A Bit More Detail

• NOW Toronto looks at the Pickering nuclear plant and its role in providing fuel for space travel.


• In some places like California, traffic is so bad that airlines actually play a role for high-end commuters. CBC reports.


• Goldfish released into the wild are a major issue for the environment in Québec, too. CTV News reports.


• China's investments in Jamaica have good sides and bad sides. CBC reports.


• A potato museum in Peru might help solve world hunger. The Guardian reports.


• Is the Alberta-Saskatchewan alliance going to be a lasting one? Maclean's considers.


• Is the fossil fuel industry collapsing? The Tyee makes the case.


• Should Japan and Europe co-finance a EUrasia trade initiative to rival China's? Bloomberg argues.


• Should websites receive protection as historically significant? VICE reports.


• Food tourism in the Maritimes is a very good idea. Global News reports.


• Atlantic Canada lobster exports to China thrive as New England gets hit by the trade war. CBC reports.


• The Bloc Québécois experienced its revival by drawing on the same demographics as the provincial CAQ. Maclean's reports.


• Population density is a factor that, in Canada, determines political issues, splitting urban and rural voters. The National Observer observes.


• US border policies aimed against migration from Mexico have been harming businesses on the border with Canada. The National Post reports.


• The warming of the ocean is changing the relationship of coastal communities with their seas. The Conversation looks.


• Archival research in the digital age differs from what occurred in previous eras. The Conversation explains.


• The Persian-language Wikipedia is an actively contested space. Open Democracy reports.


• Vox notes how the US labour shortage has been driven partly by workers quitting the labour force, here.


• Laurie Penny at WIRED has a stirring essay about hope, about the belief in some sort of future.

• Anthro{dendum} features an essay examining trauma and resiliency as encountered in ethnographic fieldwork.


• Architectuul highlights a new project seeking to promote historic churches built in the United Kingdom in the 20th century.


• Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait examines Ahuna Mons, a muddy and icy volcano on Ceres, and looks at the nebula Westerhout 40.


• Centauri Dreams notes the recent mass release of data from a SETI project, and notes the discovery of two vaguely Earth-like worlds orbiting the very dim Teegarden's Star, just 12 light-years away.


• Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber notes that having universities as a safe space for trans people does not infringe upon academic freedom.


• The Crux looks at the phenomenon of microsleep.


• D-Brief notes evidence that the Milky Way Galaxy was warped a billion years ago by a collision with dark matter-heavy dwarf galaxy Antlia 2, and notes a robotic fish powered by a blood analogue.


• The Dragon's Tales notes that India plans on building its own space station.


• Earther notes the recording of the song of the endangered North Pacific right whale.


• The Everyday Sociology Blog looks at the role of emotional labour in leisure activities.


• Far Outliers looks at how Japan prepared for the Battle of the Leyte Gulf in 1944.


• Gizmodo looks at astronomers' analysis of B14-65666, an ancient galactic collision thirteen billion light-years away, and notes that the European Space Agency has a planned comet interception mission.


• io9 notes how the plan for Star Trek in the near future is to not only have more Star Trek, but to have many different kinds of Star Trek for different audiences.


• Joe. My. God. notes the observation of Pete Buttigieg that the US has probably already had a gay president.


• JSTOR Daily looks at the many ways in which the rhetoric of Celtic identity has been used, and notes that the archerfish uses water ejected from its eyes to hunt.


• Language Hat looks at why Chinese is such a hard language to learn for second-language learners, and looks at the Suso monastery in Spain, which played a key role in the coalescence of the Spanish language.


• Language Log looks at the complexities of katakana.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes the death of deposed Egypt president Mohammed Morsi looks like a slow-motion assassination, and notes collapse of industrial jobs in the Ohio town of Lordstown, as indicative of broader trends.


• The LRB Blog looks at the death of Mohamed Morsi.


• The Map Rom Blog shares a new British Antarctic Survey map of Greenland and the European Arctic.


• Marginal Revolution notes how non-religious people are becoming much more common in the Middle East, and makes the point that the laying of cable for the transatlantic telegraph is noteworthy technologically.


• Noah Smith at Noahpionion takes the idea of the Middle East going through its own version of the Thirty Years War seriously. What does this imply?


