Search

The unprecedented participation by two Ojibwe-speaking Anishinabek lay delegates in the 1866 meeting of the Electoral Synod of the Anglican Diocese of Toronto garnered a brief flurry of contemporary journalistic coverage across a networked imperial and colonial press. In the most vivid reportage, the two delegates were dehumanized, reduced to the status of 'Indian nags ... becoming inoculated with the ways of Anglicans'. In another more distantly circulated representation, an Indigenous presence at the incipience of Canadian synodality was invested with different rhetorical significance, the unsettling scandal of their voting membership justifying the struggle for self-government in the nascent Anglican Churches of other colonies, thus laying bare anxieties about the precarious situation of colonial Anglicanism. Rather than presuming to interpret the experience and discourse of Indigenous Anglicans, nor simply documenting the first local episode of formal Indigenous involvement in the counsels of Anglicans in Canada, this paper introduces the Electoral Synod, the neglected texts that covered the event, along with the lives of the exoticized churchmen featured in their coverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 15–16 June 2023, healthcare professionals and breast cancer patients and advocates from across Canada met in Toronto, Ontario, for the 2023 Canadian Breast Cancer Symposium (CBSC.). The CBSC. is a national, multidisciplinary event that occurs every 2 years with the goal of developing a personalized approach to the management of breast cancer in Canada. Experts provided state-of-the-art information to help optimally manage breast cancer patients, including etiology, prevention, diagnosis, experimental biology, and therapy of breast cancer and premalignant breast disease. The symposium also had the objectives of increasing communication and collaboration among breast cancer healthcare providers nationwide and providing a comprehensive and real-life review of the many facets of breast cancer. The sessions covered the patient voice, the top breast cancer papers from different disciplines in 2022, artificial intelligence in breast cancer, systemic therapy updates, the management of central nervous system metastases, multidisciplinary management of ductal carcinoma in situ, special populations, optimization-based individual prognostic factors, toxicity management of novel therapeutics, survivorship, and updates in surgical oncology. The key takeaways of these sessions have been summarized in this conference report. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trans and gender nonconforming (TGNC) people who make refugee claims in Canada negotiate a complex nexus of identity, belonging, and citizenship. Drawing on insights from TGNC refugees, immigration lawyers, and frontline workers, in this paper we examine the ways the state controls the trans body through the refugee claims process and in the process of integration into life in Canada, while also highlighting trans refugee methods of survival and resistance. What emerges is an understanding of the ways that refugees navigate the tension between gender, sexuality, and homecoming as both intimately felt and geopolitically managed. We convey TGNC refugee narratives to demonstrate how they both confirm and expand upon the existing literature on Canadian LGBTQ+ refugees. TGNC refugees' experiences at the Immigration and Refugee Board confirm insights from existing LGBTQ+ refugee studies. However, TGNC refugees' day‐to‐day lives differ significantly from LGB refugee lives as recounted in the literature. In TGNC refugees' attempts to access gender‐affirming documentation, healthcare, housing, and income, they confront distinct systems of transgender exceptionalism, border imperialism, and racial and heteropatriarchal capitalism that limit their access to basic necessities and impact how they build home both conceptually and materially. Key Messages: Refugee narratives elicited at the Immigration and Refugee Board follow a logic of "transgender exceptionalism" and often diverge from the complexity of Trans and gender nonconforming (TGNC) refugee experiences.TGNC refugees experience barriers to accessing housing, healthcare, adequate documentation, and employment due to histories and systems of oppression.These narratives demonstrate that the trans refugee homemaking process is implicated in nationalism, but also shows the needs to push against this limiting frame. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

African-Canadians continue to bear the brunt of marginality and stereotyping in Canada even when various mitigating studies and programs have been initiated by the government at federal, state, and municipal levels. These stereotypes continue to affect them in informal settings and state institutions when seeking employment, housing or when in the streets, malls, schools, etc. While social justice advocates, social workers, and policy-makers focus on "Black-White" dynamics because other "racialized minorities" are also marginalized (though not equally) in Canada, it is important to note that "non-White" Canadians also contribute to the spread of historical stereotypes of African-Canadians within Canadian multiculturalism as noted in the emphasis of the city of Toronto's mitigating strategies for "anti-Black racism." Using social group position theory (SGPT) and asset-based model (ABCD), this paper argues that interrogating social group biases beyond "Black-White" binarism to encourage inter-group dialogs is important in making sure that different multicultural communities understand one another through favorable, activities-mediated, inter-group relations as opposed to having multicultural relations mediated by third parties, or not mediated at all. We also argue that African-Canadians should focus on internal strengths and only use external help to augment community initiatives to change the extant negative image. