Thank you to City of Peterborough for holding this information session for people interested in pursuing city council. Happy to see so many people in attendance! (I'm not running, just curious)

WOOHOOO! City Council voted unanimously to exclude the Kinsmen Park road from the next steps of transportation study. Great news for our city and our kids. Thank you all councillors for being receptive to this amendment. And thanks @alexbierk.bsky.social @joylachica.bsky.social for the amendment!

Phew. I succeeded in speaking to City Council tonight. My Newfie accent came out a bit, as it does when I'm nervous (or tipsy but it wasn't that). The councillors asked good questions and were encouraging.

Getting ready to give my first-ever delegation to City Council. Speaking on behalf of the Peterborough Youth Soccer Club. The Clonsilla Area Transportation Study proposes putting a road through Kinsmen Park, between the soccer fields, arena, ballpark, and splashpad. We think that's dangerous.

@breakoutcon.bsky.social I played "Oh My Pigeons" with the family after BreakoutCon. The youngest daughters love it! Her new favourite game, right up there with One Night Ultimate Werewolf and Recipe Rumble. It's nice to find games the kids like, and are simple enough for them to play with friends.

Hey urbanists: there's a new board game you might enjoy! "Walkable City" is on kickstarter now. A cooperative game where players lay out bus, LRT, bike, and pedestrian infrastructure to help people get where they want to go. www.kickstarter.com/projects/fow... Designer: @drawnonward.bsky.social

STUDIES SHOW this is the #UrbanTruth in MANY cities. Opposition to bike-lanes & angry defence of on-street parking on shopping streets is based on a wrong assumption about how customers are, or could be, getting there. Or it’s just about where the shop owner wants to park. Bike-lanes mean business.

I'm a big fan of Avi Lewis, but this made me laugh.

Municipal elections will be this fall. You too can run for office in the hopes of arguing about parking.

Saw Avi Lewis in Peterborough tonight. Inspiring! He spoke about real problems, and real solutions. Grocery store monopolies, and how public ownership options would help. Not just in the obvious way of cheaper groceries, but also on the supply chain side. Just one example. Bella Ciao @avilewis.ca

Also, if anyone in Peterborough is going to the @avilewis.ca event tonight and going through the north end (near the zoo), could I hitch a lift? 👍

I fractured my ankle playing soccer a month ago. So I've got a boot cast and a cane. Normally I bike everywhere but that's not an option. It's opened my eyes to how bad Peterborough Transit is. Inaccurate route maps. Inefficient routes. The need to walk kms to get to & from any place by bus.

Peterborough Transit is so bad. The agency website tells people to use Google Maps for schedule info. But Google Maps has a warning that it doesn't have the most recent timetables for this area. Likely due to outdated / insufficient data sharing from Ptbo Transit to Google.

Safe Parkside, site of the speed camera that was cut down over & over leading to Doug ford banning them, reports another high speed crash on Saturday via their IG account. Somebody will die here again. Doug Ford’s Ontario.

To understand what's happening in Iran today, you have to know about the history of Western intervention in the country. In the early 1900s, the British secured oil rights in the country until 1993, where they only agreed to pay Iran 16% of the total profits. This was seen as an unfair deal. 🧵

This is a short thread with helpful illustrations on streetcar signal sequences. I love that public transit is becoming a more sophisticated issue in Toronto. It's not just about More Transit, but also smarter. From signal priority to platform doors, Torontonians are demanding better.

Popular song on radio. My daughters grooving. Me: "I like this song." The song is immediately deemed uncool by said daughters who never listen to it again. My power of uncoolness is incredible.

I'm disillusioned with politics. But I'm honestly excited about Avi Lewis. More hopeful than I've been about a politician since ... ever! He'll be in #Ptbo this Friday evening. I'll be there.

This is great news, at a time when there's not much of that. You may not know the Biodiversity Heritage Library. But it performs an important behind-the-scenes service. It's a repository of open access biological information, such as old research papers and books. Glad to see it continue.

I'm nominating Gretzky for the Galen Weston award. For the Canadian with the biggest discrepancy between what the media corporations think ("great Canadian, let's glamorize him") and what normal Canadians think ("frig off").

My worlds are colliding (in a good way). A new board game ... About public transportation!! Take my money!

Ah Family Day. Both daughters stomping in tears to their rooms, yelling at each other. Wife is exasperated. Son has headphones to block it all out. This was not in the holiday brochure. But it tracks.

Hey @jameswsthomson.com. I love your articles on DFO's fisheries observer program in @thenarwhal.ca. Good job documenting the (in)action they've taken to fix its problems. thenarwhal.ca/dfo-response... There's new research that looks a bit at the program through a wildlife trafficking lens.

