Rocket Talk: Can Sunday Subway Service Start Sooner?
Newsstand: November 19, 2009
Gender Studies Coming to a High School Near You
Please Insert Station and Try Again
The Art of Not Knowing
Torontoist is ending the year by naming our Heroes and Villains of 2008--the people, places, and things that we've either fallen head over heels in love with or developed uncontrollable rage towards over the past twelve months, with one hero and one villain selected by each participating staff member. On Christmas Day: the heroes. On Boxing Day: the villains. And next week, cast your vote to determine the Superhero and Supervillain of the year.
Façadism
Back in September 2006, Toronto City Council designated the Ralph Day Funeral Home at 172 Danforth Avenue as a heritage property, saying that its "Neo-Gothic styling and [...] contextual value as a local landmark" were enough to qualify for protection in the face of a proposed retail development. Seventeen months later, Toronto and East York Community Council approved the demolition of the Ralph Day Funeral Home, endorsing a staff report assuring that the development—a big-box drug store—would respect the old building's heritage status by reusing its façade:[C]onditions will be included that would ensure the new building will incorporate some of the existing architectural features. These conditions include the removal, storage, and protection of the stone of the existing building and that it is incorporated into the new masonry work on the south (Danforth Avenue) façade of the new building.The pictures above show the result: the stone frames of two windows reassembled and completely freed of context; leaded glass replaced by plastic; a view into a building replaced by a featureless beige wall; a stately and unique building replaced by a big disposable box. What looks like drawn curtains or blinds is in fact the solid exterior stucco wall of the new building, barely two centimetres behind the plastic window that's been slapped on top. Unless they are eventually filled with ads, these windows are unlikely to offer any visual interest at all and to present only the barest hint of what used to be here. Looking at this building, which could well be Toronto's worst case of façadism in recent memory, you really begin to understand just how little we value our heritage. It's telling that the only architecturally redeeming quality is imported from the building that was demolished, and even that minor tribute is treated with such contempt that it borders on pathological. The problem with Toronto's façadism love affair is that it's devolved into a joke. Granted, not every building is worth saving in its entirety, and some preserved façades can provide a wonderful sense of both place and scale, but that kind of successful project is rare. The more commonplace half-hearted efforts such as the Ralph Day debacle really make you wonder why anyone involved even bothered. Those two preserved window frames look an awful lot like a big middle finger raised by developers and pointed squarely at the city. Apologists frequently try to present façadism as the best that we can do. Architect Michael McClelland recently told the Star's Christopher Hume, "People who simply dismiss it don't understand. It's often the agreed-upon compromise." After all, heritage buildings are too old, small, or rickety to preserve, it would cost too much to bring them up to current standards, they stand in the way of progress, or they simply don't fit in with the developer's plans. These are usually code words for a lack of will on the part of politicians and of imagination on the part of developers and architects. Great cities (and great architecture) are built on vision, not on compromise. If you want façades, go to the Guild Inn Gardens and think about what this city would look like if more of those buildings were still intact. BY VAL DODGE; TOP PHOTO BY JAY MORRISON FROM THE TORONTOIST FLICKR POOL, BOTTOM PHOTO BY VAL DODGE
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These are "villains". Residents should have had the option of bags from the get-go. Few people have the time and energy to beg for an exception.
I don't recall facadism that was more pathetic than that. It's these compromises which are compromising our stock of architecture. There's no way a lucrative national chain could not afford to keep that facade. This was all about the developer making as much money as possible.
Seeing those photos almost brings a tear to my eye. It's disgusting. The accepted compromise would have been to restore and keep the facade and scale of the building. Instead you get only a part of the facade saved, and that part is so poorly recreated that it looks like trashy quasi-historical architecture on some new 905 or suburban Toronto strip mall.
I'm a little surprised not to see Igor Kenk as a 2008 Villain.
@uglyredhonda: Same here.
Bang on about CUPE. They have some valid points (long term staff should'nt have to reapply for their positions every year etc.) but refusing binding arbitration and letting it drag on for nearly two months without an end in sight is really irresponsible.