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper transposes aspects of the histography of Fernand Braudel to the exploration of planning. It explores the extent to which different time scales, dominated by a longue durée perspective, reveal different facets of the history of planning and of how it operates. Lesser time scales focus on specific events while long perspectives bring to light durable aspects of planning, such as those relating to its embeddedness within fundamental relations between the state and the market economy. The paper contends that planning history and theory are largely shaped by a middle-scale histography, focussed on the succession of periods in the evolution of planning and on how they mark its progression. It proposes to counterbalance this historical perspective with a long-term historical lens highlighting persistent dimensions of planning, many referring to the fundamentals of its political economy. The paper argues that a full understanding of planning requires a consideration of different historical scales. The object of study is Downtown Toronto planning and development since 1945. A medium time scale identifies three distinct phases in Downtown Toronto history over this period, while a long-term perspective reveals how this district evolved with remarkable consistency into an expanded and diversified downtown during these years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the tensions racialized migrants negotiate when politically organizing and enacting citizenship within the context of the Canadian white settler state. I focus on the experiences of Latin Americans in Toronto and the politics surrounding a cultural celebration – Hispanic Heritage Month. While some Latin Americans sought to use this event to gain recognition and assert their belonging to Canadian society, others opposed its naming, objectives and organization, and opted to create an alternative celebration – the Latin-America History Collective's Día de la Verdad/Day of Truth Rally. I demonstrate that the narratives and practices mobilized around Hispanic Heritage Month and Latin-America History Collective's Rally reveal how different forms of migrant political organizing can internalize, reproduce and contest white settler colonial social relations. Overall, this paper aims to contribute to and complicate debates on the fraught nature of racialized migrants' citizenship, politics and identity formation in Canada, by emphasizing the vast heterogeneity of Latin American communities and decolonizing possibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the early 1970s, the Chabad Lubavitch movement has served as an important setting for religious, social, and cultural activity among Russian-speaking Jewish migrants to Canada and the United States. While scholars and community observers have long recognized the attentiveness of Lubavitch emissaries toward Russian Jews, there is no quantitative data and little qualitative research on Chabad's influence in the post-Soviet Jewish diaspora. This paper explores the motivations, mechanics, and consequences of this encounter in a Canadian setting, examining how Chabad creates a religious and social space adapted to the unique features of post-Soviet Jewish ethnic and religious identity. Participating in a growing scholarly discussion, this paper moves away from older characterizations of Soviet Jewish identity as thinly constructed and looks to the Chabad space for alternative constructions in which religion and traditionalism play integral roles. This paper draws on oral histories and observational fieldwork from a small qualitative study of a Chabad-run Jewish Russian Community Centre in Toronto, Ontario. It argues that Chabad, which was founded in eighteenth-century Belorussia, is successful among post-Soviet Jews in Canada and elsewhere thanks, in part, to its presentation of the movement as an authentically Russian brand of Judaism-one that grew up in a pre-Soviet Russian context, endured the repressions of the Soviet period, and has since emerged as the dominant Jewish force in the Russian-speaking world. The paper, among the first to examine the religious convictions of Canada's Russian- speaking Jewish community, reveals that post-Soviet Jews in Toronto gravitate toward Chabad because they view it as a uniquely Russian space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents findings from a study of policy implementation of green infrastructure and stormwater management in the City of Toronto – Canada's largest city. The analysis uses key informant interviews with public, private and non-profit sector actors to examine the challenges municipalities face in implementing green infrastructure policies. The article begins with a review of the literature related to green infrastructure policy implementation followed by the theoretical and methodological approach used in the paper. Findings are then presented outlining the significant barriers to green infrastructure and insights from participants who articulated