Sarah Anne Johnson, a Winnipeg based artist, has won the AGO's first Grange Prize for Photography. In keeping with the AGO's new strategy of increasingly involving the community in its programming choices, Johnson won a people's choice selection driven by online voting. Almost 3,000 votes were tallied in the process.

Last night's announcement took place at the Drake Hotel. The Grange Prize is sponsored by the AGO, the Globe and Mail, and Aeroplan.

Here are two samples of Johnson's work:


Nadine


Ben

Every once in a while Reading Toronto reposts a previous entry because history catches up with the topic. CBC radio announced this morning that ERA Architects will be advising a city in China on how to reduce the energy use of its residential towers. This success is the evolution of a thesis project by Graeme Stewart that was first published in Reading Toronto about two year ago. Here is the original:



By Graeme Stewart

There has been much talk in recent months of Toronto’s strategies for a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emission. Incredibly welcome news, there seems to be a flood gate of creative strategies for seriously combating climate change. Not yet part of the discussion however is the opportunity inherent within Toronto’s extensive stock of hundreds of bulky concrete residential slabs. Typically viewed with scepticism as ‘mistakes’ from the 60’s and 70’s, they may in fact be one of our greatest opportunities for creating a sustainable region.

These buildings are energy pigs. Counterintuitive to the accepted theory that density aids sustainability, our stock of again modern slab apartments demands more energy per square meter than any other housing type; a full thirty percent more than a contemporary single detached house. Though certain efficiencies are gained from reduced land coverage, transit use and the like, exposed slab edges, minimal insulation, single glazing and aging mechanical systems give these buildings a huge environmental impact.

As a result, a typical twenty five-storey slab building contributes more than one thousand tonnes of carbon dioxide alone. These buildings demand environmental consideration, and due to their relatively straight forward structure and boxy facades, environmental upgrade can be achieved with relative ease. This has not been lost of two members of U of T’s Faculty of Architecture, Dr. Ted Kesik and Ivan Saleff. After running numerous simulations, they have concluded that this building type may be the most cost effective candidate for retrofit in the City.

While glass window walls are the cladding fad of the day, the bulky masonry walls of these older slabs offer an ideal surface to support over-cladding systems. This approach extensively insulates the exterior of the buildings, encloses balconies and covers slab edges, which is predicted to halve energy requirements. Additionally, these buildings provide an economy of scale that makes geothermal heating, solar electric/water heating (locating panels on generous blank end walls), and green roof technology highly effective investments. These strategies would give the opportunity for carbon reductions of over two thirds the current output. In other words, a hundred and eighty unit apartment building would require less green house gas production than fifty traditional bungalows. Suddenly density begins to make sense.

These aging buildings offer endless opportunities for green modification. Containing the structural capacity to handle the addition of new floors, the buildings themselves could be the launching pad for (appropriate) intensification. By design, the concrete walls create the necessary fire separations to allow for mixed use, anything from at-grade retail, office conversion, to light industry.

And opportunities abound beyond the building walls. Sited on hectares of underutilized land, largely relegated to surface parking, this adjacent open space offers the potential for the development of commercial and social amenities lacking in most of these apartment neighbourhoods. Where further development is inappropriate, the possibility of food production and waste management is a viable alternative. We have inherited a very versatile urban resource in the tower in the park.

Due to its unique planning history, Toronto is home to more slab blocks than any other city on the continent. Typically describing itself as a mini Manhattan, perhaps Toronto is more correctly characterized as a North American Moscow. This gives us an opportunity other cities don’t have. The one thousand or so apartment towers in the region account for over twenty percent of the residential carbon output. Upgrades that result in carbon and energy reductions, when multiplied across the City’s entire slab apartment stock, would cut greenhouse gas production by hundreds of thousands of tonnes a year. Far less daunting than squeezing efficiencies out of 200 000 bungalows, retrofitting of theses aging high-rises is a policy alternative that could assist in achieving Toronto’s environmental goals.

