Four-Storey Tower
@g_meslin
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Father, planner, lifelong Torontonian - I love this city, and hope our children will also have a chance to do so. Here to share my ideas, and learn from yours.
Joined January 2012
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Send us removal request.
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Pinned Tweet
Which would do greater good for present & future generations:
Restricting these typologies in low-rise residential areas, or allowing them?
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@marceelias
What should be illegal is having to wait so long to vote that you need somebody to bring you a bottle of water.
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Quite a thing, framing the experience of a generation that can’t afford the space necessary to start families in terms of the experience of the generations that largely built their wealth through home price appreciation.
Baby boomers are adjusting to a new retirement normal: No grandchildren
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1) So my mom, in her 70s, got a call out of the blue from the library - it was somebody calling just to ask how she was doing, if she was ok, and if she needed anything. Apparently this is something some librarians are doing, with branches closed any many people isolated.
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Seems like a good day for a reminder that while serving as Mayor, John Tory has continued to receive $100,000 per year for advising the Rogers family trust.
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2407 Bloor Street West, The Campbell Apartments. This century old (1920) walk-up has 12 apartments. A scale of building that would fit in on any residential street among houses.
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There is so much cause for worry or anger these days, that when something good happens, you have to take a moment to appreciate it.
Wishing you, and Toronto, a successful mayoralty,
@oliviachow
.
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Ok, just for fun, three maps:
1) The outline of Paris, within the Périphérique, overlaid on central Toronto.
2) Toronto subway lines and stations within that area (including Crosstown).
3) Paris Métro lines (1-14) and stations within that same area.
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There is no longer an engine under the hood of an electric F-150. It is now storage. There is no reason, other than style over safety, not to modify the front end to reduce the blind spot and make it less lethal in the event of a collision with a human body.
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Imagine if we wrapped cars this way.
“There’s no excuse for running a red”
“Speeding is stealing others’ safety”
“You really don’t need a vehicle this large”
“When you park, be sure to pay”
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Near-identical views of downtown Toronto, 1958/2021, looking south from the Imperial Oil Building/Imperial Plaza.
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Our daughter is playing around with designing street sections in geography class, and she sent me this:
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Canada, social housing units built by year, 1972-2010.
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Your tweet clearly implies action taken today, in response to the day’s news. The picture was clearly not taken the day after a snowstorm.
Using public-funded comms to lie to the public.
#PHFirstResponder
patrols St Clair Station while on duty in 53 Division. There needs to be an “all hands on deck approach” to restoring safety and order on our public transit system.
#toronto
#policehorse
#enoughisenough
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Saying 'but nobody bikes there' when the street looks like this is like saying 'nobody uses the second floor' when there aren't any stairs.
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“Cycling zealots want to turn the city upside down...”
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Ludicrous society that can build up and tear down an Indy course - concrete barriers, fencing, grandstands, hospitality suites - for a four day weekend, but can’t figure out how to put a roof over the heads of a relatively small number of refugees.
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There are around 195 days in the school year.
Over 14 years, from JK-12, a child will spend approximately 2,730 days in school.
So tell me, should I be more concerned about our children missing a few days of school, or about the well-being of the institution of public education?
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So register a party, field a slate of candidates, and run in the next election. You don’t get a seat at the table by parking a truck on Wellington Street.
In an 'emergency' press conference, the truckers' new spokesperson Tom Marazzo says: "I'm willing to sit at a table with the conservatives and the NDP and the Bloc, as a coalition. I'll sit with the governor general."
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At Loblaws this evening, I’d say easily 90% still wearing masks (myself included). Big store, pretty busy, and I counted fewer than 10 people without.
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Reminder that John is a lobbyist. He gets paid to advance his client’s interests. If he’s tweeting about
#OntarioPlace
, it means that
@ThermeCanada
is still paying him to influence people, and that tells me this is not a done deal.
Keep fighting. Keep digging. Keep making noise.
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As we breathe smoke from climate change-worsened fires, consider that
@fordnation
and
@ThermeCanada
will:
-bulldoze parkland and 850 mature trees
-build a giant indoor energy sink of a spa
-needlessly replace rather than repair the Science Centre
-spend $500M public $ on parking
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1. A
#KingStreetPilot
mapping thread. Restaurant Row, in context.
This is downtown Toronto, west of the Financial District.
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Turns out that electing a government that fundamentally doesn’t believe in governance, expert advice, or public sector delivery of programs is problematic during a pandemic.
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So to summarize:
- the infrastructure and servicing is a subsidy to
@ThermeCanada
- the parking garage is a subsidy to
@ThermeCanada
- the relocation of the Science Centre is a subsidy to
@ThermeCanada
Congratulations, Ontario, on your $1.5B publicly-funded private spa.