that rather than a shift from grey to green, what is evident in terms of policy change is policy layering and very gradual conversion of well-established policies that support grey infrastructure. The paper concludes with a discussion of why the shift from grey to green will continue to be challenging unless significant policy and institutional changes are advanced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most building energy codes' performance path implicitly reward buildings that perform well under steady and near-capacity occupancy conditions, even though these are not typical operating conditions. Partially, as a result, our buildings tend not to be designed with features that allow optimal energy performance in the common circumstance of partial and fluctuating occupancy. The objective of this paper is to examine current building energy codes in this regard. The paper uses a simulation-based approach to demonstrate two strategies that target occupancy-adaptability: demand-controlled ventilation and smaller-than-required lighting control zones with occupancy-controlled lighting. In this paper, a code-compliant EnergyPlus archetype office building in Toronto, Canada was used to evaluate these design features under different occupancy conditions. The results confirm that both demand-controlled ventilation and smaller lighting control zones are most advantageous at lower occupancy levels. Accordingly, the paper concludes with generalized recommendations for code modifications to properly credit buildings with greater adaptability to partial occupancy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Injuries have become devastating and often under-recognized public health concerns. In Canada, injuries are the leading cause of potential years of life lost before the age of 65. The geographical patterns of injury, however, are evident both over space and time, suggesting the possibility of spatial optimization of policies at the neighborhood scale to mitigate injury risk, foster prevention, and control within metropolitan regions. In this paper, Canada's National Ambulatory Care Reporting System is used to assess unintentional and intentional injuries for Toronto between 2004 and 2010, exploring the spatial relations of injury throughout the city, together with Wellbeing Toronto data. Corroborating with these findings, spatial autocorrelations at global and local levels are performed for the reported over 1.7 million injuries. The sub-categorization for Toronto's neighborhood further distills the most vulnerable communities throughout the city, registering a robust spatial profile throughout. Individual neighborhoods pave the need for distinct policy profiles for injury prevention. This brings one of the main novelties of this contribution. A comparison of the three regression models is carried out. The findings suggest that the performance of spatial regression models is significantly stronger, showing evidence that spatial regressions should be used for injury research. Wellbeing Toronto data performs reasonably well in assessing unintentional injuries, morbidity, and falls. Less so to understand the dynamics of intentional injuries. The results enable a framework to allow tailor-made injury prevention initiatives at the neighborhood level as a vital source for planning and participatory decision making in the medical field in developed cities such as Toronto. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This qualitative study examined Chinese immigrant mothers of children with developmental disabilities (DDs) about their experiences of stressors, social support, and traditional cultural beliefs in Canada. Fifteen mothers were recruited from Toronto through one community organization. One-on-one semi-structured in-depth interviews on mothers in Mandarin were used in private settings. A descriptive qualitative approach was applied (Sandelowski, Research in Nursing & Health, 23, 334–340, 2000, Research Nursing Health, 33(1), 77–84, 2010). Analyses were guided by House's (1981) classification of social support (structural, instrumental, emotional, and perceptive). Mothers expressed challenges in accessing services for their children, such as limited financial resources, occupational unemployment, excessive paper work, long waiting times, language barriers, limited knowledge of social services, emotional strain, transportation difficulties, dispersed services, and feelings of "loss of face." All mothers actively seek treatments for their children without traditional "reciprocity thought." The findings provide a better understanding of Chinese immigrant mothers' experiences raising children with DDs in Canada. Implications of the study are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The CAD$1 billion transformation of Toronto’s Regent Park neighbourhood from Canada’s largest public housing site to a mixed income community is likely to inform the next several decades of public housing redevelopment policy both nationally and internationally. This paper focuses on the process and impacts of large-scale redevelopment, in the context of attempts to build a physically and socially inclusive neighbourhood incorporating non-market and market housing in downtown Toronto. Drawing from in-depth interviews with 32 Regent Park community leaders and other key decision makers, the paper explores how resident engagement and leadership development opportunities impact redevelopment processes in mixed income initiatives. Results focus