A Bit More Detail

• Urban Toronto shows a photo of the Art Shoppe at Yonge and Eglinton, seven years ago and now in the condo era.


• Sidewalk Labs promises to provide a substantial amount of affordable housing at Quayside. The Toronto Star reports.
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• blogTO takes< a look at Villiers Island, set to be constructed at the mouth of the Don.


• Crowdfunding might yet deliver to Toronto a comic book library. blogTO reports.


• Pride Toronto is undertaking a cross-country study looking at ways to improve police-LGBTQ relations. The Toronto Star reports.

• Lauren Pelley at CBC Toronto notes how, despite trying hard, Jennifer Keesmaat was unable to displace John Tory as the clear front-runner.


• Mark Gollom at CBC notes that John Tory may be able to find ways to work with Doug Ford, though the province will remain the dominant partner in any relationship.


• Many of the tenants displaced from 650 Parliament Street were happy to return briefly to their old homes, to retrieve belongings. The Toronto Star reports.


• blogTO shares these vintage photos of St. Clair Avenue a century ago, to all appearances just another rural road.


• Urban Toronto shared a gorgeous aerial photo of Toronto, looking south from a point in the Don Valley towards the downtown.

• blogTO notes impressive plans for a grand new park at the mouth of the Don River, by Lake Ontario.


• Toronto, happily for its residents, happens to be the fourth-safest major city in the world by one ranking. CTV reports
  
• This account of the life Soroush Mahmudi, one of the victims of the Church-Wellesley serial killer, as told by his wife is heartbreaking. The Toronto Star has it.


• This Katie Daubs account at the Toronto Star of Al Falcone, the King Street restaurateur who is leading protest against the transit project on that corridor, is entertaining reading, at least.


• Edward Keenan makes the suggestion that the street hockey players protesting King Street's transit are missing the point. With the street freed up, what other non-traffic uses could it serve? The Toronto Star has it.

• The National Post notes that Toronto city council voted against naming a stadium after the late Rob Ford.


• blogTO notes that Humber Bay Shores wants to run a private neighbourhood bus service, for want of a TTC presence.


• Andrew Hunter, former Canadian curator at the AGO, calls for a decolonization of art galleries across Canada.


• Joanna Lavoie describes the concrete sculptures of Duane Linklater newly installed across the Don valley.


• At Torontoist, Dennis Duffy reports on the 19th century criminal gangs once populating the Don Valley. Seriously.

• In Toronto, the new Port Lands plan imagines a new island, Villiers, at the mouth of the Don.


• Brexit means, among other thing, that the EU is no longer supporting the UK on the Chagos. The Economist reports.


• VICE notes that people on Mauritius fear extensive fish farming will also boost the shark population offshore.


• The Independent notes that tides and currents have created a new sand bar-cum-island more than 1 km long off of North Carolina, Shelly Island.


• The National Post notes that sub-Arctic Vardo Island, in Norway, has moved on from its fisheries to become a NATO outpost set to watch Russia.


• Carmela Fonbuena reports for The Guardian from Thitu Island, a Filipino-occupied island uncomfortably near a Chinese base in the contested South China Sea.

The City of Toronto is working to determine the cause of a foul-smelling fuel spill in the Don River downtown, while a local water protection charity is criticizing the lack of government action several weeks after the spill was reported.

Bill Shea, director of distribution and collection for Toronto Water, told Global News the city was informed of the petroleum spill in the river near the Gerrard Street overpass two weeks ago by a local resident, which prompted staff to contain it while they investigate the source.

Shea said some type of petroleum product had poured out of a large two-metre diameter sewer near the overpass and officials suspect it originated from a nearby area of hazardous “brownfield” land.

“The petroleum product that’s in that brownfield is leaking into our chamber,” he said.

“It’s a contaminated site that’s known to the [Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change], it’s private property and the property owner is responsible for monitoring the levels of contaminate in that site, in this case petroleum.”

The cost to flood-protect the Port Lands in eastern Toronto, transforming 715 acres into developable land, has risen from $975 million to $1.25 billion.

“Flood-protecting the Port Lands would unlock its great potential for development, for more parks, more public space and for providing room to support the city’s population and it’s job growth,” said Waterfront Toronto CEO Will Fleissig at a news conference Thursday. “This is a transformative opportunity for our city.”

The cost estimate was confirmed by a due diligence report from tri-government agency Waterfront Toronto released Thursday. The study found the probability of the actual cost being $1.25 billion or less is 90 per cent. It is very unlikely the project will costs less than $1 billion.

The increased cost is mostly due to the additional need for soil excavation, soil and groundwater treatment and issues related to flowing sand and compressible peat, which complicates soil excavation and how the land is filled for development.

The three levels of government have already been negotiating cost-sharing of the project, which was made a priority for the waterfront agency 14 years ago.

Neither the federal nor provincial government has committed to fund the flood protection of the largely government-owned land. All three governments did put up $83 million to redo the area around the old Essroc quay, which is a large part of the overall project.