• The NYR Daily takes a look at a Lebanon balanced somehow on the edge, and looks at the concentration camp system of the United States.


• The Planetary Society Blog explains what people should expect from LightSail 2, noting that the LightSail 2 has launched.


• Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw points readers to his stories on Australian spy Harry Freame.


• Rocky Planet explains, in the year of the Apollo 50th anniversary, why the Moon matters.


• Drew Rowsome reviews, and praises, South African film Kanarie, a gay romp in the apartheid era.


• The Russian Demographics Blog links to a paper examining the relationship between childcare and fertility in Belgium, and looks at the nature of statistical data from Turkmenistan.


• The Strange Maps Blog shares a map highlighting different famous people in the United States.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel explains why different galaxies have different amounts of dark matter, and shares proof that the Apollo moon landings actually did happen.


• Towleroad notes the new evidence that poppers, in fact, are not addictive.


• Window on Eurasia warns about the parlous state of the Volga River.


• Arnold Zwicky takes an extended look at the mid-20th century gay poet Frank O'Hara.

• CBC reports on the discovery of a substantial store of quinoa seeds in an Indigenous archeological site in Brantford, showing the existence of vast trade networks connecting the Andes to Canada.


• Oil exploration in the Gaspé peninsula, La Presse reports, upsets the Mi'gmag of the Listuguj there.


• National Observer reports on how the Dzawada'enuxw of British Columbia have filed suit against Canada over fish farm development.


• Angela DeMontigny is the first Indigenous fashion designer in residence at Ryerson University, CBC reports.


• Global News reports on how Sharon McIvor, founder of the first healing lodge in the Canadian correction system, says government interference has undermined its nearly completely.

• Hamilton, Ontario, is apparently becoming a major centre for cryptocurrency mining. CBC reports.


• Hydro-Québec is considering higher electricity rates for bitcoin miners. Global News reports.


• The rate at which Alberta's natural environments are disappearing in the face of development is alarming. Global News reports.


• Fish habitats in Canada, happily, will receive extra protection under a new federal law. The Toronto Star reports.


• Public libraries are successfully reinventing themselves as places where users can access technology generally. MacLean's reports.

• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait shares one picture of a vast galaxy cluster to underline how small our place in the universe is.


• The Boston Globe's The Big Picture shares some photos of Syrian refugee families as they settle into the United States.


• Centauri Dreams looks at the Dragonfly proposal for a Titan lander.


• The Crux notes the exceptional vulnerability of the cultivated banana to an otherwise obscure fungus.


• Bruce Dorminey notes NASA's preparation of the Clipper mission to investigate Europa.


• The Frailest Thing's Michael Sacasas takes a look at the role of surveillance in the life of the modern student.


• Hornet Stories has a nice interview of Sina Grace, author of Marvel's Iceman book.


• Joe. My. God. reshared this holiday season a lovely anecdote, "Dance of the Sugar Plum Lesbians."


• JSTOR Daily took a look at why Americans like dieting so much.


• The LRB Blog considers the Thames Barrier, the meager protection of London against tides in a time of climate change.


• The Map Room Blog notes the digitization of radar maps of Antarctica going back to the 1960s.


• Marginal Revolution seems cautiously optimistic about the prospects of Morocco.
  
• Russell Darnley at maximos62 is skeptical about the prospects of the forests of Indonesia's Riau province.


• Stephanie Land at the NYR Daily talks about how she managed to combine becoming a writer with being a single mother of two young children.


• Out There argues a lunar fuel depot could help support crewed interplanetary exploration.


• Science Sushi notes genetic evidence the lionfish invasion of the North Atlantic off Florida began not with a single escape but with many.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel makes the argument an unmanned probe to Alpha Centauri could have significant technological spinoffs.


• Supernova Condensate makes the point, apropos of nothing at all, that spaceship collisions can in fact unleash vast amounts of energy.


• Window on Eurasia notes that, while Kazakhs see practical advantages to cooperation with Russia, they also see some problems.

• Does Venus have a much weaker magnetic field than the Earth because Venus, unlike the Earth, did not suffer a massive Moon-creating impact? Universe Today reports.


• M.R. O'Connor tells the story of how scientists managed to figure out how amazingly long the Greenland shark can live. The New Yorker has it.


