Instead of providing any funding, Premier Leslie Frost arrived at the November 1959 ground-breaking ceremony with only a red hard hat and a speech warning local politicians not to go too far into debt for their ambitious Bloor-Danforth-University subway project. Torontonians went ahead anyway and got digging. (Toronto Telegram fonds ASCO7444)
By STEPHEN WICKENS
So, according to the Star on Friday consultants who are undoubtedly well-paid by you and me have told Metrolinx it will take 10 years to retrofit the Scarborough Rapid Transit line for the province’s Kennedy-to-Scarborough Center subway extension. Maybe that makes sense in a town where it takes a good four years to renovate Pape station.
When I read pieces like these, I think of the Torontonians from that post-Second-World-War generation. Yes, bigotry, provincialism, second-hand smoke and reluctance to party were among the notable but often cliched downsides to Blue Law Hogtown. But Toronto was a hive of energy, optimism and overall levels of goodness to easily match our often smug cosmopolitanism.
Like us, those Torontonians squabbled over subways. They couldn’t even settle on Bloor versus Queen until January 1958. But even though our city was a much smaller and poorer place, those Torontonians weren’t going to use the province’s refusal to kick in any funding as an excuse to procrastinate.
In 2013 we’re told it will take five years just to plan this SRT retrofit.
For some reason, our old-school slide-rule engineers were much more efficient than their latter-day counterparts and their technology. Maybe they had better bosses and were freer to do their jobs.
Shovels had already hit the ground by November 1959 on what was known as the Bloor-Danforth-University Subway Project. A little more than six years later — despite having problems with soil conditions, underground streams and dense urban webs of unmapped utility infrastructure to relocate or work around — the whole thing, from Union to St. George and Woodbine to Keele, 25 stations and more than 16 kilometres, was up and running.
The project also made it within the $200-million budget.
You could even claim they got the Bloor-Danforth open a couple of years early, but that’s because the province finally consented to guarantee Metro’s loans.
Then the Torontonians celebrated their victory by hauling the giant hollow horse into the city … or or something like that.
PS: Despite the sometimes flippant tone of this post, we recognize and honour the sacrifices of John Blaney, Edgar Ostkamp, Albert Low, Rosaire Beaudry, Lauri Karkas, Tommy Kerr, Attilio Tricinci, Frank LaPlante and Larry Linyck. All nine lost their lives during construction of the Bloor-Danforth subway.
PPS: The Leslie Frost photo was taken by the Telegram’s Peter Ward and is published courtesy of York University Libraries, Clara Thomas Archives & Special Collections.
Few will mourn the unreliable orphan foisted on us by provincial bureaucrats who claimed ICTS technology would be a low-cost alternative to subways. But it turns out the troubled RT didn’t just cost more than light rail, it almost certainly cost us more than a subway would have in the first place.
By STEPHEN WICKENS
If there’s a heaven, and if Gus Harris gained entry, you can bet he’s put the harp lessons on hold to follow the Scarborough transit fiasco.
Harris, Scarborough’s mayor for much of the 1980s, opposed the once-futuristic Intermediate Capacity Transit System (ICTS), designed to be a low-cost alternative to traditional subways, which were proving too expensive for suburban applications (at least in the absence of real world-class land-value-capture systems).
In 1981, when Scarborough council snubbed Harris to back a switch from conventional light rail to the province’s unproven technology, he dubbed it “The Toonerville Trolley.” When Metro council finalized the switch weeks later, he said, “I don’t think Scarborough should be guinea pigs for this.”
Minister of transportation James Snow and Kirk Foley, head of the province’s Urban Transit Development Corp., had led Queen’s Park’s hard sell that spring. Future mayor Joyce Trimmer led the majority Scarborough council faction. They were feted by UTDC and flown to Kingston to see it on a test track. They quickly bought in on a promise that ICTS would be a huge step up from the then-new streetcars that had been expected to ply the Kennedy-Scarborough Centre corridor as per a 1977 plan approved by Metro Council.
ICTS was to cost $134-million, 24 per cent more than the streetcar option, whose estimate had risen to $108-million by 1981. But Cabinet at Queen’s Park, eager for a working line to showcase UTDC’s driverless ICTS trains to the world, vowed to pick up all extra costs.
So what could possibly go wrong?
A year later, the TTC – a diplomatically reluctant partner in the ICTS plan – announced costs had soared to $181-million. Minutes of an internal meeting available at the archives show the bad news was known months earlier and that the eventual announcement played down the escalation estimates, which had actually reached $193-million.
To the odd person, me, who remembered the subway extensions from Islington to Kipling and Warden to Kennedy had opened in 1980, under budget at a combined cost of $127-million, even the low-balled $181-million RT tab raised red flags.
Might a subway cost less?
