Results tagged “environment”

       

As the city celebrated Canada Day yesterday, a small group of Christie Pits neighbourhood residents—disgruntled by the City's policy of using parks as temporary dump sites during the city workers' strike—took their grievance to City Hall in a protest organized by Friends of Christie Pits. Residents' groups around the city have been confronting people coming to drop off their garbage at park sites.

The Metro Central YMCA at Yonge and Grosvenor found itself with a problem, but one that led to a new opportunity: the roof is leaking and needs extensive repairs. Featuring a running track and not much else, the large concrete rooftop slab is more akin to the upper deck of a parking garage than a place to exercise or enjoy, but its barren configuration made it a premium site for a forthcoming downtown green roof.

A small crowd of approximately twenty people, including the very short person pictured above, gathered on Tuesday before Union Station's Front Street entrance to blow bubbles with soap, after being denied the right to do so inside the station. They did this because they're upset with Metrolinx, the GTA's newish regional transit authority, for its refusal to consider running electric trains on a pair of proposed regional rail expansions. The expansions, which as planned will accommodate only diesel-burning locomotives, would link Union Station to Pearson Airport and more than triple service on GO Transit's Georgetown corridor between Union Station and Malton on opening day.

During the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, much was made of Joe Biden's scrappy devotion to his blue-collar roots. A sudden widower and bereaved parent within weeks of his 1972 Senate win, his ensuing six terms—thirty-six years—were divided between the halls of Washington and caring for his two surviving sons in Delaware, riding Amtrak for ninety minutes in either direction to balance the demands of both. So when the White House announced its "vision for a new era in rail" on April 16, jointly declared by Biden, President Obama, and U.S Secretary of Transportation Raymond LaHood, the vice president anecdotally chimed in to underscore the strategy's importance. "Everyone knows railways are the best way to connect communities to each other," he said, "and as a daily rail commuter for over thirty-five years, this announcement is near and dear to my heart."

     

Out of sight, out of mind.

If you are walking by the northwest corner of Bloor and Spadina, be sure to look down: there is a message amongst the black splotches of chewing gum and the general grime of the city that reads "Cultivate Grace," a message that may at first look as though it were spray-painted onto the concrete but that was actually created by a stencil and a high-pressure water hose and is repeated every twenty feet from Spadina to just past Brunswick Avenue. That's right: the whiteness of the letters is the original colour of the sidewalk under your feet.

With the passage of the City of Toronto Act 2006 on New Year's Day 2007, rumblings that the city would impose green regulatory measures on new developments pointed to significant reforms of the Municipal Code. Today, as the Planning and Growth Management Committee meets to hammer out the finer points, those reforms appear poised—at this stage, anyway—to make Toronto the first city in North America to require green roofs on new commercial and residential buildings.

The first item on the agenda for the April 8th meeting of City Council's Public Works and Infrastructure Committee is headed "City of Toronto Receives the Canadian Motorcycle Association Government Award" [PDF]. As the agenda was released Wednesday, we considered it an April Fools' joke, in the brief moment before we remembered that bureaucrats don't have a sense of humour.

Although March has been remarkably snow-free, Toronto and Region Conservation has still issued flood advisories as heavy rains swelled rivers throughout the city and wreaked havoc in the city's low-lying valleys. What floody surprises will April hold? There's no need to wait passively for weather forecasts and news releases. Thanks to TRCA, you can monitor river and dam levels throughout the GTA's watersheds in near real-time.

The food we eat, and the sources thereof, have become the subjects of increasing attention over the past few years. In an attempt to bring farmers and the people they feed closer together, Slow Food Toronto hosted its second annual Farm-to-Home Fair at the Gladstone this past Saturday. Local farmers and food producers came out in force for some agricultural show-and-tell, and local eaters (that's us) came to learn more about the importance of buying from sustainable, Toronto-area farms. Torontoist departed with two dozen pastured, laid-this-week eggs, and also a bit of insight into our local food culture.

Some, like the Star, were a tad overzealous about Earth Hour's success earlier tonight. "No," wrote Daniel Dale, "you are not witnessing a city-wide power failure. Toronto's Earth Hour has begun." From where we were, sandwiched between a few dozen high-rises downtown, there was still plenty of light to be seen—and from our site statistics for the hour, it's not looking like all that many (of our Saturday night readers, at least) switched off their computers, either. But, now that another Earth Hour has come and gone, this one bigger and even more contradictory and token-y than ever, it's still worth asking the same question we did last year: did you participate in Earth Hour?

