Keeping Bohemian as Real Estate Prices Soar: The Canada Letter

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This week a fourth Canadian joined The Times’s contingent in Canada. Lindsey Wiebe, who grew up on a farm in Western Manitoba, is our audience growth editor. That means she’ll be working with Dan Bilefsky, Catherine Porter and me to help connect more Canadians more deeply with New York Times journalism, and understand better what you are looking for from us.

Lindsey, who has worked for Rogers Media and The Winnipeg Free Press, will be doing that in a number of innovative ways, not just in the usual social media channels. So keep watching and listening.

Lindsey’s first two days on the job were heady ones. Dan and I and six — six! — editors from New York joined her and Catherine in Toronto for a Team Canada summit to plot story lines and strategies for the coming months. I’m hoping she wasn’t too overwhelmed by the welcoming committee.

Cyrel Troster and Sylvia Lassam of the neighborhood’s historical society showed us Kensington’s historic buildings and new bohemian gentrification. Kensington has certainly transformed since the days of the CBC’s “King of Kensington” television series.

For those of you who don’t know the area, it’s been the landing place for different waves of immigrants: Jewish, then Portuguese, Asian, and, most recently according to storefront signs, Vegan. Large brick towers along Spadina Avenue, the thoroughfare that forms the neighborhood’s eastern boundary, were once home to Toronto’s clothing industry — the sweat shops where many of those immigrants worked.

The area has often been a center of radical politics and labor movements. And, historically, its small, inexpensive houses attracted artists, musicians and writers, though Ms. Lassam, a University of Toronto archivist who has lived there for 15 years, told us that Toronto’s soaring real estate prices may be jeopardizing that.

“It’s changing from being a place where you could live cheap and have interesting people around,” she said.

Apartments are increasingly being used as Airbnbs. Many of the food shops where I found I could stretch my budget as a student are now trendy cafes. And the neighborhood’s residents have used public protests to keep out big-box stores and other chains.

Kensington was named a national historic site in 2005. But its activists are now pushing for a historic designation by the city, a step that they hope will allow for greater control by municipal planners over its latest transformation.

The battle is far from lost. While its role as a food market has diminished, Kensington still has an eclectic mixture of businesses and residents, as well as a delightful aura of chaos.

“We’re feisty here,” Ms. Lassam said. “We’re doing our best.”

Up In The Sky

A few blocks south and east of Kensington there is, depending on your perspective, Toronto’s most innovative or most awful building: the Sharp Center for Design at OCAD University. It’s a white box with black specks and perches nine stories above the ground on a series of angled stilts. (For the record: I’m among its admirers.)

Will Alsop, the British architect who designed it, has died at the age of 70. In this fascinating obituary, my colleague Richard Sandomir describes Mr. Alsop as a “Falstaffian provocateur.”

Reading about Mr. Alsop’s death and seeing the Sharp Center again reminded me of how buildings and architects have defined, and redefined, much of Canada. Imagine Quebec City without the Chateau Frontenac hotel or Vancouver without Canada Place.

Is there a building that has a special place in your heart — or one that makes your blood boil? Does a structure define where you live? Has a single architect changed Canada for the better? Please share your thoughts (and photos of the building if you have them): nytcanada@nytimes.com.

Trans Canada

—Prompted by your suggestions, Dan Bilefsky stopped by to see the mystery writer Louise Penny during his recent Quebec road trip. Dan has now returned to Ms. Penny’s home in the Eastern Townships to profile the creator of Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. “I am a killing machine but a happy one,” Ms. Penny told Dan. “I get all my resentments out in my books.”

—Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s hopes for a trade deal with China were probably undermined this week after his government used national security concerns to block plans for a Chinese state-controlled company to buy Aecon, the large Canadian contractor that’s built and maintained much of Canada’s key infrastructure, including nuclear power plants.

—Whatever you think about Jordan Peterson — the University of Toronto psychology professor, YouTube celebrity, best-selling author and champion of a particular expression of masculinity — you should read this insightful profile of him by Nellie Bowles, a tech writer in The Times San Francisco bureau.

—First there were threats of tariffs that could devastate Canada’s steel industry. Now President Trump is threatening Canadian manufacturing with duties on cars and trucks.

—As New York moves toward setting up supervised drug injection sites, J. David Goodman, a colleague on the Metro desk, traveled north to look at Canada’s experience.

A native of Windsor, Ontario, Ian Austen was educated in Toronto, lives in Ottawa and has reported about Canada for The New York Times for the past 15 years. Follow him on Twitter at @ianrausten.

We’d love your feedback on this newsletter. Please email your thoughts and suggestions to nytcanada@nytimes.com. And if you haven’t do so, please subscribe to the email newsletter version.





Source : Nytimes