It was a simpler time. I simply phoned the main TTC number and was put straight through to a man named Stan Lawrence, who was heading up the RT project. He was friendly when asked if a subway option had been considered. Of course it had, he said, adding that costs and potential alignments had been studied and that the determination was that the best subway would cost slightly more than twice as much as the streetcar option (estimated at $68-million in 1977, likely the last year a subway estimate would have been calculated). When I asked for a specific subway cost and to see the studies, he shut the conversation down, saying the report wouldn’t be made public because only light-rail and the ICTS plan were on the table.
I then called Mayor Harris’s office, and he got back to me about a week later. I told him if Scarborough’s downtown dream was to ever become reality, it probably needed a single-seat connection to Toronto’s core some day. It seemed this was a natural one-technology subway corridor extension of the Bloor-Danforth that shouldn’t be broken up for ICTS or streetcars. (I’ve always liked what light rail can do and I had no problem with a UTDC demonstration line, as long as it went into a fresh corridor elsewhere.)
The original Scarborough light-rail proposal used the old Canadian Northern Orono subdivision (a plan killed when it ran into opposition that could literally be called Not In My Back Yard). There’s a strong chance the original and relatively inexpensive subway idea also used this route and its Pythagorean directness, though we’ll never know without the lost report. MAP COMES FROM STEVE MUNRO’S FILES
Harris made clear it was too late to for changes. The Scarborough city council and Metro had made their decisions; the province had taken charge of the file and was footing the bill. There would be no turning back, though Harris, who had backed light-rail all along, suddenly sounded keen to know what a subway would have cost.
Weeks later, Harris called and suggested we go for coffee. He didn’t have much more to say than that he’d been talking with TTC engineering staff who told him a subway extension from Kennedy to Scarborough Centre had indeed been studied and that the cost estimate was between $150-million and $175-million. He also said that some day, “maybe in five, 10 or 20 years, we’ll get to say I told you so.”
SRT problems made frequent headlines in the early years of operation and costs eventually topped $220-million as major modifications were needed. Internally, TTC staff had joked that ICTS stood for, It Can’t Traverse Snow. Harris called it “Lada transit at limo prices,” when I ran into him on Queen Street one day.
In 1989, Harris, no longer Scarborough’s mayor, phoned me with a scoop that there was a serious behind-the-scenes push at the TTC and Metro to scrap the SRT just five years after it opened. Queen’s Park had heard about it and was leaning on politicians and staff to shut up because UTDC had pending sales in Asia. (Neither Asian deal panned out, and the Star’s Peter Howell got the scoop because I was working at a national business paper uninterested in Toronto transit stories.)
It’s total coincidence but highly appropriate that I was reading Barbara Tuchman’s March of Follyon my first SRT ride in the spring of 1985. The sound of the surprisingly noisy vehicles also left an impression.
A few weeks after that initial SRT ride, the TTC and the city released an ambitious rapid transit expansion plan called Network 2011, calling for a Downtown Relief Line and subways on Eglinton and Sheppard. Shortly thereafter, I got to discuss Network 2011 with a senior TTC man, who told me very interesting stuff after he got me to promise that our talk was all off the record. This was, at most, three months after the SRT opened, and he said firmly the TTC would never consider ICTS again. Also of note was that the DRL was the TTC’s clear priority, even if the official story, for political reasons, was that Sheppard should come first.
As for Gus Harris’s $150-million to $175-million estimate for a subway from Kennedy to Scarborough Centre, he said those numbers were accurate, confirming that the province’s low-cost alternative almost certainly cost more than a subway would have in the first place – a particularly galling thought now that it’s near the end of its life just three decades later.
When I suggested the cost-comparison might be the reason for the TTC’s reluctance to release its work on the subway option, he said, again with a warning this was off the record, that the SRT cost was Queen’s Park’s embarrassment. The TTC was probably more worried about public reaction to the fact that extending the subway cost-effectively would require mothballing Kennedy station, which was then just five years old.
Anyway, during the summer of 2013, as the Scarborough debate took bizarre twists, friendly staff at the TTC and City Archives tried, without success, to help me track down that never-released document, probably more than 35 years old, assessing the subway option. Maybe the fact it was never released made it okay to file it by way of a shredder.
I’m dying to see it, in part because there’s a far better alignment than any of the subway options that have been under consideration. There’s a significant chance the TTC had found that better way decades ago.
So, we’re still digging, and the Toonerville Trolley rolls on … for now.
It should distress everyone in Ontario that the only two official options on Toronto city council’s menu – the Eglinton-based LRT/SRT replacement and a strange, three-station preliminary subway plan – are third rate, at best
For more than three decades, the swaths of land at Kennedy station have provided little return to its owners, the public. But with the Rail + Property model, we could maximize the worth of this real estate, make transit operations more efficient and take profits to reinvest in infrastructure.
(This post was written before the Sept. 4 news that the province has another idea for building this Scarborough subway. Queen’s Park’s latest idea would be fifth best among options considered below.)
By STEPHEN WICKENS
Among the emails awaiting me after a recent offline break in the north woods were requests from some of the usual suspects for my take on the Scarborough transit saga.