That the term of the contract (they want a shorter term) is so central is also really cynical of them, and I hope the TA's and students at other schools are aware of CUPEs grand plan for 2010.
Chris Tindal, your photo illustration is kinda brilliant.
Koodo's best bit of marketing is surely their pop-up style store in the Malls themselves. Koodo were way ahead of the trend with what they have been doing in Malls in Canada we believe, see http://www.dailydooh.com/archives/2298 AND http://www.dailydooh.com/archives/6507
yeah, wheres igor?
I agree with every single one of these, and that is a tall order.
The Facadism especially pisses me off.
A few things, re: CUPE 3903 at York.
First, and just to get this out of the way, they - we, actually, since I'm a member - won't be legislated back to work. Provincial parliament doesn't resume until the middle of February. And by then, the strike will be over or the year will be lost. (Not to be snarky, but you could've learned with this with minimal effort - it's on the very first page of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario's website!)
Second, we're not just a "TA union" - nearly half of our members are research assistants and non-student contract faculty. And while you're right to point out that the 2-year length is a major sticking point, you've missed the other - long-term contracts for some of those contract faculty, who have been working in some cases for 10 or 20 years, often with no guarantee that they'll be employed in 4 months. (Incidentally, this is another reason we declined arbitration. We want to set a precedent with this proposal, and arbitration is not known to do this.) Call us stubborn for continuing to refuse arbitration, but admit that York has been equally stubborn to keep pushing something they knew we'd refuse when all this time could've been spent bargaining.
Third, that the Toronto Star doesn't back our strike has less to do with us than it does with their president. Robert Prichard was the president of the U of T immediately before becoming president of Torstar and has deep ties to the school - a school whose TA union (there are no contract faculty in 3902) may or may not also be on strike next February, depending on whether 3903 "wins" in their strike. He has good reason to want to see us lose this one.
Fourth, CUPE 3903 has said plenty of stupid or unreasonable things, which you've noted above. But so has York. When asked why contract employees who have worked full-time hours for decades aren't entitled to retirement benefits, York's representatives said 'they don't have to retire, they can just keep working', as if lacking a mandatory retirement date were a bonus. When President Shoukri was asked to speak about the strike at Senate about a month ago, he suggested that it was insignificant that it would not even be remembered - but tell that to the students whose immediate future is in limbo. And as for Shoukri's leadership on this one? The Globe reported on December 17th that over the course of more than 40 days of strike he had released just one statement. But I guess it's just easier to say nothing and leave your students and your employees with nothing to refute or respond to.
Lastly, York will continue, as usual, to bill students for winter semester tuition on January 10th - even if their classes for the fall haven't resumed. *Generously*, they'll waive charging interest if the tuition isn't paid before the winter term actually begins. All the same, though, they're still charging students for a semester they can't even guarantee. That's cold. Villainous, even.
Explain why you want a two year contract so badly, please.
The pic of Jack taking a picture and blotting out May's face is hilarious.
But Jim "don't invest in Ontario" Flaherty is nowhere to be seen.
Glad you included cabs in this list, and good summary of the issues.
But where's Igor Kenk?
Lands Down: Christopher is right when he says that the two-year contract length proposal is all about coordinated bargaining. We want to be in a position to appeal directly to the province - the schools always complain that it's the province's fault for there not being money available - and this seems like something that can only be achieved through the threat of a mass strike action. (And, I should point out, that being in 'strike position' or having a 'strike mandate' is not the same as necessarily having a mass strike. It's a possible result, but one that can hopefully be avoided.)
What seems lost in the shuffle, though, is that winning such a strike would be a *huge* boon to undergraduate students. One of the proposals that we always have on the table when we negotiate - but that we always pull because it's just too costly - is smaller tutorials/seminars and more teaching support. (Since, as it stands now, a class can have 99 students without York being required to hire a TA.) These are the big-ticket items that we'd be bargaining for - and it's something that I really think the entire university community should be able to get behind.
