[PHOTO] Three photos from a point near Sherbourne and Carlton

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: buses, 592 Sherbourne, Parkdale, planning, Doug Ford

• Transit Toronto reports on the first electric bus in the TTC, now running the 35 Jane route.
• Toronto Life takes a look at the history of 592 Sherbourne Street, now the restaurant Maison Selby.
• NOW Toronto interviews people in Parkdale protesting against the cuts of Doug Ford.
• John Lorinc at Spacing looks at the many problems with the Doug Ford alteration of city and provincial planning.
• blogTO observes that this year’s iteration of Ford Fest is going, inevitably, to be very political.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: retro maps, Sherbourne, ward councils, Anthropocene, Faith Goldy

• The Map Room Blog shares this fantastic 1950s-style travel map for the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, created by Warren Davidson.
• blogTO notes the installation of some new mural panels at Sherbourne Station.
• Dylan Ward at Spacing Toronto considers how ward councils, elected or otherwise, might work in Toronto.
• Fatima Syed at the National Observer takes a look at the stunning new exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Anthropocene, and its import for the human relationship to the environment.
• This profile by Anna Silman at The Cut of Faith Goldy, her former schoolmate and friend, is compelling reading. What happened?

[PHOTO] Eleven photos of Our Lady of Lourdes Roman Catholic Church, Toronto

I have been saving these photos of Our Lady of Lourdes Roman Catholic Church on 520 Sherbourne Street, ten of the interior and one of the exterior, for a Sunday such a this. This ornate 19th century church has wonderful bones, sheltering the tangibly holy spaces inside.

[URBAN NOTE] “Rooming house conversions worry housing advocates”

The Toronto Star‘s Betsy Powell reports on how a former rooming house on Sherbourne Street is being transformed into an AirBnB hostel. This does not seem like progress.

For 30 years the boxy, Second Empire-style building at 180 Sherbourne St. operated as a licensed rooming house for some of Toronto’s neediest residents.

Today, a vintage chandelier hangs in the ground-floor lobby. Nearby is a welcome sign, checkout policy and display rack filled with maps and brochures about local attractions.

Travellers looking for a bargain find their way to this property “in the heart of downtown Toronto” via online lodging site Airbnb, where host “Silvana” offers 12 units starting at $34 for a “simple room with a single bed” to $100 a night for a room with two double beds.

Airbnb says its hosts are regular people sharing their homes for a bit of extra income with guests seeking an “authentic” travel experience.

Airbnb’s popularity has jumped dramatically in Toronto in the past two years, but critics say it is doing so based on a “sharing” myth — at the same time as it cuts into scarce available rentals and creates unfair competition for the heavily regulated hospitality industry.

[URBAN NOTE] “New plan would add 525 km of bike routes to create a true Toronto network”

The Toronto Star‘s Ben Spurr reports. All I can say is that this is a great plan. Will it be enacted? This remains to be seen.

Bike lanes could be coming to eight of Toronto’s busiest streets if the city’s new 10-year cycling plan pans out.

The plan, released in a city report Monday, identifies 525 km of new bike lanes, cycle tracks, trails and other routes that, if built, would create the kind of connected network Toronto’s bike advocates have long pushed for.

The majority of that infrastructure, some 280 km, would be in the form of painted or physically separated bike lanes on busy streets, while 190 km of it would be cycling routes on quieter roads. The remaining 55 km would be “sidewalk-level boulevard trails” running alongside major thoroughfares. The plan would cost an estimated $153.5 million over the next decade.

“Over a 10-year period we would roughly look at doubling the amount of cycling routes in the city,” said Stephen Buckley, the city’s general manager of transportation services. He said that to date the city’s planning of its bike network has been disjointed, and his goal was to “develop a full network that we could get behind.”

The guiding principles are connecting existing cycling routes, expanding the network, and improving infrastructure already in place, Buckley said.

Perhaps the most striking feature is a proposal to study bike infrastructure on eight major corridors, including Bloor St./Dupont St. from Dundas St. to Sherbourne St.; Danforth Ave. from Broadview Ave. to Kingston Rd.; and Yonge St. all the way from Steeles to Front St., almost the full length of the city.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• The Big Picture shares photos of life around the world this month.
• blogTO notes that a vacant lot on Sherbourne Street will become an urban farm, for a time.
• Centauri Dreams explores the strange oceans of Titan.
• Dangerous Minds shares some astoundingly open ads for cocaine paraphrenalia from the 1980s.
• The Dragon’s Tales links to a study suggesting that it was the Chicxulub impact, not the Deccan Traps volcanic eruptions, which were extinction-triggering.
• Joe. My. God. notes the governor of South Carolina’s statement that his political opponents orchestrated the reaction to anti-trans legislation to ensure he would not get re-elected.
• Language Hat reports on an Igbo journalist explaining why he, and many of his people, do not speak their ancestral language.
• The Map Room Blog maps patterns of rail travel in Europe.
• Michael Steeleworthy is critical, and rightly so, of the massive announced cutbacks to Newfoundland and Labrador’s library service.
• Torontoist notes the Toronto Hard Candy gym’s cutting of its links with Madonna.
• Transit Toronto notes the TTC is looking for volunteer ambassadors.
• Window on Eurasia notes that population growth in Russia is concentrated in largely non-Russian regions.

[PHOTO] Waiting, Église du Sacré-Cœur

This church at 381 Sherbourne Street is the home base of the Paroisse du Sacré-Cœur, a Roman Catholic congregation founded in 1889 that in the intervening generations has been a nucleus for Toronto’s Francophone communities.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• blogTO notes an old mansion at Bloor and Sherbourne is being moved to make room for the new.
• The Broadside Blog’s Caitlin Kelly talks about her routines and rituals.
• The Dragon’s Gaze notes a catalog of nearby stellar systems.
• Joe. My. God. observes the bizarrely rigid British ban on poppers sales.
• Language Hat notes the remarkable flexible language used in Albanian bazaars.
• Language Log notes a politely-worded anti-smoking sign in New York City’s Central Park, partly written in Chinese, and how this differs from the standard.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes that Central Americans have not benefited from globalized trade agreements, at all.
• Marginal Revolution notes the underperformance of the white English.
• The Planetary Society Blog’s Emily Lakdawalla examines the small moons of Pluto-Charon.
• The Power and the Money’s Noel Maurer announces the introduction of an economic history category.
• Towleroad notes an anti-trans activist who led the successful fight against an anti-discrimination law, on the grounds that trans people would harass women, himself defended men who took illicit photos of women changing.
• Window on Eurasia notes the Russian government is trying to present sanctions as the new normal.

[URBAN NOTE] “Toronto’s first dedicated bike lanes on Sherbourne start of bigger network”

The Toronto Star‘s Andrew Livingstone writes about the new bike lane on Sherbourne.

[A]s part of $4.1 million upgrades along the street, the $2.5 million bike lanes will provide a necessary dedicated north-south route for the growing number of cyclists in the downtown area.

“We use them all the time,” said Meldon Lobo, 27. “Sherbourne is in much better condition than it used to be before.”

[. . .]

Sherbourne was touted as a safer route for cyclists than Jarvis St., where painted bike lanes, added in 2010 under former mayor David Miller, have been a hot-button issue for drivers.

Council voted 24-19 in October to remove the $59,000 bike lanes to restore a reversible fifth lane at a cost of $300,000 to improve commute times for drivers.

The Sherbourne lanes are the east route in what Minnan-Wong said will be a square network of dedicated lanes in the downtown core. Designs for Wellesley St. have been completed and he said construction will begin later this year.