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- A new storyboard in Niagara Falls displays the importance of railways to the city. The Niagara Falls Review reports.
- Niagara Falls city council is considering the idea of linking casinos by aerial car. The Niagara Falls Review reports.
- Global News reports on a drug bust that saw two people arrested in Niagara Falls.
- The Niagara Falls Review reports the number of reported homicides in Niagara Region tripled in 2019, to six.
- The immersive live nativity hosted by a Niagara Falls church sounds interesting. More is here.
- A recent discussion at Niagara Falls city council was dominated by discussion of housing issues and of homelessness. The Niagara Falls Review reports.
- Most revenues from the casinos of Niagara Falls have been directed to the infrastructure of the city. The Niagara Falls Review reports.
- City council in Niagara Falls has approved the construction of a 72-storey hotel. Construct Connect reports.
- In November, the mayor announced the old city hall and courthouse in the downtown of Niagara Falls was scheduled to be demolished. The Niagara Falls Review reports.
- The Bath House Hotel once was intended to be a centrepiece of local tourism. The Niagara Falls Review reports.
- Carrie Bosco writes about the experience of a customer service associate working at the Niagara Falls Public Library, over at the Niagara Falls Review.
- The Niagara Falls Public Library in winter is a happening place for locals. The Niagara Falls Review reports.
- A Chinese developer hopes that a proposed $C 1.5 billion dollar project in south Niagara Falls will still go forward. The Niagara Falls Review reports.
- Niagara Falls is going to have a hard time replacing city historian Sherman Zavitz. The Niagaa Falls Review reports.
- Niagara News reports on the Winter Festival of Lights in Niagara Falls.
[PHOTO] Hotel Europa, Niagara Falls
May. 3rd, 2019 09:11 amI at first was not sure if the Hotel Europa, on the corner of Bridge Street and Erie Avenue in the old downtown of Niagara Falls just south of the train station and east of the bus station, was actually abandoned. I did see some open windows, and I did reason to myself that a hotel in such a prime location must surely be in use even if it might be a dive. But no, I later found out via a local that the hotel had been abandoned for years; one Flickr-hosted photo from 2007 identifies the hotel as abandoned even then. This is a shame: This building, dating back to 1910, really is in a prime location. Were I the enterprising and well-funded sort, I might well try to make a go of this place. I might even make this incarnation succeed.
VIA Rail's $C 23 one-way ticket to Niagara Falls makes use of the convenient Maple Leaf train that crosses the Canadian-American border at Niagara Falls. When the train arrives at the Niagara Falls station, the passengers who had intended to go to Niagara Falls disembark along with the VIA Rail crews, while the Amtrak crews who take the Maple Leaf across the border get on.
After VIA Rail's service from Toronto to Niagara Falls, Ontario dropped us off in that border city's train station yesterday morning, I went inside the station to (among other things) take a look. I was interested to see the below map, depicting the GO Transit service network in southern Ontario. Niagara Falls is literally on the uttermost edge of the network, the southeasternmost extension of the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area's regional commuting network.
I'll be sorting through the very enjoyable day trip to Niagara Falls for some time; sharing some of my photos is going to take up a fair amount of space, for instance. One thing that did impress me, as a Torontonian visiting from the city, was the extent to which Niagara Falls was physically removed from the heart of the Golden Horseshoe, could be substantially inaccessible even. The VIA Rail trip out in the morning was perfectly good, a comfortable ride two hours' long that was only five minutes late, but it was not matched by a corresponding train trip back--we had to book a return trip on GO Transit, an express bus to Burlington and then a commuter rail ride east to Toronto. Had it not been for the combination of VIA and GO Transit service, we wouldn't have been able to get there save by bus.
I live in the heart of a region that, by Canadian standards, is absurdly well-served by transit options. GO Transit does stretch far and wide, extending to Hamilton and Kitchener and Barrie and Oshawa, and bus routes do extend beyond these cities to smaller centres like Niagara Falls and Peterborough, but beyond that? Talk of developing a high-speed rail connection between Toronto and the southwest Ontario city of London have been dismissed by the new provincial government, with talk of perhaps increasing VIA Rail service, but I am unaware of this talk being solidified. There was a brief flurry of excitement this year when the mayor of Niagara Falls, New York, talked of extending commuter rail from Toronto to his city, and that does appeal to me; better yet, I think, also extend GO Transit just a bit further too, to connect to a Buffalo that while more distant from Toronto than Hamilton is also larger than Hamilton. The border, alas, is going to intervene. The Golden Horsehose will remain connected, but cities and destinations just tantalizingly out of reach will remain tantalizingly out of reach to people who do not own vehicles, to the deficit of these cities and to the Golden Horseshoe, too.