on three key emerging areas of both strength and concern: (1) efforts to build community alongside the redevelopment as an integral, evolving and place-specific strategy; (2) the impacts and challenges of both a strong institutional environment in Regent Park and a sense of weak institutional memory; and (3) formal and informal leadership and mentorship opportunities and their contribution towards the development of engagement and cohesion in Regent Park. The opportunity for low-income housing initiatives to support knowledge building and learning, preservation of institutional memory and local leadership development is significant in the context of examining physical and social redevelopment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cities are taking a leadership role in addressing global climate change and reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but policy innovations are needed to help cities move from goals to outcomes. Pilot projects are one means by which cities are experimenting with new ways of governing and financing climate change mitigation. In this paper, we develop a framework for understanding the role of pilot projects in urban policy innovation: their emergence and rationale, and the means by which they ultimately scale up and out to reduce GHG emissions. We use this framework to evaluate a pilot project for retrofitting social housing buildings in Toronto. We find the initial pilot project helped address the challenges of pursuing deep retrofits of social housing. Scaling these lessons up to the city level required overcoming challenges to financing and coordinating a larger project; scaling out to the provincial level revealed institutional and political obstacles to pursuing the co‐benefits of deep building retrofits in social housing. Bridging agents play an important role in both scaling processes. The analysis reveals the additive nature of urban policy innovation and the dynamic interplay of change agents and institutional and political context in innovation processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing processing times for immigration applications, increasing numbers of people admitted on temporary visas, and delays processing refugee claims mean that more newcomers spend longer periods of time living in Canada with precarious immigration status. This paper uses qualitative research to examine how people with precarious immigration status exercise agency in the face of restrictions to their rights and risk of deportability, as well as the extent to which agency is able to transform people's everyday realities. The research shows that regimes of immigration control construct people with precarious immigration status as un-belonging and undesirable as members of Canadian society. The research identifies two ways that research participants exert autonomy over their lives: persistent presence and critiquing their construction as un-belonging and undesirable. Both forms of agency involve the creation of counterpublics to build networks for practical support and recognition of the legitimacy of their presence in Canada. While agency made it easier for participants to sustain themselves, the research shows that participants internalized discourses hostile to people with precarious immigration status, suggesting that agency is both necessary but also limited in its capacity to mitigate the harm caused by the construction of them as un-belonging and undesirable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a crowd sensing system (CSS) that captures geospatial social media topics and allows the review of results. Using Web-resources derived from social media platforms, the CSS uses a spatially-situated social network graph to harvest user-generated content from selected organizations and members of the public. This allows 'passively' contributed social media-based opinions, along with different variables, such as time, location, social interaction, service usage, and human activities to be examined and used to identify trending views and influential citizens. The data model and CSS are used for demonstration purposes to identify geotopics and community interests relevant to municipal affairs in the City of Toronto, Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rapid proliferation of cloud computing, the energy cost of datacenters and the impact of reactive power on the grid have become major concerns. This paper presents two energy management control schemes for distributed uninterruptible power supply (UPS) architectures utilizing lithium-ion ultracapacitors (LIC) for improved system efficiency and reactive power mitigation. One scheme is proposed for low-power servers with an internal dc bus, while another is proposed for medium-to-high-power server racks with an in-rack dc bus. The LIC and the dc bus interface with a bidirectional dc–dc converter, which allows the power supply unit to run in the optimal operating region for the improved system efficiency and power factor. The server-level UPS architecture is experimentally tested using a 200-kHz, bidirectional, multiphase dc–dc converter with hysteretic current-mode control, while achieving 33% reactive power mitigation. Based on the SciNet datacenter in Toronto, ON, Canada, a rack-level distributed UPS architecture is built in MATLAB, and system-level simulations indicate a 37% reduction in the reactive power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extreme cold weather alert programs have been implemented in