The name “Mesopotamia” derives from a Greek term meaning “land between the rivers.” The Royal Ontario Museum’s latest major exhibit, which opens on June 22, takes this literally, as visitors flow between painted representations of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers on the floor.

Presented by the British Museum and rounded out with pieces from institutions in Chicago, Detroit, and Philadelphia, Mesopotamia: Inventing Our World covers 3,000 years of human development in the cradle of urban civilization. Most of the 170 artifacts on display have never been shown in Canada.

There are a lot of chefs in the kitchen for the Canadian premiere of Sarah Ruhl’s Passion Play, a triptych set in three time periods that tells the stories of amateur actors (played by real actors) involved in staging performances of the story of Christ. Three different Toronto independent theatre companies, all with reputations for innovative staging and creation in their past work, each tackle one of the three acts. Ordinarily, such a complicated arrangement would be to a show’s detriment, but not in this case. While you need to be prepared for a marathon of theatre (the show runs four hours, incluing two intermissions), you’re certainly going to get your money’s worth.

“A cross between Woodstock and the Algonquin Round Table,” is what Michael Redhill called it. Dorothy Parker grinding out an electric cover of “The Star Spangled Banner”? Well, not quite. Rather, Redhill, the literary curator for Luminato 2013, was describing A Literary Picnic, the annual festival’s celebration of storytelling, creativity, and the written word.

The 2013 Toronto Jazz Festival descends on the city this Friday with a huge “free for all” event. That means all of Friday’s programming at every Jazz Festival venue is, yes, completely free of charge. There will be concerts from local favourites Molly Johnson and Mary Margaret O’Hara, plus a show by Smokey Robinson and Martha Reeves, who will be launching the fest from its epicentre, Nathan Phillips Square.

Here’s a rundown of some of the shows worth checking out on Friday—and during the rest of the festival, when you’ll actually have to pay.

Folks who are planning on having a swim in the pool at Scadding Court Community Centre over the next few days may find themselves a little disappointed. Those who want to go fishing, however, will probably be ecstatic.

For the rest of the week, the Community Centre will be holding its annual Gone Fishin’ event, meaning its indoor pool will be an indoor fish pond. The pool has been drained, dechlorinated, and refilled with 2,000 rainbow trout, to be caught by local children and families.

Toronto’s extensive work on the silver screen reveals that, while we have the chameleonic ability to look like anywhere from New York City to Moscow, the disguise doesn’t always hold up to scrutiny. Reel Toronto revels in digging up and displaying the films that attempt to mask, hide, or—in rare cases—proudly display our city.

Last time out, we looked at a superior TV series (and one that was just renewed!). But Toronto has also hosted plenty of mini-series and movies of the week. Few of them have been as ambitious as 2006′s BBC production, The State Within.

The State Within is sort of a more tightly scripted, Britishy version of 24. It’s shot all hand-held with whippy cameras and split-second shots that make our job that much more difficult, especially since the series is six hours long. The show stars Jason Isaacs, a fine actor, who, like most British actors of his generation, will probably be best known for his work in the Harry Potter films. He plays a British Ambassdor to the U.S.A., who gets embroiled in a big, huge conspiracy—and that means Toronto gets to play not only Washington D.C., but also parts of London and Florida.

Just like 24, The State Within starts off with an audacious terrorist attack on an airplane. Things start innocuously enough at Pearson Airport, which we visit a few times during the series…

…and you can even see a map of Terminal 1 here.

Then they get in the car and drive onto what is rather obviously not the Washington Beltway…

…and then things really go south. It’s hardly surprising that staging this on a local road, right near the actual airport, attracted some attention and freaked some people out. This impressive setup was actually on Goreway Drive, near Woodbine Racetrack.

After the attack, the bodies are laid out at Varsity Arena.

As mentioned above, there’s lots of split-second shots and also very tightly-framed shots that zip around, making it difficult to see where we are. This, for example, is during the opening credits, and while we have no idea where it is, we’re gonna go out on a limb and say it’s in Toronto. (The pillars suggest Metro Hall, which we’ll see later.)

Here are cop cars zipping down University Avenue, by what looks like the Osgoode subway stop.

This is a bit easier to ID: it’s the Frost Building, on Queen’s Park Circle.

Another episode’s opening credits shows this guy coming out of the door of St. Andrew’s Church, on Simcoe…

…and while Roy Thomson Hall is kept off-camera, you can see the Elephant and Castle pub across the street here. That means he’s standing right in front of Hannibal Lecter’s office, which, hey, cool!

The show’s herky-jerky aesthetic means there aren’t many big establishing shots, but this one is of Washington D.C.’s very-distinctive Union Station.

But then we cut down and it’s clearly our Union Station. Theirs doesn’t have limestone pillars…

…the Skywalk…

…or GO trains.

The show uses our local institutions to portray important Washington buildings. Don’t believe the type! The “Pentagon” is actually Macdonald Block, a Queen’s Park building that we’ve seen used as a generic government building in films as diverse as The Recruit and Last Night.

And, despite the caption, this isn’t the Senate.

As you can see here, it’s actually Old City Hall.

This press conference was shot at Metro Hall, and when the Secret Service rushes in…

…they come down Mercer Street.

When the British Ambassador drives to his residence…

…he arrives at Osgoode Hall.

But the interiors, including this party room…

…this hallway…

…this dining room…

…and these stairs, are actually at the mansion that’s served as everything from the X-Mansion to Billy Madison‘s home, Oshawa’s Parkwood Estate.

Just as a bit of a break from the locations, you should know that some local actors also get some major facetime, including Aaron Abrams (who is also on Hannibal)…

…and Marnie McPhail, who was the original Annie Edison long before Community had its own Annie Edison. (We’ll pause a second so you can hum the theme song to The Edison Twins.)