Beyond this, what do things look like for mass transit? There are, as best as I can tell, no transit links to such an eminently day-trippable community as Port Hope, just one hour's trip east of Toronto. The Québec City-Windsor Corridor as a whole remains connected by bus and rail routes, but only barely; I cannot help but think that the lack of affordable transit connections in the arguable core of Canada is a good thing. And beyond Central Canada, mass transit options are scarce. Prince Edward Island can barely sustain decent bus routes within and between its major cities, with even the North Shore remaining consigned to private shuttles, for instance, while Atlantic Canada as a whole is lacking. At least things are better than in Western Canada, where a Greyhound hit hard by long distances and high costs has shut down most of its routes, leaving small communities especially disconnected from the wider country and with successors apparently unclear as to how they can fill the gap.
I am lucky in that I only find Niagara Falls a bit complicated to reach, and London offputting. Others outside the Golden Horseshoe, and the well-serviced conurbations of the Québec City-Windosr corridor, face worse fates, trapped in their communities without access to the wider world and facing terrible risks as they try to get out. The so-called "Highway of Tears" in northern British Columbia, known as being a haunt for murderers of women, could only take on this role in the first place because of the need of women to hitchhike for want of any other way to leave.
I can easily make the argument that much more funding is required for mass transit in Canada, to make it much easier for Canadians to move from one community to another. A Canada arbitrarily parceled out into communities of various sizes, each disconnected from each other with the costs of individual travel making regular travel inaccessible to most people, is a Canada that is poorer in so many ways. Why public policy in Canada has not sought to remedy this, if not through direct investment in new transit infrastructure then at least through subsidies to private companies like Greyhound, is beyond me. I would have thought the gains obvious. Far-sighted politicians should seize on this, I'd think, as an issue they can at least try to deal with.
I'll be sorting through the very enjoyable day trip to Niagara Falls for some time; sharing some of my photos is going to take up a fair amount of space, for instance. One thing that did impress me, as a Torontonian visiting from the city, was the extent to which Niagara Falls was physically removed from the heart of the Golden Horseshoe, could be substantially inaccessible even. The VIA Rail trip out in the morning was perfectly good, a comfortable ride two hours' long that was only five minutes late, but it was not matched by a corresponding train trip back--we had to book a return trip on GO Transit, an express bus to Burlington and then a commuter rail ride east to Toronto. Had it not been for the combination of VIA and GO Transit service, we wouldn't have been able to get there save by bus.
I live in the heart of a region that, by Canadian standards, is absurdly well-served by transit options. GO Transit does stretch far and wide, extending to Hamilton and Kitchener and Barrie and Oshawa, and bus routes do extend beyond these cities to smaller centres like Niagara Falls and Peterborough, but beyond that? Talk of developing a high-speed rail connection between Toronto and the southwest Ontario city of London have been dismissed by the new provincial government, with talk of perhaps increasing VIA Rail service, but I am unaware of this talk being solidified. There was a brief flurry of excitement this year when the mayor of Niagara Falls, New York, talked of extending commuter rail from Toronto to his city, and that does appeal to me; better yet, I think, also extend GO Transit just a bit further too, to connect to a Buffalo that while more distant from Toronto than Hamilton is also larger than Hamilton. The border, alas, is going to intervene. The Golden Horsehose will remain connected, but cities and destinations just tantalizingly out of reach will remain tantalizingly out of reach to people who do not own vehicles, to the deficit of these cities and to the Golden Horseshoe, too.
Beyond this, what do things look like for mass transit? There are, as best as I can tell, no transit links to such an eminently day-trippable community as Port Hope, just one hour's trip east of Toronto. The Québec City-Windsor Corridor as a whole remains connected by bus and rail routes, but only barely; I cannot help but think that the lack of affordable transit connections in the arguable core of Canada is a good thing. And beyond Central Canada, mass transit options are scarce. Prince Edward Island can barely sustain decent bus routes within and between its major cities, with even the North Shore remaining consigned to private shuttles, for instance, while Atlantic Canada as a whole is lacking. At least things are better than in Western Canada, where a Greyhound hit hard by long distances and high costs has shut down most of its routes, leaving small communities especially disconnected from the wider country and with successors apparently unclear as to how they can fill the gap.
I am lucky in that I only find Niagara Falls a bit complicated to reach, and London offputting. Others outside the Golden Horseshoe, and the well-serviced conurbations of the Québec City-Windosr corridor, face worse fates, trapped in their communities without access to the wider world and facing terrible risks as they try to get out. The so-called "Highway of Tears" in northern British Columbia, known as being a haunt for murderers of women, could only take on this role in the first place because of the need of women to hitchhike for want of any other way to leave.