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Left: weekly price per litre of unleaded in Toronto, From last April to now.
Right: federal carbon tax per litre, over the same period.
When a politician attributes day-to-day gas price changes to the carbon tax, they are lying to you.
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Some have asked why the wrap offends:
- because it paints transit riders as takers, when they generate net benefits
- because we should be selling the idea of transit, not stigmatizing it
- because most riders pay fares
- because there ARE reasons why some don’t
- because dignity
Imagine if we wrapped cars this way.
“There’s no excuse for running a red”
“Speeding is stealing others’ safety”
“You really don’t need a vehicle this large”
“When you park, be sure to pay”
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The sympathy I have for operators who take multiple units out of the universe of long-term housing and effectively run hotels in residential buildings is somewhere between zero and none.
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The lengths to which
@fordnation
is willing to go to fast track this is really remarkable. Secretive process. Long lease. Parking garage. Servicing. Science Centre. Exclusion from EA. $ and uploading for Toronto. Now the legislation described below.
…for a private spa. Why?
NEW: The Ford government has tabled legislation that would give itself significant new powers to fast-track the redevelopment of Ontario Place and exclude it from environmental laws, including the power to issue MZOs on the site.
#Onpoli
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There is no business case.
There was no consultation.
It is not falling apart.
It was not an election plank.
It will cost more than they say.
It will not replace what was lost.
They will move as fast as they can, so their vandalism cannot be reversed once they are out of office.
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I recently purchased a pack of Nestle minis for $14.99. For that amount I can give 50 kids each a couple treats. Or, I could give them each $0.30, which gets them nothing.
Anyhow, happy Halloween to
@Sflecce
, who chose to hand out $200 per student, instead of $5k per class.
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The fact that the City may be spending up to $300M to host five soccer games - at a moment when it can’t afford to shelter people, run buses, or maintain infrastructure - should be another issue discussed during this mayoral election.
Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment won’t be on the hook for any costs associated with helping Toronto host the World Cup, as part of a “sweetheart deal” in which the company will be entitled to millions of dollars in revenue generated by the soccer tournament, the Star has learned
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If you go back two or three generations on my family tree, you find branches pruned by the Holocaust. People pulled from their homes, loaded on trains, gassed, and cremated.
We are asking people not to eat in restaurants, to protect them, others, and ICUs.
Fuck you, Randy.
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Every inch of the scene in this picture would be bulldozed to make way for the
@ThermeCanada
spa, which would occupy all of it. The lake would then need to be filled to expand the island to allow public access around the massive private spa. All of which was excluded from the EA.
On a bird walk on the Ontario Place west island. Our host has already identified over 20 species of birds in the first 15 minutes, and the place feels like a natural wonderland.
Very sad to imagine a bunch of profiteers ruining this beautiful space with a spa.
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Sorry
@ThermeCanada
, but any version of ‘wellness’ that begins with bulldozing all of this and enclosing it all within a massive private indoor space is a sham.
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1. If you are fortunate to receive a vaccine, know that it is due to the efforts of local public health units, hospitals, doctors and nurses – and not due to any leadership, planning, coordination, or logistical preparation by a province that has had a year to do such things.
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Look at these photos, taken today by
@ONPlace4All
. Can you imagine, rather than using this as the starting point for an amazing park, bulldozing it, filling it with concrete, and enclosing it in a private indoor waterpark? What a lack of vision. What a disregard for heritage.
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1. Welcome to Toronto, where apparently you should now wave a flag if you hope to cross the street safely.
At a signalized intersection.
By a school.
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There’s no way that a stronger, longer lockdown earlier on, accompanied by supports, held until new cases were near 0, and followed by reopening with contact tracing and travel controls/quarantine, would have been more costly than this year of muddling through...
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It was a competitive process!
(won’t reveal details of other 30+ bids; won’t reveal criteria for selecting
@ThermeCanada
; won’t reveal terms of 95-year lease; won’t reveal bids not requiring a $500M parking garage; won’t reveal costs of repairing Science Centre; won’t reveal…)
@BonnieforLeader
@OntarioPlace
First, it was a competitive process. Second, the process was lead by bureaucrats at Heritage and Infrastructure Ontario. Third, thanks for letting us know you would continue to let Ontario Place and Ontario Science Centre rot.
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Toronto, by population, would be Canada’s fifth largest province, yet you can apparently run for a third term as mayor, and accept expanded powers in that role, without having to defend your track record and articulate your priorities in a debate.
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467 and 469 Spadina Road.
Formerly 17 affordable and mid-range two-bedroom apartments.