Where were we? Well, yeah, there’s all sorts of spy shenanigans going on, so you get clandestine meetings, like this one, on Villiers Street…

…and this one, also in the Port Lands, with the Toronto Star building in the background.

Speaking of backgrounds, we mentioned there’s a lot of tightly framed downtown shots that are a bit tougher to spot, like this argument scene…

…this TTC stop, which is supposed to be in Tampa (the lens they used really throws off perspective but it looks like it’s maybe on Bay, near Bloor?…

…and this financial district alleyway.

This park is supposed to be D.C.’s Rock Creek Park, but it’s actually High Park…

…as you can see when there’s an assassination at the since-burned-down (and subsequently rebuilt) playground.

This fancy shmancy hotel lobby, of course, belongs to the Royal York…

…and this scene is just outside.

So is this one, complete with a Casey’s visible at the edge of the frame.

Some of the other more familiar locations include the now-defunct Canary Restaurant…

…and hospital scenes, like this, which used the city’s go-to location for hospital shoots, Humber River Regional.

CORRECTION: June 4, 10:40AM This post previously referred to D.C.’s Rock Creek Park as Rocky Creek Park. The correction has been made above.

Photo by seango, from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

As we reported yesterday, Metrolinx has released its Investment Strategy [PDF], a set of recommendations about how to pay for transit and road improvements in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA). Those recommendations: increase the HST by one per cent; implement a levy on non-residential, off-street parking; increase the fuel tax by five cents; and increase development charges by 15 per cent.

Is this a good proposal, and will it get anywhere?

This History: Waiting For a Strategy

Back in June 2007, then-Premier Dalton McGuinty announced MoveOntario 2020 with a list of 52 projects cobbled together from regional and GO Transit plans. The estimated cost, about $16 billion, would be shared between two thirds from Queen’s Park and a hoped-for one third from Ottawa.

The agency now known as Metrolinx was given the job of finalizing a plan, which became known as The Big Move, and was formally adopted in November 2008. By then, the estimated cost had climbed to $50 billion (with even higher numbers in draft versions of the plan); $2 billion was established as the annual target for funding. Today, Metrolinx still talks about that $2 billion, but now that’s only expected to cover a handful of projects from the original list, plus a 25 per cent diversion to municipal governments to help with smaller-bore, local transit needs.

Even before The Big Move was published, an Investment Strategy Update [PDF] was presented to the Metrolinx Board. Little in that document is surprising, and most of the major revenue sources being proposed now—the sales tax, fuel tax, and parking levy—were on the 2008 list. That update also included projections of the funding needed annually for various network concepts then under development (page 7), ranging from an extra $2 billion to $6.2 billion.

The much higher-than-anticipated cost of transit investments, coupled with the banking crisis of late 2008, changed everything. A government once committed to a massive transit network struggled to afford just the first phase of projects, whose cost had ballooned to the originally announced value of the entire program.

The scope and timing of projects, notably Toronto’s Transit City lines, were adjusted. Routes that were originally slated for near-completion in 2013 were dispatched to the end of the decade. Outer portions of routes (Eglinton and Finch LRTs to the airport, Sheppard LRT to University of Toronto’s Scarborough Campus, a Scarborough LRT to Malvern) were sacrificed to a still-unfunded second phase.

If it were not for the legislated requirement that Metrolinx produce an Investment Strategy by June 1, 2013, Queen’s Park might still be bumbling along avoiding significant, long-term commitment to solving regional transit woes.

The Primary Tools

Metrolinx proposes four primary and three secondary funding tools. The primary tools are:

Harmonized Sales Tax (1 per cent increase)
This tax does the bulk of the work funding transit projects and operations, with projected new revenue of $1.3 billion being raised annually in the GTHA. (It will actually raise a little more than that: Metrolinx’s plan includes a $100 million allowance for a means-tested “mobility tax credit.” This would be similar to the sales tax credit now available to those with low or no income.)

If the tax is applied province-wide—easier to manage legislatively—an additional $1.7 billion will be available, raised from the rest of the province, to fund transportation projects outside of the GTHA. Because this territory is beyond Metrolinx’s planning area, no work has been done on how this revenue might be managed or allocated.

Business Parking Levy
A tax on non-residential parking would be levied throughout the GTHA on a sliding scale based on property values. In effect, parking would become a new land use for taxation purposes. This tax, averaging 25 cents per space per day, would bring in $350 million.

Fuel and Gasoline Tax (5 cents per litre)
This tax would produce $330 million, though that figure could be affected by future changes in driving habits and fuel economy. Any revenue would be in addition to the current dedicated fuel tax transfer to municipalities.

Development Charges (15% increase)
Across the GTHA, development charges are applied to new construction, to cover the cost of supporting infrastructure municipalities must provide. Assuming that building continues at current rates, this would yield an additional $100 million in revenue.

Funds raised by all the new taxes would be put in a dedicated transportation trust fund, one that would be administered by a board separate from Metrolinx. This would, says Metrolinx, ensure accountability and transparency, demonstrating to a skeptical public that new transit is indeed being funded with the new revenue tools.

The Secondary Tools

The secondary tools are not included in the fundraising totals—they don’t count immediately towards the $2 billion a year we need to raise. They are recommended as policies to consider not because they would raise a lot of money but but because they are intended to influence behaviour, whether this be by commuting motorists or by landowners who benefit from public investments in transit.

High Occupancy Toll Lanes (HOT)
A High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lane is one set aside for vehicles with multiple passengers. High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes extend this scheme by giving solo drivers, who are also able to use the lane if they pay a toll. This concept is popular in some circles, but dubbed “Lexus Lanes” by others, as it confers a benefit only for those willing and able to pay.