some areas to address the significant health impacts of exposure to cold. One such program is the Toronto Cold Weather Program (TCWP) that was implemented in the City of Toronto since 1996 to protect the public from extreme weather conditions. In this paper, we aim to evaluate the effectiveness of the TCWP in reducing mortality and morbidity outcomes related to cold temperatures. We applied a quasi-experimental study design using the Difference-in-Differences method coupled with propensity-score-matching to determine the effect of the TCMP on daily hospitalizations and deaths due to cardiovascular disease (CVD), coronary heart disease (CHD) or cerebrovascular disease, using two complementary analytical approaches. Overall, the analysis did not detect an impact on reduced mortality/morbidity in the City of Toronto from the TCMP. For example, we obtained a Risk Difference (RD) of −0.88 (per 1,000,000 people) (95% CI: −3.27 to 1.51) and a Risk Ratio (RR) of 0.98 (95% CI: 0.91 to 1.05) people for CVD hospitalizations. The TCWP was not found to be effective in reducing cold related mortality and morbidity which demonstrates the importance of improving existing policies related to cold in Canada and other countries. • Exposure to cold is substantially increases an individual's risk for injury and death, and worsen pre-existing chronic conditions • Little is known about existing cold warning programs impact on reducing cold-related mortality and morbidity. • We observed that the Toronto Cold Weather Program was not effective in reducing cold-related mortality/morbidity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public interest in the influence of neighbourhoods on immigrant integration in Canadian society has been growing in recent years; yet, there are few studies that explain the effect of neighbourhoods on immigrant experiences of exclusion in Canada. Drawing on in-depth interviews (12 males and 13 females) and a focus group discussion (five females and three males) conducted with Ghanaian immigrant youth between the ages of 18 to 30 from the Ghanaian community in the Jane and Finch neighbourhood of Toronto in May to June, 2011, this paper discusses the experiences of social and spatial exclusion among Ghanaian immigrant youth. Drawing on socio-spatial dialectics, the findings suggest that Ghanaian immigrant youth experiences of socio-spatial exclusion are intertwined in a dialectical process involving the Jane and Finch neighbourhood and the general public. In particular, the youth negotiate access to employment opportunities, shopping malls and counter exclusion through reformulation of resumes, and masking of their actual neighbourhoods. This paper fills an important gap in our knowledge of the lived experiences of African immigrant youth and contributes to our understanding of the dynamics of neighbourhood stigmatization and its impact on residents' integration into the larger society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the commercial shopping street as a site of racialized class struggle. The argument builds around the study of a disinvested inner-suburban neighbourhood in Toronto, which furnishes an ideal case through which to achieve the paper's objectives of, first, identifying commercial space as an important site of contestation over competing suburban futures; second, delineating how processes of racialization inform the economies of commercial gentrification and urban renewal; and third, highlighting the epistemological and theoretical insights that emerge when research is conducted collaboratively, among academic, community, and activist groupings. The paper argues that such commercial spaces play a key role in making the city accessible to vulnerable and marginalized groups. Two competing planning agendas centred on reordering commercial space, meanwhile, spell the almost-certain demise of such arrangements: a 'real estate' vision featuring new condominium developments, and a new urbanist resistance favouring 'green' and 'creative' alternatives. Our engagements with precarious, predominantly immigrant-owned businesses and community-based researchers reveal the complicity of both modes of development planning with processes of displacement and structural racism. Specifying these dynamics as 'racialized class projects' opens up space for intervention and organizing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While many Black Canadian women are innovators in the third sector, the contributions of Black people to the social economy go largely unnoticed in the academic literature. The social economy is not only a place of refuge for African-Canadians; it also provides a way for racially marginalized communities to co-opt resources. In fact, racialized Canadians are driven to be active in the third sector by the systemic bias and racism in the Canadian economy and society. To understand the place of the social economy among racialized people, we must recognize that Black and racialized people are not merely on the receiving end of aid and support, but that they lead and work within the social services sector. This paper utilizes Black liberation theory—specifically the concepts of self-help and co-operation—to analyze the work of five Black women leaders in non-profit organizations that reach thousands of people in Toronto. This study confronts the erasure of Black women in the third sector, and argues for the need to link liberation theory with the field of social economics in order to fully understand the