[URBAN NOTE] Ten Toronto links

• The vicious homophobia exhibited by TCDSB trustee Mike Del Grande is, IMHO, another reason to defund public Catholic education in Ontario. Global News reports.
• The CCLV streetcars of the TTC are set to be pulled by the end of November. Global News reports.
• The Scarborough Bluffs are set to see some worthwhile investment. blogTO reports.
• CBC notes growth in food bank usage in Toronto and Mississauga.
• Presto users are being mischarged based on GPS mistakes. CBC reports.
• Renovictions have spiked 300% over the past four years. blogTO reports.
• The cost of rent continues to grow in Toronto. blogTO reports.
• A new project hopes to make Yonge and Eglinton less congested. The Toronto Star reports.
• New regulations about Airbnb should make the real estate market easier for renters. NOW Toronto reports.
• Owing to family request, a new street in Etobicoke will not be named after former Toronto mayor Rob Ford. Global News reports.

[URBAN NOTE] Eight Toronto links

• Samantha Edwards writes at NOW Toronto about the controversy surrounding the visit of transphobe author Meghan Murphy to give a speech at the Palmerston library, with authors even threatening a boycott of the network.
• Natasha Tusikov writes at The Conversation about how Sidewalk Labs’ proposals for the Port Lands would give it great and unaccountable political power.
• blogTO looks at the 1945 proposal for a subway in Toronto, one with a west-east axis not on Bloor but further south on Queen.
• blogTO looks at Sparkles, the nightclub at the top of the CN Tower that reigned over the Toronto scene in the 1980s.
• Will the Scarborough neighbourhood of Birchcliffe-Cliffside by changed for the worse by new dense construction? The Toronto Star reports.
• People who, in illegally climbing the Scarborough Bluffs, get trapped on said feature might soon be charged with the costs of their own rescue. blogTO reports.
• The growth of popularity of specifically Toronto slang is fascinating. Global News reports.
• Jamie Bradburn shares an old article on St. John’s Norway cemetery, here.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: PATH, Airbnb, houseboat, apartment towers, neighbourhoods

• Jamie Bradburn considers the history of the construction of the Toronto PATH network, and the surprising controversy. Many, it seems, did not want to live like moles.
• VICE takes a look at how Airbnb is directly driving people out of their neighbourhoods.
• The Toronto Star looks at a houseboat in the Scarborough Bluffs area that looks very homey.
• The aging apartment buildings of Toronto need care, perhaps a lot of care, if they are to continue to house safely their many hundreds of thousands of inhabitants. CBC Toronto reports.
• Postcity considers what, exactly, the slowing of development applications in Yonge and Eglinton means. Will the same hypertrophy spread to other neighbourhoods, soon to be overburdened?

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: Galleria Mall, PATH, streetcars, BMR, float homes

• Urban Toronto notes that Toronto city council has granted approval for rezoning the Galleria Mall, making plans for a massive high-density redevelopment possible.
• blogTO reports that, finally, a website has appeared that will let people navigate the underground PATH network downtown. (An app will come later.)
• Steve Munro notes how the Bombardier streetcar debacle not only undermines that company, but threatens the presence of the streetcar in Toronto.
• Spacing shares Gabriel Eidelman’s explanation of the history of Toronto’s Bureau of Municipal Research, and why he decided to bring it back.
• Toronto Life shares photos of the float homes moored off the docks in Scarborough’s Bluffer’s Park Marina, and the people who live there.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: Anatolia, Massey Hall, T.J. Atwood, Inside Out, wooden tower

• I believe I have been to this Turkish-Canadian restaurant in the west end of Toronto. CBC reports on Anatolia Restaurant.
• The missing Bach and Beethoven windows of Massey Hall have been recovered, safely boxed away in a basement. The Toronto Star reports.
• I quite liked this article about this athlete, T.J. Atwood, practising his surfing off of the Scarborough Bluffs. The Toronto Star reports.
• Drew Rowsome reports on the upcoming Inside Out LGBT film festival here in Toronto, here.
• A 14-story wooden tower at the University of Toronto would certainly be an eye-catching addition to the downtown skyline. The Toronto Star reports.