The real problem with the HOT concept is its assumption that there is surplus, unused capacity in the HOV lane available for sale. Traffic that would otherwise be in the free lanes is shifted to the allegedly emptier HOT lane. This is completely contrary to the principle that HOV lanes are intended to encourage shared use and thereby to increase overall road capacity.

If a road is full today, changing one lane to a tolled HOT lane will not create capacity out of thin air. If anything, the HOV lane should demonstrate a lower congestion level than the free highway in order to attract the desired car-pooling behaviour.

In a worst case scenario, this could be a highway expansion plan in disguise, if the HOV/HOT lane cannot be carved out of existing space. Implementing any tolling scheme also requires substantial capital outlay for vehicle and passenger monitoring. The gross revenue varies depending on the scale of the HOV/HOT network, and it is unclear how much would remain available for other transportation improvements.

Paid Parking
GO Transit’s expansion is historically rooted in provision of parking at stations. With the shift from large surface lots to parking structures, the cost of providing parking has grown, but GO’s model continues to encourage commuters to drive to the transit station. This approach is limited both by parking capacity and traffic congestion at stations. Also, parking may not be the best land use at locations that will become local development nodes. Parking—intrinsically designed for peak commuting to downtown—is of little use for all-day, two-way demand.

Charging for parking could generate $20–40 million annually, although this will certainly annoy GO customers, just as it has TTC riders who lost the free parking once available with the Metropass. The real challenge for Metrolinx should be to simply stop building more spaces, not to find ways to reduce their cost through new revenues.

Land Value Capture
The premise of this tool is that transit investments make land more valuable, and this value should somehow help to pay back the investment that made it possible. However, the definition of what “value” should be taxed and how this might be calculated remains a mystery.

A fundamental problem is that development does not necessarily follow construction quickly. Examples on the existing TTC and GO rail networks abound. The value of a rapid transit line is enjoyed not just by the immediate properties, but by the transformation of access in general (be it by car or feeder bus) when a line opens up new territory or major service improvements change a route’s convenience and attractiveness.

Should land be taxed just because a new station pops up, or should the tax await development? What is the catchment area for a new tax? This and other related questions have not been answered, but Metrolinx recommends working with municipalities and the development industry to develop a “land value capture strategy”.

Which Tools Will Be Used, and How?

The Investment Strategy, formally, is only advice Metrolinx is offering Queen’s Park. The ink was barely dry on the report when Transportation Minister Glen Murray took to the airwaves, mentioning the many other revenue suggestions he had received. He suggested that the mix of new taxes, indeed the entire Metrolinx proposal, was still very much in play, saying that the “Metrolinx contribution is significant, but it is just one of many voices the government will be listening to over the summer.” (This is from an interview on CBC radio’s Here & Now; see the second of the two clips at that link.)

Via a press release [PDF], Murray also announced that the government will strike a review committee over the summer of 2013 to consider the Metrolinx report and manage outreach to municipal politicians and citizens. In effect, the Metrolinx work will be rehashed to put a ministerial stamp on its conclusions.

In the lead-up to Metrolinx’s announcement, through public consultations, third-party advocacy, and media reports, the emphasis has been on which taxes would be used to generate $2 billion per year. What is missing is any detailed plan for actually spending the money. All we have right now is a list of projects with no delivery dates, nor any estimate of the benefits they will bring.

Both opposition parties have rejected new taxes to fund transit expansion. Metrolinx, as a non-political agency, did not examine any potential reallocation of government finances through revisions of corporate tax structures—an NDP demand—nor the spending cuts demanded by the Tories. Alternate agendas both in government and opposition will make any speedy resolution to the transit funding question unlikely.

By late 2013, the government must make up its mind and either bring forward enabling legislation for new taxes, or at least build an agreed-upon set of proposals into the 2014 provincial budget plans. There is little time for more dithering and second-guessing of an already extended research and consultation process.

Is $2 Billion Enough?

Experience with The Big Move and with transit projects generally tells us that cost estimates don’t stay fixed for long.

Metrolinx now quotes its “Next Wave” projects in 2014 dollars, but will build them years in the future with unknown inflationary effects thanks to economic changes in labour, materials, and financing, not to mention changing capacity in the construction industry.

Add to this the need to pay for operating new lines as they open—a question that remains unresolved. The faster Metrolinx expands GO service, the sooner it must bear the cost of running that service and maintaining new infrastructure.

Local transit will also need to be improved to provide access to the regional network. Simple changes like running GO trains every 30 minutes rather than hourly have profound implications for infrequent, off-peak transit service and the cost to local municipalities.

The Challenge of “Local Funding”

Twenty-five percent of the new revenue, or $500 million a year, will be shunted to municipalities for their local transportation goals—that is, dedicated to projects outside of The Big Move network itself.

• Fifteen per cent ($300 million a year) will go toward local transportation improvements (road or transit) that are intended to increase transit ridership or road capacity. Municipalities will have to provide matching funds, but this must be net new money, not simply a reallocation of existing spending. Metrolinx sees this as a funding source for increased transit service, but it is unclear how long such improvements would be eligible as a stimulus for new riding. Operating subsidies are a continuing cost, and they could be crowded out by one-time capital spending.
• Five per cent ($100 million a year) will go to investments in the controlled access highway network (like 400-series highways).
• Five per cent ($100 million a year) will go to a mixed bag of active transportation (cycling and pedestrian) improvements, fare systems, and other leftovers in the plan.