For a change, I’ll admit the plan I’d favoured just weeks ago is probably now second best – a realization I hit upon while studying a report by Transport Action Ontario analyzing the GO rail system’s potential – if electrification is tackled promptly and intelligently. Released in July, it’s must reading for all who care about the GTA’s economic health and quality of life.
We’ll examine the 400-page report, titled GTHA Regional Rapid Rail: A Vision For The Future, in a separate post, but we should note here that it makes a strong case for electric-mulitple-unit technology, which among many possibilities, could quickly deliver near-subway-level service from downtown, through Kennedy station to Scarborough Town Centre, Malvern and beyond for less than Metrolinx’s allegedly funded LRT option. Too bad TAO’s report didn’t appear sooner because, as important as many of the recommendations are, they likely can’t become part of mainstream discussion in time. Through the grapevine, we hear some GTA planners and decision-makers are suddenly intrigued by this report but, so far, the Star has been the only major media outlet to clue in.
Anyway, we’re talking Scarborough transit here, and as humbling as it is that my idea – an alternate subway alignment with emphasis on the Rail + Property funding model – might now be second best, it should distress everyone that the only two official options on city council’s menu – the Eglinton-based LRT/SRT replacement and a strange, three-station preliminary subway plan – are no better than third rate.
In this part of the world, we have a history of making bad transit decisions, sometimes because we cling to any ideas that have traction, fearing that if we step back and think for a moment we mightn’t get anything done at all. But dumb decisions are among the things that have killed the public’s will to properly fund transit in recent decades. The RT may be Exhibit A. It’s bad enough that we have to junk a transit line that’s not even 30 years old. Really galling, however, is the significant likelihood we spent more on this politically driven, allegedly low-cost alternative to subway than we would have spent on an actual subway in the first place – and all the while we did not realizing the RT would be temporary.
More obvious to some of us in the early 1980s, was that any serious transit line linking STC with central Toronto via Kennedy station was a natural extension of the Bloor-Danforth and that forcing an en route transfer – especially with Kennedy station lacking any destination qualities – was foolish. In 2013, it’s still a bad idea to build in a transfer for riders going into town via Danforth and Bloor, no matter how much more convenient it may be than the current station setup and no matter how much we’re concerned that the westbound Bloor-Danforth is now at capacity in the morning rush. Encouraging more city-bound Scarborough, Durham and eastern York Region riders to use Eglinton and the already overcrowded Yonge line makes no sense at all. If you consider that an Environmental Assessement is already approved for extending the Eglinton LRT east to Kingston Road and out to Morningside Mall, it’s a bad idea to divert this line to serve northeast Scarborough. Eglinton was one part of Transit City that made sense, on nearly all counts.
As for city council’s now-favoured $2.3-billion subway option, which would provide that all-desirable one-seat service from downtown to the STC (when seats are available), the preliminary alignment, apparent funding assumptions, station spacing and the lack of regard for capitalizing on surrounding real estate are all horrible. The silos that promote or tolerate this kind of “thinking” must be smashed. The only planners who could seriously consider deep-bore tunneling east under Eglinton and north under a dead stretch of McCowan – with three more wasteful standalone stations – are yes-men or yes-women working under duress.
The only comparative benefit of the Scarborough subway plan that was before city council last month is that it would allow the SRT to continue operating while the new rapid transit is built. That’s a tiny gain for the huge amounts of waste that model would entail – at a time when transit funding is scarce. Transportation minister Glen Murray said Aug. 28 that a more firm route preference will be revealed in a few weeks. Let’s hope the powers that be come to their senses in the interim.
If we are going to build a Bloor-Danforth extension to the STC, let’s seize upon it as the long-awaited golden opportunity to demonstrate the worth of the Rail + Property (R+P) business model on this continent. It can deliver far more than big savings on a one-off transit project. R+P is the international gold standard, the model best practice for subway development that proactively links transit and land-use for economic and urban planning objectives.
For some reason, decision-makers in these parts seem hostile to R+P, which has been essential to making transit funding sustainable in Far East metropolises and has kept MTR Corp. in Hong Kong profitable for decades. Adaptation and experimentation will be required for a GTA context, but the Scarborough case presents a special opportunity because the public owns so much underutilized land in the best subway corridor.
R+P considers stations as mixed-use profit centres integrated into their surroundings, while the Toronto model treats stations as cost centres, delivering wasteful standalone buildings that repel development. Don’t confuse R+P with the Ford brothers’ dreams of free private sector subways, or with the narrow and superficial consideration of value capture contained in reports from our transit funding discussions earlier this year.
There’s no way of honestly estimating how much profit potential is available – short or long term – by employing the R+P model to real estate on this route. But then the official $2.3-billion subway extension estimate being bandied about is also vague, and necessarily so. It’s a plus-or-minus 30% number, meaning anything from $1.6-billion to $3-billion (which makes this side spat with the province over $400-million seem absurd).