I hadn't appreciated art in transit stations until I visited Montreal's beautiful Metro stations. It raised the bar for me. It's nice to see some cool art in a station for Toronto's Eglinton LRT.

One thing people underestimate about entomology (especially for fly taxonomy) is how big a role male genitalia plays in species identification. Genitalia and wing vein patterns, these are two key traits. What a bunch of pervs. 😂🪰🔬

I love that my feed is full of posts about the newly opened Eglinton Crosstown LRT line in Toronto, not the football game.

Ontario's Premier is putting lives at risk, just for some wedge issue in polling.

Enjoy board games? But the world is on fire? I recommend the solo board game Maquis by @sanakism.bsky.social. You are French resistance in World War 2. Your goal is to disrupt Nazi occupation and the local thugs who support it. Feels good. Just a game, of course, but it feels good.

Public transparency with an online dashboard wouldn't fix Metrolinx. Not on its own. But I like it as part of a solution. Transparency can allow accountability. Ontario isn't getting the bang for our buck with public transit. We've spent so much to get so little.

On a train, 420% chance I'm stoned af just having the ultimate philosophy time while enjoying the view outside. We need more trains.

Ok I'm in. #ElectoralReform is critical to our democracy. So I've signed up with the federal NDP to support @avilewis.ca's leadership bid. I'm pretty jaded, but he actually gives me hope. We need big changes in Canada, starting with how elections should reflect the will of the people.

Sometimes my work is boring. And sometimes I get to issue an authorization to a researcher to use a vibrator to collect turtle semen. 🐢🍾

The suburbs built in Ontario's cities the 1960s - 80s are gonna hit us hard financially with their maintenance. Low-density housing brings revenue to the city short-term, but it loses big money long-term.

Interesting idea.

"Look for the helpers," is what Fred (Mister) Rogers said. These times are rough, but there are so many people doing good here in #Ptbo and beyond. Thanks to the Mortons and all other generous helpers.

I just learned that Hydro One has a thing called "distribution rate protection". It caps rural residents' hydro distribution rates. So the huge increase in hydro distribution costs will be paid for, disproportionately, by urban Ontarians. This is an example of cities subsidizing rural Ontario.

This is it exactly. When my kids were younger I wasn't worried about stranger-danger. I was worried about actual danger from the trucks zipping everywhere. It's natural for kids to run around unpredictably, and that can be deadly near roads (which are everywhere).

Should soccer coaches rate their referees? The latest episode of @refsneedlovetoo.bsky.social podcast discussed this. Some points I hadn't considered. open.spotify.com/episode/5hcM... 1. Coach feedback should focus on ref development, not complaints. Train coaches on what's expected. 1/5

Banning street hockey in Canada? This isn’t about protecting kids. It’s about protecting drivers from having to think about kids.

imagine how much better our city would be if more mayors and councilmembers and department heads actually rode transit and bikes.

this is flat out our local leaders saying "we don't care about putting pedestrians, cyclists, people using wheelchairs, or kids in strollers in danger" and nearly all our cities do it

Good news!

Every time we choose to subsidize parking we make other choices less attractive. Why would I walk, bike, or take the bus when there's an abundance of parking at every stop? This leads to people thinking that cars are the best choice, but they've just been subsidized the most.

What the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group promised Ottawa residents versus what OSEG actually delivered:

The difference in the time it takes a streetcar in Amsterdam vs. Toronto to clear an intersection after servicing a nearside stop.

The Region should keep them up and regularly publish data on how fast cars are going and how different speeds are from when the cameras generated fines for drivers who broke the law.

Watching some #CPL playoff soccer on @onesoccer.bsky.social. The Canadian Premier League is good soccer. Play-by-play guy Adam Jenkins is great. Perfect level of enthusiasm, knows the Laws of the Game, pronounces players' names correctly, and gives credit to refs for good calls/games.

The Biodiversity Heritage Library doesn't just provide access to historic literature. There are publications on BHL from 1469 to 2025. The Canadian Field-Naturalist is one of many in-copyright publications we've made freely accessible online (with permission from the rights holders of course). 🧪 ©️ 📖

Unfortunately data is never enough for people who make decisions based on culture wars. The data could show 100% compliance and 0 accidents after installation and they would still try to rip these cameras out to make our streets more dangerous. It is still amazing to see how clearly these work!

My family and I had a great time at the Halton Streetcar Museum near Guelph @streetcarmuseum.bsky.social. Lots of old streetcars to see, and ride a track through a forest. Learned lots from the volunteers. I love this car with snow sweepers. The bristles were made from special non-hollow bamboo!