Critical aspects of local service and fare integration—a challenge needing much more than a shared PRESTO smartcard—will not be addressed until mid-2014. The substantial cost of improved local transit service is lumped into a funding pool with many other demands, including road expansion, and there is no sense that the magnitude of spending required has been matched against the proposed funding.

For years Metrolinx has been preoccupied with a network of large-scale projects and has dismissed local needs as somebody else’s problem. Now they have discovered the “last mile”: the portion of a commuter’s trip between a regional service and a home or work destination. (Think about taking the bus from the nearest subway station to your home.) Coupled with a commitment to providing regional service and fare integration, local transit is a major concern in its own right. Metrolinx’s work in this vital area is threadbare, a condition that will not be easily remedied given the disparity of goals and priorities for each municipal transit agency.

A further problem lies in the definition of what counts as a “regional” project and, hence, one that would be funded as a Metrolinx undertaking, not as a local scheme. If Metrolinx includes a project in The Big Move, it gets full provincial funding, but the municipality loses control. One example is the proposed LRT/streetcar network on the Toronto waterfront touted by Glen Murray as a high priority, even though it’s not part of the Metrolinx scheme. Completing all components, including expansion of Union Station Loop, construction of new trackage through the East Bayfront, West Donlands and Port Lands, and associated street realignments, has a cost comparable to some Big Move projects. If this must come out of the “local funding” pot, it will elbow aside any other operating or capital proposals for several years.

What Will We Build?

The new money is intended for what are called the “Next Wave” projects. These include:

• Two subway lines (the so-called Relief Line and the Richmond Hill extension of the Yonge line);
• Two light rail lines (Mississauga and Hamilton);
• Three bus rapid transit lines (Brampton’s Queen Street, Dundas Street, and Durham-Scarborough);
• Many GO improvements (two-way all-day service throughout the network and electrification of the Lake Shore and Kitchener corridors).

According to Metrolinx president Bruce McCuaig, the board members were quite insistent that the new revenues be dedicated to specific projects, and that there be a review mechanism to discuss whether to change or discontinue the new taxes and levies once their initial purpose is achieved.

Additional funding from Ottawa could speed up work on the Next Wave projects, or it could free up capital to add new projects to this group. Until such money appears, if ever, all of the unfunded projects that are supposed to come after the Next Wave, including Transit City Phase 2 and other pieces of The Big Move, are in funding limbo.

When Will We Build?

One major open question is the financing strategy that will support all of this. Metrolinx has not, as yet, provided a clear recommendation: do we build $2 billion a year worth of transit, as the money comes in, or use the new revenue tools to underwrite borrowing a much larger sum (against the future revenue the taxes would bring in) to facilitate faster construction?

Each approach may be appropriate for different types of projects. For example, a large subway such as the Relief Line (now shorn of its “Downtown” moniker) would soak up all available funding if it were built only with current revenues. The scope, length and lifespan of the investment would be more suitable for debt financing. Much smaller projects could be built directly with in-year tax revenues, by contrast.

In its report, Metrolinx included estimates for how long it would take to design, conduct an environmental assessment, and construct each Next Wave project:

Some of these timeframes, notably the electrification of GO service on the Lake Shore and Kitchener lines, are very long, and their contribution to reducing travel times will not be felt for at least a decade. Can all of these be undertaken at once, or will the process be drawn out by Metrolinx limitations on concurrency in its staging plan, due in June 2014?

The Next Wave will not move speedily. It may consume 15 years worth of new revenue, but the GTHA could wait much longer to see meaningful results.

Metrolinx Governance

As part of its recommendations, Metrolinx is proposing that its board grow from twelve to eighteen members, with the additional six being appointed by the municipalities to represent their interests. How this would be achieved is unclear given the complexity of a region-wide recruitment process. Equally, it could be argued that Queen’s Park should give up some of its existing seats on the board to keep its size manageable. When everyone wants to speak, even a twelve-member board can chew up a lot of time.

The projects now approved in the Metrolinx Base Program and Next Wave represent a spending breakdown roughly proportionate to the population in the “416″ and the “905″ areas. This coarse grouping will not likely survive examination at a finer level at the individual municipalities. Some areas may still feel “left out” and this could affect broad acceptance of the plans. The worst possible scenario would be a board that gerrymandered The Big Move to suit pet projects rather than fairly-applied regional objectives and criteria.

Selling the Plan

Metrolinx and Queen’s Park face a considerable political challenge in convincing Ontario residents that new taxes will bring meaningful, timely improvements to their travel experience. Polls and community meetings suggest that everyone—including the business community—accepts the need for greater transit spending, but the preferred source is often “anyone but me.”

The new taxes will place varying burdens on different groups, but these will be eventually offset by the transfer of personal expenses (eliminating a second or third car, reducing the time needed to commute) to public ones. That “eventually” is the nub of Metrolinx’s problem. Voters will pay for many years before they benefit from better transit, and those years must see plans and funding survive swings in government policy and economic activity.

With an annual population growth of 100,000, the GTHA will be one million people bigger before most of the Next Wave finishes construction. That’s a million more people who will complain about congestion, but most will drive for want of an alternative. Even the hoped-for changes in land use sought by Metrolinx will take decades to produce a meaningful shift in population and travel patterns across the region, and the network will have to serve the sprawling GTHA as it is built, not as it might exist in a planner’s fantasy.

In its staging plan, Metrolinx must show how improvements will be felt in the near and medium term, not just in a hypothetical future where all of The Big Move is in operation. Savings in travel time and reductions in congestion must be calculated and demonstrated for the intermediate stages when only parts of the plan are finished. Good results will beget support for more transit projects, but the government—whatever its party—must have the will to stay with the plan rather than amending it to suit electoral needs.

