New Header

Perhaps I'm a little too apocalyptic, but I believe our era warrants my strong reaction.

I designed the web header graphics based on these images.

The image on the left is from New York city's Cloisters, where I have been numerous times, and about which I've written here.

In the middle graphic, I've turned the Cloisters image counterclockwise 90°, and did a "heat map" filter through Photoshop. It looks like there is a flame projecting from the Cloisters to the image on the right.

The graphic on the right is the the Absolute Condo Towers, in Mississauga, with the aptly named designers Burka Architects and MAD Architects. I changed the image with Photoshop by making it look like an ashy result of the flames projected from the middle image, and the burned landscape still retaining hot and orange ashes.

We, acting as harbingers of what is to come, and as keepers of art, civilization and our Western culture, can gain our strength and fighting spirit from our institutions, using their still potent power to help us destroy the impostors that have invaded our landscape.

It is no longer a matter of reclamation, but of actual saving, as I further elucidate in my website: Reclaiming Beauty: Saving our Western Civilization.

Behind the Scenes

These are the hard-working men, behind the scenes of Mississauga's revival. And they were all set in place by the city's last mayor, Hazel McCallion.

The question is of course if this is a real revival, which I think it has the makings of, or if it just adding infrastructure to accommodate the unmentionable: increased immigration.

I think it will in some way sort itself out. If the city revives itself in a true sense: higher quality buildings, a "luxury mall" as Square One is being structured, improved landscaping and surroundings with better parks and recreational areas, but above all a with a Canadian perspective, then it will attract for a longer term those that can afford to stay not just for quick real estate flips (buying and selling), but those who would stay to buy good homes for their families.

I am seeing more of the latter, which to my observations looks less Asian (Chinese and Indian) and more white (possibly those attracted form nearby cities, including Toronto).

Let's hope so.


The Jubilee Garden is full of magnolia trees.


The C-Cafe, which is adjacent to the Jubilee Garden, has two industrious chefs, cooking up their appetizing meals on a daily basis. Here is one, barely visible, preparing a dish.


I keep thinking they're brothers. "Cousins?" I asked, but not even that. "Then they must be from the same Welsh town," I joked. They looked Welsh to me.


These are the groundsmen preparing the area for a new addition in the Jubilee Garden: The Hazel Tree, in honor of the former (last) Mayor Hazel McCallion. What an apt recognition. A tough nut to crack! I asked them what they were working on, and it seems they were told only a few days ago the nature of the project. "I got the scoop!" I joked.


And Andrew Wickens, Parks Manager for the City of Mississauga, was in the garden discussing with other officials some details ont he tree, and the surrounding magnolia trees. He was kind enough to stand for a photograph.

He will be responsible for the Hazel Tree.

Hazel McCallion as mayor of Mississauga, sitting in a council session

Hazel McCallion on Mississauga's growth:

Growing up:
Growth is good, says Mississauga’s Hazel McCallion - within limits

Full article at: Toronto Star, Mar 27 2013

Facing pressure under Ontario’s Places to Grow Act to house more of the GTA’s population boom, Mississauga Mayor Hazel McCallion is pushing back.

At city council Wednesday, McCallion said Mississauga has accepted the province’s mandated growth targets but will not accept decisions by the Ontario Municipal Board that allow developers to build beyond those targets. The spurt of highrise construction is hurting the city’s already overstretched infrastructure, she said.
“They can’t be playing around with our land use like they do,” McCallion said of the province and the OMB, which rules on municipal and planning disputes.

Council unanimously passed a motion asking that Ontario’s Planning Act be amended so developers cannot appeal city council decisions to the OMB, if the city’s official plan is in compliance with Ontario’s growth strategy. The strategy sets municipal density targets that aim to encourage cities to build up rather than out.

McCallion and other councillors said developers, seeing profits in building even higher, are simply going to the OMB whenever they want densities for projects increased. The OMB then uses the growth plan as the rationale for ruling in favour of the developers. The end result is often more lucrative for builders, but puts pressure on already overstretched municipal services.