If R+P is considered from the start, we’d unshackle the thought process. We consider the seemingly radical demolition of the current Kennedy station, which real estate experts agree is a major impediment to transit-oriented development in such a key, potentially urban location – where the Bloor-Danforth subway, GO rail and the Eglinton LRT will meet. The focus needs to be broadened from building a transit facility at Kennedy to fully leveraging our massive publicly owned land holdings surrounding and above the station, through Build Toronto or a new but similar entity.
R+P would require a cultural adjustment for Torontonians. Rather than decrying the unearned value granted lucky or well-connected landholders in station catchment areas, we, the people, would be in position to profit and reinvest. We own that land and should be demanding that our politicians do all they can to maximize returns from our assets and infrastructure investments. Long term, the example of efficiency would also likely nurture the political will to fund transit properly, and that’s important because R+P cannot come close to doing it alone in the North American context.
R+P for the Scarborough extension might also be a great opportunity for a provincial government trying to revive its image after the gas-plants scandal. And if the province were really smart, it would create a Build Toronto-like Crown corporation to bring in private-sector expertise for maximizing the worth of lands surrounding our GO stations. Metrolinx has quite the portfolio of underutilized land.
Making the Scarborough subway extension work economically would require adjusting the alignment through a new Kennedy station and briefly into the old SRT space before turning into the main Gatineau hydro corridor, at least to Brimley and Lawrence. That would allow us to use much-less-expensive cut-and-cover tunneling (and don’t forget that cut and cover was and is plenty good for most of the original Yonge, University and Bloor-Danforth subways). It would mean a bit more traffic disruption during construction, but if it significantly increases the chances that Scarborough residents get their subway – and get a more useful subway with more stations at a better price – it will be tolerated. Brimley is also quite dead, but it is better suited to subway than McCowan, and would allow us to reach the STC via the west side with less underground work.
Burying high-voltage wires and removing the towers while digging cut-and-cover subway tunnels can open up huge amounts of valuable real estate at station sites, such as this spot here where the Gatineau hydro corridor crosses Midland.
Better still, with hydro infrastructure buried in the Gatineau corridor during tunnel construction – a surprisingly inexpensive process – stations at Midland and at Brimley-Lawrence could be designed as the hearts transit villages on newly freed-up lands. The hydro corridor acreage is huge and we would have to get the province to transfer the lands from Hydro One to Build Toronto. But if we blend in office, residential, retail, educational and service uses, and if we focus on the pedestrian, we’d ensure subway-worthy ridership before the long-term and obviate the need for high-rises.
Even where we don’t own the land, at Scarborough Town Centre, R+P can come into play as Oxford Properties should find it worthwhile to provide a station as part of the basement/foundation of new developments. Where R+P is used, it’s understood the marginal cost of station infrastructure tends to be much less than the upstairs premium available to the developer if the excavation, foundation and platform work is done at once.
Alas, while I love this second-best plan because it can get us past the absurd idea that Toronto cannot afford subways, it would increase Bloor-Danforth line ridership, which is a problem with all the Scarborough rapid-transit options other than the one presented in the TAO report. It’s sad, but as Toronto Transit Commission CEO Andy Byford and transit planning veteran Ed Levy point out, we’re short of good network options because the Downtown Relief Line is so overdue for the entire region.
I hold out little hope that the transit bureaucracies and politicians will wake up to the possibilities in time, and that’s a shame. This is a rare and special opportunity.
Economist David Foot is not predicting any real estate crash for Toronto, but he is telling developers that they'll pay the price if they ignore some key demographic trends.
This piece originally appeared in the Toronto Star’s Insight section on November 3, 2012
By Stephen Wickens
Considering how well University of Toronto economist David Foot foresaw Toronto’s downtown boom 20 years ago, you might think condominium developers would regularly seek his views.
“No, it doesn’t happen often,” says Foot, co-author of Boom, Bust & Echo, a 1996 bestseller that argued demographics explains about two-thirds of everything. Even in retirement, Foot constantly flies about the country because various industries want insights into evolving trends.
But real estate developers? Not so much. “I’ve spoken at a few conferences and that has led to the odd email. There’s been some contact, but …”
That apparent lack of interest in demographics might be why it’s an industry that tends to repeatedly overbuild and miss clearly emerging trends at crucial points in its market cycles.
So what would Foot tell them after Thursday’s Urbanation report showing GTA condo sales are down 35 per cent from 2011?
Basically the same thing he’s been saying for years.
“What we’ve had over the past decade,” he says, “is the children of the boomers, the echo generation, leaving home, leaving the suburbs and doing what young people do, moving downtown. It’s the same reason college and university enrollments soared. This downtown boom was entirely predictable,” he adds, even if his 1996 book missed that it would come in the form of condos, not 1960s-style high-rise apartments.
Foot is not predicting a real estate crash, but he says developers have to make big adjustments in what they offer. He also says Toronto’s economic health is endangered if we don’t act fast on major transportation improvements.
He sees two crucial demographic keys to understanding where we’re headed, and again it’s boomers, who are nearing retirement, and the echo boom, babies born a 15-year period beginning in 1980.