This is a very large, some would say impossible, expectation. In the short term, the government must survive long enough to implement the new taxes and push enough projects out the door to establish momentum for transit expansion. Even a political optimist will see this as difficult, but with good will and continued strong support from senior figures at Queen’s Park it remains possible.

The pessimistic view—more stalemates, little or no expansion, a further relegation of transit to a distant secondary role—does not bear consideration.

Photo by BradShaw2dot0 from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

After months of anticipation Metrolinx, the regional agency in charge of transit planning, has released its proposal [PDF] for a mix of new taxes and fees—revenue sources that would, collectively, yield just over the approximately two billion it estimates we need to build a major new round of transit infrastructure. That set of projects is called The Big Move; it includes, among many other things, a new subway line for Toronto.

A summary of the proposal:

If you’re wondering what, concretely, this would mean for you, here is how the numbers break down:

• For the average student: $117 a year
• For a two-car, five-person family: $977 a year
• For an average senior: $140 a year
• For the overall average household: $477 a year
• The average annual per capita cost: $179

And this, says Metrolinx compares to:

• Average cost of congestion per household: $1619 a year

Metrolinx’s proposal also includes a mobility tax credit, “to help ensure the proposed HST increase does not disproportionately burden those with lower incomes.” That would be paid for out of the revenue produced by these new taxes and fees as well.

Among the Big Move’s projects: a new subway line for Toronto, the very tentative route of which is shown here. Map courtesy of the TTC.

Speaking to reporters today, Metrolinx CEO Bruce McCuaig said that “In my mind it’s all about stable and dedicated funding. One of the things that set this region apart from others…is that we rely almost 100 per cent on traditional government transfers.” That is why, he said, Metrolinx is calling for the creation of a Transportation Trust Fund: the revenue would be sequestered in a separate account, essentially, to assure the public that the money was being allocated to the promised transit projects.

This will be a major talking point going forward: Metrolinx needs both the public and the NDP convinced that the province can spend the money it collects responsibly if these proposals are to gain traction and be passed at Queen’s Park. (Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak has already said we should only be looking at new revenue tools after all government waste has been eliminated; if transit funding proposals are to pass through the Legislature, therefore, it will be with the help of the New Democrats.)

In explaining how it arrived at this set of four tools, Metrolinx pointed to the experiences of other cities and regions that have implemented transit revenue tools, including Hong Kong, London, Vancouver, and Montreal. Those experiences teach that “there is no silver bullet” that will solve the transit funding question in a single move. Using a suite of taxes and fees helps mitigate against any fluctuations in the revenue a single tool might bring in, and also helps distribute the impact rather than focusing on a particular group (like businesses or drivers).

Formally, Metrolinx’s proposal only counts as advice to the province. It will now be up to Kathleen Wynne and the minority Liberal government to decide how to proceed. A round of public consultations is expected in the coming months; after that Wynne will need to begin talks with the NDP to see what the parties can agree to. In an interview with Torontoist last month, the premier indicated that she would not necessarily be limiting herself to the recommendations put forward by Metrolinx. The NDP very much wants to pay for transit, at least in part, by closing corporate tax loopholes and/or rolling back corporate tax cuts; though those measures are not included in Metrolinx’s proposal Wynne could, at least in theory, add them into the mix to help reach an agreement on the issue.

It is expected that the provincial government will bring their final proposal for transit funding to the Legislature sometime in the next year, though it is not yet clear whether they will do so as part of the 2014 buudget or attempt to pass it before then.

—In a press release issued earlier today, Horwath, the Ontario NDP leader, announced a deal with the Ontario Liberal party, putting an end to the possibility of an immediate provincial election. In exchange for not opposing the Liberal budget (and thereby toppling Premier Kathleen Wynne’s government) Horwath won a few concessions, including the establishment of a new Financial Accountability Office and a 15 per cent cut to car insurance premiums.

Group at statue of Queen Victoria, Queen’s Park, ca. 1912. From the City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1244, Item 2211.

The Golden Jubilee, celebrating Victoria’s 50th year on the throne, prompted an outpouring of patriotic fervour in Toronto in 1887. So large was the crowd attending a special Jubilee church service, with representation from most of the city’s denominations, that they couldn’t all fit in the Metropolitan Church. After a series of effusive speeches by the lieutenant-governor, premier, and mayor, the proceedings closed with a song—composed especially for the occasion by F.H. Torrington—”sung with great spirit and feeling” by all assembled, according to one in attendance.

The next day, a grand procession—composed of civic officials, school trustees, members of the city’s charities and societies, military units and veterans, all carrying banners and flags—marched past throngs of cheering spectators to festivities in the beloved monarch’s honour at the exhibition grounds. It was said that the procession was so long that it took an hour to pass a single point. Of the parade in the beloved monarch’s honour, Conyngham C. Taylor wrote in Toronto “Called Back” from 1888 to 1847 (Toronto: William Briggs, 1888): “The grand event so long anticipated was one to be long remembered as perhaps the most remarkable and the most thoroughly delightful day in the history of Toronto.”

Such was the loyal adoration Torontonians held for Queen and Empire. Yet, despite Victoria being the most commemorated British monarch, with statues in her honour scattered throughout the expansive British Empire, it took over 30 years of desultory efforts before Toronto erected a permanent Victoria statue of its own.

Photo of Queen Victoria monument at Queen’s Park, 1870, by Arthur R. Blackburn. From the Toronto Public Library Digital Collection.

Queen’s Park was originally intended, Mark Osbaldeston writes in Toronto 2 (Dundurn, 2011), to feature a statue of Victoria—the queen of the park’s name—in a place of honour at the head of University Avenue. When the Prince of Wales (the future King Edward VII) officially opened the park on September 11,1860, he laid the cornerstone for the base of a statue for that very purpose.

