The Globe and Mail's Oliver Moore reports on Metrolinx's announcement that it is searching for a new transit car maker to replace Bombardier.

Metrolinx has opened talks with another transit builder as it pushes for a quick resolution to its legal showdown with Bombardier Inc. over a $770-million light-rail vehicle order for Toronto ( Read more... )

• blogTO notes a threat to some of Liberty Village's historic buildings through development.
• Centauri Dreams looks at planetary formation around close binary SDSS 1557, which includes a white dwarf.
• False Steps' Paul Drye announces a new book project, They Played the Game, which looks at how different baseball players overlooked in our history might ( Read more... )

The strength of discount retailers like Giant Tiger and Dollarama, as described by the CBC's Dianne Buckner, reflects underlying weaknesses in the Canadian economy including falling wages.

Whenever Anna Maria Afable travels from British Columbia to visit her friends in Ontario, she makes a point to stop in at a Giant Tiger store ( Read more... )

CBC News' Kate McGillivray wrote about the risk of high rents driving young pepe out of Toronto.

Young people across the income spectrum who would like to build lives in Toronto are choosing to leave rather than pay the city's ever-increasing rents ( Read more... )

NOW Toronto's Susan G. Cole notes how independent bookstores in Toronto are upset by a grant of money by the Toronto municipal government to a literary festival.

A grant from the Toronto Arts Council to the International Festival of Authors, bestowed last fall, has outraged programmers for the city’s independent bookstores ( Read more... )

• Language Hat reports on the Wenzhounese of Italy.
• Language Log writes about the tones of Cantonese.
• Lawyers, Guns and Money writes about the costs of law school. (They are significant, and escalating hugely.)
• Marginal Revolution reports on the problems facing the Brazilian pension system, perhaps overgenerous for a relatively poor country facing rapid ( Read more... )

Doug Alexander and Katia Dmitrieva write for Bloomberg about the statement by the Royal Bank of Canada's chief executive officer that Toronto's housing market needs to be slowed down like Vancouver's

Toronto may require measures to cool its red-hot housing market similar to moves taken in Vancouver if interest rates don’t increase, said Royal Bank ( Read more... )

The Globe and Mail's Alex Bozikovic really quite likes the proposed redevelopment of the area of Honest Ed's and Mirvish Village.

Mirvish Village is dead. Long live Mirvish Village. In the area near Honest Ed’s this week, workers had put up fences around a string of Victorian houses on Markham Street, preparing to gut them, while creatives ( Read more... )

blogTO's Derek Flack notes that 205 Yonge Street has been put up on the market for the initial asking price of $C 1.

One of Toronto's most beautiful buildings has hit the market for the grand sum of $1. Just don't expect the former Bank of Toronto at 205 Yonge St., to sell for anywhere near that price ( Read more... )

The Toronto Star's Tess Kalinowski reports on one new pitfall of the Toronto real estate market.

It’s not enough that Toronto area home-buyers are facing competition so fierce that list prices have become virtually meaningless and bully or pre-emptive offers are increasingly the norm ( Read more... )