In the European Union, tower block restoration has become a key component of their environmental strategy. From London to Warsaw, the carbon saving potential of aging welfare state and Soviet era towers has been exploited to achieve greenhouse gas reduction targets. In Bratislava, Slovakia for instance, the entire Petržalka, a district of hundreds of blocks built in the 1970’s, is undergoing extensive environmental upgrades to meet new EU standards. Paid for in equal shares by the EU commission of the environment, the municipality and private investors (who gain development rights on adjacent properties), the project is breathing new life into this deteriorating district. It is now the Bratislava’s single largest environmental initiative.

In other parts of the EU and the former Soviet states, building upgrades are accompanied by new infill developments. These include cultural facilities, markets and even urban agriculture, turning former wastelands into desirable urban destinations. Of particular note are the Bijlmermeer (Amsterdam), Marzhan (Berlin ) and Topli Stan (Moscow).


Marzhan, Berlin. (Photo By Graeme Stewart)

Given the wide scale implementation of retrofitting elsewhere it should be no surprise that investigations into remaking Toronto’s towers and their environs has gone on for decades. Examples include George Baird’s St. Jamestown Studio of the 1970’s, Jack Diamond’s revisionings of the 1980’s, and today’s research on sustainability. Tackling the tower in the park has been a healthy architectural preoccupation. Recent financial support for ‘greening’ of the city, such as the Federal Government’s commitment to infuse hundreds of millions into sustainable growth, are welcome news. Yet tower restoration is not part of these plans, nor is it in the City’s official green strategy.

Overlooked for their enormous potential, these buildings are currently underutilized, blighted, and extremely inefficient. Creative programmes are needed to encourage public and private investment that will allow these buildings to reach their potential. With wide spread international precedent, broad awareness of the climate crisis and a growing number of ‘at risk’ neighbourhoods associated with apartment towers, greening and investing in these projects has moved beyond an interesting design exercise to an issue fundamental to the ecological and social sustainability of the GTA. It’s time to get on with it.

If you forgot to breath a deep sigh of relief that the TTC union chose not to go on strike, here is a Reading Toronto exclusive from their last work stoppage that may generate one:

Just in case you wondered what Toronto would be like without its transit system, the TTC union gave us a reminder yesterday. Watch a seven minute cell phone cam view of stalled traffic on Gerrard Street between River and Yonge, at 10 Monday morning.

Have you ever walked a picket line? If you have, then you know the camaraderie that can emerge, the rare sense of standing for a common principle. You also know the tedium that develops after days or weeks, broken occasionally by violence or news from the bargaining table. If you've walked a picket line you're also familiar with the costs: physical and emotional exhaustion, the often irrecoverable hit to your income, the impact on labour relations, and perhaps above all, the costs to the people affected by the strike -- coworkers, the public, and all the other institutions and individuals whose activities are derailed as the result of a strike.

If the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU), representing nine thousand TTC workers, acts on the strike mandate given to it by its members, then tomorrow morning at 4:00 am the TTC will cease to operate. No subways or buses will run. The stations will be shuttered. The 1.5 million people who rely on the TTC to get to work or school will be forced to find other ways of commuting on roads choked with cars, bicycles and pedestrians.

Media reports have focused on the inconvenience a strike will cause for commuters. This morning's Toronto Star headline blares, provocatively, "Is TTC an Essential Service?" Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty has muttered obliquely that the Province may introduce legislation to make it so, and indicated more coherently that back-to-work legislation would likely bring a quick end -- although perhaps not within a week or two -- to any strike action. Mayor David Miller, being feted all week in China, is staying -- at least publicly -- out of the fray. That's not a surprise: in the coming months he's got even bigger negotiations looming with the two huge CUPE locals representing tens of thousands of city staff, and isn't likely to show his hand unless forced to do so.

I don't buy any of these claims. I don't find "inconvenience" a legitimate reason to oppose a strike, nor do I consider it adequate justification have a service declared essential. I find the Mayor's self-imposed absence from the bargaining table reprehensible, especially at a time when he should be doing everything possible to broker a settlement. I am ambivalent about back-to-work legislation, but acknowledge its value if (and only if) a strike or lockout goes on so long that the public interest becomes genuinely compromised.