A statue of Victoria, however, wasn’t added to Queen’s Park until April 1871—and then only temporarily. At that time, city council gave permission to Marshall Wood to install his bronze depiction of a young Victoria, standing regally, on a tall wooden pedestal. It was almost an exact duplicate of the statue erected the same year in Montreal’s Victoria Square. When the proficient English sculptor—who did a brisk trade in selling his statues of the queen to communities across the Empire—travelled to Canada for the Montreal unveiling, he brought with him an assortment of other Victoria statues he hoped to sell around the country. Installing the statue in the urbane setting of Queen’s Park was part of his sales pitch. It worked.

Soon Toronto’s municipal committee on walks and gardens recommended that the statue be purchased by the city for $3,000. City council debated the expenditure at great length in the fall of 1871 but never quite reached a final decision. Some aldermen balked at the cost. Others, Osbaldeston writes, went as far as questioning whether Wood’s statue even looked like the queen. At long last, in the spring of 1873, council finally formally voted against purchasing the statue—which had remained right where Wood had left it in the interim—and asked Wood to remove his sculpture in 1874. After years of neglect in storage, Osbaldeston’s research revealed, the statue Wood had placed in Toronto was eventually installed in Quebec City’s Victoria Park in June 1897.

There were efforts in the mid-1880s by the St. George’s Society to commission a statue of Victoria for Queen’s Park, with a sketch of the proposed monument prepared by English sculptor Percy Wood for presentation to the membership at a June 1886 meeting. And, in the 1890s, there was a proposal to create a grand public square—named for Victoria and centered upon an immense statue—adjacent to the new City Hall then under construction at Queen and Bay streets. Neither proposal was ever completed, making the city’s most noteworthy commemorations of the queen during her lifetime the Victoria Hospital for Sick Children, which opened in 1892, and the university that relocated to the University of Toronto grounds the same year.

The proposed Victoria Square at Queen and Bay streets, January 1898. From Wikimedia Commons.

It was therefore a source of mild embarrassment for a city with claims to imperialist enthusiasm when, upon Victoria’s death in January 22, 1901, the only public representation of Victoria in Toronto that could be draped in black as a sign of mourning was a patriotic column in honour of the Boer War that had stood in Eaton’s department store until being installed in the main corridor of Old City Hall.

The Toronto Star (January 23, 1901) bemoaned this conspicuous lack of a public monument to Victoria:

The city of Toronto has grown from a little place in the wilderness to its present proportions as a great city during the time that Queen Victoria has occupied the throne, and probably no people in the Empire have been quicker to assert their loyalty and to declare the love and respect they bore to Her Majesty, yet to-day, at the end of the Queen’s long reign, there is not in this city a public statue of Her Majesty.

It was unsurprising then that, within days of the queen’s death, Premier George William Ross committed to seek appropriations during the coming session of the provincial legislature for the purposes of erecting a suitable statue of the Empire’s longest-reigning monarch.

At this, the Star quickly shifted tack and argued that no public funds should be expended on a memorial. “What we hope to see,” the editors opined on January 24, 1901, “is not a statue erected officially, for such actions are sometimes perfunctorily done, but one set up by the voluntary act of the people as an unmistakable manifestation of the popular regard for that good Queen whose marvellous hold upon the hearts of the Canadian people nothing could over-emphasize.” The Hamilton Times concurred: “In our opinion monuments to the Queen, in Toronto or elsewhere, ought to be paid for by subscription, or not erected at all. If the people want to show that affection and esteem which they profess for their late Sovereign, the money will be produced without the intervention of the tax gatherers.”

Right: Queen Victoria Monument, Queen’s Park, after 1903. From the City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1568, Item 203.

One interested Torontonian, S.F. Walker, suggested to the Star that funds raised through public subscription be limited to $1 per person so that “all would feel that they had an equal share in Toronto’s loving tribute to the memory of ‘Victoria the Good,’” and even the city’s poorest might contribute to the cause. Nevertheless, the provincial government committed $10,000 to acquiring the Queen’s Park statue, including the cost of a granite base.

At the municipal level, City officials convened public meetings to debate what would be best suited “to commemorate the memory and noble qualities and acts of our late Queen Victoria,” as a resolution passed at one public meeting read.

While everyone could agree that something ought to be done in Victoria’s honour, the trouble became that—besides a statue—no one could agree on what tribute would be most fitting. Speaking on March 1, 1901, Mayor Oliver Aiken Howland felt strongly that while a statue—”a monument of the living image of the great departed”—for Toronto was essential, it would be “inappropriate, unusual, and unprecedented” for the city to duplicate provincial efforts and erect a second statue.

Throughout the winter and into the spring of 1901, the Star published dozens of ideas and proposals for alternative tributes penned by prominent and unknown citizens alike. One Torontonian suggested a Home for Old Men; another amended the idea to be a Home for the Aged because the queen was a friend to all sexes and creeds. While one citizen proposed a home for consumptives, a doctor called for a sanitarium. There were advocates for a museum of history, an art gallery, or a reference library being built and named in her honour. The Women’s Canadian Historical Society of Toronto pressed for a Memorial Hall, perhaps constructed at the University of Toronto. Finally, several Star readers argued that the failed Victoria Square proposals of a few years earlier ought to be revived and pursued.

Left: Queen Victoria monument at Queen’s Park, 1910. From the Toronto Public Library Digital Collection.

