[URBAN NOTE] Seven city links: Innisfil, Buffalo, Ottawa, Montréal, Winnipeg, Amsterdam, Singapore

• The town of Innisfil is looking forward to some very futuristic developments. Global News reports.
• Jeremy Deaton at CityLab reports on how, buffered by the Great Lakes, Buffalo NY may end gaining from climate change.
• The Ottawa chain Bridgehead Coffee has been sold to national chain Second Cup. Global News reports.
• Many of the more eye-raising installations in the Gay Village of Montréal have since been removed. CTV News reports.
• Warming huts for homeless people in Winnipeg were torn down because the builders did not follow procedures. Global News reports.
• Open Democracy looks at innovative new public governance of the city budget in Amsterdam, here.
• Singapore, located in a well-positioned Southeast Asia and with working government, may take over from Hong Kong. Bloomberg View makes the case.

[URBAN NOTE] Seven city links: Ottawa, Longueuil, Montréal, Winnipeg, Saint John, Halifax, Lethbridge

• The Ottawa Citizen suggests a recent audit of OC Transpo should have offered warnings of the Confederation Line problems to come.
• A project office has been set up for the extension of the Yellow Line in Longueuil and elsewhere on the south shore. CTV News reports.
• La Presse looks at the concerns of some artists in Rosemont-La-Petite-Patrie that they might be forced out by gentrification.
• That the Bay Building in downtown Winnipeg has been evaluated as being of little value offers an opening to Heritage Winnipeg. Global News reports.
• The New Brunswick government is forcing suburbs of Saint John to pay for city facilities that they also used. Global News reports.
• Short-term rentals are having a negative effect on real estate markets in Halifax. Global News reports.
• Downtown Lethbridge faces struggles to attract business. Global News reports.

[BLOG] Some Friday links

(A day late, I know; I crashed after work yesterday.)

• Antipope’s Charlie Stross has a thought experiment: If you were superwealthy and guaranteed to live a long health life, how would you try to deal with the consequence of economic inequality?
• Vikas Charma at Architectuul takes a look at the different factors that go into height in buildings.
• Bad Astronomy notes S5-HVS1, a star flung out of the Milky Way Galaxy by Sagittarius A* at 1755 kilometres per second.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly shares photos from two Manhattan walks of hers, taken in non-famous areas.
• Centauri Dreams looks at habitability for red dwarf exoplanets. Stellar activity matters.
• Maria Farrell at Crooked Timber shares words from a manifesto about data protection in the EU.
• Dangerous Minds shares photos from Los Angeles punks and mods and others in the 1980s.
• Bruce Dorminey notes a ESA report suggesting crew hibernation could make trips to Mars easier.
• Gizmodo notes that the Hayabusa2 probe of Japan is returning from asteroid Ryugu with a sample.
• Imageo shares photos of the disastrous fires in Australia from space.
• Information is Beautiful reports on winners of the Information is Beautiful Awards for 2019, for good infographics.
• JSTOR Daily explains how local television stations made the ironic viewing of bad movies a thing.
• Kotaku reports on the last days of Kawasaki Warehouse, an arcade in Japan patterned on the demolished Walled City of Kowloon.
• Language Hat notes how translation mistakes led to the star Beta Cygni gaining the Arabic name Albireo.
• Language Log reports on a unique Cantonese name of a restaurant in Hong Kong.
• Robert Farley at Lawyers, Guns and Money links to an analysis of his suggesting the military of India is increasingly hard-pressed to counterbalance China.
• The LRB Blog notes the catastrophe of Venice.
• Marginal Revolution notes a paper suggesting states would do well not to place their capitals too far away from major population centres.
• Justin Petrone at North! remarks on a set of old apple preserves.
• The NYR Daily looks at how the west and the east of the European Union are divided by different conceptions of national identity.
• Jim Belshaw at Personal Reflections reports from his town of Armidale as the smoke from the Australian wildfires surrounds all. The photos are shocking.
• Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society Blog lists some books about space suitable for children.
• Drew Rowsome reviews the Canadian film music Stand!, inspired by the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike.
• The Russian Demographics Blog shares a paper noting that, in Switzerland, parenthood does not make people happy.
• The Signal notes that 1.7 million phone book pages have been scanned into the records of the Library of Congress.
• Starts With A Bang’s Ethan Siegel explains the concept of multi-messenger astronomy and why it points the way forward for studies of astrophysics.
• Strange Maps looks at how a majority of students in the United States attend diverse schools, and where.
• Strange Company explores the mysterious death of Marc-Antoine Calas, whose death triggered the persecution of Huguenots and resulted in the mobilization of Enlightenment figures like Voltaire against the state. What happened?
• Towleroad hosts a critical, perhaps disappointed, review of the major gay play The Inheritance.
• Understanding Society’s Daniel Little looks at the power of individual people in political hierarchies.
• Window on Eurasia shares an opinion piece noting how many threats to the Russian language have come from its association with unpopular actions by Russia.
• Arnold Zwicky explores queens as various as Elizabeth I and Adore Delano.

