U of T Back Campus Fields Project

Concept: 0 out of 5
Execution: To Be Determined
Yeah, but: My new website project, backcampus.blogspot.com

The Long Version: According to the University of Toronto, their "Downtown Toronto (St. George) campus blends historical architecture and inviting green spaces as a backdrop to a truly remarkable community." The lead photo is theirs, and it shows a neighbourhood awash in significant architecture and large green spaces. There's a big round one in the middle of the photo, which is used for ceremonies and frequently fenced off for rehabilitation, and there's the big square green space on the left side of the photo. That's Back Campus, but don't get too attached to it.

In anticipation of the Pan Am games, the University will be spending millions of dollars to dig up two grass turf playing fields and replace them with an artificial turf surface. Confusingly, and possibly in honour of George Orwell's legacy, the University invariably refers to this simply as "turfing", and not in the sense of 'turfed him off of the governing council'. To avoid the confusion of their replacing one kind of turf with another, I'll be calling the mowable surface "Grass" and the future material "Plastic." That seems fair.

The outline of the project is that two playing fields will be changed from grass to a plastic surface. The existing field is lined with trees on three sides, both young and old. There's a nice iron fence on the north end of the field and a rather unappealing black chain-link fence with a plastic dryer vent duct along the top – as protective padding, presumably – closing off much of the remaining perimeter, with the quarter facing the main campus left open as the only access. The existing grass does get a lot of traffic, and even as a community member I typically use the field with one eye on the frisbee and another looking out for ruts, puddles, and dips.

The replacement plan is to move the formal boundaries (and fence) almost to the very perimeter of the playing surface, keeping the existing trees and grass on the outside and installing plastic on the inside. The idea is that this will provide a hard-wearing surface that's suitable for international field hockey competition one moment and casual baseball games the next.

The University of Toronto, an institution renowned for promoting critical thinking, has published a great deal of material talking about what a great deal this is. Much of the financial cost will be paid by other people, community access will be retained, none of the existing trees will be harmed, no chemicals will be needed to maintain the surface, and it will be able to be used year-round. Their material doesn't contain one single downside; there's not even a slight shrug and an admission of 'well, yeah, that one little part might not be so great when it's all done.' It's lollypops and bonbons for everyone.

Naturally, others have stepped into the vacuum to provide a countering opinion. The unambiguously titled Keep Back Campus Green website contains a collection of their own articles as well as links to ones published elsewhere, both pro and con, regarding the project. The formal plans, organized opposition, and outside opinions provide a good diversity of material. I've read a lot of it, and I'm pretty sure that the "the truth is somewhere in the middle" folks have something on their side in this debate, but I don't think that it makes any difference.

The University does need a better playing surface; I'm willing to accept their assertion that grass is not up to the challenge. But the argument of necessity doesn't stop their plan and actions from being fundamentally and inherently evil. The University should step up, own it, and say, "we need this anyway". Or even better, "we need this anyway, and here are all the great things we'll do elsewhere in the campus to mitigate its effects."

The replacement of two grass playing fields by what is essentially a carpeted parking lot simply can't be morally neutral even if all of the other possible negatives of the project – damaging century-old Elm trees, removal of smaller trees on the border of the field, application of biocides to the playing surface, massive water use, restricted student and community access, among others – are avoided.

Is it plausible that paving over the large field that currently absorbs and slowly releases rain water to the surrounding trees somehow won't damage them? Instead of this natural system the University will be installing a large under-field cistern to slow the flow of storm water before it inundates the aging municipal network of combined sewers. That isn't nearly as good an answer to the problem at all.

Has any project of this scale worked out according to the best-case projections that are created to steer it through the planning and approvals stage? We're just one minor engineering requirement away from losing dozens of trees that line the perimeter; once ten million dollars are spent on a world-class competitive surface will the department of Kinesiology still want to leave it unlocked so that people who just happen to live in the area can toss a ball around on a saturday afternoon? I don't believe it for a second.

