Toronto

1) Why did you choose to come to Canada? Tell about the conditions before coming and what attracted you here.

"Because Canada is an experiment - think about this, English and French couldn’t defeat each other and so made a nation together. Hence the “other” becomes an essential part of who you are. I thought that would be a fertile ground to strike roots - to do here what I was doing back home in Bombay (oops! Mumbai) – architecture, poetry and calligraphy (though I miss the Arabian Sea as I grew up in a house on its coast)."

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2) How was the move itself?
3) How easy/hard was it for you to get involved in architecture in Canada? What helped you find success?
4) What would you suggest to new immigrants who wish to get into the field

Interviewed by Rotem Yaniv;
Canadian Immigrant (online magazine)
November 2009

Cross Reference. See also:
"Between Two Tongues: Falling at The Speed of Light" in the Articles Section
"Impossible Toronto"  in the Articles Section
"Meditation on Clockfaces" in the Articles Section
"Flying Into Watercity" in the Articles Section
"The Travelling Nonvegetarian" in the Poetry Section

This report was prepared for the Toronto Workforce Innovation Group (TWIG). It examines relevant worksite and occupational profiles in Toronto's construction sector. It draws attention to what a more sustainable construction sector, that is more inclusive and responsive to all relevant stakeholders, would look like. The report is divided into two principle sections: (1) a general overview of work in Toronto’s construction sector, and (2) an overview of key occupations, as well as current and projected labour market needs and trends.

In the spring and early summer of 1977, Toronto was on tenterhooks. Violent crime shook the Yonge Street “strip,” a few city blocks in the downtown core that featured pornographic bookstores, strip clubs, illicit drug sales, and sex work. The strip was also a fading centre of Toronto’s “Gay village.” In July, two men raped and murdered twelve-year-old Emanuel Jaques, the son of Portuguese immigrants, who worked regularly as a shoeshine boy on the strip. In short order, the two men accused of the killing were released from prison on their own recognizance, as was a man accused of raping three teenage girls at knifepoint, and fourth charged with raping a twenty-one-year-old in her apartment. Of the alleged Jaques murderers, the Toronto Sun newspaper editorialized that it was “astonishing that the pair would be turned loose on the community.” Those charged with “crimes of perversion” were “the vilest of all. Society should not be jeopardized by unleashing people who may have weird, uncontrollable appetites that are slaked or satisfied by violating children.”

The Jaques killing coincided with the appointment of Phil Givens chair of the Metropolitan Toronto Police Board, which oversaw the city police, but had long taken a hands-off approach to day-to-day police operations. Givens fell instantly into a political maelstrom. A newly vociferous and politicized Gay liberation movement in Toronto had begun confronting police violence against LGBT people,  a struggle now complicated by the dangerous conclusion reached by many Torontonians that the Jaques killing was somehow the fault of LGBT people. There was growing public sentiment against the violent treatment of black Torontonians by the police. In August 1979, police officers shot Albert Johnson to death in his home. Two police constables were charged with manslaughter in the case. “I never realized just how close to the surface one would find racial tensions,” Toronto mayor John Sewell told an audience at the Toronto Liberal Forum in September 1979. Dismayed, he quoted from a letter he had received from an elderly couple unhappy with the mayor’s criticisms of police violence and in reference to members of the black community: “If they don’t like our laws… why do they come here, we don’t need them….”  Two years into Givens’ term as chair, tensions between the police and black community reached a peak when on October 14, 1979, 1200 people rallied against racism and police violence at City Hall. A small number of demonstrators began fighting with members of the neo-Nazi Nationalist Party of Canada who had arrived to oppose the demonstration with placards reading “White Unity” and “Boat them Back.” One counter-demonstrator appeared in a gorilla suit carrying a sign stating, “I demand equal rights too.” In the aftermath of the melee, police charged eight of the anti-racism demonstrators with assaulting police officers and breach of the peace. 

Meanwhile, in late 1977, a crowd of twenty bystanders watched and chanted, “Kill the cop” as five attackers kicked and punched an officer trying to separate a man and woman fighting in the street. David Keefer was only one of 988 officers assaulted by members of the public that year. In another case, an officer answering a domestic quarrel call found two women fighting. When he tried to separate them, they threw him down a flight of stairs. Other residents who joined the fray knocked him out.  Through it all, Givens worked tirelessly to explain police conduct to a divided city. In March 1978, in an echo of police positions, Givens told a reporter that before the Jaques murder, the police had done everything possible to crack down on sex work on the Yonge Street strip, as though sex workers were partially to blame for the murder of a child. At the same time, Givens invoked a longstanding police grievance that community-police conflict was the result of the federal government tying the hands of officers with legislation that prevented them from doing their jobs. The police fight against sex work, he argued, was hampered by the removal of “vagrancy” from the Criminal Code. Now, irate and still commenting on the Jaques murder, Givens told the media, “to get a conviction a morality officer has to practically crawl into bed with a hooker.”

