A Bit More Detail

• Ending free coffee for municipal employees in the Québec community of Pierrefonds created massive controversy. CBC reports.


• The mayor of the Francophone city of Edmundston in New Brunswick has encouraged immigrant Québec students hurt by immigration changes to come to his community. CTV News reports.


• The price of crystal meth in Saskatoon is apparently as low as $3 a bag. Global News reports.


• Guardian Cities notes how Louisville, low on trees, is trying to regreen the city as a way to deal with rising temperatures.


• Open Democracy considers if the DUP is about to lose its strongholds in Belfast.


• Guardian Cities looks at the Jerusalem neighbourhood of Kafr Aqab, a place where Palestinians can access their metropolis (and their partners).


• CityLab shares photos of the wonderful new public library of Helsinki.

• Hamilton, Ontario, now has a wall open to public street art. Global News reports.


• An early immigrant to Kingston, Ontario, explains what it was like to move to this eastern Ontario hub. Global News reports.


• MTL Blog notes that Montréal mayor has cancelled the construction of a condo tower because it was not including social housing.


• A museum exhibit in Saskatoon is offering free HIV testing and blood donation services in the fight against stigma. Global News reports.


• Ellen Mauro at CBC explains to readers the movement to make Washington D.C. into the 51st American state.

• Architectuul profiles the construction of the Modern Berlin Temple built to a design by Mies van der Rohe in 1968.


• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait notes the beauty of galaxy M61.


• D-Brief notes new evidence that Mars sustained rivers on its surface at a surprising late date.


• Gizmodo notes a theory that the oddly shaped ring moons of Saturn might be product of a collision.


• Hornet Stories suggests/u> that recent raids on gay bars in New Orleans might be driven by internecine politics within the LGBTQ community.


• Joe. My. God. notes that a court in the Cayman Islands has recently legalized same-sex marriage there.


• JSTOR Daily looks at the origins of the Chipko activists of 1960s and 1970s India, whose tree-hugging helped save forests there.


• Language Log notes the story of Beau Jessep, who got rich off of a business creating English names for Chinese children.


• Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money, looking at the introduction of public healthcare in Saskatchewan and wider Canada, notes the great institutional differences that do not make that a close model for public healthcare in the US now.


• Marginal Revolution links to a paper examining the close relationship over time between population growth and economic and technological change.


• Roads and Kingdoms interviews documentary filmmaker Nadir Bouhmouch about a Amazigh community's resistance to an intrusive mine on their territory.


• The Russian Demographics Blog notes, correctly, that one reason why Ukrainians are more prone to emigration to Europe and points beyond than Russians is that Ukraine has long been included, in whole or in part, in European states.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel notes that we still do not know why antimatter does not dominate in our universe.


• Understanding Society features a guest post from Indian sociologist V.K. Ramachandran talking about two visits four decades apart to one of his subjects.


• Vintage Space makes a compelling case for people not to be afraid of nuclear rockets in space, like the vintage never-deployed NERVA.


• Window on Eurasia takes issue with the bilingual radio programs aired in Russian republics, which subtly undermine local non-Russian languages.


• Arnold Zwicky starts with lilacs, which include hybrids tolerant of the California climate, and goes on to explore lavender in all of its glories, queer and otherwise.

• CityLab takes a look at how Montréal took care of the problem of an excess of raccoons in that city's Mount Royal Park, particularly around the Camillien-Houd lookout.


• CityLab takes a look at the city-defining design of Pittsburgh-based architect Tasso Katselas.


• The Yellow Quill First Nation is setting up an urban reserve in the city of Saskatoon. Global News reports.


• Guardian Cities looks</> at the roots of the black art renaissance in Atlanta.


• Joe McFarland at Global News argues that, particularly with its skepticism over the 2026 Olympics, Calgary is starting to retreat into an anti-development mood.

• This history of LGBTQ life in Saskatchewan by Valerie Korinek sounds fascinating. Has anything been done in Atlantic Canada, I wonder? Global News reports.


• This Artsy editorial is quite right about the importance of David Wojnarowicz, artistically and politically. I own a copy of his Close to the Knives.