Less than two-thirds of a kilometre from Back Campus, or about a five minute walk, there's a large grass playing field. It's controlled by the U of T affiliated University of Toronto Schools (UTS) private high school, and it's kept locked and unavailable to the community when it's not being used for a few hours a day during the school year.

Immediately south of this playing field is what might be a hockey rink if it hadn't fallen into shameful disrepair, and it's also kept chained. The difference is that it's not being used by the school at all, and simply sits abandoned. Next to that rink are two of the most bedraggled tennis courts in the city, left open, but one features a chain-link net while the other is stripped bare and only used for the occasional kids ball-hockey scrimmage. If only there was a proper rink nearby that people could use…

Given Toronto's recent water infrastructure projects to deal with storm runoff, the reviving interest in Toronto's "Lost Rivers" – such as Taddle Creek, whose watershed this is – and mandated efforts to create green roofs to combat the urban heat island effect, even the best case scenario that the University proposes is exactly the wrong answer. Toronto's downtown core, of which the St. George campus is a major part, already suffers from a lack of public space, insufficient parkland and green space, and inadequate civil infrastructure to serve the demands we already have.

Regardless of the stated need for better athletic facilities, and the impending arrival of the Pan Am / Parapan Games in 2015, the University of Toronto's decision is a massive failure of innovation and leadership. This simply isn't the way we build cities any more, and the University of Toronto should be championing innovative solutions here just as much as they do in other areas. Taking such a regressive action in the heart of the most significant university campus in Toronto deserves to haunt their reputation for decades.


I am chronicling the University of Toronto's Back Campus Fields Project, the conversion of Back Campus from grass to plastic, on a dedicated website: backcampus.blogspot.com.

last updated 29 june 2013

Swiss Bianco Victorinox Carver

Concept: 2 out of 5
Execution: 5 out of 5
Yeah, but: Pick a theme and stick with it.

The Long Version: Swiss Army Knives are such paragons of multi-functional virtue that searching with Google for exact matches to "the swiss army knife of" produces over ten million results. Audio codecs, shovels, fighter jets, forensics, filmmaking, public health, portable grills, smartphones, snowmobiles, bank accounts, barn equipment, business agreements, workbenches, window treatments, tube amps, telecom equipment, essential oils, Linux, Listeria: if something has existed long enough for there to be a blog post about it, someone's called something The Swiss Army Knife Of it.

This makes June's SAK Of The Month, the Swiss Bianco special Victorinox Carver, especially perverse. Equipped with five tools in three layers, all it does is cut.

The 93mm Carver is essentially an Alox Harvester that has had its cap lifter swapped out for a second large blade. That gives it two identical large blades, one pivoting from each end, and a hooked small pruning blade. The middle layer houses the exceptional Victorinox wood saw, and the fifth tool is the in-line awl. While that's technically more of a poking tool than a cutting one, it's an excellent rough-duty blade, and I wouldn't want to mess with one in a dark alley.

The automatic question about the Carver is "why bother?" Why bother with a multi-tool that only does one thing, and why carry a knife the size of a three-layer 93mm Alox SAK when it has blades that open with nail-nicks and no pocket clip? Well, did I mention that it's a special with a limited (but unspecified) production run that was made with Copper-coloured Alox scales in addition to the unadorned-aluminum version?

I have too much invested in Beanie Babies to keep track of Swiss Army Knife resale values, but I suppose novelty value must count for a lot.

I'm an accumulator, not a collector, so even though I appreciate that it's an uncommon bit of cutlery my Carver is a working knife. The hooked pruning blade is excellent for breaking tape, although straight out of the box it verges on being too sharp and aggressive. Having a pair of large blades, while odd, does mean that the Carver can cover a lot of miles before needing to be resharpened. And the wood saw is simply unbeatable for any softer material its length can span. While I haven't used my Carver for this task yet, the SAK saw is my tool of choice for rough-cutting PVC or ABS plastic pipe as well as wood.

While the all-blades all-the-time approach of the Carver is amusing and thematically appropriate, it would have been nice to see a metal saw in place of the second main blade. That would be a first for this size, as far as I can tell, which makes this dream configuration highly improbable – but by extension, accomplishing this remarkable feat would create a very desirable knife if Swiss Bianco could pull it off. I know I'd buy one, for whatever that's worth.

