.


• National Geographic notes that Brazil's capuchin monkeys have progressed to the stone age.


• The National Post reports on evidence of cannibalism among Neanderthals, notes Kathleen Wynne's criticism of "All Lives Matter", and engages with the idea of a guaranteed minimum income.


• Open Democracy engages with Scotland's strategy for Brexit.


• Wired looks at a New York City park built to withstand rising seas, mourns the disappearance of the CD, and notes that scenes of murder will never disappear from our social media.

• Bloomberg considers wind power off of Long Island, looks at Odebrecht's progress despite high-level arrests, and notes New Zealand's criticism of China's maritime expansionism.


• Bloomberg View notes that Germany is a country thoroughly opposed to genocide.


• The CBC notes the Tragically Hip tickets have sold out, and looks at ice melt in Antarctica.


• MacLean's notes the mounting of a monument in Moncton to the three RCMP officers recently killed there.


• The National Post notes that Iraqi Kurds want to be armed, looks at how Calgary is a center for language change in Canadian English, and looks at how Australians want Canada to take in refugees.


• Wired looks at the Louvre's defenses against flooding.