[NEWS] Six links on journalism in Canada: Québec, Halifax, PEI, Guelph …

• La Presse carries the concern of a Québec journalist that the decline of daily papers could have a catastrophic impact on the province’s culture.
• The Québec government would like financially-stressed newspaper group to form a coop. CTV News reports.
• That the Toronto Star shut down its free Metro affiliates across Canada made the news in Halifax. CBC reports.
• The closure of the Transcontinental Media printing plant in Borden-Carleton means that PEI no longer has a local printer for its media. CBC reports.
• Sabrina Wilkinson writes at The Conversation about the increasingly tenuous nature of journalism in Canada, not least as an employer.
• This Alex Migdal piece looks at how Guelph, Ontario, has fared since the closure of the Guelph Mercury daily.

[URBAN NOTE] Seven city links: Guelph, Innisfil, Montréal, Asbestos, Québec City, Alberta, Richmond

• Guelph will be holding an open house to see what development will replace the Dolime Quarry. Global News reports.
• The town of Innisfil has extended its Uber subsidy program for people in need of transit. Global News reports</u.
• Archeologists in Montréal have found a mass grave of Irish famine victims. CTV reports.
• The Québec town of Asbestos is changing its name so as to avoid the link, in English, with the toxic mineral. CTV reports.
• A subway, alas, would be too big for Québec City. Streetcars would work better. Le Devoir reports.
• Can a hyperloop be built to plug Edmonton together with Calgary? Global News considers.
• Richmond, British Columbia, has unveiled a cultural harmony strategy to help its diverse population get along. The National Post reports.

[BLOG] Some Tuesday links

• Bad Astronomer notes the circumstances of the discovery of a low-mass black hole, only 3.3 solar masses.
• Crooked Timber shares a photo of the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul.
• The Crux looks at Monte Verde, the site in Chile that has the evidence of the oldest human population known to have lived in South America.
• The Dragon’s Tales notes that Russia may provide India with help in the design of its Gaganyaan manned capsule.
• L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing talks of his work, including his upcoming conference and his newsletter, The Convivial Society. (Subscribe at the website.)
• Gizmodo shares the Voyager 2 report from the edges of interstellar space.
• JSTOR Daily looks at the East India Company and its corporate lobbying.
• Language Hat shares an account from Ken Liu of the challenges in translating The Three Body Problem, linguistic and otherwise.
• Language Log looks at the problems faced by the word “liberation” in Hong Kong.
• Dan Nexon at Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the implications of the surprising new relationship between Russia and the Philippines.
• Marginal Revolution seems to like Terminator: Dark Fate, as a revisiting of the series’ origins, with a Mesoamerican twist.
• Sean Marshall announces his attendance at a transit summit in Guelph on Saturday the 9th.
• Garry Wills writes at the NYR Daily about his experience as a man in the mid-20th century American higher education looking at the rise of women.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel looks at the strangely faint distant young galaxy MACS2129-1.
• Window on Eurasia considers the possibility of Latvia developing a national Eastern Orthodox church of its own.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Guelph, Hamilton, Lethbridge, Moncton, Halifax

• blogTO suggests some things people could do on a day trip to Guelph (and commenters come up with more suggestions).
• The lack of explicitly queer spaces in Hamilton is one thing that has come up in a recent study. Global News reports.
• The Alberta city of Lethbridge, third-largest in the province, now has a population of more than one hundred thousand people. Global News reports.
• Will the city of Moncton get rainbow crosswalks? Global News reports.
• Halifax has faced complications in trying to pursue a commuter rail option. Global News reports.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Canada humour, Guelph, Batawa, Laval, McAdam

• The Beaverton gets it right, I think, with this fictional sketch of a man from Smiths Falls who is seen as becoming a big-city type by moving to Brockville.
• That Guelph now has a space for the sacred fires of Indigenous peoples is surely a good thing. Global News reports.
• Urban Toronto reports on the unexpected modernist homes in the cottage country community of Batawa.
• La Presse reports that, to cope with winter snow, the city of Laval had to order salt from Morocco.
• This Global News article looks at how residents of the New Brunswick community of McAdam are trying to save it from decline.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: GTA, Montréal, Portland, Berlin, Seoul