“The echo birth rate peaked in 1991,” he says. “Add 20 to all that and 2000 is when the echo kids started leaving home, creating new households,” he says. But 2011 should be at or near the peak of the market – at least for small downtown condos. Things should keep dribbling along, but the drop-off in birth rate after 1991 was significant; the big growth is over,” he says, adding that immigration rates could skew things.
Foot sounds upbeat, sitting in beautiful natural light at the U of T’s Max Gluskin building. He sees opportunities for wise developers and the city. He thinks the urban renaissance will have staying power – if we finally get serious about transportation problems. He sees much of the urban renaissance morphing into suburban contexts (and by suburban, Foot includes much of the 416 area code).
“The children of boomers are starting families of their own, birth rates are rising again,” he says, adding that simultaneously, lots of boomers who raised families in places such as Etobicoke, Scarborough and North York are moving to the next phase of their lives.
“I sort of say, it’s downtown in your 20s, suburbs in your 30s and 40s, and peace and quiet country in your 50s and 60s.” He still holds the concept to be largely true, though he acknowledges many echo families will raise inner-city kids and lots of boomers will downsize to a condo in town because they want big-city convenience, vitality and culture.
“Milton and Markham will keep booming because lots of people still want a big backyard for raising kids. And lots of retiring boomers will do the traditional thing and move further out, to live next to a golf course or at their cottage or in smaller cities where their real estate dollars buy much more.”
He expects many young urbanites starting families to look at houses the boomers vacate, rather than buying new on the 905 fringes. He also sees rising demand in some 1920s suburbs, especially ones close to subway stations, becoming intense.
As for downsizing boomers: “Get real! They won’t be buying 800-square-foot condos, and developers had better figure this out. At the very least, they better start providing units with knockout walls so they can be joined. The boomers, the ones who want the city and its cultural amenities, they have money and they want room.”
Aside from competing with echo-generation parents who want those rare downtown condos big enough for raising kids, Foot sees demand for large units in new mid-rise buildings out of the core, along the avenues, above mall parking lots and in largely undeveloped areas around and above existing subway stations – just the stuff city planners would love to see.
“We’re totally wasting valuable air-space above subway stations and malls, but we shouldn’t fool ourselves on transit,” Foot says. “Lots of these boomers may love city living, but they also have Audis and they increasingly won’t want to deal with stairs at subway stations and overcrowded platforms and trains, let alone the serious overall inadequacies of our transit system.”
He has only one regret, looking back to Boom, Bust & Echo, which he co-wrote with Daniel Stoffman (and Foot gives much credit to Stoffman for the book’s success).
“If I were writing with the benefit of hindsight, I would have connected the lower interest rates and boomer retirement savings to increased demand for housing and increased house prices since the mid-1990s. But I think that’s the only thing.”
The oft-overlooked island of Grenada has everything that winter-weary Canadians might want from a sun vacation, but with a few spectacular bonuses
Vicissitudes by sculptor/diver Jason de Caires Taylor is part of an underwater art installation that made National Geographic’s list of “Earth’s 25 Most Awesome Places.”
This story first appeared in the Toronto Star travel section on October 20, 2012
By Stephen Wickens
Aside from the cows and egrets, Pearls Airport sits deserted.
It’s not in Grenada’s guidebooks and not listed on today’s itinerary. But it’s a highlight nonetheless and everyone on the bus wants off to see the Cuban planes, abandoned to scavengers and the elements since the 1983 U.S.-led invasion.
“It should be a national monument,” says Mandoo Seales, a passionate guide who prefers “rescue” to “invasion” when speaking of Operation Urgent Fury, a Reagan Doctrine strike that snuffed a 4½-year experiment with revolutionary Marxism.
“It’s an archeological site. We shouldn’t let it deteriorate further.”
Ex-U.S. soldiers prompted Seales’ first tours to this 1940s-vintage airport, shut since 1984. “I bring lots of people here now,” he says. “All kinds are fascinated.”
Cuban planes have been left to rot at old Pearls Airport since a 1983 U.S.-led invasion of Grenada snuffed an experiment with revolutionary Marxism.
It’s funny how the accidental tourist attractions are often the best. And Grenada has others, including the Underwater Sculpture Park and Levera Beach leatherback turtle sanctuary.
British sculptor/diver Jason de Caires Taylor originally pitched the underwater park to Grenadians as art that might help restore coral reefs. It succeeded on both counts, with new growth gradually completing the statuary. Now Taylor’s creation is on National Geographic’s list of “Earth’s 25 Most Awesome Places” and Mexican officials have commissioned him to produce a larger version in Cancun.
I’ll be back at this underwater park, though next time, instead of snorkeling, I’ll have scuba certification and a serious underwater camera.
The leatherback project, meanwhile, was hatched to help save a remarkable species from extinction, even if it meant disruption for locals who had relied on meat and eggs from Earth’s largest sea turtles.
“We now earn revenue from people coming to see this (April to August),” says Kimron Redhead, a supervisor on the project, launched in 1999. “There are definitely more turtles again,” he says. “You can only sell a turtle or her eggs once, but tourists come back again and again.”