significance of the social economy for Black and racialized people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IN CONFRONTING THE FILTH AND DECAY of the early 20th century city, civic reformers often undertook ambitious programs that sought to not only eliminate the sources of disease from the urban environment but also to civilize urban dwellers, teaching them to live in pure and morally hygienic ways. Historical studies have tended to focus on the consumption side of this process, looking at how sanitary reformers and public health officials worked to establish fundamentally new understandings of household waste and its disposal, laying the foundation for the "throwaway" society of the 1950s and 1960s. However, they have tended to neglect the parallel efforts to fashion a new kind of city worker. Drawing on Toronto as a case study, this paper examines how the rise of a modern, scientifically managed waste regime in the early 20th century contributed to fundamentally new conceptions of civic employment, premised on the "purification" of the worker from the contaminating influence of neighbourhood-based patronage networks and an informal waste economy. I explore how efforts to expunge filth from urban space were paralleled by struggles to disentangle class from community-based solidarities in the labour process. Moreover, I explore how this contributed to the view that public workers somehow stood apart from the community as an anonymous and uniform service. I conclude by discussing the implications in how we think about city workers and their struggles today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most investigations of incident-related delay duration in the transportation context are restricted to highway traffic, with little attention given to delays due to transit service disruptions. Studies of transit-based delay duration are also considerably less comprehensive than their highway counterparts with respect to examining the effects of non-causal variables on the delay duration. However, delays due to incidents in public transit service can have serious consequences on the overall urban transportation system due to the pivotal and vital role of public transit. The ability to predict the durations of various types of transit system incidents is indispensable for better management and mitigation of service disruptions. This paper presents a detailed investigation on incident delay durations in Toronto’s subway system over the year 2013, focusing on the effects of the incidents’ location and time, the train-type involved, and the non-adherence to proper recovery procedures. Accelerated Failure Time (AFT) hazard models are estimated to investigate the relationship between these factors and the resulting delay duration. The empirical investigation reveals that incident types that impact both safety and operations simultaneously generally have longer expected delays than incident types that impact either safety or operations alone. Incidents at interchange stations are cleared faster than incidents at non-interchange stations. Incidents during peak periods have nearly the same delay durations as off-peak incidents. The estimated models are believed to be useful tools in predicting the relative magnitude of incident delay duration for better management of subway operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the creation and the subsequent meaning of ‘redevelopment areas’ in Toronto in the 1950s. The city passed a bylaw in 1952 that defined blighted areas as suitable for redevelopment. One of these areas was the downtown district that runs between Wood and Wellesley streets. The history of the Wood-Wellesley redevelopment area between 1952 and 1957 was important in several ways: it built on but differed from similar activity in the USA; it discursively reflected the needs of the city to refashion itself as a modern landscape; it provided the city with the tools to turn planning ideas into action; and it gave developers the forum by which they could push for specific areas of the city to be opened up for investment. Politically calculated and heavily contested visions of urban space, redevelopment areas such as Wood-Wellesley were used by the state and developers to physically reconstruct Toronto’s downtown area for private capital, to create a new modernist landscape, and to reproduce new and to reinforce existing social inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper is the second part of a two-part study on the performance of ground-source heat pumps (GSHPs) in single-family detached houses in Canada. In Part I the cooling performance of two GSHPs was tested, analyzed and evaluated over one cooling season. In this paper, the heating performance of three vertical closed-loop water-to-air GSHP systems installed in three new single-family detached houses in Innisfil (80 km north of Toronto, Canada) is monitored, analyzed and evaluated over one heating season. Results show that GSHP A , GSHP B and GSHP C were able to meet the peak heating load without using the auxiliary heating element. The seasonal coefficient of performance of heat pump of GSHP A , GSHP B and GSHP C is 4.2, 4.0 and 3.4, respectively, whereas the seasonal coefficient of performance of the GSHP system of GSHP A , GSHP B and GSHP C is 3.8, 3.4 and 2.7, respectively. GSHP A has the highest COP mainly because it is equipped with a variable speed compressor while GSHP B and GSHP C are equipped with two-stage compressors. The average temperature