This chapter focuses on Phil Givens’ term as Police Commission chair from 1977 to 1985. Givens led Canada’s largest urban police force during a period of enormous change in Toronto during which the police came under continuous criticism from the media, local politicians, immigrant community leaders, and many others for violence, racial discrimination, the mistreatment of LGBT Torontonians, and rogue behaviour. When Givens was appointed Commission chair, John Sewell saw him as an unknown quantity on policing. However, immediately and throughout his tenure as Commission chair, Givens became a staunch, loud, socially conservative defender of the police on the most sensitive of issues. What changed from 1963-1966, when Givens served as a liberal mayor of Toronto, to 1977 when he took over as Commission chair? How did Givens, a well-known Toronto progressive and a civil rights standard bearer in the 1960s, become the most eloquent defender of the indefensible -- police brutality and discrimination against minority communities? 

Only half-joking, John Sewell suggested that Givens wasn’t the only Torontonian whose politics shifted right on ascending to the Commission chair; people seemed to assume police positions once they joined the Commission. But Givens’ transformation represented more than a shift from a popular liberal (and Liberal Party member) as Toronto mayor in the mid-1960s, to a more conservative tough-on-crime Police Commission chair in the late 1970s.  His views did not change suddenly or radically. He continued to self-identify as a Liberal. But there’s more to it. Givens’ experience offers insights into the shifting character of what it meant to be progressive in Toronto, the changing face of the Liberal Party of Canada, the nature of municipal politics in Toronto, and how Givens’ longstanding understanding of civil rights and support for Israel may have influenced his thinking on policing.

law, but also the fact that these entries are annotated in a lucid and insightful way. The rest of the book details some of the more practical aspects of the process: protection of property, homelessness decisions, discharge of duty, allocations and enforcement. The last third of the book covers statutory instruments, for both Wales and England, as well as the Homelessness Code of Guidance 2006 (not so relevant for Scottish practitioners). The major changes to the 8th edition include new guidance on Choice Based Lettings, the 2009 Code of Guidance on Housing Allocations as well as new guidance on intentional homelessness and mortgage arrears. This edition also includes the 2009 Circular on Accommodation for ex-armed forces. The section on immigration issues has been rewritten and includes expanded coverage of additional means for providing housing. There has been a substantial revision of the coverage of allocations following the House of Lords Decision in R (Ahmad) v Newham LBC. This new edition also covers other important case law decisions, including those of House of Lords in Holmes – Moorhouse v Richmond upon Thames LBC, Birmingham CC v Ali, Moran v Manchester CC and of the Supreme Court in Tomlinson v Birmingham CC. This publication is an absolutely essential resource for practitioners who specialise in housing advice and advocacy. Few single volumes offer so many sources of information that tie the entire framework together, giving housing and homelessness advisors and practitioners a consolidated source of unrivalled authority. This volume is invaluable for housing professionals, whether working for local authorities—in particular those who make and review decisions on homelessness and allocations—or for housing associations seeking accurate and accessible guidance on local authority duties. It is also an important resource for policy makers who wish to fully understand the legislative framework, how it operates in practice, and where it fits in the statutory process of provision. A fully annotated guide such as this facilitates a broad understanding of the ways in which legislative prescriptions can change both policy implementation as well as general practice. For those taking a more academic approach to homelessness, it also assists in gaining insight into the potential social impacts of the evolving field of law as well as new orientations in the structures of governance. Having extensively used this book as a former practitioner in the field of homelessness, I highly recommend it for anyone with an interest in the subject at any level.

With the rise of mainstream drag cultures achieving international recognition through transnational circulations mediated by artistic platforms, such as RuPaul’s Drag Race, discourses of drag authenticity have also emerged. Such representations are produced through homo/nationalist logics of sexual citizenship, normality, and ‘modernity’ to regulate and manage definitions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ drag performance. The politics of drag thus come to cultivate insular grammars of legitimate drag performance practice through the proliferation of a queer politics built on homogeneity and sameness and furthermore, one that often seeks to bifurcate queerness and sexuality from race, class, and transness, among other vectors of systemic oppression that push mainstream queerness outside of its contained optic of white, middle-class, gay men. Access, success, and livability in such ‘queer’ spaces for marginalized artists is then predicated on a conformity to a homonormative performance politic. While contradictory to, what is supposed to be, the transgressive potential of queerness, queer artists who engage in feminist, revolutionary, insurgent, and radical politics often become rendered always-already elsewhere to the geographies of mainstream queerness for wtheir disruptive and threatening potential. In this article, I am in conversation with multiple Toronto QTBIPoC drag performers who are situated within these positions of peripheral subjecthood as they work through archives of resistance and decoloniality to trouble and unsettle homonormative exclusions and work to queer ‘queer space.’ These artists include Babia Majora, Sydney Quest, Rhinestone Chickadee, Halal Bae, Amian Black, and Mallika. These transformative strategies of queer re-making function through geneaologies of what I call the “insurgent drag subject” where radical queer of colour performance practice challenge the homonormative as a site of universal queer knowing and being.

