Spacing Saturday

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.

• Katie McKay describes the scene on a Halifax intersection as crowds gathered to watch the destruction of a city landmark: the distinctive Victorian Apartments.

• Halifax’s aging CBC building may be getting an overhaul as CBC Radio Canada and the YMCA (owners of the neighbouring building) have jointly come up with a proposal for the site’s redevelopment. The new development plan would see “new YMCA facilities, office retail space, a public atrium, 200+ residential units and a 100 room boutique hotel”.

• A discarded bike buried in a snowdrift prompts Spacing Ottawa contributor Kathryn Hunt to investigate what happens to the city’s abandoned bikes.

• A proposal to turn Orléans, a key Ottawa intersection “from a standard four-way into a roundabout or traffic circle” is generating significant discussion among politicians and the media. But Spacing contributor Dwight Williams is worried about the lack of public consultation.

• A look back into history reveals that the story of Montreal’s Plaza Saint Hubert and “its distinctive glass awning” began almost 40 years ago “when the Saint Hubert Merchants Association wanted to convert the commercial street into the world’s biggest shopping centre”.

• Montreal’s City Council tabled the 2010 Budget of the City of Montreal last week.  Devin Alfaro highlights the most salient budget issues and their effect on the city.

•  John Lorinc tries to makes sense of Toronto’s increasingly convoluted mayoral race as conservative front-runner, John Tory, drops out.

• Steve Munro finds a report on Toronto’s streetcars from more than 50 years ago still holds lessons for the Toronto of today.

• Need a primer on Environmental Assessments? Check out Hilary Best’s
“print-out, fold-up, all-purpose guide” .

photo by Katie McKay