The seeds of Toronto’s modern-day political discord, as it pertains to urban development, were planted in the 1950s. According to Stephen Bocking, one thing that’s become prevalent here over the last 20 years is the notion that urban planning has become an intensely political activity. That belief would be false in his view. Bocking, professor & chair of environmental & resource studies, Trent University in Peterborough, Ont., made a Nov. 7 presentation, “Building Postwar Toronto: When Planning And Politics Collide”, at the Toronto Public Library’s Annette Street branch in the Junction neighbourhood. His talk was part of the library’s “History Matters” lecture series. With respect to the origins of the challenges Toronto faces presently in terms of planning, many trace it back to the Conservative Mike Harris provincial government’s so-called Common Sense Revolution in the mid-1990s. That horrific scheme imposed amalgamation and the downloading of all kinds of costs on T.O. Others may go further back to the 1980s when basic investments in transit expansion, after the initial development of the subway system, was essentially abandoned. But Bocking suggested the need to rewind even further. “Go back to the 1950s when much of the shape of Toronto as we see it today was just emerging. It was an intriguing time in the history of Toronto. The city was expanding rapidly via the postwar era and it was a time when enormous investment was being made in the city,” he said. “It was also a time when the seeds were being planted that would lead to a breakdown in Toronto city planning.”

EDITOR'S NOTE: Spacing will be eventually heading out west with the launch of Spacing Vancouver. We still don't have a set date yet, but it'll be soon, we promise. In the meantime, Spacing's editors thought it would be good to acquaint our Toronto readers with some Vancouver urban issues news. Spacing contributor Liam Lahey recently relocated to Vancouver and filed this post. - - - - - - - - - - - The Canadian Football League’s (CFL) B.C. Lions are going back to their roots for the coming season by returning to the site on which historic Empire Stadium once stood in Hastings Park in East Vancouver. It’s just too bad the Lions have called for building a drab, uninspiring structure to discourage their fans from becoming emotionally attached to the outdoor field. The original Empire Stadium, built in 1954 for the British Empire and Commonwealth Games, was the reason Vancouver landed a CFL franchise in the same year. At one time, it was Vancouver’s premiere outdoor amphitheatre. Among its many highlights: it was the site of the first televised sports event broadcast live to all of North America (The Miracle Mile) and The Beatles played there in August 1964. After the Lions and the Vancouver Whitecaps soccer club moved to BC Place in 1983, Empire Stadium was without tenants and it was demolished 10 years later. The Leos’ move back to Empire Stadium was necessitated by the forthcoming installation of a retractable roof at the cavernous BC Place stadium in downtown Vancouver. The Whitecaps will also play at Empire Stadium this summer as a result of the renovations. BC Place is a horrible place to witness a football match or any game for that matter. It can accommodate 60,000 fans but it usually lacks enough people to form even a modest-sized crowd, which might speak more to the state of the CFL than the building itself. The situation is akin to how Torontonians are quick to dismiss SkyDome (a.k.a. Rogers Centre) as a wretched place to see sports that should be played outdoors (thousands of empty seats, pain in the butt to access, uninspiring surroundings). Like Toronto's SkyDome, BC Place provides about as much atmosphere as a concrete slab possibly can (read: none at all).

Prior to the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, I attended the final day of a three-day history symposium at Fort York on Oct. 9 to hear Ontario's former Lt.-Governor James Bartleman speak on the subject of how best to celebrate the forthcoming 2012 bicentennial of the War of 1812. I got more than I bargained for. The “Sense of Place and Heritage Trails: Realizing the War of 1812 Bicentennial” conference at the Cultural and Heritage Tourism Symposium 2009 was organized by Centennial College and presented in association with the City of Toronto at the historic site, Oct. 7-9. Kudos to the College's organizers for holding the event at Fort York and not way the hell out at its campus in Scarborough. Bartleman served as an ambassador in Canada's Foreign Service for 35 years prior to serving as Ontario's Lt.-Gov. Simply put, the retired diplomat gave the audience a two-pronged history lesson on the War of 1812 and the subsequent racism this country's aboriginal population has endured since the European powers-that-be decided the natives were no longer useful militarily. “The popular view of this war is that . . . we preserved Canada from the worst of all possible fates: becoming part of the United States. I guess there's some truth to that but as we're looking at the forthcoming bicentennial of the War of 1812, I imagine you'd want to avoid the fate of the 250th anniversary of Quebec City,” he said, referring to the holding of a reenactment during that city's celebrations of what was effectively the defeat of the French on one of the most historic sites in French Canada. Needless to say, the event offended many French Canadians across Quebec.