And it turns out that the resurgent turtle population has helped the local tuna fishery because leatherbacks feed on jellyfish who had been decimating schools of baby tuna.
Trying to snap photos of the egg-laying can be problematic as leatherbacks work at night and flash photography has to be banned because it would interrupt the mood for mama turtles. But usable photos or not, the awe seemed unanimous the night I visited.
It's tough to shoot pictures of turtles laying eggs, but if you're lucky, a mona monkey might just pose for you in Grenada.
“I must have shot 100 pictures and they’ll all be rubbish,” Ben Carroll of London, England, says, echoing others among us.
“But it hardly matters. The hair on my neck was standing. Seeing how hard she worked to dig a hole, lay the eggs and cover them. That last turtle must have been six feet. Getting to stroke the shell, that’s powerful.”
If you want casinos and nightlife, Grenada’s not for you. But it offers most of what winter-weary Canadians want from sun vacations – with several bonuses. It’s also easily reached from Toronto since Caribbean Airlines launched year-round non-stop service.
Despite being a volcanic island, it has white-sand beaches, including Grand Anse, a regular on Caribbean best-of lists. Because Grenada has just 1,200 hotel rooms, beaches aren’t crowded, even in high season.
It’s a generally affordable island, though, like the expensive ones, crime rates are low and litter is scarce. Once you’ve seen the bountiful gardens, you’ll know why Grenada’s worst finish in 13 years at England’s famed Chelsea Flower Show has been silver.
“It’s like a lusher, much-less-developed Barbados,” says Carroll, who also raved about rainforest hiking in the island’s interior.
Grenadian cuisine is interesting, too, no surprise for “the spice island.” Nutmeg is the big export (though still down 50 per cent since tree damage from 2004’s Hurricane Ivan), but there are constant mealtime reminders of the endless list of spices and fruits that grow here.
Like most Caribbean islands, there are colonial forts for history buffs, but Grenada’s have seen recent combat – battles people still calmly debate, even as the Cuban planes rot.
Graffiti remains on Grenada, thanking the U.S. for leading Operation Urgent Fury in 1983.
Locals seem to see both sides of their place in Cold War history. There’s no clamour to revive socialism, but under the current prime minister – who spent two years as a political prisoner when Communists ruled – the airport was renamed for Maurice Bishop, who led the 1979 revolution.
You’ll hear tales of corruption and brutal autocracy under Bishop, sometimes from the same people who credit him for steep rises in literacy rates and the creation of real healthcare. There’s still graffiti thanking the Americans, though some locals seem convinced the chaos and bloodshed used to justify sending in troops was initiated by a Central Intelligence Agency-driven destabilization campaign, ostensibly led by Bishop’s deputy.
And no matter how real the fears were in the Reagan White House, we’ll never know for sure if the Soviet Empire ever planned to attack the Americas from that Cuban-built runway beside the Maurice Bishop terminal building. But with the Cold War mostly just historical curiosity, we do know the landing strip is plenty long enough for jet-loads of tourists.
SLEEPING: The Blue Horizons is excellent if you don’t mind a 300-metre walk to the beach. Mount Cinnamon and Spice Island are great spots right on Grand Anse beach. LaSource will soon reopen as a Sandals Resort.
DINING: Even if you don’t stay at Blue Horizons, visit the resort’s La Belle Creole restaurant. The menu changes daily, but it’s outstanding. Other recommendations are BB’s Crabback (bbscrabback.co.uk), The Aquarium (aquarium-grenada.com) and Dodgy Dock (truebluebay.com/resort-facilities/details/dodgy-dock-restaurant).
DOING: The rainforest hike to the interior waterfalls is big fun, but expect to get muddy (grenadatours.com/hikes.htm). Also worthwhile are tours of the organic chocolate operation (grenadachocolate.com) and the old water-wheel-driven River Antoine rum distillery, though be careful with the high-test fire-water (grenadaexplorer.com/tip/rumfactory).
Mary Marshall, having her picture taken by and with Adham Fisher, was one of dozens TTC riders delighted to meet the minor celebrity from Leicester, England.
By STEPHEN WICKENS
As meltdowns go, this was a fair display of British self-restraint.
The anguished shout rattled some folks on the Kennedy station platform and there was a peevish toss of the backpack. But if you’ve seen just a flash of the intensity Adham Fisher brings to a subway challenge, you too would have expected more.
Misled by a malfunctioning electronic sign, Fisher and I boarded a train on the north side of the island platform, only to hear door-closing chimes from the other side. The resulting four-minute delay killed any hope of breaking his day-old record for visiting all 69 of Toronto’s rapid transit stations — two hours, 46 minutes and one second.
Fisher appeared inconsolable and I kept silent, like I do when a ball shanked into a pond ruins a round for a golfing buddy. But 10 minutes and five stations later, the Leicester native was apologetic and back to poking fun at himself.
Adham Fisher takes lots of notes and pictures on his subway challenges.