I think the police who ignored Igor Kenk for years, give out a disproportionate number of tickets to cyclists and ignore people who park in bike lanes need to account for their actions.
Put Chief William Blair on the list.
Leaving Kenk off the list was definitely our bad, though he was a big important part of the reason we named bikes as heroes.
How is that fair to anyone, watchmaker? You're striking now in preparation for an even larger (and more acrimonious) strike in 2010. I question the idea that you're doing this for students. It's quite clear CUPE is trying to extract an unreasonable amount (in salaries and job security) from the administration and using 50,000 students as leverage to that end.
Note to those in high school - go out of province for undergrad. You probably don't want to be in an Ontario school when 2010 rolls around.
Also, I just appended a correction to the Media Cutbacks entry above about CP24. CTVglobemedia did announce plans to make massive layoffs but they never named which entities would be affected, so our conclusion that CP24 would be the victim of "significant" cutbacks was one we jumped to.
beautiful gallery.
I LOVE my monster bin. It is easy to move to the curb, easy to fill and perfect for me, here in Scarborough.
I get it, you live downtown, you have less space, etc.. etc.. but you have better access to transit and a million other services. It's nice for us folks in the burbs to have the advantage for a change.
Lands Down: Sorry for the late reply - for whatever reason, there was no option to post a comment yesterday.
I'm not really sure where you're getting your information, but CUPE's demands are hardly unreasonable - a 4% annual raise and five 5-year contracts spots every year, which would be open to applications from contract lecturers/faculty with a certain amount of seniority. (Only 68, I believe, of the 700+ contract teachers would qualify to apply.) You're probably thinking of the pre-strike proposals, which were largely just posturing on both sides - York offered wage increases below what they traditionally offer and we proposed something substantially higher; they proposed benefit adjustments that would have seen, for example, my childcare coverage drop by about 25% and we proposed that they increase our individual coverage amount. It's shitty that such ridiculous posturing is necessary, but it seems to be practically built-in to the bargaining process - which Dean Bob Drummond, on the university's negotiating team, admitted to the Excalibur student paper.
Fairness, unfortunately, is also in short supply. Few of us want to be striking, but most of us agreed that it was unfair to continue working without a new contract - we would be working under the conditions of our 2005 deal, which meant that our benefits would continue to be eroded by an increase in our membership, that nothing would change with regard to security and class size, and that York would be under no pressure to negotiate because the situation was working quite well for them. And if you think I'm exaggerating when I say that there's no other way to pressure the university to bargain, look at U of T. By the time CUPE 3902's strike deadline rolls around, they will have been without a contract for a year - the old terms worked just fine for U of T, so they were in no rush to have them changed.
But it's entirely likely that there are people in CUPE 3903 who are motivated for reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of education - who desperately need the pay raise or the increased benefits or the job security or the glory of sticking it to the man and are striking for those reasons. That said, personally, I can probably take or leave the extra $10 a month in pay and the difference in a few hundred dollars a year in child care probably won't break me - though, in honesty, I'd love to have it. What I'd like most, though, are the smaller, more intimate and effective class sizes - and it's clear that we'll never win that battle in a negotiation setting like this, even with the relative strength of our union.
And as for using the students as leverage in this fight? I can just as easily suggest that the university is doing the same - they have, after all, re-branded themselves as the representatives of the student body in their press releases. The undergrad students are certainly caught in the middle and their needs are largely being ignored, at least temporarily - but neither the school nor the union can claim that they've managed to avoid victimizing the undergraduates.
Your argument is hilarious. First you say: "most of us agreed that it was unfair to continue working without a new contract - we would be working under the conditions of our 2005 deal."
Then you say: "I can probably take or leave the extra $10 a month in pay and the difference in a few hundred dollars a year in child care probably won't break me"
So it's so desperately unfair that you're not getting a few bucks a month in pay and benefits, which you could take or leave, that there's no other option but a strike? That doesn't sound terribly rational to me.
@thewatchmaker: A 4% annual raise is more than the rate of inflation. Explain that to people who are losing their jobs in this province.