The right to strike is one of the most fundamental labour rights. It is -- like the right to join a union and bargain collectively -- enshrined in the Ontario Labour Relations Act. A strike is a legally protected course of action when, after the term of a collective agreement has expired, properly conducted negotiations do not produce a new one. Unions may go on strike only if a strike vote is held and only if the majority of those voting support a strike.

In the case of the TTC workers represented by Amalgamated Transit Union Local 113, the collective agreement has expired. The union has been in negotiations for months. In a strike vote, over 99% of those voting supported a strike, and the ATU has been in a legal strike position since April first. The union has indicated it would give the public advance notice of any strike action, and it has done so, announcing several days ago that if a settlement is not reached by 4:00 this afternoon, the union will commence strike action at 4:00 tomorrow morning. Both parties acknowledge that, despite prolonged talks and the presence of provincial mediators, progress at the bargaining table has stalled. Under these circumstances it would be difficult to describe the ATU's action as precipitous or premature.

I will support the TTC workers in the event of a strike. I will do so even though, like 1.5 million other Torontonians, I depend on the TTC to get around the city. I don't drive, and am rapidly becoming too pregnant to be able to depend on my bike as a mode of transportation. My ability to do my job, attend important medical appointments, shop and socialize will be compromised. In short, a strike will inconvenience me.

But it seems to me that an inability to strike would be a far greater inconvenience. Unions are largely responsible for the job security, wages and working conditions that employees -- and not just those in unions -- enjoy. The benefits unions win for their members tend to spill out across the non-unionized workforce as well, through legislation such as the Employment Standards Act as well as through pure labour economics -- wages and benefits across a sector tend to improve for all employees when they go up for unionized workers.

Moreover, declaring the TTC workers an essential service -- and thus depriving them of the right to strike in exchange for arbitrated contracts -- would ultimately involve a trade-off that might be more inconvenient to taxpayers' wallets than negotiated settlements punctuated by the occasional strike, given that most essential workers command higher wage premiums by virtue of being so designated.

I'll also support TTC workers because one of them is my neighbour, a bus driver with three kids under the age of ten, who contributes to local soccer programs and does his own renovations on the weekends. Who navigates Toronto's clotted streets every day on the job, dodging angry drivers and challenging riders who put dimes instead of tokens into the fare box; who risks getting spit upon or shot at or blamed for a late bus stuck in traffic; and who will walk the picket line acutely aware of what it will cost to do so.

Above all, though, I'll support TTC workers in the event of a strike because I believe in their fundamental right to do so.

[Amy Lavender Harris is the daughter of a Teamster. She has also been a union president and chief negotiator, and once spent 78 days captaining a picket line. She holds a master's degree in Industrial Relations from the University of Toronto.]

[2007 TTC strike image by David Topping and used here under the aegis of a Creative Commons license.]

Back when I first moved to the Junction -- 20 years ago -- no one ever called it that. None had heard of any Junction. And even if they had, residents would never have called it that. Not for love nor for money.

Back then, reference had to be roundabout. Indirect. Oblique. This was Bloor-West -- North. Or High-Park -- West. In events of direst emergency, it became Annette Village. Dire emergencies as when clients confronted real-estate agents with: “You mean it’s (gasp) north of Annette?”

Like some geographic sore spot or socio-economic canker, it was way too unmentionable to rate its own designation. Blemishes seldom get personalized nameplates.

Then, suddenly, everything changed. Everything that mattered. First, the City finally repealed its prohibition against alcohol in the Junction. The economically devastating prohibition lingering in the Junction until 1997. Which meant that instead of lurching along Dundas West, guzzling from paper bags, I could actually sit myself down at excellent neighbourhood pubs. Like Axis, for instance -- where nobody knows my name but they’re damn friendly anyway.


Axis: among first and best post-prohibition Junction watering-holes.

Second thing that really changed in the Junction was when the City installed spectacular-looking, historically relevant light posts all along Dundas West. All the way from Keele to Runnymede. Reminding everyone how great the Junction used to be -- late in the 19th century.


One light to remember the Junction’s better days by.

Now, the Junction has become almost idyllic. People boast living here -- despite what traces of old economic sores remain. Despite how, in the Junction, all sides used to be wrong of the tracks.