of water leaving the ground loop of GSHP A , GSHP B and GSHP C is 3.9 °C, 3.1 °C and 2.7 °C, respectively, where the average temperature of water leaving the ground loop varied by up to 6.3 °C throughout the heating season. The total power consumption and operating cost of GSHP A , GSHP B and GSHP C are less than conventional air-source heat pumps by up to 46%, 40% and 24%, respectively. It is concluded that GSHPs operate at high COPs without operational problems even in very cold climates if designed, sized and installed correctly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multiculturalism is a contested concept and policy in the current context. Many European leaders have declared its failure, and scholars have traced a global backlash against multicultural policies, especially in Europe. Canadians, on the other hand, are more likely to view it positively, as a badge of citizenship or belonging. Being multicultural has become closely intertwined with what it means to be Canadian, especially for immigrants and their children. The focus of this paper is to unpack these meanings of multiculturalism among one immigrant group, most of whom are now Canadians, and their children: Sri Lankan Tamils in the Greater Toronto Area. Our aim is to better understand how members of this group view the relationship between their Canadian and Tamil identities in the context of multiculturalism. In particular, we are interested in the 'uptake' of the concept, practice, and policy of multiculturalism among Sri Lankan Tamil newcomers to Canada. Drawing on interviews and focus groups with both immigrants (first generation) and Sri Lankan Tamils born in Canada (second generation), we illustrate some of the ways in which multiculturalism operates as frontstage behaviour and as a more tacit backstage concept among those in the Greater Toronto Tamil diaspora. We argue that Canadian multiculturalism functions as 'banal nationalism' in Canada, as daily practices of tacit nation-building are produced and repeated on a daily basis among Sri Lankan Tamil Canadians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Ontario Municipal Board is a quasi-judicial tribunal that is responsible for adjudicating municipal land-use planning appeals. The Board exerts considerable influence over property development outcomes. Big box retail as a form of commercial development has often been subject to planning conflict and appeal. This paper examines 65 big box retail Board appeals filed between 1993 and 2012 by developers and stakeholders independently or jointly in response to applications submitted at the municipal level throughout the Greater Toronto Area, Canada's largest metropolitan market. Results indicate the presence of game playing strategies used by participants that involves leveraging the potential of proceeding with a potentially expensive, time-consuming and uncertain hearing as a means to negotiate a settlement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A heavy rainfall event over a 2-h period on 8 July 2013 caused significant flash flooding in the city of Toronto and produced 126 mm of rain accumulation at a gauge located near the Toronto Pearson International Airport. This paper evaluates the quantitative precipitation estimates from the nearby King City C-band dual-polarized radar (WKR). Horizontal reflectivity Z and differential reflectivity ZDR were corrected for attenuation using a modified ZPHI rain profiling algorithm, and rain rates R were calculated from R( Z) and R( Z, ZDR) algorithms. Specific differential phase KDP was used to compute rain rates from three R( KDP) algorithms, one modified to use positive and negative KDP, and an R( KDP, ZDR) algorithm. Additionally, specific attenuation at horizontal polarization A was used to calculate rates from the R( A) algorithm. High-temporal-resolution rain gauge data at 44 locations measured the surface rainfall every 5 min and produced total rainfall accumulations over the affected area. The nearby NEXRAD S-band dual-polarized radar at Buffalo, New York, provided rain-rate and storm accumulation estimates from R( Z) and S-band dual-polarimetric algorithm. These two datasets were used as references to evaluate the C-band estimates. Significant radome attenuation at WKR overshadowed the attenuation correction techniques and resulted in poor rainfall estimates from the R( Z) and R( Z, ZDR) algorithms. Rainfall estimation from the Brandes et al. R( KDP) and R( A) algorithms were superior to the other methods, and the derived storm total accumulation gave biases of 2.1 and −6.1 mm, respectively, with correlations of 0.94. The C-band estimates from the Brandes et al. R( KDP) and R( A) algorithms were comparable to the NEXRAD S-band estimates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the migrant networks that develop between migrants, non-migrants and the larger Indian diaspora. Specifically, it examines the decision to migrate to Toronto, Canada and how this decision is shaped by, and in turn shapes the migrant network. Based on 35 interviews with migrants from Karnataka, South India, two main findings are presented. First, migrants are deliberately choosing settlement countries in which their families are not yet located, thereby becoming 'migrant pioneers' in their country of settlement, which is an attempt to expand their migrant networks globally. Second, the narratives these migrants receive and subsequently impart to others are often inaccurate, which can lead to miscommunication