Category: Canada

Anything related to Canada or Canadians

The lost porter tradition at Massey College

Massey College, at the University of Toronto, is an important example of Canadian efforts to emulate the ‘OxBridge’ educational and college system at Oxford and Cambridge. I was pleased to join Massey as a junior fellow when I began my PhD in 2012, and found the college to be an indispensable social hub amid U of T’s general coldness. I was a resident during term time over three years but, for the rest of my PhD, still visited routinely to read, have lunch, or just see who was around. It used to be that any time I was passing the college I could drop in for a few minutes and have about a 1/3 chance of having a really interesting conversation, often with a stranger.

As with everything else, the COVID-19 pandemic locked down Massey College to residents only, staring nervously at each other through plastic dividers. Unfortunately, and as with many other pandemic disruptions, some important changes have carried through to the present. It used to be that at most times someone would care to go, such as evenings and weekend days, there would always be someone on duty in the porter’s lodge at Massey College. The gate would be open, and they would greet anyone who happened to turn up. Now the college is controlled by keyfobs and security cameras. Except for during business hours, there is usually nobody in the porter’s lodge. Instead of a gateway to a social community, the front gate is an impassable cage of metal that admits only key-bearing residents. Consequently the college is darker, emptier, and of less use.

I feel this has had an immense cost for the community, and a cost deeply linked to Massey’s purpose. Like Oxford and Cambridge colleges, it brings people together across scholarly domains. This helps them build relationships not excessively bound up in the competitiveness of those in the same field. It also fosters interdisciplinary collaboration. But, for such cross-community enrichment to take place, there needs to be a norm of community participation in college life, ideally extending beyond the set-piece events which the porter’s lodge will now be staffed for.

It often seems that the profoundest effect of the pandemic was to push people into smaller social circles. Friends who used to be at a particular event 10% or 20% of the time are now there never. Events that brought in 50 people bring in 20 or don’t happen at all. It’s like people had their pool of social energy diminished, and so chose to divvy it out among fewer people. In that context, the loss of accessible third spaces like Massey College outside of business hours is deeply felt. The closed gate in your face feels less like a pragmatic money-saving choice and more as a manifestation of a world where we have de-prioritized community.

Far and slow

I took my Dutch bike in for servicing today (to get my brake pads replaced) and calculated some usage statistics.

Indeed, on the ride from home to the bike store, I crossed 7,000 km of total distance on the bike.

One interesting element of that is how it has nearly all been done at a modest pace. 90% of all my travel is at less than 19.3 km/h and 50% was under 12.2 km/h.

It’s a hauler, not a racer, and I am often occupied with tasks more complex than just getting from Point A to Point B.

Late spring flowers

Flowers are coming up gloriously across Toronto. I have been enjoying the rich red and alien shape of Canada Columbine and, in the last few days, seeing the pink of Common Milkweed flowering, with flowers emerging in clusters. Black Cohosh cultivated on campus is already producing flower wands, just still green instead of white, and it is spreading in rhizomal clusters around where flower wands appeared last year.

I am checking iNaturalist daily for when the Butterfly Milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa) bloom begins, at which point I will be leading a city-wide search to improve the data on where this plant is present.

Looping Toronto

Yesterday, Albert Koehl from the Toronto Community Bikeways Coalition led about 50 of us on a loop around Toronto, from the central waterfront along the lake to the Humber River, up the Humber to the Finch Hydro Corridor, across the city to the Don, and back along the waterfront:

We did 79 km in 8 hours, and I met lots of nice people. The theme of the ride was ‘filling the gaps’ — calling on the city to remove the awkward parts where we had to leave the bike trails behind for fast roads and, in one case, an active construction site where we had to help each other through fences.

This could be a fantastic season for cycling, and I am looking forward to when the Neon Riders start meeting weekly again.

A starting point in grass identification

Grasses create a special challenge when it comes to identifying native plants, and even experienced experts have told me they have trouble with it.

I recently got a useful start from Natasha Gonsalves’ presentation for the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA): “Getting to Know Grasses“.

I’m still an absolute beginner, but at least know I know a bit of the relevant anatomical vocabulary and have a sense of the difference between grass and grass-like plants like sedges and rushes.

Carney caving on Keystone

More evidence is emerging that Prime Minister Mark Carney is choosing to ignore what he knows about climate change economics to do precisely the wrong thing. He is thinking of reviving the Keystone XL pipeline.

As a world expert on climate change economics, Carney could tell you that the crucial thing is to avoid locking in inappropriate long-term investments in fossil fuels which we will need to scrap early and which will delay and raise the costs of dealing with climate change. Unfortunately, the political imperative to cater to the planet-wrecking industry has overpowered his expertise, honesty, or integrity. The sad fact is, once built, even the dirtiest projects are politically agonizing to shut down. Carney is ignoring the most elementary requirement of controlling climate change: to stop building the fossil fuel infrastructure that causes the problem.

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A shark from the library

Libraries have been one of life’s joys for me.

The first one I remember was at Cleveland Elementary School. From the beginning, I appreciated the calm environment and, above all, access at will to a capacious body of material. All through life, I have cherished the approach of librarians, who I have never found to question me about why I want to know something. Teachers could be less tolerant: I remember one from grade 3-4 objecting to me checking out both a book on electron micrography and a Tintin comic, as though anyone interested in the former ought to be ‘beyond’ the latter.

At UBC, I was most often at the desks along the huge glass front wall of Koerner library – though campus offered several appealing alternatives. One section of the old Main Library stacks seemed designed by naval architects, all narrow ladders and tight bounded spaces, with some hidden study rooms which could be accessed only by indirect paths.

Oxford of course was a paradise of libraries. I would do circuits where I read and worked in one place for about 45 minutes before moving to the next, from the Wadham College library to Blackwell’s books outside to the Social Sciences Library or a coffee shop or the Codrington Library or the Bodleian.

Yesterday I was walking home in the snow along Bloor and Yonge street and peeked in to the Toronto Reference Library. On the ground floor is a Digital Innovation Hub which used to house the Asquith custom printing press, where we made the paper copies of the U of T fossil fuel divestment brief. This time I was admiring their collection of 3D prints, and was surprised to learn that a shark with an articulated spine could be printed that way, rather than in parts to be assembled.

With an hour left before the library closed, the librarian queued up a shark for me at a size small enough to print, and it has the same satisfying and implausible-seeming articulation.

I have been feeling excessively confined lately. With snow, ice, and salt on everything it’s no time for cycling, and it creates a kind of cabin fever to only see work and home. I am resolved to spend more time at the Toronto Reference Library as an alternative.