A Bit More Detail

• NOW Toronto reports on the long-time independent weekly's sale to a venture capital firm, here.


• The Yonge-Eglinton Centre now hosts a venue where people can nap in peace. Toronto Life has photos, here.


• The family of North York van attack victim Anne-Marie D'Amico hopes to raise one million dollars for a women's shelter. The National Post reports.


• Toronto Community Housing, after a terrible accident, has banned its tenants from having window air conditioners. Global News reports.
  
• blogTO reports on the ridiculous heights to which surge pricing took ride fares on Uber and Lyft during yesterday morning's shutdown.


• blogTO notes that the Ontario government has provided funding to study the idea of extension of the Eglinton Crosstown west to Pearson Airport.

• The City of Mississauga is encouraging residents to take part in a postal campaign to push for independence from Peel Region. Global News reports.


• A Montréal city councillor wants the city to try to get a world's fair in 2030. CTV reports.


• April Lindgren at The Conversation considersthe important role that local media in Thunder Bay can play in dealing, with, among other issues, Indigenous concerns.


• Amy Wilentz considers at The Atlantic whether France, after the devastation of Notre-Dame in Paris, should perhaps contribute to the reconstruction of the cathedral of Port-au-Prince, a decade after its destruction in the earthquake that devastated an already poor ex-French Haiti.


• Ben Rogers at Open Democracy makes the case for seeing London, despite its position as a global city, as also a metropolis inextricably at the heart of England, too.

• Urban Toronto shares a photo of the Toronto skyline, taken from Etobicoke looking east along the Gardiner.


• Toronto City Council can do nothing if the provincial government of Ontario decides to take over the TTC, a secret report concludes. The Toronto Star reports.


• Jonathan English at Urban Toronto considers what scenarios could result from an Ontario takeover of the TTC. The example of London, in the United Kingdom, seems particularly relevant.


• Urban Toronto reports on plans to make the area around Pearson airport a second transit hub for the GTA, alongside Union Station.


• Aparita Bhandavi at The Discourse takes a look at the importance of the strip mall, as an architectural and retail form, in Scarborough.

• Croatian-Canadian fans in Mississauga were definitely organized and ready to celebrate the Croatian team playing in the World Cup finals. Global News reports.


• People in Kahnawake are looking forward to an upcoming powwow, as a celebration of indigenous culture and a vehicle for reconciliation. Global News reports.


• CityLab notes the progress that environmental initiatives in Madrid have had in bringing wildlife back to the Spanish capital.


• Politico Europe reports on the mood in Helsinki on the eve of the Trump-Putin summit there. Avoiding a repetition of Munich was prominent in locals' minds.


• Namrata Kolachalam at Roads and Kingdoms reports from Mumbai on the negative environmental impact of a controversial statue of Marathi conqueror Shivaji on local fishing communities.

• This story of a TTC worker who took a day's fares home with him, where they got confiscated by police, and then compensated by union pressure for having been suspended without pay ... wow.


• Edward Keenan makes the point that cost overruns for city infrastructure need to be taken seriously. The quoted price for a park staircase is just off.


• Daily Xtra notes the sad state of repairs of the rainbow crosswalks of Toronto.


• CBC reports on Twyn Rivers Drive, a Scarborough route some say should be marked as off-limits for heavy vehicles.


• NOW Toronto reports on how Mississauga is starting to outshine Toronto in the department of bike lanes.


• Torontoist's Tricia Wood writes about the almost impressive dysfunction at Metrolinx.

Last Tuesday, Susan Blight delivered Hart House’s annual Hancock Lecture, titled “Land and Life in Tkaronto: New Solidarities Toward a Decolonial Future.” Blight is an Anishinaabe artist, filmmaker, arts educator, and activist from Couchiching First Nation. She is nationally recognized for her work in language revitalization. Blight is also a presidential appointee to the Hart House Board of Stewards, and organizes U of T’s annual Indigenous Education Week.

As the country celebrates its 150th anniversary, Blight sheds light upon Toronto’s 15,000 years of history. She began the lecture by introducing her clan and origins, acknowledging the Indigenous territory that we occupy. The intent of Blight’s lecture was to promote Anishinaabe land, history, knowledge, and particularly, the language—Anishinaabemowin.