Vacated in 2006.
Neighbours objected to a 2013 proposal to renovate the interior to accommodate 31 units - concerns included the proposed tenure of the units (rental).
Still boarded up in 2023.
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1. The year is 1994, Toronto has been awarded an NBA franchise, and The Star and CFRB 1010 are running a name the team contest…
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Premier
@fordnation
to high risk workers, disproportionately from racialized communities: we will not give you paid sick days, but we will empower police to stop and question you on the way to the jobs that you cannot do from home.
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Paris’ temporary bike lanes are better than Toronto’s permanent ones.
Here's how Paris is doing temporary street space reallocation. Neatly, quickly, and semi-permanently.
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Everything that has been revealed this week has continued to reaffirm my position that John Tory was the worst mayor of my lifetime.
$2 billion to keep the Bloor line running (500,000 riders per day) or $2 billion to rebuild the Gardiner East of Jarvis (5,000 drivers will save a few minutes during rush hour). Tough call.
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In Toronto, we’ll spend four years studying whether to add a couple km of flexipost-separated lane, and then we’ll call it a pilot for the next decade.
Paris region will spend €300 million on a 650-kilometer secured cycle network, including temporary facilities beginning May 11 designed for post-virus life.
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Anyone who tells you they’re going to fix ‘traffic chaos’ without telling you how they’re going to reduce single-occupant car trips by creating alternative options for getting around, incentivizing people to choose them, and improving land use, is lying to you.
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$650 million.
I have no fundamental objection to a private spa, but not on public parkland, and not with public $.
If this is such a great business,
@ThermeCanada
, build it yourself. On private land. With your own money.
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Illegally parking your car in a spot that blocks a streetcar line: $150
Not paying your fare on a streetcar: $425
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“As architects we were instructed to use concrete to last far beyond 100 years. We guaranteed that with proper maintenance the life of this project will last far beyond 250 years.”
Raymond Moriyama, on the Ontario Science Centre, in a letter to the Toronto Star, May 3, 2023.
At Question Period: Ontario’s minister of infrastructure says the Ontario’s Science Center is end of life at 53 years.
Kinga Surma then claims her government will oversee the construction of a new structure at Ontario Place that will last 100 years.
#Onpoli
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1) Recently, on several consecutive weekends,
@thermecanada
ran full-page colour ads in Toronto newspapers promoting their Ontario Place proposal. Let’s look at what those ads showed, and whey they did not.
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Toronto, Highway 401.
14 lanes.
'Express and collector moving slowly'.
The only thing that has ever waged 'war on the car' is other cars.
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Anyhow, Toronto, after 8 years of Tory you’re going to have no SmartTrack, worse transit in Scarborough, and tons of $ poured into rebuilding a short section of elevated expressway on the waterfront. I hope we open our collective eyes in 2022.
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Before and after of that block.
How do you go back?
(A: you don’t!)
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Of course a tax hike would be felt.
In lower transit fares & more service.
In better-maintained parks & roads.
In shelter beds & warming centres.
In library hours.
In programs and services that are protected, rather than cut.
In a city that starts to feel less mean and tattered.
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Re: having a drink in a park
This amazing, scathing paragraph was written by Richard Needham, for The Globe and Mail, in 1965.
57 years ago.
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Walking with my 11-year-old daughter to today’s rally, on Ontario Place’s West Island, and she looks around and says, ‘why would they build a spa here? It’s so nice. People should have picnics here……afterwards, can we just walk around a bit?’
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Hey
@ThermeCanada
,
Since you’re answering questions, what are the terms of your 95-year lease, and what are you permitted to do on the West Island if the spa/waterpark doesn’t somehow operate continuously for almost a century?
There have been no ties of any kind or business dealings between Therme and Ares Management or its subsidiaries. Suggestions that Therme has been involved in any unethical or improper activity are entirely false and defamatory.
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1 of 850
There's a huge uproar in England over the destruction of one majestic tree, the Sycamore Gap, and in Ontario we're about to lose *hundreds* for no reason. There should be a massive outcry.
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Nina & Bathurst.
Hillcrest School on the left.
Crossing guard on the right.
This is the culture that kills.
Cc:
@JohnTory
@TrafficServices
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Tweets that still exist.
The people have spoken - we will maintain the Greenbelt in its entirety.
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Vehicle-free High Park should be the rule, not the exception.
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Doug and Kinga: the Ontario Science Centre, built only 54 years ago, is at end of life.
Also Doug and Kinga:
@ThermeCanada
’s private spa requires a 95-year lease, and we won’t reveal what the leaseholder is allowed to do if the spa ceases operation before the lease’s end.