[CAT] Five #caturday links: strays, Winnipeg, scent, Instagram, paper

• This letter to the Windsor Star makes the point that city needs to tend to its stray cats. (So do all cities, I bet.)
• A cat café in Winnipeg has reopened. CBC reports.
• Phys.org reports on a paper noting that the scent of male cats is made by microbes inhabiting cat bodies.
• Apparently Instagram accounts of fat cats on diets are a thing. The Guardian reports.
• Why do cats so love cardboard and paper? MNN reports.

[ISL] Five #islands links: Shoal Lake 40, Martha’s Vineyard, Fogo, Ramea, Barbados

• Maclean’s reports on how, a century after Shoal Lake 40 First Nation was made an island to provide drinking water for Winnipeg, it finally was connected to the mainland by a road.
• CityLab reports on how the pressures of the tourist season make it difficult for many permanent residents of Martha’s Vineyard to maintain homes.
• Fogo Island, Newfoundland, recently celebrated its first Pride Walk. CBC reports.
• Yvette D’Entremont writes at the Toronto Star about how the diaspora of the Newfoundland fishing island of Ramea have gathered together for regular reunions.
• J.M. Opal writes at The Conversation about the origins of white Anglo-American racism in 17th century Barbados.

[NEWS] 15 links about Canada and Canadian politics (#cdnpoli)

• Scott Gilmore at MacLean’s notes how, in the United States, Canada as a model is a common idea among Democrats.
• David Camfield argues at The Conversation that the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike offers lessons for Canadians now.
• Le Devoir notes the recent argument of now-Québec premier François Legault that a Québec that was, like Ontario, a relatively wealthy province would be a Québec that would have fewer tensions with the rest of Canada. Is this plausible?
• Éric Grenier notes at CBC that, in Ontario, Andrew Scheer’s federal conservatives will need to draw voters from beyond Ford Nation.
• MacLean’s hosts the arguments of Frank Graves and Michael Valpy that Canadian politicians are not paying nearly the amount of attention to economic inequality that Canadians think they should.
• MacLean’s makes the point that Conrad Black seems to see much to like in Donald Trump.
• Ontario and the Canadian government are fighting over funding for the proposed Ontario Line, the Canadian government insisting it needs more information about the route. The Toronto Star reports.
• Facebook, it turns out, chose not to pay proper attention to sending officials to testify at a Canada government inquiry into fake news. Maclean’s reports.
• Justin Trudeau, speaking recently in Toronto, credited immigration for the success of the tech sector of Canada. CBC reports.
• Foreign workers turn out to play a critical role in staffing the lobster plants in the Acadian fishing village of Meteghan, in Nova Scotia. CBC reports.
• Canada and the United States are again disputing the claims of Canada to sovereignty over the Northwest Passage. Global News reports.
• MacLean’s interviews Northwest Territories premier Bob McLeod, who dreams of a massive development of Arctic Canada, including a goal of a million residents for his territory.
• Enzo DiMatteo suggests at NOW Toronto that the growing unpopularity of Doing Ford in Ontario might hurt the federal Conservatives badly.
• Could the Green Party go mainstream across Canada? The Conversation considers.
• The Conversation reports on what the national fervour over the Toronto Raptors represents, including the growing diversity of the population of Canada and the global spread of basketball.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Winnipeg, Vancouver, Stockholm, Vienna, Mariupol

• The salvaging and restoration of the Fortune Block in downtown Winnipeg is a victory indeed for preservationists. CBC reports.
• One hopes that Vancouver manages to settle on a plan for revitalizing its West End beaches. Global News reports
• Guardian Cities suggests that Stockholm has done a good job of keeping a proper work-life balance for its residents.
• Guardian Cities reports on the specific contributions of women to modern Vienna.
• Open Democracy reported before the Ukraine elections from the Donbas front line city of Mariupol, seeing how exhausted the locals were.

[DM] Some links: immigration, cities, small towns, French Canada, Eurasia, China, Brexit, music

Another links post is up over at Demography Matters!