Tough either quantifying or qualifying such transformation. Once, Dundas West was considered fraught and hazardous. Now, biking back from downtown during rush-hour, one feels nothing but relieved crossing Keele. Motor vehicles make some room. Instead of swerving around parked-car doors opening in one’s face, smiles are exchanged with motorists waiting until one’s safely passed by. And it’s been quite a while since I’ve heard the fear of walking Dundas West after sundown expressed. Day or night, people seem to flock this way.

That’s what really struck me a couple days back. How flocking to Dundas West might be getting a bit ridiculous. See, this building got knocked down between Keele and Pacific. Then, instead of new building, there was this sort-of stage erected on that lot.


Some sort of stage.

The other day, on this sort-of stage, there were people in top-hats and bonnets. Also, a crowd gathered round watching. A rather large crowd. So large that I roller-bladed the periphery of it spilling into the street.


Spilling in the streets.

Turned out to be guided-tourism. No doubt by the Junction Historical Society. Got me curious enough to rush home, dump roller-blades, grab camera, hop on bicycle and rush back. What I wanted to know was this: would tourism-guides point out sores and cankers remaining from the Junction’s bad old days? Or would focus get restricted to the Junction’s more ancient, spectacular history -- and the new, so much improved look?

There are plenty sore spots remaining. Architectural restoration and improvements along Dundas West of Keele shoulder tight against a century’s dilapidated neglect and dereliction. Certainly some business survives -- even prospers. Yet, despite famously cheap rents, there linger legacies of the ghost-town this used to be. Commercial activity still fails so predictably and repeatedly here -- storefronts get boarded up and papered over just about more often than not.

Listening in best I could -- nothing said about the bad old days. How residue from those days still lingers. Ancient history? Heaps. Everything new and improved? Loads. The days in between and reasons how bad those were? Nothing I could hear.


As if the ghost of McBride Cycles weren't looming right there.


Strenuously ignoring commercial ghost across from McBride's.

There's so much remaining to ignore in the Junction. Historic tourist-guiding must demand real careful stepping. Almost like around open graves in otherwise splendid grave-yards.


Spectres of a former Handyman's..


Of a former Upholsterer's..


Even the long-abandoned corpse of an overly Hasty Market.

That’s why I’m so not into history. Including the Junction’s. Because how often history seems to mean the mistakes we’re bound to repeat.

Note: This story was first published in http://www.corporateknightsforum.com. It is an international story that does have ramifications for all Canadians. So-called world class cities don't fit well in countries that allow this:

Canadian Fisheries has once again proven that it thinks bad politics beats good policy. Last weekend’s seizure of the Farley Mowat—a Sea Shepherd Foundation protest vessel—proves the point. After an abysmal week for the Canadian government agency where four fisherman drowned as a result of a towing accident involving a Canadian icebreaker, Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn decided to deflect the generation-old criticism of Canada’s sealing industry by arresting environmentalists.

Leader of the Sea Shepherd organization Paul Watson made it easy for Hearn to take this step when he stated, “The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society recognizes that the deaths of four sealers is a tragedy but Sea Shepherd also recognizes that the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of seal pups is an even greater tragedy.” According to the CBC, Watson also described sealers as “sadistic baby killers” and “vicious killers who are now pleading for sympathy because some of their own died while engaged in a viciously brutal activity.” With eastern Canada enraged over Watson’s comments, Minister Hearn saw an opportunity to act and he did. He ordered the Mowat seized in international waters.

Of course, this was Watson’s purpose all along: provoke a disproportionate government response to get headlines and reach an international audience. Read this quote from the Sea Shepherd’s web site:

In seizing the Farley Mowat and arresting the Sea Shepherd crew Loyola Hearn has done something that Sea Shepherd hoped he would do but we did not believe he was stupid enough to do – an unlawful boarding of foreign registered vessel in international waters. With the European Parliament on the brink of voting to ban seal products into the European market, Loyola Hearn decides to arrest Europeans for the “crime” of documenting incidents of cruelty on the ice.

Given the provocation, it is hard for Canadians to support Watson’s efforts to ban sealing. That’s why Green Party leader Elizabeth May decided that it was time to distance herself from the group. She resigned from her role as an advisor to the Sea Shepherd society.