• Sean Marshall at TVO notes the limited, if real, potential of a new ride-sharing app to bridge the transit gap between Kitchener-Waterloo, Guelph, and Hamilton in the west of the Golden Horseshoe.
• CBC Montreal notes delays in the renovation of the Biodôme.
• CityLab notes that in Portland, Maine, volunteering can help one get access to affordable housing, literally.
• CityLab notes how the government of Berlin is set to intervene directly in the housing market to ensure affordability.
• Guardian Cities looks at how Seoul is set to redevelop the districts once at the heart of the South Korean economic miracle.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Hamilton, Guelph, Kingston, Thunder Bay, Montréal

• Hamilton has its first home made of shipping containers. Will it be the first of many? The Toronto Star reports.
• Roads and Kingdoms looks at the modern tradition of ale-brewing in Guelph.
• That the main library in Kingston is closed down until October for repairs makes me sad. I’ve fond memories of that place. Global News reports.
• For Canada Day, Worthwhile Canadian Initiative noted the import of the rail-and-grain exporting towns of Fort William and Port Arthur, now Thunder Bay, for Canada.
• These photographs taken of the rooms in the buildings of Petit Bourgogne, in Montréal, in the 1960s are evocative. Go here.

[NEWS] Twelve 2018 Ontario general election links (#onpoli, #elxn2018)

• John Lorinc at Spacing takes a look at Ontario’s “crazy-ass” election and warns about what a Ford government might do, based on Toronto precedents.
• blogTO reports on a house on Dupont at Franklin, in the Junction Triangle, that has a fantastic political lawn sign display.
• “General Zod for Ontario Premier”, indeed. The National Post reports on some imaginative signage.
• Mitch Potter reports from Egansville, a small town in the Ottawa Valley in eastern Ontario, to look at some of the causes of Ford’s strength there.
• Peter Biesterfeld at NOW Toronto reports on the fear of many that Doug Ford could be an even worse version of Mike Harris.
• Robyn Urback suggests that, had the Liberals under Wynne tried to position themselves as thoroughly centrist, they might have had a chance. CBC has it.
• Rob Salerno wonders at Daily Xtra if the unpopularity of Kathleen Wynne, a politician whose policies are popular and being substantially copied by rivals, has anything to do with homophobia.
• Will Kathleen Wynne be able to keep her riding of Don Valley North? The jury is still out there. The Toronto Star reports.
• The riding of Guelph may well be where the Green Party of Ontario will elect its first MPP. The Toronto Star reports.
• Meagan Campbell takes a look at Andrea Horvath, and her journey from working-class Hamilton to NDP leadership and perhaps beyond, over at MacLean’s.
• Tim Harper takes a look, two decades later, at the controversial NDP government of Bob Rae. Does it still cast as much of a shadow over Ontario? The Toronto Star has it.
• Steve Munro takes a look at the idea of uploading the Toronto subway system to Metrolinx, and at the many ways this Doug Ford proposal would make things terribly complicated.

[URBAN NOTE] Five cities links: Peel Region, Montréal, Ontario Cannabis Store, Homewood, London

• Chris Rattan argues at NOW Toronto that Peel Region should stop its school resource officer program, embedding cops in schools.
• Montréal mayor Valérie Plante wants to make homebuying more affordable for locals in her city. The Montreal Gazette reports.
• The first four outposts of the Ontario Cannabis Store chain will be in Toronto, Kingston, Guelph, and Thunder Bay. The Toronto Star reports.
• CityLab reports on how the Chicagoland community of Homewood is using comics to market itself to millennial homeseekers, here.
• Why is the homicide rate in London so high? Problems in crime-fighting, including policing and crime prevention both, need to be dealt with. Bloomberg View reports.

[URBAN NOTE] “Toronto buyers drive real estate prices up in Cambridge, Kitchener, Guelph”

CBC News’ Colin Butler reports on how Toronto buyers are pushing up prices in the wider Golden Horseshoe.

Industry watchers predict Toronto buyers will continue to drive prices up in Waterloo Region’s already red-hot real estate market, even as “for sale” listings traditionally slow in the winter.

It follows a summer that delivered month after month of record-breaking sales figures in Waterloo Region fuelled by low interest rates, a strong local economy and a steady influx of buyers from the Toronto area, priced out of an increasingly expensive big city market.

Benjamin Tal, the deputy chief economist with CIBC World Markets, said as the price real estate mushrooms in Toronto, young couples are now willing to go further afield to get themselves a slice of the Canadian dream.

“They simply go on the 401 and start driving until they find something they can afford and then they stop and we’re seeing a lot of this now,” he said.