I can easily make the argument that much more funding is required for mass transit in Canada, to make it much easier for Canadians to move from one community to another. A Canada arbitrarily parceled out into communities of various sizes, each disconnected from each other with the costs of individual travel making regular travel inaccessible to most people, is a Canada that is poorer in so many ways. Why public policy in Canada has not sought to remedy this, if not through direct investment in new transit infrastructure then at least through subsidies to private companies like Greyhound, is beyond me. I would have thought the gains obvious. Far-sighted politicians should seize on this, I'd think, as an issue they can at least try to deal with.
- Two British tourists were kicked out of their Niagara Falls hotel for supporting striking workers at an attached restaurant. CBC reports.
- Members of different Christian minorities from the Middle East living in London, Ontario, have united to create a new community church. CBC reports.
- Le Devoir looks at how Québec City is torn by a debate: Should it build a streetcar or a subway?
- The British Columbia city of surrey is currently rounding up its rogue peacocks. Global News reports.
- Guardian Cities reports on how the Japanese city of Onagawa, hit by the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, is trying to rebuild without sprawl.
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- Gilbert Ngabo writes about how Niagara Falls, New York, would love the GO Train to cross the border into his city, his article featuring in the Niagara Falls Review.
- Michelle Da Silva writes at NOW Toronto about how the Montréal Igloofest is such a great idea.
- The tax on empty homes in Vancouver may yet be increased, to discourage speculation. Global News reports.
- Guardian Cities notes how tensions between police and locals in the Bairro do Jamaico in Lisbon reveal problems of integration for African immigrants and their descendants.
- CityLab notes how the popular novels of Elena Ferrante may drive gentrification in the Naples neighbourhood of Rione Luzzatti.
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- Transit Toronto notes that GO Transit has introduced regular weekday train service to Niagara Falls.
- Average monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Toronto has hit #C 2260. blogTO reports.
- Revenue from the much-needed land transfer tax that supplies City of Toronto budgets is below expectations, the Toronto Star reported.
- NOW Toronto shares a list of the most-borrowed books from the Toronto Public Library system in 2018.
- Spacing celebrates the 100th anniversary of the Prince Edward Viaduct, also known as the Bloor Street Viaduct, arcing across the Don River.
- blogTO reports on the lovely Dufferin Islands of Niagara Falls, green creations in the river.
- Language Hat reports on the mythical island of Antillia, a phantom island reputed in late medieval Europe to lie far to the west of Iberia.
- Archeologists are racing to excavate and record and even protect hundreds, if not thousands, of archeological sites in the Orkney Islands ahead of rising sea levels. The National Post reports.
- JSTOR Daily takes a look at the factors that drew the 19th century kings of Hawai'i so strongly towards freemasonry.
- Janet Wainscott writes at The Island Review about her visit to New Zealand's Stewart Island, searching for the remnants of her family's homes and businesses there.
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- The Nova Scotia community of Beechwood has been recognized as being of historical significant for its African-Canadian links. Global News reports.
- This Sunday saw the final Masses delivered at three churches in Saint John, new Brunswick, closed down due to rising costs and falling attendance. CBC reports.
- The leaders of New Brunswick's major political parties appeared in Moncton for that city's bilingual Pride festivities. Ici Radio-Canada reports.
- An Ontario NDP MPP has been the latest to complain about the sewage being injected by Niagara Falls, NY, into the Niagara River. CBC reports.
- Guardian Cities reports on how what can only be interpreted as paranoid, even racist, hysteria against outsiders in greater Baltimore's Anne Arundel county is driving a push to reduce service on its light rail system.
- VICE notes that Airbnb is also having a negative impact on certain neighbourhoods in New York City.
- It may be necessary to put up barricades at Niagara Falls, but it's still sad. CBC reports.
- Is Seattle the latest city at risk of being priced out of range of most locals? This Seattle Times opinion piece makes the case.
- This Toronto Life ad suggesting things to do in a four-day stay in Boston makes that city look wonderful. One day ...
- Why not write an opera about the hockey rivalry between Toronto and Montréal? CBC reports.
- Why are the falls at Niagara Falls so famously compelling, even lethally seductive for some? Some human brains might be confused by the immensity. The National Post reports.
- The extent of the flooding in Brantford, inland from Hamilton on the Grand River, is shocking. The Toronto Star reports.
- The Saskatchewan capital city of Regina turns out to be the McDonald's breakfast capital of Canada. Global News reports.
- This essay in The Globe and Mail by Greg Blanchette looking at the rental housing crunch in the small Vancouver Island town of Tofino describes what's frankly a terrifying situation.
- If not for the fact that the CP Railway owned no property locally, the Vancouver suburb of Port Moody could well have become Canada's biggest west coast metropolis. Global News reports.
- Is a sin tax to discourage meat consumption a good idea, at least environmentally? CBC considers.
- The use of Chief Poundmaker and the Cree as players in the new game Civilization VI is controversial among the Cree, who wonder why they were not asked first. The National Post reports.
- Mount Washington, in New Hampshire, sounds like a particularly frigid place. The New York Times describes the environment.