Toronto is one of the most multicultural cities in the world. It is also a city of social inequalities. This article examines how public spaces facilitate social inclusion and intercultural communication and present specific socio-spatial practices and processes that transcend ethnocultural divisions and traditional public and private boundaries. Relying upon scholarly evidence of socio-spatial injustice, as well as upon 19 interviews and a focus group of 13 young participants, I discuss interculturalism as a possible theoretical framework for communication between social groups in public spaces. I frame public space as a means to redefine and redistribute, and discuss the forces that shape, appropriate and redefine it in Toronto. Based on the testimonies of my research participants, I also discuss phenomena such as the privatization of public space and malling. Finally, I present the practice of the domestication of public space and its potential for intercultural communication as a possibility for communities to make public spaces relevant.

Toronto est une des villes les plus multiculturelles du monde. C’est également une ville avec  des inégalités  sociales. Cet article examine comment  les espaces publics facilitent l’inclusion sociale et la communication interculturelle et
présentent des pratiques socio-spatiales et des processus qui transcendent les divisions ethnoculturelles et les frontières traditionnelles des secteurs public et privé. S’appuyant sur une approche d’injustice socio-spatiale, ainsi que sur 19
entrevues et groupes de discussion de 13 participants,  je discute  l’interculturalisme comme un cadre théorique possible pour la communication entre les groupes sociaux dans les espaces publics. Je conçois l’espace public comme un
moyen de redéfinition et de redistribution, et discute des forces qui façonnent, approprient,  et  redéfinissent  cet  espace  à Toronto. Basé  sur  les  témoignages recueillis dans les entrevues, je discute également des phénomènes tels que la
privatisation de l’espace public et le “malling.” Finalement, je présente la pratique de la domestication de l’espace public et son potentiel de communication interculturelle comme une possibilité pour les collectivités de rendre les espaces publics pertinents.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen many rapid and pragmatic changes to how we safely use the public realm. The City of Toronto’s CaféTO program throws a lifeline to restaurants and bars by allowing for much needed outdoor dining and physical distance in the public realm. The program required collaboration between the City of Toronto, Business Improvement Areas (BIAs), restaurants, and design firm IBI Groups’s placemaking team.

This report summarizes the challenges and recommendations for Canada's healthcare system in the areas of mental health, sexual health, and chronic disease health for South Asian communities in Toronto, Canada. This report captures the views of multiple stakeholders (community members, healthcare service providers, health researchers etc...), which has been recommended as one of the best ways of conducting research to aid the health policy process (Exworthy, 2008).

We have attempted to provide a voice for South Asian communities in Toronto by writing this report. As was mentioned by our participants, it is important for South Asian communities to be involved in the creation of health policy and the administration of health services in Canada. We are an integral part of the community and we need to provide our input.

We hope this report can be used by policy makers and healthcare service providers to better tailor policy and healthcare services to be inclusive of South Asian communities.

original title: "Ernährungssicherung durch Urban Gardening? – Erfahrungen aus Toronto"
Angesichts des Aufschwungs urbaner Gartenformen in der Bundesrepublik, die sich explizit dem Nahrungsmittelanbau widmen, stellt sich die Frage nach ihrem Beitrag zur städtischen Ernährungssicherung. Dazu werden in vorliegendem Aufsatz Erfahrungen aus Toronto vorgestellt und der Zusammenhang von Gemeinschaftsgärten, Ernährungssicherung und Ernährungsgerechtigkeit diskutiert.