About the only odd quirk of the Carver, aside from its existence, is that the second large blade sits higher in the handle when it's closed. This means it's an easier blade to open, and a more comfortable knife to hold when it's in use, so it's the one that I use for most tasks. I consider this a feature rather than a bug, since I always prefer to use one blade for the majority of the work, leaving the other freshly sharpened for critical tasks.

The Carver is an easy knife to carry. Its weight rides securely in a jeans' watch pocket, the smooth tool-free back makes it easy to draw, and the thickness of its third layer gives it a square profile that's comfortable to use. While the Carver is thinner than the Mechanic, and so falls within my range for pocket carry, it wouldn't look foolish in a belt pouch, either.

As a Swiss Bianco special, the Victorinox Carver is only available directly through the regional Swiss Bianco distributors, and not through Victorinox or other third-party retailers. I'm pleased to say that the Canadian dealer that I purchased from was helpful and easy to deal with, despite the lack of a traditional e-commerce website, and my Carver arrived promptly with reasonable shipping costs. I have no doubt that I'll be ordering from them again.

last updated 4 dec 2010

Joby Gorillapod Focus

Concept: 3 out of 5
Execution: 4 out of 5
Yeah, but: Third time.

The Long Version: The Focus is the third Gorillapod, and sixth Joby product, that I've bought. Obviously I like them, but I've managed to decommission both an SLR and SLR Zoom, so I decided that stepping up to the heavy-duty metal model was a sensible thing to do.

It's nice to know that the Focus can easily hold my D800, but I rarely use it – or any tripod – for cameras. Instead it's part of my audio kit, where it does an exceptional job of keeping my Sony PCM-D50 field recorder exactly where I want it to be. The various Joby Gorillapods are such an excellent tool to have for audio recording that I consider them a mandatory-extra, just like proper wind protection.

The Focus is offered with or without a ball head. I went for the Without version and installed a Manfrotto 484RC2 head, which is heavier and larger than the Joby "Ballhead-X", but keeps compatibility with my existing heads and plates. If I was using arca-swiss gear then the X-head would have been perfect. Or almost perfect, at least – the included plate is square, but only has mounting grooves along one direction, giving visual but not operational symmetry. That's one of those things that would bug me for the life of the product, which in this case would be a very long time indeed. And yes, I do hate USB ports as well, thanks for asking.

While hanging a camera from a chain-link fence might not provide a lot of stability for long exposures or multi-shot brackets, it's something that works very well for audio gear. My method is to feed the legs through the fence, hooking the leg joints across the wire, and then snug the top two legs inward to give a secure hold. Then I can walk away and leave the recorder to do its thing for ten or fifteen minutes unattended and have no worries about it coming loose or letting me down. I'm also quite happy to hang the Gorillapod from the tops of signs or wrap it around posts, knowing that it won't work its way loose or slide.

I've been amazed at the places where the Focus has been happy, such as perched on the narrow bottom of an I-beam girder that's part of a highway overpass. I do occasionally use a full-sized tripod or light stand to hold my recorder, but proximity is everything, and the Focus is hard to beat for unusual perspectives.

And there are plenty of times when carrying larger objects simply isn't an option, whether it's for matters of convenience, access, practicality, or departure speed. I'm able to carry the Focus inside my nondescript backpack, so it's the heavy-duty support that I'm most likely to have with me.

While part of me wishes that I was a minimalist, it's usually beaten into submission by the larger part that wants the best available option to handle the widest range of contingencies, and that's what the Gorillapod Focus is. It's far stronger than I need for my Sony D50, but it's ready to do camera-duty with my Nikon D800, and that makes me happy. While the Focus is too heavy to carry for no reason – the lighter Joby head would help here – it's an indispensable part of both my day recording kit and the only tripod that I would consider travelling with. It might not do everything, but it's the most flexible tripod I know.

last updated 6 june 2013