- Despite appearing frozen, water still flows underneath the ice of the Niagara Falls. CBC explains.<>/li>
- How could the fall of the Soviet Union, and the inclusion of successor states in the international order, have gone differently? What was possible? Transitions Online considers.
- The simmering Oka land dispute continues. NOW Toronto reports.
- Marineland is suing the OSPCA, charging the animal welfare group with trying to end this business. The Toronto Star reports.
- Niagara Falls has authorized the construction of two new towering hotels, dozens of stories high. The Niagara Falls Review reports.
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- Having visited Friday, I liked the blogTO report on the early days of Toronto's love affair with Niagara Falls.
- blogTO shares photos of Kensington Market in the raw 1970s.
- The exterior of 450 Pape Avenue was used for the movie It, and the place is seeing Stephen King pilgrims already.
- The Toronto Book Garden, a lovely mini-park at Harbourfront keyed to literary Toronto, opened yesterday.
- Steve Munro shares some vintage photos of TTC streetcars from Canada's centennial in 1967.
- Spacing Toronto's Chris Bateman describes how the Toronto Islands became a test-bed for architectural modernism.
- Global News notes the proposal for a hovercraft service across Lake Ontario, connecting Toronto with Niagara.
- The Toronto Star's Emily Mathieu notes that a Kensington Market apartment complex made into a ghost hotel has been temporarily shut down by Airbnb.
- NOW Toronto's Paul Salvatori has a touching photo essay on the Palace Arms, a soon-to-be-gone rooming house at King and Strachan.
- Steve Munro reports on the many problems associated with implementing new express buses, in Toronto and elsewhere.
- Global News was one of many sources reporting on the high rate of failure of the new Bombardier streetcars.
- Ben Spurr notes the astounding failure of the City of Toronto to do basic things at Union Station, like collect rent.
- Transit Toronto notes that GO Transit's seasonal routes to Niagara have started today and will go until 4 September.
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[BLOG] Some Tuesday links
Jun. 13th, 2017 11:09 am- blogTO reported that York University plans on opening a satellite campus in York Region's Markham. This is a first.
- Dangerous Minds notes a new, posthumous release from Suidide's Alan Vega.
- The Dragon's Gaze links to a paper considering the detectability of Niven ringworlds around pulsars. (Maybe.)
- The Everyday Sociology Blog considers burnout among sociology students, and suggests that engagement with issues is key to overcoming it.
- The Great Grey Bridge's Philip Turner photoblogs his recent Rhode Island vacation.
- Joe. My. God. reports on the arrest of a Christian activist protesting outside of the Pulse memorial in Orlando.
- The LRB Blog shares considerable concern that the Democratic Unionists of Northern Ireland are now national powermakers.
- Spacing Toronto shares the ambitious plan of Buenos Aires to make the city better for cyclists, pedestrians, and mass transit
- Transit Toronto notes that starting Friday, Metrolinx will co-sponsor $C25 return tickets to Niagara from Toronto.
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- The Atlantic's Ed Yong notes the discovery of dated Homo sapiens fossils 300k years old in Morocco. (!)
- The Atlantic reports on Twitter-driven science that has highlighted the remarkable visual acuity of the spider.
- The Economist notes that multilingual societies can encounter more difficulties prospering than unilingual ones.
- Torontoist notes a Thunder Bay park devoted to the idea of First Nations reconciliation.
- The Inter Press Service reports on how gardens grown under solar tents in Bolivia can improve nutrition in poor highland villages.
- The Toronto Star's Christopher Hume trolls Rob Ford's supporters over the new, well-designed, Etobicoke Civic Centre.Metro Toronto calculates just how many avocado toasts would go into a mortgage in the GTA.
- MacLean's hosts a collection of twenty photos from gritty Niagara Falls, New York.
- The National Post shows remarkable, heartbreaking photos from the flooded Toronto Islands.
- Edward Keenan argues that the Toronto Islands' flooding should help prompt a local discussion on climate change.
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For people like myself who look back on visits to Marineland wtih fond memories, news like this shared by the Toronto Star's Sammy Hudes is terribly depressing.
Ontario’s animal welfare agency announced six new animal cruelty and neglect charges against Marineland on Monday as part of a continuing investigation into the care of land mammals at the theme park.
The charges include one count each for permitting elk, red deer and fallow deer to be in distress. They also include one count each for failing to provide prescribed standards of care.
“Essentially, animals being in distress can relate to not being provided with adequate care: food, water, shelter, necessary veterinary care in some cases,” said Jennifer Bluhm, deputy chief of the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Bluhm said the new charges stem from the same investigation that resulted in the Niagara Falls, Ont. attraction being charged with five counts of animal cruelty in late November.
Those charges were related to the treatment of peacocks, guinea hens and black bears.