This paper contributes to debates on the empirical and conceptual potentials of anti-essentializing notions such as ‘thirdspace’ with the aim to open new epistemological and political grounds. Based on the findings of ethnographic research, I critically examine two spatial strategies (the deliberate creation of an ethnic neighbourhood, and the securing of a community centre) that Latin American immigrants in Toronto, Canada, developed to appropriate urban space and lay claims to equal rights. The case of Latin Americans' struggle for belonging in Toronto serves to reflect on how and why new immigrant groups today (re)construct collective identity spatially. I argue that immigrants strategically essentialize their identities in and through place in order to make themselves visible and their voices heard. Ethnic places represent sites of resistance and creation where immigrants construct their own subjectivities while also redefining dominant notions of inclusion and citizenship. Although locally grounded, these new immigrant identities remain fluid and engage with multiple forms of exclusion [The] situation is simply sad; the [Latin American] community … is one of the most orphan communities … in [Toronto] … [We] don't even have a place where to dig our own grave basically. If there is need to get together … a meeting … there is no place. We have to be looking for a basement … for a recreational centre to give us a room … If there is a social or cultural event, we do not have a place where … we can present what we have … [It] is sad and it is a reality. (Cesar Palacio, city councillor candidate to Toronto's 2003 municipal elections, interview, 2 May 2003, translated from Spanish)Dans le but d'ouvrir de nouvelles perspectives épistémologiques et politiques, cet article se veut une contribution aux débats sur les possibilités empiriques et conceptuelles que présentent les notions anti-essentialistes comme le ‘troisième espace’. Les résultats d'une recherche ethnologique viennent appuyer mon étude critique de deux stratégies spatiales (la création intentionnelle d'un quartier ethnique, et l'approbation obtenue pour ériger un centre associatif) mises sur pied par des immigrants latinos américains à Toronto (Canada) pour s'approprier un espace urbain et revendiquer l'égalité des droits. Les efforts considérables déployés par les latinos américains pour appartenir à Toronto permettent d'examiner comment et pourquoi les nouveaux arrivants tentent aujourd'hui de (re)construire une identité collective dans l'espace. Je soutiens que les immigrants essentialisent de manière stratégique leurs identités dans et à travers le lieu en vue de se rendre visible et de faire entendre leur voix. Les milieux ethniques représentent des sites de résistance et de créativité dans lesquels les immigrants construisent leurs propres subjectivités en même temps qu'ils redéfinissent les notions dominantes que sont l'inclusion et la citoyenneté. Malgré que les identités de ces nouveaux arrivants soient enracinées localement, elles restent fluides et sont touchées par diverses formes d'exclusion.Este papel contribuye al debate sobre las posibilidades empíricas y conceptuales de nociones antiesencialistas como ‘tercer espacio’ con el fin de ir abriendo nuevos caminos epistemológicos y políticos. Basándose en los resultados de una investigación etnográfica, examina críticamente dos estrategias espaciales (la creación deliberada de un barrio étnico y el establecimiento de un centro comunitario) desarrolladas por los inmigrantes latinoamericanos en Toronto, Canadá, con el motivo de apropiarse de espacio urbano y reivindicar la igualdad de derechos. El caso de la lucha de los latinoamericanos por pertenecer en Toronto sirve para reflexionar sobre cómo y por qué los nuevos grupos de inmigrantes de hoy en día (re)construyen una identidad colectiva de forma espacial. Sugiero que los inmigrantes esencializan estratégicamente sus identidades en, y a través, del lugar para hacerse visible y hacer que se escuche su voz. Lugares étnicos representan sitios de resistencia y creación donde los inmigrantes construyen sus propias subjetividades mientras que redefinen nociones dominantes de inclusión y ciudadanía. Aunque tienen base local, estas nuevas identidades de inmigrantes siguen siendo fluidas e interactúan con múltiples formas de exclusión.

Lake Iroquois was a larger, deeper version of the current Lake Ontario. It existed during the last ice age...about 12000 years ago. Two well known vestiges of the Lake Iroquois shoreline in Toronto are at the Scarborough Cathedral Bluffs and the Casa Loma bluff north of Davenport Rd. What about the ancient shoreline around and between these two features? This document captures the shoreline in photos.

A new book on the stories of inventiveness and hope as well as of oppression and despair experienced by  hundreds of thousands of Italians emigrated to Toronto.

"After World War II, hundreds of thousands of Italians emigrated to Toronto. This book describes their labour, business, social and cultural history as they settled in their new home. It addresses fundamental issues that impacted both them and the city, including ethnic economic niching, unionization, urban proletarianization and migrants’ entrepreneurship.
In addressing these issues the book focuses on the role played by a specific economic sector in enabling immigrants to find their place in their new host society. More specifically, this study looks at the residential sector of the construction industry that, between the 1950s and the 1970s, represented a typical economic ethnic niche for newly arrived Italians. In fact, tens of thousands of Italian men found work in this sector as labourers, bricklayers, carpenters, plasterers and cement finishers, while hundreds of others became contractors, subcontractors or small employers in the same industry. This book is about these real people. It gives voice to a community formed both by entrepreneurial subcontractors who created companies out of nothing and a large group of exploited workers who fought successfully for their rights. In this book you will find stories of inventiveness and hope as well as of oppression and despair. The purpose is to offer an original approach to issues arising from the economic and social history of twentieth-century mass migrations."

In the past decade, urban regeneration policy makers and practitioners have faced a number of difficult challenges, such as sustainability, budgetary constraints, demands for community involvement and rapid urbanization in the Global South. Urban regeneration remains a high profile and important field of government-led intervention, and policy and practice continue to adapt to the fresh challenges and opportunities of the twenty-first century, as well as confronting long-standing intractable urban problems and dilemmas. This Companion provides cutting-edge critical review and synthesis of recent conceptual, policy and practical developments within the field. With contributions from 72 international experts within the field, it explores the meaning of ‘urban regeneration’ in differing national contexts, asking questions and providing informed discussion and analyses to illuminate how an apparently disparate field of research, policy and practice can be rendered coherent, drawing out common themes and significant differences. The Companion is divided into six parts, exploring: globalization and neo-liberal perspectives on urban regeneration; emerging econceptualizations of regeneration; public infrastructure and public space;
housing and cosmopolitan communities; community centred regeneration; and culture-led regeneration. The concluding chapter considers the future of urban regeneration and proposes a nine-point research agenda. This Companion assembles a diversity of approaches and insights in one comprehensive volume to provide a state-of-the-art review of the field. It is a valuable resource for both advanced undergraduate
and postgraduate students in Urban Planning, Built Environment, Urban Studies and Urban Regeneration, as well as academics, practitioners and politicians.