• Climate Central notes how, thanks to global warming, maple syrup season is starting earlier every year and the heartland of production is moving ever more to the north.


• At Wired, Joshua Sokol reports on the distant and mysteriously massive black hole J1342+0928. How did it become so incredibly massive--780 million solar masses--when the universe was less than a billion years old?

• Charley Ross reports on an unexpected personal involvement in the disappearance of Kori Gossett. Did an informant know?


• Citizen Science Salon reports, in the time of #sharkweek, on the sevengill sharks.


• The Dragon's Tales links to an article on the Chinese base in Sudan.


• Inkfish has a fascinating article describing how New Zealand's giant black swans went extinct, and were replaced.


• Language Hat notes two obscure words of Senegalese French, "laptot" and "signare". What do they mean? Go see.


• Language Log argues that the influx of English loanwords in Chinese is remarkable. Does it signal future changes in language?


• Lawyers, Guns Money notes how Los Angeles and southern California were, during the American Civil War, a stronghold of secessionist sentiment, and runs down some of the problems of Mexico, including the militarization of crime.
  
• Marginal Revolution reports on what books by which authors tend to get stolen from British bookstores.
  
• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer suggests that Donald Trump is not likely to be able to substantially reshape NAFTA.


• Roads and Kingdoms reports from the recent protests in Poland against changes to the Supreme Court.


• Understanding Society takes a look at the structure of the cities of medieval Europe, which apparently were dynamic and flexible.


• Unicorn Booty shares some classic gay board games.


• Window on Eurasia argues that Russia is going to try to wage a repeat of the Winter War on Ukraine.

Some of the best fishing is in our back yard.

Two young anglers, each no more than 12-years-old, wade in the creek with their fishing rods as the sun breaks through the last of the rain clouds. It’s spawning season for Chinook salmon and the kids, along with hundreds of other community members, have congregated near Highland Creek for the seventh Annual Salmon Festival, where they hope to catch—at least a glimpse of—the fish swimming upstream.

“It still amazes people that there are salmon in these rivers,” says Arlen Leeming, a manager at Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA). “It wasn’t always like this,” he adds, as we walk along a deer path near the riverbed. In fact, 200 years ago, the waterways that feed into Lake Ontario were teeming with native fish populations. The Atlantic salmon was so abundant that inmates at the Don Jail eventually refused to eat any more of the fish, caught fresh and frequently on the prison premises.

In the decades that followed, industrialization, urbanization, and neglect lead to polluted waterways and the demise of many fish populations, including Atlantic salmon. In 1969, the Don River was ceremoniously pronounced dead; other nearby rivers were scarcely healthier. By 1985, the Toronto region was dubbed an “Area of Concern”—an environmental hazard zone—on the Great Lakes.

Since then, the TRCA has helped carry out myriad projects to boost the health of Toronto’s rivers and creeks and restore fish habitats. In 1987, the Toronto and Region Remedial Action Plan (RAP) was formed as a means to set goals and monitor progress around restoring the health of Toronto’s waters, particularly those that feed into Lake Ontario. The most recent progress report [PDF], released this October, highlights immense improvements in the quality of waterways and the species that live there. There have been huge reductions in E.coli counts near the waterfront, resulting in a steady decline of beach closures; the rivers along the waterfront, once thick with a greasy film, now run clear; new and restored habitats for migration, spawning, nursery, feeding and shelter have bolstered species diversity and health in the rivers and the harbour; and fish-eating wildlife are no longer at risk from contaminants.

The threat of wet weather wasn’t enough to put a damper on the Highland Creek Salmon Festival on Sunday.

Some 2,000 people showed up for the annual event in Toronto’s largest green space. It has taken off in popularity since its beginning in 2009, when it drew about 30 people for guided tours along the shores of Highland Creek in Scarborough’s Morningside Park.

“We were worried about the weather,” said Cameron Richardson, a project manager with the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority. “It turned into a really beautiful day.”

The lucky ones on the tours deep into the Highland Creek Valley could see salmon splashing in the shallow waters on their way upstream to spawn.

There were chinook salmon, introduced into Great Lakes in 1960s, as well as steelhead and coho. Richardson said he expects to also see Atlantic salmon coming back, as water quality improves.