• There is, I have to conclude, at least some homophobia in the jokes about Trump and Putin being a couple. It's quite quite possible to be a straight homophobe, for starters. Vulture deconstructs the meme, here.


• Scott Thompson is a national treasure. Read this CBC Day 6 interview.


• CBC takes a look at the roaring success of China-oriented gay dating app Blued, with tens of millions of users.

• 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.

• The fact that a jury--carefully selected to have no jurors of First Nations background--found the killer of Cree man Colten Boushie innocent is a horror. The Toronto Star < a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2018/02/09/hanging-over-my-familys-head-colten-boushies-family-await-verdict-in-gerald-stanley-trial.html">reports.


• MacLean's takes a look at the reasons for Cree sensitivities regarding the inclusion of Chief Poundmaker as a character in the new iteration of Civilization.


• The Inuit of the northern Québec region of Nunavik, when sent south to Montréal for medical treatment, have an enclave in the city, the building of Ullivik. The Toronto Star reports.


• This opinion piece in The Globe and Mail makes an excellent case for the removal of the statue of General Cornwallis from Halifax. Societies evolve; statues, alas, cannot.

• MacLean's features D.W. Langford's article questions what happened to the famous Métis church bell of Batoche. Where is it?
  
  
  
  • The National Post's Maura Forrest reports/a> on NDP MP Romeo Saganash's question why First Nations were not consulted in renaming the Langevin Block.
  
  
  • CBC News features Regan Burden's article talking about the issues others impose on her for being Aboriginal while looking stereotypically white.
  
  
  • The Toronto Star's David Rider writes about four interns of First Nations background at Toronto City Hall.
  
  

• Bloomberg notes how an economic boom will let Sweden postpone hard decisions, looks at the popularity of the Korean Wave in China, suggests that subsidies are going to be a big issue for cash-short Arab governments, looks at the investigation in Bulgaria of groups which arrest refugees, and looks at the long-term problems of the Russian economy.


• CBC reports on a Saskatchewan woman who has a refuge for pet rats.


• Global News illustrates the dire social conditions in the Ontario North, hitting particularly strongly First Nations groups.


• The Guardian reports on speculation that Neanderthals may have died in significant numbers from African diseases brought by human migrants.


• MacLean's notes a study of handwriting styles in ancient Israel which suggest that literacy was reasonably common.


• The Mississauga News reports on a new PFLAG support group for South Asians in Peel.


• National Geographic notes the strong pressures on island birds towards flightlessness.


• Science Mag notes subtle genetic incompatibilities between human women and male Neanderthals which would have hindered reproduction.


• The USA Today network has a story examining the recent HIV outbreak in Indiana.


• Vice reports on the huge cleavages within the NDP, something also examined at the CBC.

The federal housing agency says there is a risk of correction in Canadian housing markets in several cities, especially Toronto, Saskatoon and Regina, because of overvaluation and overbuilding of real estate.

Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation looks at housing markets in 15 Canadian cities every quarter, in an effort to detect housing bubbles.

Cities such as Calgary, Saskatoon, and Regina suffer from both overvaluation and overbuilding, as prices remain high and building continues in face of low oil prices.

The level of housing prices in these cities is not supported by the economic conditions, CMHC says. Prices remain high despite rising vacancies and falling demand for housing.

Alberta and Saskatchewan are facing weakening migration, employment, and income, which are in turn affecting housing markets, CMHC said in its report released Wednesday.

Overbuilding has worsened in Saskatoon and Regina, despite downward pressure on prices from weakened demand for housing, CMHC says.

Canadian Finance Minister Bill Morneau introduced a package of tighter home-lending rules in December, citing risks from a surge in prices in Toronto and Vancouver that leave some younger families at risk from outsized mortgages. Prices of single-family homes in those cities often exceed a million dollars and have sparked a surge in condo construction that has drawn warnings from the International Monetary Fund.

“In Toronto, overall strong evidence of problematic conditions reflects a combination of price acceleration and overvaluation,” the CMHC report said. “We are also monitoring for the potential emergence of overbuilding in Toronto due to the high number of condominium units under construction. Inventory management therefore continues to be necessary to make sure that these condominium units under construction do not remain unsold upon completion.”

The overvaluation rating for Montreal, Canada’s second-largest city, was lowered to moderate from strong.