Queers living in the urban centre of Toronto have a strong history of resistance and deviant practices that skirt social norms in presenting and disseminating queer knowledge and art. These practices include the self-publication of zines, newspapers, posters, wearables, and art objects made as multiples. These materials, unlike popular mass media, are presented by and for queer audiences allowing for more nuanced, complicated, and affective understandings of the city's queer communities. Using an object-based approach grounded in Sara Ahmed’s Queer Phenomenology, I present queer multiples as guideposts for understanding the inherited queer history of Toronto and its influence upon contemporary artists. For Proud Deviants and Queer Multiples, I curated an exhibit comprised of a multi-generational slate of queer artists, multiples and Toronto’s queer history by showing works from my collection. In tandem with the multiples, I have juxtaposed queer archival materials such as scans of the covers of publications like The Body Politic and gendertrash, as well as the map of the Toronto Purchase. The combination of multiples and archives chart moments of tension and jubilation for queers living within the heteronormative colonial and institutional frameworks of Toronto. By using an artist-curator methodology, this exhibition creates the opportunity to consider the past, present and future of queer art-making in Toronto.

At this time when realism supersedes pipe dreams as the primary mode of urban imagination, pipe dreams have become realities. Market based development is not always punctual (discrete projects on discrete land) - it is also proliferative (multiple projects melding together). Buildings expand, gather and connect without regards to some of the conditions that kept them apart. Once contained by property lines or infrastructure, the interior now has occasion to grow without bounds. The following is an account of two such events that started in the 1960s and have yet to fully conclude. With both an expanding network of regional shopping malls and a web of central commercial developments linked by a bridges and tunnels, the interior has grown to become an endless type of urban form.

Where are queers of color within the queer times of homonationalism? Scholarship grounded in Jasbir Puar's (2007) framework of homonationalism has interrogated queer praxes that collaborate with state racism and other structures of violence, particularly how white queers secure life through participation in violence against non-white populations, but what of the unique and varying locations of queers of color specifically? Within analyses of homonationalism there remains a need to theorize under what new conditions queers of color, across different locations, are located within recently queer-friendly nations, as well as how these locations can both be vastly uneven and produce antagonisms between queers of color in the name of inclusion. This chapter is a modest contribution to locate some queers of color in the discussion of Canadian homonationalism, particularly as they intersect with questions about the psychic power of interpellation.

"This report presents new evidence that the Toronto Police Service (TPS) is not complying with the City of Toronto’s Access Without Fear directives and often violates its own partial “Don’t Ask” policy.

Since the TPS has only implemented a partial “Don’t Ask” policy and remains opposed to a practice of non-disclosure, we hold the position that the Toronto Police Service remains an inaccessible service for undocumented Torontonians who fear being reported to the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), and potentially detained and deported. Data recently obtained through Access to Information requests also confirm what many undocumented Torontonians and service providers have been saying for years: that Toronto police officers continue to practice racial profiling to inquire into Torontonians’ immigration status, in contravention of their own “Don’t Ask” commitment.

We have found that the TPS is the most frequent user of the CBSA’s Warrant Response System. Described as “an important component in effecting removal orders” by the CBSA, the call centre is available 24 hours/day, 7 days/week to law enforcement officers who want to inquire whether an immigration warrant exists against a particular individual. In the period for which we have obtained data (part of 2014 and 2015), the TPS is responsible for 31% of all calls made by all law enforcement and transit agencies across the country. The TPS inquired more often than the RCMP, and more often than the police services of Montreal, Quebec City, Calgary and Vancouver combined.

The reason for these calls is also shocking. The data provided by the CBSA show that TPS calls were rarely for “database verification” or "warrant inquiry." Rather, 83% of all calls were placed to perform a “status check” – to actively seek out information about someone’s immigration situation. This troubling information confirms what we already knew: that TPS is not accessible to people with precarious immigration status and actively seeks to identify immigration status of undocumented Torontonians, putting them in danger of indefinite detention without charges or trial or deportation to places where their lives may be at grave risk."

--- Report commissioned by No One Is Illegal-Toronto. Co-authored by David Moffette, Karl Gardner, No One Is Illegal-Toronto, and the Immigration Legal Committee of the Law Union of Ontario.

