June 17, 2010

Why queers have a stake in Jarvis redevelopment plans

Pressure from all sides

If Jarvis St is not quite part of the Village, it is at least a close relative, the gaybourhood’s rebellious younger brother. Or, to switch metaphors entirely, Jarvis is a release valve — a neighbouring hood with a large queer population, but slightly lower rent.

The strip is rougher around the edges than the Church-Wellesley neighbourhood, but the Jarvis Street Streetscape Improvement, which earned environmental approval early this year, seems bent on changing that.

So far, debate over that plan has focused — relentlessly — on traffic. It’s true that the plan calls for bike lanes, but with only two minutes of added driving time expected during rush hour, it’s not exactly a pedestrian takeover.

Rather, mock-ups imagine Jarvis as a Richard Florida–style “cultural corridor,” anchored by the National Ballet School and Rogers’ headquarters and lined with granite curbs, bronze sidewalk inlays, trees, planters and sidewalk light fixtures.

(Read more)

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May 10, 2010

Margin of Error: Inside Maclean’s dangerously empty statistics on teenagers

The online version of Maclean’s recent piece on young women really doesn’t do the print version justice. “Inside the Dangerously Empty Lives of Teenage Girls” was splashed across the cover, along with two dangerously empty looking girls. As usual, the cover suggested something more comprehensive and controversial than the actual article inside the magazine—in this case, a Q&A with Leonard Sax, a retired MD and advocate for single-sex education.

If Maclean’s was looking for someone to explain Canada’s teenage girls to their parents, Sax was a strange choice. He does have a PhD in psychology from 1980, but he primarily interprets and popularizes research rather than doing peer-reviewed work himself. Unfortunately, his interpretations are pretty controversial.

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April 19, 2010

Smitherman replaces Conservative campaign manager with Liberal

New campaign manager flashes queer bona fides

George Smitherman may be leading Toronto’s mayoral race, but with the majority of Torontonians still undecided, the ex-provincial minister is rebuilding his team, and returning to his party roots.

Jeff Bangs, a Conservative insider, has left the campaign, citing family obligations. Now Bruce Davis, a veteran Liberal organizer and school board trustee, is stepping in as campaign manager. Amanda Klein, another Liberal campaigner, will serve as his deputy.

If Smitherman can maintain his lead for the next seven months, he will become Toronto’s first openly gay mayor.

Davis is pitching Smitherman as a candidate that environmentalists and business leaders can agree on. He says that successful fundraising means he can focus on letting his candidate articulate a vision for the city.

“We’ve spent a lot of time criticizing the city government, criticizing the administration, and a certain amount of that is required,” says Davis. “But I also think there’s an expectation that we have to turn now and focus on the future. I think you’ll see that over the next several weeks.”

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April 13, 2010

Revolution from within

The night that I meet Nerissa Cariño, there are several children at her home in Pickering, Ontario. Four are her own: Cariño and her partner have boys aged 11, seven and three, and a five-year-old girl. The others are family that they are babysitting. “It’s really loud there!” she says, as we chat at Tim Hortons. But Cariño seems pretty serene about the situation – the U of T student, volunteer, activist and volleyball player is used to being pulled in a lot of directions.

In November, Cariño was awarded the YMCA of Greater Toronto’s Peace Medallion. The award recognized V-Day events that she organized at U of T Scarborough in 2009. V-Day is a movement inspired by Eve Ensler’s playThe Vagina Monologues – independent groups hold events all over the world on or around February 14, raising awareness and money for charities that combat violence against women. It’s an issue that Cariño has become passionate about. “To raise money, I approached entrepreneurs. And many of the women said, ‘I really want to get involved, because this is what happened to me,’” she says.

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April 9, 2010

Protesters mount anti-G8 “people’s summit”

Organizers are calling this summer’s G8 and G20 summits “the largest security event in Canadian history” — more expensive and elaborate, even, than the Vancouver Olympics. The federal government will spend at least $179 million on security, first at the Huntsville G8 Summit and then in Toronto, where the G20 will meet at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.

It’s the cost of holding one of the world’s most divisive meetings in a major city, where dissenters cannot be kept out of sight. The G8 and G20 have become flashpoints for protests about social justice, environmentalism and anti-globalization.

Here in Toronto, activists have been planning for the meetings since last spring but kicked into high gear with a flurry of press releases in March. They are working hard to build something as different as possible from the exclusive closed-door meetings of the G8 and G20.

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March 23, 2010

“Slow steaming” cuts costs and and carbon for global shipping

It’s been a tough couple of years for the shipping industry. First there was the recession, which led to almost 12 percent of the world’s cargo ships spending last December empty and anchored. The industry has also come under fire by environmentalists for its contributions to climate change and air pollution.

At December’s Copenhagen summit, the group Climate Justice Action (CJA) staged a protest outside the headquarters of Maersk, one of the world’s largest shipping companies. While shipping may be a worthy target—it’s responsible for two to five percent of global CO2 emissions—going after Maersk was a strange choice. Even the CJA’s factsheets acknowledged the company’s green initiatives.

Among other things, Maersk has been developing a long-known but little-used practice called “slow steaming.” When big cargo ships slow down, they can sometimes run more efficiently. While each journey takes longer, the practice cuts CO2 emissions by 10–30 percent, and for the largest vessels it’s equivalent to saving 3,500 tonnes of fuel each year.

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March 15, 2010

PTP buys ‘wounded’ gay porn digital channel

Pink Triangle Press (PTP), the company that publishes Xtra, in partnership with Peace Point Entertainment Group, has bought gay porn digital specialty channel, HardTV.

The channel was purchased from OutTV’s parent company in a deal valued at about $70,000.

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