In 2013, Blight co-founded The Ogimaa Mikana Project with Anishinaabe writer and educator Hayden King. The project consists of Anishinaabe activists and artists working in Toronto to reclaim the streets and landmarks of Anishinaabe territory with the use of Anishinaabemowin. The main objectives of the project are reclaiming and renaming. This is done by replacing official street, park, and landmark signage with the original Anishinaabe versions. For example, “Spadina” would be changed to the original Ishpadinaa.

“At the centre of the project is the revitalization of the Anishinaabemowin,” noted Blight, “[…] as a pushback against the settler-colonial system in Canada—a system whose objective with regards to Indigenous peoples has not changed.”

Blight acknowledged the dispossession of Indigenous peoples from their land and resources, and how the state’s assimilation policies resulted in devastating effects on Indigenous languages. The Ogimaa Mikana Project aims to remind non-Indigenous people of their place on Indigenous land. It also seeks to reinforce awareness of Indigenous presence in Canada. Moreover, the project hopes to initiate communication with other Anishinaabe in Toronto—a city that can feel alienating to Indigenous peoples with its endless signage that represents the settler-colonial system.

The pitch from the Greater Toronto Airports Authority, backed by politicians from the region, comes amid a growing sales job for transit at the airport. Noting that the vast majority of people who use or work at the airport get there by automobile, advocates of this plan say that there needs to be fundamental shift to transit.

[. . .]

The proposal, which would be funded by the GTAA and has been estimated by them at $500-million, would involve a new and larger passenger processing terminal where travellers would be able to check in for flights and clear security. The plan also calls for new mixed-use commercial space, with room for retail, office space or hotels.

But the biggest change would be making Pearson more accessible to transit. Advocates call for it to become a sort of Union Station for the western side of city – albeit one that would serve far fewer people than the station downtown.

[. . .]

It’s a bold pitch made more daring by the fact that transit plans for the region already are moving ahead. Although politicians have repeatedly shown their willingness to change on the fly – a greater emphasis on GO rail by the province, for example, or Toronto Mayor John Tory’s acceptance of LRT instead of heavy rail on Eglinton Avenue – the broad strokes of the transit vision hasn’t shifted too much in the past few years. But the GTAA is hoping to tweak the plans in new ways.

As envisioned, a transit hub would involve changing the Finch LRT, which is in its very early stages, from its current terminus at Humber College and extending it instead to the airport. It also requires that the proposed Eglinton West LRT be built to run to the airport. This has been proposed by Toronto but the project would need a substantial contribution by the city of Mississauga, which reacted unhappily to the idea.

She started as a 19-year-old cadet with Peel Regional Police and grew up in the force. But, by her own account, the most important moments in the education of Chief Jennifer Evans happened during her work outside the force – at inquiries into why police failed to stop Canada’s most notorious serial killers. Asked to examine the cases of Robert Pickton and Paul Bernardo, Chief Evans concluded that communication failures allowed both men to continue to target women.

Yet today, the 53-year-old chief finds herself under fire for the very thing she learned to value most: the collection and sharing of information. She says her ability to listen is a point of pride, but her critics say she doesn’t hear them.

The conflict can be traced to the racially charged issue of carding. The Peel force has called the practice “street checks” or “street interviews” since it officially began in 1993. Now it is simply the “collection of identifying information.” The civilian board that oversees the force – the chief’s boss – passed a motion last year asking her to suspend the practice, no matter what it’s called. She told the board no.

Chief Evans, one of just a handful of female police leaders in Canada, says she was hired for her decision-making ability. And, though her $289,000-a-year contract is up for renewal next October, she is not one for backing down.

The dispute over carding has sparked a wider debate over whether the Peel force is in step with the times and the community it serves. The country’s third-largest municipal force has had to examine its own demographics – four out of five officers are white, though Peel Region, which comprises the town of Caledon and the cities of Brampton and Mississauga, is the country’s most multiracial (57 per cent are minorities) – and account for a reputation for violating people’s rights. Chief Evans is feeling the heat from the police board, the mayors in her region and community groups who question whether she is standing in the way of change.