Yesterday: Ontario huffy that federal budget didn’t include commitment to idea of tunnel under Hwy 401 Today: Ontario announces award of $9M contract to see if the idea of this 60km dig is even feasible www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Ham-fisted attempt at prosecution

The two people whose discoveries most make modern city living possible: Elisha Otis and John Snow

For all its manifest faults, this paper can still do a hell of a front page

Olds who slam these kids for wasting their time doing long walks, man, you have no soul. But I will admit that this kind of line is is just asking for an inter-generational eyeroll.. ”I guess walking, the way we do it, is performance art.” www.theglobeandmail.com/life/article...

Vancouver's proposed 2026 budget has been released. It proposes a property tax freeze, a 10% increase to the Police Services budget, a 6% increase to Fire/Rescue Services, and lots of other cuts, including Arts & Culture, Planning & Sustainability, and much more. Full report here.

When this happens in other countries, it’s the kind of thing cited as example of government brutality when arguing for regime change

Surely all those billionaires were not just talking shit and are right now packing their bags

Axing a luxury tax on planes and boats but keeping it on vehicles over $100G is an interesting choice. Lot more of the latter, of course, but one senses the hand of the aerospace lobby www.theglobeandmail.com/investing/pe...

Interior pics are extraordinary. For the person with loads of money and no taste www.thestar.com/real-estate/...

Honestly, $50B over ten years for a country as big as Canada will barely be noticed www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/art...

Irony alert. City of Toronto warns against obstructing or encumbering a former homeless encampment it has fenced off and filled with giant concrete blocks

Good deep dive on why it’s so hard to build family sized apartments in Canada

Anti-Mamdani media is leaning hard on the idea that his victory will lead to an exodus from the city. Including this piece, which raises the prospect that "New Yorkers begin to flee in droves" www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

One of my low-key favorite parts of the Mamdani campaign is that he walks around the city. People who love cities walk around their cities, but few political candidates do so.

$12 to wash and dry *one* load at the local coin-op. City politics convulses over a property tax increase that adds a couple of hundred to the bill of the average owner household but this endless drain on renter finances goes unnoticed

Funny. So apparently Metrolinx is happy to have its people talk to the media — as long as it’s not about the building or operation of transit

Bit on the nose

They’re doomed

Someone painting her face in the public library is the Halloween content I am here for

This is a bullshit hed since the PMO has not confirmed. All we have at this point is that *Trump says* that Carney apologised www.thestar.com/politics/fed...

Too disgraced to be prince not too disgraced to be king is a strange line to draw www.bbc.com/news/live/cn...

Banger of a quote by my long-departed former colleague Josipa Petrunic.. "If every mayor in North America is not peeing themselves right now, they really should be" www.ctvnews.ca/world/trumps...

Remembering that time ten years ago when John Tory dressed up as a conductor to "demonstrate ... confidence" his pet transit project, which still doesn't exist, would happen “You can never start too early to teach these kids about the importance of SmartTrack” globalnews.ca/news/2309211...

Working thesis: tech bros are socially maladjusted weirdos who create products assuming the rest of us are also www.businessinsider.com/meta-cto-and...

Sometimes you know better but you click on a piece anyway and then you feel soiled

A committee of Toronto city hall nixed the possibility of small-scale retail in residential neighbourhoods but opened door to more of it on major streets. Isn't it already approved everywhere on streets like that?

Such a great detail in this deep dive by our @jeffreybgray.bsky.social: the project has been delayed so long that some of the vehicles for the yet-to-be-opened line are a decade old www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/artic...

A baseball angle Junius can embrace: the urban imperative of where and how to build a stadium www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/edit...

Today's manufactured scandal: couple that lives in LA supports LA team, more at 11 ca.news.yahoo.com/traitor-prin...

It feels as though a key dynamic of the homeless debate in N.America is that giving them housing is seen as an unfair perk (where’s *my* free house?) and that the money — even more money — is better spent making life miserable for them

Since they were prevented from charging Heathrow Express prices, MX seems to have a long-term plan to turn the UPX into the Piccadilly Line

Remarkable case of false balance. Trump is disappearing people, blowing up boats, musing about third term. Mamdani wants rent freeze and free buses. “Extremes“

It's amazing that Trump has been able to torch the relationship so thoroughly that more Canadians view the US as an enemy than they do China www.thestar.com/politics/fed...

There was a massive pushback when Doug Ford tried this in Ontario. It's a nuclear bomb that removes labour rights to bargain and strike www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/alber...

“non-market and market housing do not exist in parallel universes. They are in the same city, sometimes side by side on the same street. Adding a lot of the former would reduce demand for the latter. Which would, naturally, have an impact on prices” www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/edit...

Critics of this idea always end up in the most baroque scenarios imaginable. What if I'm being chased by MS-13? What then, nanny-stater?

Sick move. Yorkdale has spent years trying to shore up its posh credentials. But now, if mall owner Oxford Properties won't cough up $75M to buy out RioCan's lease for the former HBC store there, RioCan is threatening to rent the spot to a downmarket retailer www.theglobeandmail.com/business/art...

Ontario govt takes down trial balloon about changing rental system so that after a lease expires it would no longer revert to month-to-month, protecting tenants as long as they stay in place. Fear was that change would allow landlords to turf anyone after lease term and jack the tent

Contrarianism in pursuit of clicks is no journalistic virtue

Hmm, what roiled the relationship? 1/ an increasing unhinged US president who wants to annex Canada and cripple its economy with an emotion-driven trade war? 2/ an anti-tariff ad? To-may-to to-mah-to, I guess

Laneway house comes complete with teeny, and suitably unkempt, lawn

Everyone needs an editor. Some need one more than most. This piece — which is a weird pastiche of YIMBY, gushing about how Trump gets things done and moaning about modern architecture — is just bizarre www.nytimes.com/2025/10/25/o...

Kind of weird, at this moment in geopolitical history, for a Canadian baseball team to be part of the American League

Crassus said a man could be considered truly wealthy only if he could afford to raise his own army

What it's like walking where the rich live in fear.. "As I pass multiple homes, a voice comes out of nowhere: 'Hi, you are currently being recorded.' A few passing cars slowed down so occupants could take a closer look at me." www.wsj.com/real-estate/...

We live in exhausting times www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/artic...

If the new owner doesn’t keep the sign they have no soul

Waiting for the too clever by half take by some Canadian pundit who ties this into the stasis over 24 Sussex Drive and argues *well at least Trump got it done*

Well this is embarrassingly parochial. An Angus Reid poll finds most Canadians quite ignorant of SE Asia. High percentages admit knowing little or nothing about Malaysia (90pc) Indonesia (89pc) Singapore (82pc) Thailand (80pc) Vietnam (78pc) Taiwan (77pc) South Korea (73pc) Japan (60pc)