In an editorial Nov. 25, the Toronto Star endorsed a bus-only road connecting Downsview subway station and York University. “Busways, such as the bus-only road proposed between York and the Downsview subway station, represent a cheaper, easier and faster way to expand transit in Toronto. Mayor-elect David Miller is backing the approach. Instead of embarking on another subway project, and digging out to the university, Miller proposes building a bus-only road along a nearby Hydro right-of-way. It’d cost a fraction of a subway’s price tag and could be built in two years. Constructing a similar subway, connecting York University to the Downsview station, would cost $1.5 billion and take at least a decade.”
Teasing the creative juices
The founder of Toronto’s One Minute Film & Video Festival was Meredith Dault, reported The Globe and Mail Nov. 20 in a feature with photo about the York 2000 film graduate and the international short-film festival she inspired. The festival was sparked by a dare thrown out to filmmaker friends at a party last August. “Hey guys, why don’t we do a little challenge?” Dault recalls. “I challenged my other lapsed-filmmaking friends. All of us went to York together and have been busy with different things. I gave them the same assignment. The film had to be about a neighbour and it had to be a minute.”
At first the challenge was aimed at a close circle of filmmaker friends, but Dault expanded the call for film entries using an e-newsletter through the Toronto artist’s collective instantcoffee.org. It gave a wide range of indie filmmakers an inspirational kick in the butt, wrote the Globe. Winnipegers, Brooklynites and Aucklanders responded with interest. Now she’s brought their works to the big screen at Toronto’s Bloor Cinema, where independent Hot Docs filmmakers and International Short Film Festival producers have earned recognition. Subtitled The Neighbours Project, the hour-long presentation screened Nov. 20.
No angels
In response to a Globe and Mail editorial about American protectionism, Bernard Wolf, economics and international business professor at York’s Schulich School of Business, wrote Nov. 25: “Your editorial is an appropriate indictment of US protectionist manoeuvres that threaten the global economy. They remind one of the US Smoot-Hawley tariffs of 1930 that were beggar-thy-neighbour. However, it is one-sided to ignore Canada’s own protectionist policies that in a more limited way undermine the global economy. When it comes to protection, there are no angels.”
On air
- Sergei Plekhanov, political science professor and coordinator of the post-communist studies program at York’s Centre for International & Security Studies, was interviewed about Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze resigning after tens of thousands of protesters stormed parliament, in an item aired on CBC radio stations across Canada and on CTV’s “Canada AM” Nov. 24.
- Paul Delaney
, astronomy professor with York University’s Faculty of Pure and Applied Science, talked about the rare solar eclipse that scientists and tourists are paying $17,000 to see in Antarctica, in a Discovery Channel special aired on news programs on CFRN-TV in Edmonton, CJOH-TV in Ottawa, and CFCN-TV in Calgary on Nov. 24.