“There’s a point at which someone’s comments are just so completely repugnant,” May told CBC News Friday.

“We’re just reeling from the loss of these men at sea, and whether you support the seal hunt or not, you want all the seal hunters to get home to their families safely.”

Watson said Friday he is not apologetic about his comments.

“I don’t pretend to not be controversial. I’m here to rock the boat, to make waves, to make people think, you know, to provoke. That’s what I do."

Canada’s bad policy on sealing makes Watson’s job easier. The story is already in the world’s news cycle, and Canada’s image abroad is eroded first and foremost by the primitive spring blood ritual, and then by the making of laws meant to prevent observers from covering the slaughter. When a Canadian icebreaker rams an environmental protest vessel in international waters it is easy to guess how the story will be played by the world’s press.

From the Australian News site:

Dr Redenbach, a paediatrician at Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital, said members of the crew were arrested under the Marine Mammals Act.

“We were arrested originally yesterday on charges of violations of the Marine Mammals Act but later released without charge having been arrested in international waters,” she told ABC Radio today.

From the Globe and Mail:

“At least a dozen armed RCMP officers came on board, pointing shotguns, automatic weapons and handguns at us,” said David Nickarz, a Winnipegger who works with the Sea Shepherd group. “It was like those SWAT team videos.”

Mr. Nickarz said he was forced to wait in cold temperatures on the Farley Mowat deck for four hours, then handcuffed onto the railing of the Coast Guard’s Des Groseilliers icebreaker.

“This was just a ploy to get us out of the way,” he said of the operation. “But the bottom line is that we want to stop the seal hunt. They can take our ship, but it’s not going to stop us."

One of the many sad aspects of this debacle is in the symbolism of the ship’s name. The Farley Mowat is named after a legendary Canadian author and naturalist. Mowat’s “A Whale for the Killing (1972)” described the brutal death of a trapped whale in Newfoundland. That book gave many people reason to think about their relationship to the natural world. Almost forty years later though we remain engaged in acts that are bent on destroying the world that sustains us. Watson’s tactics are wrong, but unless we as a civilized country take steps to live sustainably and protect natural resources, we will face more such acts and Canada will not do well in the court of world opinion.

Hey -- what’s with the partial nudity?

That’s just how Robert Nadeau regards economists. Because, according to his recent article in Scientific American, economists are scientifically ignorant. That’s why, on his view,

Unscientific assumptions in economic theory are undermining efforts to solve environmental problems.

Essentially, Nadeau’s argument isn’t that economic theories are inconsistent. Only absurdly incomplete. As if mainstream economists were describing nothing but straight narrow portions of spectacularly long winding roads. Thus, particularly when it comes to ecological impacting, economists mislead us. Their theories can’t lead us anywhere we need to go.

Economic theories are misleading rather than explanatory due to how absurdly incomplete they are. Nadeau is calling for economic upgrades:

Because neoclassical economics does not even acknowledge the costs of environmental problems and the limits to economic growth, it constitutes one of the greatest barriers to combating climate change and other threats to the planet. It is imperative that economists devise new theories that will take all the realities of our global system into account.

Some economists might not take Nadeau’s threat to tinker economics lying down, though. “Bender”, for instance, commented that,

In an article purportedly discussing economic analysis and environmental policy neither externality nor externalities ever appeared! I don’t know which is more depressing, that someone could be stupid and ignorant enough to produce this tripe or that the Scientific American has sunk so low as to publish it.

How pedantic. That's exactly what Nadeau's talking about -- how overwhelming economic externalities like ecology are getting. But Nadeau not utilising the specific terms “Bender” recognizes resulted in “Bender” utterly missing Nadeau’s point. Standard economic theories mislead us precisely because environmental crisis constitutes such overwhelming externality.

Nadeau’s right, of course. We are rushing full steam and toxic waste to being overwhelmed. Not just economically.

But should economists seek to internalize theoretically and factually overwhelming externalities like environmental crisis? No. By no means. Absolutely not. There is no economic solution to our problems. Rather, let’s better appreciate how limited and incomplete economic theories are -– and let’s start looking way past economics for what it means to be more natural. What it means to be at all natural.