We are, just to be clear, very fond of Planet Earth. Big fans. Huge. We are, likewise, fond of initiatives which safeguard our environment, and also in favour of consciousness-raising efforts that promote such initiatives. Therefore, when we say that many of the events being held to celebrate Earth Hour tomorrow are vacuous publicity exercises that insult our intelligence and with which we want no truck, we are not doing it because we think this whole environmental crisis we've been hearing so much about has been overblown. We are doing it because they are so vacuous and so insulting that we have been rendered awestruck by their inanity, and find our consciousness to be depressed, angry, and frustrated rather than uplifted.

It's hard to know quite what Toronto will look like by 2030. Detailed plans become harder to formulate the further into the future one goes: contingencies multiply upon contingencies, and predictions are rendered ever more tenuous. There are, however, some trends that seem fair to anticipate and some others that are fair to hope for.

If you had any doubt that Earth Hour—a little less than two weeks away now—is an all-but-empty symbolic gesture, click on over to its website. As Brett Lamb writes on his blog: "There is actually NO CONTENT about useful things you can do for the environment on the Earth Hour website. Not a single thing ... unless you count turning out the lights for an hour at the end of March. The website does offer product placements. Corporations receive mention for token gestures. Did you know that Coke is shutting off its billboard in Times Square for an hour? Wow, that must be a real sacrifice." As Lamb puts it, Earth Hour is less about awareness of environmental issues—many of the problems, after all, are perpetuated by the very companies sponsoring the whole thing—and more about "awareness of awareness."

When was the last time you opened the Yellow Pages? In a world of Google and Canada411, it's probably been a while since you've consulted any kind of phone book. When was the last time you saw someone take a phone book off that giant shrinkwrapped pile that eternally guards so many apartment building lobbies and grocery store entrances? It's probably been even longer.

Do you think you know what items go into the blue bin, what items go into the green bin, and which things go into the garbage? You don't. Even if you've studied the charts in the collection calendar, attended several meetings of the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee, read all the municipal news all the time, you don't. Sorry.

Putting together a concise biography for Severn Cullis-Suzuki is something of a daunting task. Not due to a lack of achievements, but rather because the Vancouver-born environmental and social-justice activist has an incredibly long resumé for someone not yet three decades old. There's so much there, it's hard to whittle down to size.

Walking down Queen West can be an obstacle course. We've got to navigate the hazards of traffic, meandering pedestrians, and patches of ice at the same time as car stereos, bits of overheard conversation, flashing signage, and the temptations of shop windows all fight for our attention. The chaos of street life can be lively and invigorating, even comforting. Yet a new study from the University of Michigan (as reported by Jonah Lehrer in the Boston Globe) concludes that streets like Queen West are hard on our brains.

Wild Toronto was a bi-weekly comic strip, created by Rosemary Mosco, about the animals and plants that make a living in our city. It ended last July, when Rosemary left the city for greener pastures, but we decided to bring her—and her column—back for one final edition before the new year.

Photo by mihai.g from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

Photo by --richelle-- from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

Photo by Jenna Marie Wakani from the NDP's Flickr photostream.

TRANSIT: While your SUV is in the shop, why don't you participate in an open discussion on public transit in Toronto? Metrolinx (an agency of the Province of Ontario) has released the first draft of their 25-year plan for public transportation. It's titled The Big Move: Transforming Transportation in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, and they want to hear what you think of it, so head down to the Metro Toronto Convention Centre (after having thoroughly read the 114-page draft regional transportation plan and registered in advance on-line). Metro Toronto Convention Centre (255 Front Street West), 5–9 p.m., FREE.

Under the umbrella of Avaaz Canada’s wide-ranging efforts to “close the gap between the world we have and the world most people everywhere want,” the new, targeted campaign seeks to inform the public of what its supporters believe are Stephen Harper’s environmental shortfalls. According to Avaaz’s Executive Director Ricken Patel, “under the Conservative government our country is actively wrecking international progress on climate change. This song is an eloquent reminder that Canada doesn’t have to be this way—it’s our choice.” “You Have a Choice” was written and produced by K-OS and Ian Lefeuvre, and it includes a slew of Canadian artists such as Ed Robertson of the Barenaked Ladies, Ben Kowalewicz of Billy Talent, Adam Gontier of Three Days Grace, Jason Collett of Broken Social Scene, and the Arts Offstage Choir. In the words of Patel, “these bright lights of the Canadian music scene are sending a message to voters: you can make a difference, and we need to come together and strategically support candidates who will defeat Stephen Harper and fight climate change.”

Photo by Michael Chrisman from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

Photo by mama loo from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

The second annual Picnic at the Brick Works was held this past Sunday, and it was a veritable extravaganza of foodie fun. From the simple (sliced and dressed heirloom tomatoes) to the avant-garde (chocolate beet cakes, anyone?), local ingredients and chefs showed off their stuff.

Photo by functoruser.

Photo of the T3 Tramway from *** Fanch The System !!! ***.