Meanwhile, in July 1901, the Ontario government chose to purchase an exact replica of a Victoria statue in Hong Kong designed by Mario Raggi. An Italian sculptor who trained at the Accademia Carrara and Rome before relocating to England in 1850, Raggi worked under Matthew Noble until setting up his own North London studio in about 1875. Until his death in late November 1907, Raggi was known for his memorial busts and statues of famous personages such as Lord Beaconsfield, Lord Swansea, Benjamin Disraeli, William Ewart Gladstone, and others in the United Kingdom and around the Empire. On news that his work had been selected for Toronto, the Star (July 24, 1901) reported that Raggi was “considered a sculptor of the first rank.”

Commissioned to provide Hong Kong a statue of Victoria in the wake of the Golden Jubilee, Raggi completed the work in 1890, but it would not be unveiled on the reclaimed land of Statue Square until May 28, 1896. The bronze statue depicted Victoria as an older figure, crowned and seated on a throne, holding an orb in her left hand and a sceptre in her right. Grander than what was later installed in Toronto and elsewhere in the Empire, the original monument in Hong Kong included a carved stone cupola covering the statue atop Corinthian columns. However, Victoria was among a number of Hong Kong statues looted as scrap metal by the Japanese during the Second World War. Repatriated a few years later, the statue was reinstalled in Victoria Park—without the domed enclosure.

Statue of Sir John A. Macdonald at head of University Avenue, looking south from Queen’s Park, August 1, 1914. From the City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1231, Item 1274.

“Those who have seen the Hong Kong statue, of which that in the Queen’s Park will be a replica, say it is the best of Queen Victoria extant,” the Globe (July 31, 1902) proudly asserted, noting Raggi’s particular skill at capturing the queen’s features and stern expression, as well as the realistic draping of her robes.

No sooner had the statue for Queen’s Park been selected, than controversy arose over the placement of the statue. In the absence of a Queen Victoria monument, the prime place of prominence at the head of University Avenue had been occupied since 1894 by Hamilton MacCarthy’s statue of Sir John A. Macdonald. The premier recommended relocating the former prime minister in deference to the crown, while opponents of this idea were adamant that Macdonald should remain right where he stood. Still others proposed compromises, like placing the queen in the centre of a new University Avenue median near College Street, or placing her in the centre of a widened King Street West near Simcoe Street.

The only ones seemingly unconcerned about this debate were Mayor Howland and city officials. Exasperated by the necessity of negotiating with an unresponsive city, Attorney General Sir John Morison Gibson carried out a war of words on the newspaper page. He complained that the mayor was purposely “violat[ing] the rules of courtesy” by dragging out responding to the government’s overtures. “Oh, I do not know,” Gibson wearily responded to journalist questioning in the Star (August 20, 1901), “but unless Sir John is moved, I suppose we will have to put the Queen up nearer the building in some secondary place.” That’s exactly where she ended up—to the east of the main entrance to the Parliament building.

Although the press was optimistic in early 1902 that the statue might be installed and unveiled by Victoria Day, by the early summer Raggi’s cast had still not been shipped from England. On the morning of June 13, an official sod-turning ceremony was conducted by provincial treasurer and acting premier Richard Harcourt, and D.T. McIntosh of the McIntosh Granite Company, who would build the substantial stone pedestal. A large crowd had turned out for the 9:30 a.m. ceremony, but by the time Harcourt showed up over a half-hour late, the number of spectators had dwindled significantly. “The acting Premier took the spade in hand like a master,” the Star (June 14, 1902) reported, “drove it into the earth and deftly raised and turned the sod and thus commenced the work of preparing the spot on which is to stand the statue of the late Queen.”

Right: Fall cleaning of Queen Victoria statue, Queen’s Park, ca. 1920. From the City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1244, Item 3033.

By the end of July, the McIntosh Company’s work on the nearly nine-foot-tall pedestal was finalized, save for the installation of two bronze bas-reliefs by J.L. Banks—depicting the queen’s first council meeting at Kensington Palace in June 1857 and the deceased queen lying in state—which would adorn the statue base. On one side of the six-ton pedestal was a bronze wreath of oak and maple leaves containing the letters V.R.

After numerous false reports of the statue’s arrival in Toronto in mid-September 1902, it finally arrived on September 22, encased in a wooden packing crate. That same afternoon, a derrick that had been waiting beside the stone pedestal in Queen’s Park for weeks raised the Raggi’s 5,600-pound bronze Victoria and swung her into place. Premier Ross and other interested officials looked on, but no speeches were made. “It is perfect in likeness and beauty of detail,” the Globe (September 23, 1902) assessed of the nearly 10-foot-tall statue, “and bears out all that has been said of Raggi’s ability to execute an appropriate monument to so great a Queen.”

“The statue was left unveiled after being put into position,” the Globe added, “and it is understood that a formal unveiling ceremony will be dispensed with.” Indeed, the Star and Globe contain no record of any official unveiling the following spring. Given that the statue of Sir John Graves Simcoe was unveiled at Queen’s Park in May 1903 by a governor general and the band of the Royal Grenadiers, and the unveiling of the Robbie Burns statue at Allan Gardens was afforded a half-page article in the Globe, it seems a strange slight to not provide a formal occasion after the decades of effort it took to finally (permanently) install a statue honouring the Queen’s Park namesake.

Sources consulted: Gerald Utting, Toronto the Good: An Album of Colonial Hogtown (Bodima Books, 1978); John Warkentin, Creating Memory: A Guide to Outdoor Public Sculpture in Toronto (Becker Associates, 2010); and articles from the Toronto Globe (June 5, 1886; June 13, July 11, 22 & 31, and September 23, 1902; May 23 and June 2, 1903); and the Toronto Star (January 23, 24, 25, 28 & 29, February 1, March 2, 16, 18 & 20, June 14, July 24, and August 20, 1901; January 22, June 14, and September 23, 1902; May 27, 1903; and May 17, 2008).