Can we do that? Toronto living is just about the most economically affluent anywhere –- ever. We expect some economic turbulence ahead. Will we be willing to look past it –- for what it means to be more natural? Or do we remain forever fixated on economic maximizing -- regardless how affluent we get? Regardless the cost to everything natural so precariously remaining?

[Peter Fruchter teaches in the Division of Humanities at York University.]

Screenshot from here.

The scrap truck cruised along the street, stopping at a pile of bicycles placed at curbside for pickup. Moments later the driver paused in front of our home, glanced at the wooden table we'd set out, drove off. Metal guy. Mixed scrap isn't worth so much, but sorted aluminum will bring in up to a dollar a pound, depending on the salvage yard and the yard boss's mood.

Last night we set out by bike on our own salvaging run. Not looking for anything in particular, just cruising. Peter collects bike parts; I like vintage appliances: an old sewing machine; a 1950s portable record player. We both brake for many-paned windows, usable lumber, and, once, a box of discarded crystal. Last night we passed on myriad chesterfields and unmatching chairs, wooden cupboards lacking doors, a set of Barbie vehicles: hopefully she's now driving a hybrid. We didn't bring home anything last night, except the pleasure of looking and the night song of robins returned to the city.

Later this year the City of Toronto plans to implement a new fee-based garbage program. Residents will order city-supplied standardized garbage bins and will be charged according to the size ordered. The smallest bin, which holds the equivalent of a single garbage bag, is planned to net the homeowner a $10 annual credit. The largest bin, which accommodates the equivalent of four and a half bags, will cost $190 per year. The new program is part of the City's strategy to achieve 70% waste diversion by 2010, and coincides with the new recycling program already being phased in through the distribution of behemoth blue bins. Scarborough residents are already being asked to select their new garbage bins; the program will be rolled out westward across the city during the summer, and the new collection system is scheduled to be implemented by November 1, 2008.

After living and working for years in one of the first Ontario municipalities to implement fee-based garbage pick-up, I greeted news of Toronto's fee-based system with cautious enthusiasm. Then, while reading the materials provided to date by the City, it occurred to me that the new regime might put a crimp in urban salvage activities. If all waste must be crammed into the bins, what will happen to the objects currently salvaged, especially small appliances, toys, electronics, books, bicycles, building materials and metal scrap? The City suggests that these objects might be donated to charity or taken to City-run drop-off centres, but it seems to me that this overlooks a vital curbside step in waste diversion: the local economy of salvage.

In our neighbourhood, residents tend to place useful but unwanted objects at curbside a day or two ahead of pickup, in hopes that they will find a new home instead of ending up in a landfill. While it would be difficult to quantify the volume of waste diverted this way, it's been our experience that the majority of reusable objects and saleable scrap are picked up long before the City's trucks come grinding along. And while scavengers cruising the streets on bikes, in rusted-out pickup trucks or pushing shopping trolleys may not conform so neatly to the Clean and Beautiful City sublime, they support themselves and a local informal economy while diverting waste at the same time.

Want to help the City achieve its ambitious waste diversion targets? In addition to everything else you're doing to reduce, reuse and recycle waste, set useful objects aside -- especially unbroken toys, old bikes, working appliances, books, scrap metal, and other household objects -- and make them visible to local salvagers. If you are shocked to see your dog-walking neighbour grab a dinged-up dresser, you'll be even more surprised to see how well she'll repurpose it. Glance into the pick-up truck stopped beside you at a red light on your way to work, and you might recognise the skeleton of your old barbecue there in the back, piled against a load of aluminum storm windows from a renovation down the street.

Doubtful about how much salvage gets diverted from landfills? You should see my study. Diffusing light in the window is a row of old bottles dug out of someone's back yard. My desk, filing cabinet, shelving, computer monitor, plants, and banker's lamp were all salvaged. My long-ago scavenged office chair is starting to wobble, but that's okay. I'm looking for a new one.

[Amy Lavender Harris and Peter Fruchter are the authors of "Acts of Salvage", an essay on the political economy and ecology of salvage published in GreenTOpia: Towards a Sustainable Toronto (Coach House, 2007).]

[Dumpster image by Steven H and used under the aegis of a Creative Commons license.]