Spacing Saturday is a new feature that highlights posts from across Spacing’s blog network in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and the Atlantic region. Spacing Saturday replaces the weekly features Montreal Monday and Toronto Tuesday.
• The decision by Empire Movies to close Ottawa’s Orleans town centre movie theatre, an Ottawa mainstay for nearly 20 years, leaves the future of the 6-screen building in doubt. Dwight Williams examines the possibility of transforming the now defunct theatre into a repertory cinema so it can continue to serve as an entertainment destination for the Orleans area.
• A city plan to transform transit in downtown Ottawa calls for the construction of a costly underground tunnel. The price tag attached to the tunnel has many critics calling for a switch to above ground mass transit. But Spacing Ottawa’s Eric Darwin argues that, in the long-run, the tunnel is the most efficient and cost-effective method of ensuring smooth transit through the city.
• Dalhousie’s campus master plan which, if implemented, would “have a big impact not only on Dal students but the wider community” has generated limited public and media debate. With the goal of generating more discussion Jake Schabas examines the changes to the built-form and to campus life that would result from the plan’s implementation.
• Historic photographs of Halifax’s movie theatres from the Nova Scotia Archives offers a glimpse into city life and entertainment centers from over 50 years ago.
• The York University busway, “the GTA’s first major bus-only road” opened on November 20th to ease congestion in the area surrounding Toronto’s York University campus. Sean Marshall provides insight into how this new project is working.
• The history of Agincourt–once a small village in its own right, now a barely recognizable part of the Greater Toronto Area–is a case study of how urban sprawl can swallow and alter surrounding villages and hamlets.
• Alanah Heffez examines Montreal’s various encounters with pedestrian only streets and the opportunities and challenges they bring. Her account begins in the Summer of 1970 when the city opened its first pedestrian mall on Mount Royal Avenue.
• A look through The Gazette’s archives gives us a glimpse into life in the city’s Mile End neighbourhood in the 1840s.
photo of Orleans Cinema from Spacing Ottawa