---- See: http://toronto.nooneisillegal.org/ImmigrationsDirtyWork

Indigenous history is commonly approached as a counter-narrative, treated as if it threatens some stable, communal understanding of history and place. A Western epistemology has rigidly shaped how most Torontonians see, and as a result it can be challenging to see Indigenous history as autonomous. The city feels unified to High Park as place—in Toronto, in Ontario, in Canada. All three are Haudenosaunee words, constantly used without any reflection of their history that predates the colonization of the country. The dissonances created by contrasting forms of perception contribute to an estrangement of Indigenous communities from locations that have significant spiritual meaning to them. In High Park, visions of a sublime expanse of nature, and as a place of rich Indigenous history, contrast and compete. Wherever these visions are expressed, a contest is enacted between the oral and the literary, between mythology and history, between spirituality and science.

Increasing awareness of the urban heat island (UHI) effect has raised attention about the outdoor thermal comfort in cities worldwide. Several studies in the last decades have revealed how critical the UHI effect can be in a cold climate, such as in Canadian cities. As a result, in Toronto, one of the cities experiencing the highest rate of building development in developed countries, UHI mitigation strategies are currently the object of extensive debates. This study evaluates different UHI mitigation strategies in different urban neighbours of Toronto, selected according to their building density. The effects of cool surfaces (on the roofs, on the street pavements or as vegetation areas) are evaluated
through numerical simulations using the software ENVI-met. Having obtained the surface temperature, outdoor air temperature, mean radiant temperature, and physiologically equivalent temperature, this study compares the possible mitigation of net surface radiation and thermal radiative power. The results demonstrate that the duration of direct sun and the mean radiant temperature, which are strongly influenced by the urban form, play a significant role in urban thermal comfort. Finally, this research supports new policies for promoting sustainable urban development in Toronto, and suggests design strategies for a more resilient urban planning.

This article investigates a series of tattoo-inspired artwork produced by Toronto-based artist Aba Bayefsky during the late 1970s and early 1980s. To do so, I draw heavily from archival documents that belong to the Aba Bayefsky fonds at Library and Archives Canada and newspaper articles published in the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail. I reconstruct this period in the form of a historical narrative and use what I call a “tattoo scene” as a frame for my analysis. In doing so, I argue that by creating work that depicted members of the tattoo scene, Bayefsky merged disparate social and cultural groups and their respective visual cultures locally in Toronto and later transnationally between Toronto and Japan.

The virus doesn’t discriminate. It’s the great equalizer. We’re all in this together. These are refrains that can be heard around the world as a chorus of government leaders, health practitioners, celebrities, and social media influencers construct a mainstream discourse around COVID-19. With every corner of the globe experiencing the health and economic effects of the virus, and affluent and powerful people like Tom Hanks and Boris Johnson among those unfortunate enough to contract it, there is certainly an unparalleled shared experience that will be a defining feature of this time in global history. This elusive and volatile virus has also served as a common enemy, inspiring incredible feats of solidarity and collaboration across national, cultural, class, disciplinary, and political boundaries. These are indeed important stories to tell.

However, the sociopolitical cleavages of our pre-COVID world are still quite visible through this veil of social change and good will. In fact, there is good reason to believe that these societal distinctions will become further entrenched and increasingly divisive in the time of extreme uncertainty, scarcity, and paranoia that we are currently in. Time, experience and research will tell how these dynamics will ultimately unfold. In the meantime, however, it is important that researchers keep an eye to the ground and begin to ask questions about how COVID-19 is being experienced by different communities – particularly racialized and marginalized groups. When we look closely at the Black and African diaspora in North America , we begin to see how the intersections of factors such as race, migration, economics, and structural environment are creating a unique set of challenges that these communities are both confronting and responding to.

THIS IS YOUR CUE: TIME TO TAKE ACTION
Call upon the community or general public, parents and youths, mental health professionals, physicians and nurses, educators, Facebook and other internet social media, religious groups, athletes, celebrities, secular and SBNR, school administrators, news media, Hollywood, academia, scientists, employers and employees, business owners and managers, private individuals and public officials, to join their talents, opportunities, and influence to support student mental health and end school shootings. Sharing this article is one way you can help https://www.academia.edu/35809557

This thesis undertakes a historical materialist analysis of the smart city. Though the smart city does not yet exist in any real way, the precepts which give rise to it have already been in effect. The smart city is embedded in the capitalist world-system. Of specific interest is the smart city’s relationship with the ideology of industrial & technoscientific progress, which will allow for the re-centering of labor over and above the supposed ephemerality of ‘post-industrial’ contemporary capitalism.

The dream of intelligent life has long been elaborated over decades by urbanists, demagogues, corporations, luminaries, science fiction writers, sociologists, futurists, and technologists; this process has resulted in a slapdash concept which nevertheless presents itself as a seamless, universal utopia of glass and wire. From this point of departure, I set out to track the historical emergence of smart urbanism from the perspective of Sidewalk Toronto’s Quayside project. This thesis approaches the smart city not as an object, but a nascent ideological expression of institutionalized ruling class desire. My analysis focuses on spatial, economic, and political contexts, arriving at an understanding of the city as a dialectical tendency, not as a foregone artifact-to-come; as a contradictory abstraction, and not as a simplistic technological intensification of urbanity.