“Most people would rightfully consider me absurd for losing my temper,” says Fisher, 27, who has garnered media attention with attempts to set records for speed-riding the subway systems of New York, London, Paris, Madrid, Chicago and Toronto. “I’ve been known to stew for days over a mistake like that.”
Others might consider Fisher’s interests and his subway obsession absurd altogether. Among the places he wants to visit most in Canada is something called “the quadripoint“, where the borders of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Nunavut and the Northwest Territories meet. Fisher, who makes his living arranging European camping trips for Formula 1 auto racing fans, says he has no interest in sports. He also says doesn’t read much, though he is involved in a music project and had hoped to have a forthcoming album out in time for his North American trip.
But odd or not, here’s a good man who has not only found what he likes to do, he does it. And as long as he can run between trains without crashing into people, he won’t be doing anyone any harm. Having spent a few hours talking with him, I can say he seems worthy of the goodwill this city has shown.
Only the “Tube Challenge” in London and the “Subway Challenge” in New York are recognized by Guinness World Records, but that doesn’t diminish Fisher’s commitment to setting the standard for Toronto’s relatively puny system.
Planning a challenge attempt involves research on the layouts of stations where he’ll switch vehicles. He keeps detailed notes telling him which doors to exit so he can be closest to the stairs. He needs to know the schedules of connecting services and, on this day, a key variable will be the bus options for getting from Don Mills station to the Scarborough Town Centre.
Before setting out, he takes a pee. “I don’t drink coffee and I can get by without much fluids,” he says at Downsview staion, before we ride all the way round to Finch.
En route, he must shoot pictures of every station and record to the second when the doors close at each. He also needs witness statements, one of which was provided by Celia Foster in the long tunnel between Eglinton West and St. Clair West.
“There are strict rules and regulations,” he says.
At Don Mills station, Fisher is concerned by the amount of time lost waiting for a 190 Rocket bus that will take us to Scarborough Town Centre. But he has a plan to buy time once we get to STC and runs like madman to McCowan station rather than go upstairs with me for an eastbound RT.
“I missed by about five seconds,” Fisher says, when my train pulls in and finds him waiting on the platform. If he’d caught that RT, there’s a good chance he’d have been three subway trains earlier and might not have made the fateful blunder at Kennedy.
“There was a knock-on effect with the wait for a bus at Don Mills,” he says, estimating that cost eight minutes. “If I’d made it at McCowan, I would have been in good shape. That’s probably where I lost it, not at Kennedy.”
In the end, at Kipling, we stepped onto the platform 11 minutes and 31 seconds off the pace, but still under three hours. Compare that with the nearly 23-hour commitment needed to conquer the Big Apple’s system.
But this would be Fisher’s last shot at the TTC for now. He’s off to subway-free Winnipeg to visit a friend before going to Chicago in hopes of reclaiming his mark for the CTA system.
Over candy bars at Kipling, he says he has been emailing with the people who broke his Chicago record. “I’m hoping we can have a shindig when I get there,” he adds.
Then we take a leisurely ride back through town, and more Torontonians, including TTC employees, continue to smile and point or come up and introduce themselves and wish good luck to this minor celebrity, who was front page of the previous day’s Metro and on Global TV’s morning show.
“I’m quite overwhelmed by the reception here in Toronto,” says Fisher, who professes not to be disappointed by the TTC’s subway. “Yes, the system does seem quite small for a city this size, but I’m just glad you have one.”
Us, too. And we’re glad you took to the time to visit.
TTC employees John Taylor and Steve Wilson were among those who greeted Adham Fisher and wished him luck on his subway challenge.
Politicians and newspaper columnists are blathering on about what this alleged surplus means, but few mention the most salient point. We were forced to piss away $420 million this year for interest on accumulated debt, making the latest surplus nothing more than dangerous illusion. It doesn’t matter whether your politics are left, right, middle or unaligned.
We made a big deal a few months back about restoring $19 million worth of services to the city budget. But this $420 million is a hidden-in-plain-view cut from services and it’s imposed by bondholders, not by council’s budget hawks. Key decisions are being made for us by credit markets, not elected officials.
What sane person would let the household mortgage principal rise each year?
We had better start paying down debt and making a big dent soon for two reasons.
1. Interest rates are at record lows and can go in just one direction. The only thing that will keep rates low is economic stagnation, and that’s hardly encouraging.
2. This ballyhooed surplus appears to be largely rooted in a hot real estate market. That might continue for some time, though a few reasonably expert types are calling the situation a bubble. I don’t think it’s that dire, what with the GTA population continually rising, but if there’s any significant correction in the real estate market, the sustainability of city revenue will be badly eroded.
If we get a correction triggered by rising interest rates, Toronto faces a double-whammy followed by a potentially spiraling credit crunch, further rate hikes because our debts will be seen as increasingly risky to lenders.
Surprisingly good service in economy class comes as a blast from the past
Don't let the armrest ashtrays spook you. There's no smoking on Caribbean Airlines flights, just surprisingly good economy class service reminiscent of an era when you could light up.