flows among these migrant networks. These findings are considered in light of the large body of research on migrant networks and the ways they develop and transmit information. This paper argues that existing understanding of migrant networks is somewhat static. Findings indicate that these 'migrant pioneers' may be engaging in global risk-diversification strategies for subsequent generations, but may themselves suffer from the more immediate consequences of misinformed networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The book Direct Action, Deliberation and Diffusion: Collective Action After the WTO Protests in Seattle argues that the process of diffusion is dependent on social processes in the receiving context. The most important in social movements is an egalitarian and reflexive deliberation among diverse actors. The book traces the direct action tactics associated with the Seattle protests against the World Trade Organization in 1999 and how these spread to activists in Toronto and New York City. It shows how the structure of the political field, racial and class inequalities, identity boundaries, and organizational and conversational dynamics limited deliberation among activists, and thus limited the diffusion of the Seattle tactics. By constraining the spread of the Seattle tactics, this slowed the global justice movement's wave of protest. In this paper, I explore the application of and implications of this model of protest tactic diffusion to the recent Idle No More mobilizations. Le livre Direct Action, Deliberation and Diffusion: Collective Action After the WTO Protests in Seattle fait valoir que le processus de diffusion dépend de processus sociaux dans le contexte de réception. Le plus important pour les movements sociaux est une délibération égalitaire et réflexive entre divers acteurs. Le livre retrace les tactiques d'action directe associés aux manifestations de Seattle contre l'Organisation Mondiale du Commerce en 1999 et comment ils se propagent à des militants de Toronto et de New York. Il montre comment la délibération de la structure des inégalités le domaine politique, raciales et de classe, les limites de l'identité et de la dynamique de l'organisation et de la conversation limitée parmi les militants, et donc limiter la diffusion de la tactique de Seattle. En limitant la propagation de la tactique de Seattle, ce ralentissement de la vague de protestation du mouvement altermondialiste. Dans cet article, j'explore l'application et implications de ce modèle de diffusion protestation de tactique pour les dernières Idle No More mobilisations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Bicycling rates increased across study sites regardless of the presence of a cycling facility. • A new cycling facility increased the odds of bicycling more on the street. • New facilities were associated with increased commute-related bicycling only for regular cyclists. • Mode-substitution was more likely near a new cycle track vs. a painted bicycle lane. • Urban vs. suburban location was associated with more cycling on street, but not with mode substitution. Cycling facilities have become a widely used sustainable transportation policy tool, but their impacts on reduced car dependence are difficult to isolate. This paper presents the findings from a household survey conducted in 17 neighbourhoods in the Toronto region, Canada, some with a recently built cycling facility and some without. Results indicate higher odds of increased commute-related bicycling on streets with a new cycling facility. People who were already commuting by bicycle at least once a week are likely to bicycle more frequently after new facilities are built. Bicycling uptake is more obvious in neighbourhhods with a new cycle track, while changes relating to bicycle lanes were not statistically different from neighbourhoods without a facility. All else being equal, urban cycling facilities were associated with higher odds of increased commute-related bicycling, compared to suburban locations. Findings offer insights into expected outcomes of bicycle network expansion policy/projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the application of surrogate modelling to create bottom-up archetype models, to improve the energy performance of specific residential building archetypes. The objective of this study is to quantify the application range(s) of surrogate models to predict and improve the annual energy performance of single-family home archetypes. Six distinct surrogate models were developed using multivariate regression and artificial neural networks, based on 6000 simulated samples extracted from four different century home archetypes in Toronto (Canada) as a result of random field study within a target neighbourhood. The results show that a single surrogate model can predict the annual energy requirements for four distinct archetypes with 7.87% average error with a multivariate regression model and 4.13% average error using an artificial neural network in 0.00047 and 0.013 ms respectively. These results indicate that the bottom-up surrogate model can describe the relationship between retrofit strategies and annual energy demand with substantial computational time savings. The findings of this study support the future application of surrogate modelling to develop bottom-up archetype models to continue the development of the Toronto Archetype Project and to support a national retrofit strategy in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]