A considerable body of scholarly research now accords with long-held Indigenous prophecy in affirming the ongoing importance of Indigenous knowledge for the health and wellness of contemporary Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples and their environments. Yet, while much research has examined Indigenous knowledge and traditions in more natural or rural contexts, there has been to date very little examination of the presence and character of Indigenous knowledge and traditions in more urban contexts. This dissertation redresses this gap in the research via an analysis of Indigenous knowledge, traditions, and storytelling in Toronto and their prophetic implications for contemporary Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples.
The analysis is based on a comparative literature review of Indigenous knowledge, traditions, and community as they have been practiced in urban and non-urban locales, long-term participation within Toronto’s Indigenous community particularly as a tour guide for the highly-regarded community-based Great ‘Indian’ Bus Tour of Toronto, and in-depth semi-structured interviews with a small group of Anishinaabe Torontonians regarding their perceptions of the city and the practice of urban Indigenous knowledge and traditions. These lines of investigation revealed that land-based urban Indigenous knowledge and storytelling traditions are practiced in at least some cities like Toronto in ways that exhibit significant similarities and continuities with those practiced in non-urban locales. Land-based stories of Toronto’s Indigenous heritage shared among Indigenous Torontonians portray Toronto as a traditional Indigenous territory, promote life – and land – affirming connections to places in the city and the development of a cosmopolitan ethics of place that may constitute a significant pathway to the Eighth Fire of Anishinaabe prophecy.

Over the last four decades public art has galvanized neighborhoods around the world, yet in Toronto it is a relatively untapped tool for engaging with and promoting vibrant and inclusive communities. Inspired by the potential of art in public space, a vigorous dialogue has sprung up from many sources with the goal of making Toronto a leader in global public art practice. Participants seek to evaluate current practice and explore future opportunities to expand the definition, practice, and support for public art in this city. Though this conversation transcends policy, policy is a key part of the puzzle. Spurred by this dialogue and by the relevance of public art to universities, researchers from OCAD University and the University of Toronto joined together to produce this report, Redefining Public Art in Toronto.

Iskandar Beg Munshi (Persian: اسکندربیگ منشی), a.k.a. Iskandar Beg Turkman (اسکندربیگ ترکمان) (c. 1560 – c. 1632), was a Persian historian of Turkmen origin of the Safavid emperor Shah Abbas I. Iskandar Beg began as an accountant in the bureaucracy, but later became a privileged secretary of the Shahs.[6] He wrote one of the greatest works of Persian historiography, Tārīk̲h̲-i ʿĀlam-ārā-yi ʿAbbāsī (Alamara-i Abbasi). The work begins with the origins of the Safavids and continues through the reign of Shah Abbas I.

His native language was Azerbaijani

This article suggests the need for imagining assemblages and engagements between queer, Marxist, postcolonial and indigenous perspectives in order to critically confront the complex and ambivalent politics of queerness today. It grounds and deploys this reflection through a critical exploration of “Dawn of a New Gay,” a non-academic piece on ‘po-mo homo’ and the case of Queers Against the Israeli Apartheid, an activist group based in Toronto. Queerness, in our account, is constituted by dimensions which go far beyond a narrow conception of sexuality. Thus, ‘queering queerness’ implies talking about ‘classing’, ‘gendering’ and ‘racialising’ processes, avoiding an additive logic and acknowledging their interelated messiness. By employing ‘queer’ as a self-reflective, methodological tool, we examine its integral role in the processes of capitalism, racialisation, heteropatriarchy and colonialism. The suggested theoretical perspective has implications in terms of how to think of politics ‘as such’: there is a need, this article argues, to overcome economic and culturalist reductionisms in the approach to radical politics. Both are liberal in their ‘ideological mechanics’ because they proceed with the logic of segmentation and obscure how power(s) operate(s).  Assembling critical perspectives is an impossible and necessary exercise of de-reification of categories and theories but, more fundamentally, it is an attempt to imagine less oppressive political praxes and futures.

Michelle McCullock, professionally known as Michie Mee, is a Canadian hip-hop artist who first came to prominence in Toronto’s young hip-hop scene in the mid-1980s. Michie Mee is an important figure in Canadian hip-hop for several reasons. She is a successful female rapper in a highly male-dominated performance sphere. Furthermore, she was the first Canadian rapper to gain acknowledgement and support from established New York hip-hop acts such as Boogie Down Productions (BDP). Michie Mee was also the first Canadian rapper signed to an American record label (First Priority Music). However, what makes her especially unique is her expression of a distinct Jamaican/Canadian hybrid identity. From her earliest recordings “Run For Cover” and “Jamaican Funk: Canadian Style,” to 2013’s “Bahdgyal Bubble,” Michie Mee has promoted a strong Jamaican identity within her lyrical and visual style. By using theories of hybridity and third space, my thesis investigates Michie Mee’s articulation of a recognizable hybrid identity that projects both Canadian and Jamaican sensibilities.