By STEPHEN WICKENS
Ashtrays in the armrests? That’s a tad unsettling in 2012.
Sure, Boeing still manufactures the venerable 737-800, but this was clearly a high-mileage model. So, as a travel writer mostly used to big North American carriers, I figured I better take notes on my first Caribbean Airlines adventure.
What a surprise I got.
Before leaving for the airport, I double-checked that my Toronto-Trinidad and Trinidad-Guyana flights hadn’t been delayed. Maybe I was thinking of the old “island time” cliché, even though I’ve been to Caribbean countries often enough to know that’s increasingly an unfair stereotype.
So I didn’t consider it unusual that Caribbean took off right on time, even as would-be Air Canada travelers were suffering the effects of a pilots’ “sickout.”
However, once we were airborne, strange things started to happen.
Clearly we weren’t merely flying to Port of Spain in a jet whose interior evoked the feel of a pre-Internet world or the last days of the Cold War. We’d actually gone back in time to a civilized era in air travel.
There was leg room in economy and a flight attendant (dare I call her a stewardess) offered free ear-buds for the movie. The in-flight magazine, Caribbean Beat, had several stories worth reading from start to finish.
Then they fed us dinner, honest. No charge.
Haute cuisine? No, not by a long stretch. But it was a reasonably pleasant chicken and rice dish that hit the spot. It even came with dessert, a bag of plantain chips and a small Kit Kat bar.
Blankets and plllows? No charge. Beer? Four bucks a can.
The flight attendants were attentive and friendly, maybe because they weren’t obligated to sell duty-free stuff to passengers and process credit-card transactions. Crew announcements didn’t seem to come from the usual, cloying PR scripts.
Trinidad-based Caribbean Airlines was officially incorporated in 2006. The company, which also operates Air Jamaica as a sister brand, is a descendant of BWIA, formerly British West Indian Airways. From what I’ve been able to ascertain, the safety record is quite good.
So far, after four flights (two legs each way for a recent Caribbean Tourism Organization conference in Georgetown, Guyana) all departed on time and one even arrived quite early due to a tailwind. Nobody has lost my luggage.
The journalist’s quest for quibbles had to settle for:
– Engine noise drowned out the captain’s announcements on one flight.
– The entertainment system is little more than a few small overhead screens and one channel. Caribbean Essence, the in-house production, has an irritatingly promotional feel and on the Georgetown-Port of Spain flight, everyone in the cabin had to listen. The guy next to me, trying to read a book, was also unhappy about the show.
– The garish green upholstery in some planes reminded me of cushions in the student lounge at university back in the early 1980s.
Anyway, I’ll fly Caribbean again soon for a trip both to Grenada and back in time.
It would be nice if the executives of the big North American carriers came along to see how they once brought a little class to economy class.
The official wording of the press release said “the Sustainable Accommodation Award went to the Accra Beach Hotel and Spa in Barbados for positively impacting the local supply chain and community whilst minimizing negative environmental impact, and contributing to conservation of local culture.”
I’m trying to learn more about what this all means and I have emails out to CTO staff. But as a travel journalist who also writes about urbanism, it’s great to see the CTO’s 13th annual Sustainable Tourism Conference recognize that walkable, vibrant communities are just as important to vacation spots as they are in our home cities.
On a basic level, my wife and I had a great stay at Accra Beach a few months back. The price was reasonable, our room and the beach were excellent, staff were friendly and, as a bonus for active people who like to swim lengths, the pool was among the best I’ve found in the Caribbean.
But Accra and the Rockley Beach area proved to be special because the resort is so well integrated within a thriving stretch of shops, services and restaurants patronized by both locals and tourists. This is a case where tourists are really strengthening the local economy and where the local businesses are really contributing to the tourism experience.
The virtuous cycle has benefits beyond the bottom lines of business. All day and into the evening there are eyes on the street and feet on the sidewalks, as urbanist Jane Jacobs would have pointed out. This is probably not a place where a mugger would want to ply his trade and the pedestrian instinctively senses that.
This mingling of locals and tourists adds much to a vacation experience on a human level. And when vacationers feel safe out walking beyond their hotels, they don’t need to rent cars or take cabs anywhere near as often.
Contrast that with the experience of an all-inclusive compound or a resort on a lovely but isolated stretch of beach.
When we talk of sustainable travel, we often hear about initiatives to protect rainforests or minimize waste from cruise ships. We talk of finding ways to offset the carbon emissions of jets or make solar and wind power viable for resorts and their small island countries. These are all good and important subjects. But on the south coast of Barbados, something as simple as a comfortable environment for pedestrian interaction illustrates sustainability and environmentalism at its organic best.
Cheers, to the Accra Beach, but please share this honour with your many neighbours.
Danforth East locals have been big on Colombo's pizza, Italian sandwiches and rice balls since 1971. Turns out, Charlie, the owner, has a pretty good sense of humour, too. Original owner, Salvatore Avolese, moved to Toronto in 1967, the year the Leafs last won the Stanley Cup.
