“Don Valli don give no favers to no ones, see? Especially not to rat basterds like yous!”

Unfortunately, the Don is not currently in a position to make any demands. As a recent Star article points out, it’s mostly a heap of mud and rocks at the moment:

Yup. Not much to look at. But apparently what you’re looking at in the photo will be the tower on the left below:

I’m still not sure exactly how this is supposed to work, but this River City project sounds like a mix of for-sale condos, social housing, and rooms for athletes in the 2015 Pan-Am games. Once the games are done, those will presumably go up for sale as well. They’re expecting the whole 4-phase construction to take up to ten years. Which probably means fifteen. The scale of the project seems ginormous; “City” doesn’t seem entirely inappropriate.

They plan to create two parks in the area, one of them under the wide Eastern Avenue overpass. That should be interesting. Better than what`s there now:

And these tracks run both regular trains and GO trains. This one happens to go to Markham. The locals seem to put up with it but it’s woefully inadequate if we’re hosting guests from other countries.

We should be gracious hosts and show them it’s okay to spend their bolivianos / reals / guaranis / nuevo sols / bolivars / colons / quetzals / lempiras / cordobas / krones / pesos / euros / dollars here.

But the project will have corollary benefits besides the interesting currencies that will be floating around for a while. To begin with, it’ll nicen up the neighbourhood.

Everything beneath and around what you see in the photo above.

The thing about the West Don Lands is that they’re one of the last few chunks of downtown to remain as chain-linked lots. Maybe because the trains run through there. Just west of them is deep downtown and the beginning of Harbourfront. East over the river is an entirely different place unto itself.

River City is supposed to have these streets called woonerfs. (I know, I won’t be using that term much myself.) Basically these are roads designed to imply that pedestrians come first. The narrow street and sidewalk are level and separated by either colour or a dimple that can also serve as a gutter. No curb. Because there are suddenly no lanes, it compels any driver entering the area to slow down. Like they’re in a parking lot. So cars wouldn’t be banned,  just discouraged.

Seems like a nice area for walkers. :)

And the Sun was reporting that this new section of town will be getting a new rail-bound shuttle service to Union Station. I doubt they’ll rip that up after the games so that means a new light-rail service will probably land under the auspices of the TTC / Metrolinx. And it really needs to be here within five years. Hopefully Adam Giambrone won’t be anywhere near either of these two organizations by that time. “A van down by the river!” , as Matt Foley used to say, should be a safe distance.

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Take the Toronto City Centre Airport story, for example. I’m not sure many people would care about the tussle going on there. It’s a three-way shoving match between the city, the Port Authority which controls the airport and I believe has it’s own squad of shadowy assassins, and Porter Airlines which managed to pull in record profits pretty much every year since it started flying. Oh, and the island residents who basically bitch 24-7, 365 about everything (“The city’s too loud! The lights are too bright! The planes are too scary! Wah! Wah!”)

(big!)

Bill would gnaw at this, getting angrier and angrier right up until the commercial break. I don’t remember his stance on the issue, but I clearly recall the outraged timbre of his voice. The current topic of contention is the proposed tunnel to the airport which no level of government wants to pay for.  It’s intended to replace the current ferry service which, at a full 20-second trip (maybe 30) from shore to shore, seems kind of inefficient:

But whatever. I’m sure Porter contributes to this inefficiency from its growing wallet so who cares? Bill does. Passionately. Desperately. I bet the fact that Toronto got the 2015 Pan Am Games probably caused his head to just explode. They probably had to drag his headless, blood-soaked corpse out of the studio live on the air. That would’ve been some show. If only it was still on at a time when I could listen.

I can just imagine his reaction at the $2.4 billion cost. He either would have been rejoicing that his beloved Etobicoke was getting a pool make-over, or cheesed that the athletes’ village will be in what is currently a large mud pit bisecting the east edge of town (ON TAXPAYERS’ MONEY, AND DOWNTOWN GETS ALL THE BENEFITS!!), or both.

He doesn’t care that he sometimes contradicts himself. Bill shoots from the hip and asks questions later. If there’s time. I don’t think John Moore even owns a gun.

Now I have at least three more days of waking up to do. Quite possibly a few decades on top of that. With Bill gone, I’m left sleeping in almost every day, but I don’t know where else to turn. The radio dial to. And with it staying dark outside later and later now, the problem is becoming more urgent. “Nature Sounds I” just won’t cut it, but what’s the alternative … the buzzer?!

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