Iskandar Beg Munshi (Persian: اسکندربیگ منشی), a.k.a. Iskandar Beg Turkman (اسکندربیگ ترکمان) (c. 1560 – c. 1632), was a Persian historian of Turkmen origin of the Safavid emperor Shah Abbas I. Iskandar Beg began as an accountant in the bureaucracy, but later became a privileged secretary of the Shahs. He wrote one of the greatest works of Persian historiography, Tārīk̲h̲-i ʿĀlam-ārā-yi ʿAbbāsī (Alamara-i Abbasi). The work begins with the origins of the Safavids and continues through the reign of Shah Abbas I.

His native language was Azerbaijani

What are the possibilities for well-being in exile? If one is displaced, and in a constant struggle for what has been lost, can you be “well”? An individual’s answer to these questions might change on a day-to-day basis, or over the course of one’s lifetime. A definition of wellbeing is useful here: “the balance point between an individual’s resource pool and the challenges faced.” Resources the Tibetan community draws on include concepts and practices from Tibetan Buddhism, the leadership of the Dalai Lama, and political action and community care forged in the different contexts of lack of citizenship in South Asia and citizenship in the diaspora outside of it. China’s invasion and colonization of Tibet in the 1950s led to Tibetans fleeing south to India for refuge. In the six decades since then, the diaspora has spread around the world while many Tibetans also remain inside Tibet as part of the People’s Republic of China. In this article, I draw on ethnographic research in Tibetan communities in Canada, France, India, Nepal, Switzerland, and the USA from 1994 through 2020, including activism in the current Covid-19 pandemic. Notions of care embedded in Tibetan political activism enable possibilities for well-being even in times of loss. The idea of activism as care is the key.

Recently, the ‘Smart City’ label has emerged as a popular umbrella term for numerous projects around the world that claim to offer an enhanced urban experience, often provided in collaboration with international companies through private-public partnerships. As smart cities pledge to create long-term economic sustainability and progressive form of urban entrepreneurialism, it is getting important to highlight risks such as the reduced role of the public sector, technological dominance and data privacy. In contrast to more a conventional, long-term, holistic master planning, a technologically pre-determined form of Smart City endangers the emancipator usage of public spaces as spaces of diversity, creativity, inclusive citizen participation and urban sustainability.

This research approaches the concept of Smart Cities as a future category and, thus, targets to develop a comprehensive visual analysis based on architectural representations in the form of computer-generated images (CGI’s). The Quayside project, a notable and widely criticized urban development project, by Sidewalk Toronto, a cooperation between Waterfront Toronto and Sidewalk Labs which is a sister subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., has been selected as Smart City case study as. Visual analysis was conducted by using the theoretical frame advocating ‘Coordinating Smart Cities’ in contrast to ‘Prescriptive Smart Cities’ by Richard Sennett. In addition to Sennett’s concept of ‘Incomplete Form’, Jan Gehl’s ‘Twelve Quality Criteria’ was used as coding categories to elaborate the content analysis which was followed by semiological and compositional interpretations. Visuals have been investigated in three sequential sets and analyzed focusing on time-based comparative frequency counts for sets of visuals. Concentrating on how future public spaces are illustrated, the study aims to uncover and to discuss how Smart Cities are being imagined and advertised.

Within the walls of an unremarkable two-story storefront in a strip mall in suburban Toronto, a distinct alternative practice of radical politics and life is taking place. In fact, what would appear to be an extension of the Kurdish social movement, as it is understood, is being practiced against a backdrop of the refugee experience within the metropolitan city limits of Toronto. This practice of what is arguably feminist anarchism has identified itself in recent years by the title "Democratic Confederalism". Democratic Confederalism in its feminist anarchist framework reflects an understanding of what is known within the Marxist tradition as "the commons". This paper seeks to show that the Kurdish Community Centre has, over nearly three decades, evolved for its members within Toronto into a space that attempts to practice this radical feminist politics mirroring our understanding of "the commons". However, as with many leftist social movements, struggles with the glaring divide between theory and praxis across space and time mark the centre's main concerns. Limited by the diasporic experience, these Kurdish refugees are faced with trying to navigate their anti-state Kurdish revolutionary struggle within a nation that has provided them refuge. This paper will explore what is understood as "komal" (community) and how these community centres have come to represent the Kurdish social movement in diasporic spaces through refugee lived experiences-particularly that of the Kurdish woman's. Their radical feminist politics, which have been most prominently articulated in the movement through armed struggle against oppression in urban and rural spaces, can only be reflected in a Canadian setting by the TKCC working to form solidarity with various other oppressed groups who share similar politics-a variety of third world, women-of-color feminism that is about critique and spaces of coalition building unlike that of second wave white feminists. Traditionally the movement's feminist project claims to be that of disidenfication. Contrastingly, in Canada where their identification as Kurds and as refugees is an organizing epistemology, pushing policy by lobbying the Canadian government becomes essential.