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Excerpt from a Jan 19, 2019 Toronto Star article, referencing Hazel McCallion, who was recently appointed as chair of the Greenbelt Council.
👀
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Hey
@ThermeCanada
, remember these quotes? They’re from your website:
“Therme is not being subsidized by Ontario taxpayers”
“The Ontario government is planning and building the site-wide parking solution at Ontario Place for all of its tenants.”
BREAKING: The Ford gov't is contractually obligated to build a parking garage at Ontario Place: Auditor General.
The garage has to be 650m away from the Therme spa with taxpayers on the hook if the province doesn't meet the obligation.
#onpoli
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16) So good news, Ontario! You know those things that
@thermecanada
was selling you? We already have them. The beach. The water. The paths. The trees. The heritage.
Sure, let’s repair and improve it. We don’t need a private spa, or a huge public-funded underground lot to do so.
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Your periodic reminder that these four buildings on Tichester are able to provide 128 apartments in a four-storey package on a total lot area that, one street north, accommodates six detached houses.
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Looking through the 1959 Official Plan for the Metropolitan Toronto Planning Area. This passage was written 63 years ago. We have yet to fully internalize much of it.
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3. Spielberg’s Jurassic Park had been released the previous summer, and dinosaurs were a thing.
On that theme, I always thought this proposed name was funny.
#TorontoSaurusRex
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Transit vehicle capacity for a couple thousand people bogged down by a few dozen cars, and a long-standing abandonment of effective enforcement of existing laws.
A wee 🧵.
This was my commute, erm… walk home last night. 12 minutes sped up to a little over two minutes. Between Peter and King there were 14 streetcars stuck for nothing other than traffic congestion. This is not unusual lately and absolutely ridiculous.
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Both Ontario Place and Ontario Science Centre, by the way, are examples of governments neglecting maintenance and manufacturing a situation where they can claim a place is falling apart, and that it requires privatization/replacement to continue the use.
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1. Our debates about how we share the public right-of-way focus a lot on travel time.
I’d like to talk about comfort, risk and trade-offs.
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I explained to my kids that Kawhi was like Mary Poppins and now they’re ok with it.
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‘renters don’t pay taxes’ is a close relative of ‘cyclists don’t pay for the road’.
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I noticed, while at
#OntarioPlace
, that Kosso Eloul’s Ontario Bicentennial Sculpture (1984), dedicated by Lincoln Alexander, has been removed.
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I hate to look at everything a government does with a cynical eye, but shifting all COVID-19 testing centres from walk-in to appointment-only doesn’t address capacity issues, it just hides the lines, which were a source of political pain.
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2) anyhow, just another example of how our library system is a jewel, the people who work in it are amazing, and that it is essential community infrastructure that provides so many intangible and spillover benefits.
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One of the sad things is how badly
@ThermeCanada
is being advised. Few people oppose a spa - but there is strong opposition to it at Ontario Place. There would be so much goodwill if they said, ‘we made a mistake, we want to be in Toronto, but we will consider other sites’.
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The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago.
The second best time is now.
The worst time is never...
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Ontario Place had strong admissions, and was on track for profitability when the Liberals closed it.
Ford is closing the Science Centre as it emerges from COVID and years of construction on Eglinton.
They aren’t closed because they fail; they’re closed so they don’t succeed.
The McLaughlin Planetarium was open from 1967-1995. The planetarium was closed by the Mike Harris government despite being profitable and having climbing attendance.
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I didn’t want to waste time tweeting about it earlier, but now that it’s done, I’ll say that Rob Ford hurt and embarrassed this city and, fully acknowledging his struggle with disease, his behaviour in office was not befitting such commemoration. So he answered his phone. Great.
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"He's coming for the things that make Toronto livable, and he wants us distracted....that's why"
@gordperks
on fire at Council today.
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@TheGallowBoob
@martynschmoll
I saw something similar - the Collectivity Project - along the High Line, in 2015.
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A failure of the public-private model.
A failure of Astral Media to honour their commitment.
A failure of the City, to draft or enforce a contract that protects the public interest.
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I know I’m probably grasping at straws, but
@ThermeGroup
used to tweet regularly, then went silent last May. Projects in NYC and DC received initial press, then nothing. And if you search for ‘Therme Manchester’, you get tweets like this…
Quick look at Therme Manchester construction. Well there isn't any. Looks like it will be delayed to atleast 2026 at this rate
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My kids have pranked the house, eating all the Lindor chocolates & carefully replacing them with brussels sprouts. I may never trust again.
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Closing playgrounds before workplaces is the kind of move you get from a Cabinet that likely all have backyards, and it most impacts the communities that have already been hit hardest by COVID.
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