[URBAN NOTE] Four Toronto links: Scarborough Bluffs, waterfront transit, car dealerships, CityPlace

• Edward Keenan celebrates at the Toronto Star the belated arrival of TTC bus service to Bluffers Park, at the foot of the Scarborough Bluffs. Why did it take so long, I wonder? I have walked that long narrow road too many times. Climbing the Bluffs is almost better.
• blogTO notes how, despite official hopes, TTC funding commitments will limit the extension of new services on the waterfront.
• Christopher Hume considers the aesthetics of some of the car dealerships on the east side of the downtown, clustered around the Don, over at the Toronto Star.
• Justin Skinner looks in the City Centre Mirror at the extent to which the condo-dominated CityPlace neighbourhood, in the area of the old Spadina Yards south of the CN Tower, has thrived and come to cohere.

[URBAN NOTE] Four Toronto links: Yonge Street, Scarborough Bluffs, It, Yayoi Kusama

• I agree almost entirely with the argument of Alex Bozikovic that the time to revamp Yonge Street in North York for the future is now. The Globe and Mail has it.
• While I have never minded the fifteen minutes’ walk through Scarborough suburbia to the Scarborough Bluffs, a dedicated TTC route to the cliffs will be nice. blogTO reports.
• Torontoist does a nice job listing the various city locations where the recent It was filmed.
• blogTO makes me wonder if I will ever see the Yayoi Kusama Infinity Mirrors show at the AGO. Certainly I won’t if I don’t buy the tickets …

[NEWS] Seven links, from Tibetan Parkdale and Ontario politics to dangerous Mars and Big Oil’s end

• The New York Times‘ Michael Wilson tells the sad story of how a woman murdered in Harlem was only identified 47 years later.
• In NOW Toronto, Gelek Badheytsang writes about the complexities surrounding the visit of the 17th Karmapa to Tibetan-heavy Parkdale.
• Novak Jankovic writes in MacLean’s that there are real declines in the Toronto real estate market, but not enough to set a trend.
• The Toronto Star‘s Jackie Hong reports that protecting Bluffer’s Park from the waves of Lake Ontario could also wreck an east-end surfing haunt.
• The National Post reports on how the Ontario NDP claims, probably correctly, that the Wynne Liberals are stealing their ideas. Good for them, I say.
• Universe Today’s Matt Williams notes a study reporting that life on Mars’ surface is a much greater risk factor for cancer than previously thought.
• Seth Miller argues that efficient electric cars will push Big Oil through the trauma of Big Coal in the 2020s.

[NEWS] Five links on the flooding of Lake Ontario and its consequences

• USA Today provides an American perspective on the increased risk of flooding from Lake Ontario, in upstate New York.
• Global News notes that the Toronto Islands are now effectively off-limits to visitors until the end of July.
• Toronto Life shared Daniel Williams’ stunning photos of the flooded Toronto Islands.
• Inside Toronto notes that many people are still going far too close to the unstable Scarborough Bluffs.
• The Toronto Star noted that the marina at Bluffers’ Park is facing flooding.

[CAT] Twelve photos from the TOT Cat Café, 298 College Street

Thursday, when I was walking west along College, I passed by TOT Cat Café (298 College Street, Toronto’s only cat café. I had long been curious about the place, following the different fundraising efforts aiming to set up a cat café in Toronto starting a couple of years ago and then hearing last spring about the scandal when the Toronto Humane Society stopped supplying this cafe with cats for adoption (CBC, Toronto Star, Reddit). The sign outside showed that the cafe was still in operation, and promised. I needed some coffee and could enjoy something sweet, so why not go inside?

The cafe is organized as a sort of double enclosure, the cafe space surrounding the inner double-doored chamber open to the street where the cats reside.

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After I finished my enjoyable coffee and cheesecake, and being briefed on the rules, I passed inside. There were thirteen cats, I was told, most hiding in the carpeted cubby holes at the far end, but some spilling into bowls and on top of ladders in plain view. The cats–apparently sourced by Scarborough Bluffs Cat Relief, part of the effort to retrieve cats and other pets dumped at the Scarborough Bluffs–were available for adoption at a cost of $C 150 per cat. Posters listing the cats’ names, ages, and availability were on the west wall, but the other people there were not paying close attention to those. They were looking at the cats.

As far as I could tell, the cats seemed to be in good shape. The staff was clear in laying out the rules–no feeding, no poking, and so on–and the people in the cat enclosure with me obeyed these. The cats, for their parts, seemed both healthy and relaxed, comfortable enough with their environment to sleep and contented with being gazed at from afar. I left not feeling as if I had exploited the cats in an situation unsuited for them–the whole institution seemed to be working out.