Every Saturday, Historicist looks back at the events, places, and characters that have shaped Toronto into the city we know today.

Breaking with just about every precedent of his mayoralty thus far, Rob Ford has decided to call it quits on an issue he’s championed rather than fight it out (and lose) on the floor of the council chamber: today he proclaimed proposals to build a casino in downtown Toronto “dead” and cancelled the special meeting of city council that had been scheduled for Tuesday, May 21 to debate the issue.

Seeking to overturn his cancellation, just minutes later several councillors said they were going to try and hold the meeting anyway. Those councillors, all opposed to a casino, aren’t satisfied with a cancelled meeting: they want to make sure the matter is well and thoroughly settled, and decidedly vote against the proposal. Officially, it won’t be dead until and unless they do.

Speaking at greater length than he usually does, the mayor convened a press conference this afternoon to say that he remains committed to the idea that a major “entertainment complex” including a casino is a good choice for Toronto if it meets certain conditions, and in particular if the province guarantees to give the municipal government a “fair share” of the revenue it generates—at least $100 million a year. The province has been dragging its feet on confirming how much revenue Toronto would receive, however, and in the wake of today’s announcement by Finance Minister Charles Sousa that the province might not be able to commit to a hosting fee formula before city council met, Ford decided to cancel the debate altogether:

If the province won’t agree that $100 million then, folks, the deal is dead. We are not going to carry on with the casino debate.

I had planned to tell you today how I [intended to] recommend council allocate that revenue… The full $100m we could put towards transit: more specifically, [to] what council adopted last week, a subway extending the Bloor-Danforth subway line to the Scarborough Town Centre and north to Sheppard, and extending the Sheppard [line].

(According to all estimates this would provide only a fraction of the needed money.)

Ford also said that he had planned to move a separate motion which would see any additional property tax revenue generated from a casino put towards Toronto Community Housing’s major repair backlog, and another that would require any casino operator to “commit at least $4.5 million a year to a Toronto community benefits fund that would be divided up equally between every councillor and ward in the city…for improvements to their parks and public spaces.”

Painting a casino complex as a major economic boon to Toronto, Ford blamed the premier for dashing his hopes: “I don’t think the premier gets it.”

Context and Background: A Toronto Casino?

New-ish premier Kathleen Wynne has certainly been far cooler to the idea of expanded gaming in Toronto than her predecessors. (By contrast, former Finance Minister Dwight Duncan waxed enthusiastically about a “golden mile” on Toronto’s waterfront, anchored by a casino development.) Given that a clear majority of city councillors had already confirmed that they’d be voting against a casino proposal when the time came, however, Wynne’s reluctance may not be causing them much distress.

Not Over Yet

In light of all this, the mayor said that instead of holding a special meeting next week the casino item will be added to the agenda of the next regularly scheduled council meeting, at which point he’ll recommend that councillors simply go through a basic procedure that would see them receive the major staff report about a potential casino for information, but take no action.

One consequence of that: the issue wouldn’t actually be dead, since council wouldn’t have decidedly voted against a casino at all.

Just moments after Ford finished speaking, news broke that a petition was circulating among city councillors to override the mayor and hold next Tuesday’s meeting anyway. (A simple majority of city councillors—which is 23 of them—can trigger a meeting on a particular issue by signing a request that gets forwarded to the City clerk’s office.) Some councillors learned yesterday that the mayor was thinking of cancelling the casino meeting, and began talking amongst themselves about whether to proceed despite him. “It’s not up to him to make that decision,” Mike Layton (Ward 19, Trinity-Spadina) told us shortly after the mayor spoke, saying that this debate has gone on for too long already and that many councillors want to have the issue settled one way or another for good: “we should be saying with conviction what we think should happen.” Several councillors told us that they do believe the required support exists to convene that special meeting, and that it is likely to go ahead on Tuesday despite the mayor’s announcement.

The Hosting Fee Question

Also right after Ford spoke came this response from the provincial finance minister, via a spokesperson: “The City of Toronto should make its decision based on the various characteristics of a casino. We appreciate the Mayor’s comments but we’ll put out the formula when we’re ready and are confident that it is fair to all municipalities.” In short, if Ford’s idea was to try to pressure the province into committing to a hosting fee, they’re not biting.

Meanwhile, Layton said, the hosting fee isn’t actually a decisive consideration for many councillors. “This has much more to do with what we’re hearing from our constituents, that this will overwhelm infrastructure and suck money out of the local economy,” he concluded, “and that the people of Toronto don’t want to be raising government money off of addiction.”

The question may well be moot: the Toronto Star is reporting that they’ve learned the proposed hosting fee for Toronto, including both a downtown casino and the existing Woodbine site, would be $53.7 million—far short of the $100 million needed to secure support from the mayor and most of the swing votes on council..

“The hosting fee, whatever number it is, is probably not the question that council has before them…It doesn’t seem to me, that whatever the number is, is going to matter much to their decision.”

—The provincial finance minister warning that Toronto city council may not learn how much the City would receive each year in hosting fees, if it decided to permit a new casino. Council is scheduled to debate and vote on whether to green-light a new gaming facility on Tuesday, May 21, and many councillors have said that their support for a new casino would be contingent on a substantial amount of new money flowing into municipal coffers—$100 million is the minimum most of them cite. The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation sent a set of several potential revenue-splitting formulas to the ministry recently; Sousa said those options are still under review. Given his downplaying of the hosting fee, however, his remarks are likely to make many councillors even more concerned that they wouldn’t know what they’d be getting into if they decided to approve a casino in principle.