• Skepticism about immigration in many traditional receiving countries appeared. Frances Woolley at the Worthwhile Canadian Initiative took issue with the argument of Andray Domise after an EKOS poll, that Canadians would not know much about the nature of migration flows. The Conversation observed how the rise of Vox in Spain means that country’s language on immigration is set to change towards greater skepticism. Elsewhere, the SCMP called on South Korea, facing pronounced population aging and workforce shrinkages, to become more open to immigrants and minorities.
• Cities facing challenges were a recurring theme. This Irish Examiner article, part of a series, considers how the Republic of Ireland’s second city of Cork can best break free from the dominance of Dublin to develop its own potential. Also on Ireland, the NYR Daily looked at how Brexit and a hardened border will hit the Northern Ireland city of Derry, with its Catholic majority and its location neighbouring the Republic. CityLab reported on black migration patterns in different American cities, noting gains in the South, is fascinating. As for the threat of Donald Trump to send undocumented immigrants to sanctuary cities in the United States has widely noted., at least one observer noted that sending undocumented immigrants to cities where they could connect with fellow diasporids and build secure lives might actually be a good solution.
• Declining rural settlements featured, too. The Guardian reported from the Castilian town of Sayatón, a disappearing town that has become a symbol of depopulating rural Spain. Global News, similarly, noted that the loss by the small Nova Scotia community of Blacks Harbour of its only grocery store presaged perhaps a future of decline. VICE, meanwhile, reported on the very relevant story about how resettled refugees helped revive the Italian town of Sutera, on the island of Sicily. (The Guardian, to its credit, mentioned how immigration played a role in keeping up numbers in Sayatón, though the second generation did not stay.)
• The position of Francophone minorities in Canada, meanwhile, also popped up at me.
• This TVO article about the forces facing the École secondaire Confédération in the southern Ontario city of Welland is a fascinating study of minority dynamics. A brief article touches on efforts in the Franco-Manitoban community of Winnipeg to provide temporary shelter for new Francophone immigrants. CBC reported, meanwhile, that Francophones in New Brunswick continue to face pressure, with their numbers despite overall population growth and with Francophones being much more likely to be bilingual than Anglophones. This last fact is a particularly notable issue inasmuch as New Brunswick’s Francophones constitute the second-largest Francophone community outside of Québec, and have traditionally been more resistant to language shift and assimilation than the more numerous Franco-Ontarians.
• The Eurasia-focused links blog Window on Eurasia pointed to some issues. It considered if the new Russian policy of handing out passports to residents of the Donbas republics is related to a policy of trying to bolster the population of Russia, whether fictively or actually. (I’m skeptical there will be much change, myself: There has already been quite a lot of emigration from the Donbas republics to various destinations, and I suspect that more would see the sort of wholesale migration of entire families, even communities, that would add to Russian numbers but not necessarily alter population pyramids.) Migration within Russia was also touched upon, whether on in an attempt to explain the sharp drop in the ethnic Russian population of Tuva in the 1990s or in the argument of one Muslim community leader in the northern boomtown of Norilsk that a quarter of that city’s population is of Muslim background.
• Eurasian concerns also featured. The Russian Demographics Blog observed, 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 various European states. As well, Marginal Revolution linked to a paper that examines the positions of Jews in the economies of eastern Europe as a “rural service minority”, and observed the substantial demographic shifts occurring in Kazakhstan since independence, with Kazakh majorities appearing throughout the country.
• JSTOR Daily considered if, between the drop in fertility that developing China was likely to undergo anyway and the continuing resentments of the Chinese, the one-child policy was worth it. I’m inclined to say no, based not least on the evidence of the rapid fall in East Asian fertility outside of China.
• What will Britons living in the EU-27 do, faced with Brexit? Bloomberg noted the challenge of British immigrant workers in Luxembourg faced with Brexit, as Politico Europe did their counterparts living in Brussels.
• Finally, at the Inter Press Service, A.D. Mackenzie wrote about an interesting exhibit at the Musée de l’histoire de l’immigration in Paris on the contributions made by immigrants to popular music in Britain and France from the 1960s to the 1980s.

[NEWS] Five #Indigenous links: land ownership, astronomy, Pueblo, transgender, MakadeMigize

• JSTOR Daily looks at the myth that land ownership was not present in pre-Columbian Indigenous cultures in the Americas.
• CBC takes a look at Indigenous traditions of astronomy.
• JSTOR Daily looks at how white female reformers of the early 20th century US tried to repress the sacred dances of the Pueblo peoples, and why.
• CBC had a great feature about how Cree doctor James Makokis uses Indigenous perspectives to treat his trans clientele.
• This report about MakadeMigize Clothing, a company created by a Manitoba family whose clothes are inspired by Indigenous languages. Global News covers the issue.

[NEWS] Five notes on French in Canada: Montréal, Ontario, Welland, Manitoba, New Brunswick

• La Presse notes that the bilingual greeting “Bonjour-Hi” is becoming more common in Montréal.
• This Ottawa Citizen opinion-writer was entirely right in noting that the Ontario government should not try to eliminate minority language rights and institutions for budgetary reasons.
• This TVO article about the forces facing the École secondaire Confédération in Welland is a fascinating study of minority dynamics.
• This brief article touches on efforts in the Franco-Manitoban community of Winnipeg to provide temporary shelter for new Francophone immigrants.
• Francophones in New Brunswick continue to face pressure, with their numbers despite overall population growth and with Francophones being much more likely to be bilingual than Anglophones. CBC reports.