For Mississauga’s motion to take effect, it would have to be endorsed by Queen’s Park.

Councillors cited a number of high-density projects in Mississauga over the past few years that residents and council, adhering to the city’s official plan, opposed. But developers eventually got their way at the OMB [Ontario Municipal Board], they said.

“I am really concerned about the increased densities … our (infrastructure) is not designed to take the climate change and the increased densities,” McCallion said.
She said the increased densities beyond what , Mar 27 2013has been planned will cost Peel Region “at least a billion dollars” to take care of the extra garbage alone.

About

New Outlook, Same Issues

This blog focused for a few years on Islam and Muslims in the West. I started it as a corollary to Camera Lucida, to exclusively write about these issues. I then stopped writing here, and focused all my work on Reclaiming Beauty. Now, I feel we need to revisit this site, to show the slow, progressive, change in our landscape, and of course our society.Please read on to observe .

All my posts on Islam are still filed by topic.

The Chinese in Ontario

I write in the side explanation of this blog (in one paragraph):

This blog focused for a few years on Islam and Muslims in the West. I then stopped writing here, and focused all my work on
Reclaiming Beauty. Now, I feel we need to revisit this site, to show the slow, progressive, change in our landscape, and of course our society.Please read on to observe with me my observations.

Now, immigration, and non-Western immigrants have entered the fabric of our society so much so that they can pick and chose what they want. They clearly benefit from the economic and "intellectual" freedoms and opportunities (e.g. they don't have to fear the "thought police" and other societal regulators from which they fled in their countries of origin, and can use the tremendous wealth these countries have built over the centuries), but now we begin to realize that they have no intention of leaving those countries behind.

Instead, they are forming their own pockets of societies, resembling as much as they can what they left behind, with language and culture as intact as possible, but within the open and welcoming arms of our Western lands.

Below are my first observations I'm posting here, although I have been posting on these issues both at Camera Lucida and Reclaiming Beauty to some extent.

Now I will dedicate this full blog to those issues.

We must know what we are up against.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------


I was sitting drinking my coffee and going through my laptop, as these two men came and sat down with a cup of coffee each. They were there at least 1/2 hour with the same cup of coffee, and talking loudly, with gesticulations, in Cantonese.

The whole cafe was overpowered by their noisy discussion.

At one point, I turned around and watched them, to see if it would have any effect.

The man in my view was a much younger man, and it was his older companion that was doing most of the talking. The younger man would periodically break out into girlish giggles. It was clear that there was some hieracichal protocol being kept, and strongly.

After a long 1/ hour, they eventually left, holding on to their by now empty (surely) cups).

Besides the alienating, disturbing presence, how can they feel comfortalbe sitting there with a $1:00 cup of coffee each (at least the Starbucks would have been $2:00) for a good half hour?

The lovely C-Cafe, envisioned and designed by Western Canadians, is now a place for Toronto's inhabitants to enjoy its atmosphere.

As this continues, I can imagine the C-Cafe shutting down. In fact, they have cut down on their menu, including the wine and beer list (the wine was from the Niagara wineries), and closing earlier to benefit the City Hall's employees, which are now beginning to look more and more like this Chinese couple.

I saw the older man upstairs as I asked for some information (on maps and guides) in the administration office.


He was standing by the Chinese woman's ledge. By the time I came closer to take a photograph, he had left. I tried to find out what this woman was doing, and I asked, carefully ("Can I not talk with her, over there? I am in a hurry!"), and found out that she was responsible for building permits for commercial businesses. It looks like another Chinese restaurant, or some kind of convenience store, where English communication will be difficult, and so most likely to serve Chinese clients.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I went back down, to walk through the City Hall, and to make it back out into the square, and was startled by these loud Chinese women, talking loudly and aggressively to each other.

I stopped, and just looked at them as they spoke, and then took out my camera, and took a photograph. I waited as they talked. One of them realized I was watching, and they silenced themselves. I went on my way.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------