Phillips: Clear transportation plan works for Helsinki; why not here?
The last decade has not been kind to Ottawa's transportation infrastructure and public transit. This must change if the Official Plan's goal is to be achieved: to become the most livable mid-sized city in North America.
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Ottawa's Official Plan calls for densely populated 15-minute neighbourhoods linked by equally dense and integrated public transit and networks for safe walking and biking. The city's newly released draft Transportation Strategy is a key instrument to realize this goal. To work, however, it must establish clearly defined measurable outcomes.
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Outcomes state desired changes in the quality of life for people, environmental conditions and economic vitality. Key indicators inform better decisions by staff, management and council.
Ongoing tracking of progress allows staff to adapt quickly and cost effectively. Can anyone see 10 years ahead? Does any organization always get things right the first time? No. So the city must constantly assess implementation and innovate in real time.
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To understand what is required, Helsinki, a city much like Ottawa in size and values, offers a results-oriented model with its Transportation Strategy. At the heart of Helsinki's strategy lies the Transport System Plan for the City Centre. It demonstrates the city's commitment to continually monitor and assess whether an adaptive, efficient and sustainable urban mobility network is emerging from its strategy.
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Helsinki is internationally recognized for its innovative urban development and forward-thinking public transport solutions. The 2023 Urban Mobility Readiness Index — produced by the Oliver Wyman Forum in partnership with the University of California — evaluated 67 international cities on how well their transit systems and mobility infrastructures are prepared to meet future challenges. Helsinki topped the ranking, based on its current transit but also its strategic foresight to adapt new technologies such as autonomous transport and smart infrastructure.
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In response to rapid urban growth and escalating demands on city infrastructure, Helsinki prioritized clear targets and constantly reassesses them. Rather than implementing static measures, the city sets ambitious performance goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) to capture progress. Helsinki constantly refines its strategies based on real-time data.
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The process began with a well-articulated vision: to transform the city centre into a hub where sustainable mobility is the norm, and where walking, cycling and public transit become the preferred modes of travel over private cars. This vision is underpinned by specific, quantifiable targets such as reducing travel time, lowering carbon emissions, reducing accidents and injury and increasing public transport usage. By defining KPIs from the outset, the plan ensures that every initiative is measurable and aligned with the overall vision.
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A continuous cycle of action, evaluation and adjustment integrates feedback loops through mechanisms such as citizen juries and digital data analysis. Public opinion is actively sought, supporting real-time refinements. When a specific measure falls short, the strategy component is recalibrated, allowing for flexible, data-informed decision-making. Each desired outcome such as 'improved urban air quality' is matched with a metric, in this case 'reduced concentrations of carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter' that is monitored through data tools.
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Ottawa Citizen
12-05-2025
- Ottawa Citizen
Phillips: Clear transportation plan works for Helsinki; why not here?
The last decade has not been kind to Ottawa's transportation infrastructure and public transit. This must change if the Official Plan's goal is to be achieved: to become the most livable mid-sized city in North America. Article content Article content Ottawa's Official Plan calls for densely populated 15-minute neighbourhoods linked by equally dense and integrated public transit and networks for safe walking and biking. The city's newly released draft Transportation Strategy is a key instrument to realize this goal. To work, however, it must establish clearly defined measurable outcomes. Article content Article content Outcomes state desired changes in the quality of life for people, environmental conditions and economic vitality. Key indicators inform better decisions by staff, management and council. Ongoing tracking of progress allows staff to adapt quickly and cost effectively. Can anyone see 10 years ahead? Does any organization always get things right the first time? No. So the city must constantly assess implementation and innovate in real time. Article content To understand what is required, Helsinki, a city much like Ottawa in size and values, offers a results-oriented model with its Transportation Strategy. At the heart of Helsinki's strategy lies the Transport System Plan for the City Centre. It demonstrates the city's commitment to continually monitor and assess whether an adaptive, efficient and sustainable urban mobility network is emerging from its strategy. Article content Helsinki is internationally recognized for its innovative urban development and forward-thinking public transport solutions. The 2023 Urban Mobility Readiness Index — produced by the Oliver Wyman Forum in partnership with the University of California — evaluated 67 international cities on how well their transit systems and mobility infrastructures are prepared to meet future challenges. Helsinki topped the ranking, based on its current transit but also its strategic foresight to adapt new technologies such as autonomous transport and smart infrastructure. Article content Article content Article content In response to rapid urban growth and escalating demands on city infrastructure, Helsinki prioritized clear targets and constantly reassesses them. Rather than implementing static measures, the city sets ambitious performance goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) to capture progress. Helsinki constantly refines its strategies based on real-time data. Article content The process began with a well-articulated vision: to transform the city centre into a hub where sustainable mobility is the norm, and where walking, cycling and public transit become the preferred modes of travel over private cars. This vision is underpinned by specific, quantifiable targets such as reducing travel time, lowering carbon emissions, reducing accidents and injury and increasing public transport usage. By defining KPIs from the outset, the plan ensures that every initiative is measurable and aligned with the overall vision. Article content A continuous cycle of action, evaluation and adjustment integrates feedback loops through mechanisms such as citizen juries and digital data analysis. Public opinion is actively sought, supporting real-time refinements. When a specific measure falls short, the strategy component is recalibrated, allowing for flexible, data-informed decision-making. Each desired outcome such as 'improved urban air quality' is matched with a metric, in this case 'reduced concentrations of carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter' that is monitored through data tools.
Winnipeg Free Press
10-05-2025
- Winnipeg Free Press
Pope Leo XIV's Creole heritage highlights complex history of racism and the church in America
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The new pope's French-sounding last name, Prevost, intrigued Jari Honora, a New Orleans genealogist, who began digging in the archives and discovered the pope had deep roots in the Big Easy. All four of Pope Leo XIV's maternal great-grandparents were 'free people of color' in Louisiana based on 19th-century census records, Honora found. As part of the melting pot of French, Spanish, African and Native American cultures in Louisiana, the pope's maternal ancestors would be considered Creole. 'It was special for me because I share that heritage and so do many of my friends who are Catholic here in New Orleans,' said Honora, a historian at the Historic New Orleans Collection, a museum in the French Quarter. Honora and others in the Black and Creole Catholic communities say the election of Leo — a Chicago native who spent over two decades in Peru including eight years as a bishop — is just what the Catholic Church needs to unify the global church and elevate the profile of Black Catholics whose history and contributions have long been overlooked. A rich cultural identity Leo, who has not spoken openly about his roots, may also have an ancestral connection to Haiti. His grandfather, Joseph Norval Martinez, may have been born there, though historical records are conflicting, Honora said. However, Martinez's parents — the pope's great-grandparents — were living in Louisiana since at least the 1850s, he said. Andrew Jolivette, a professor of sociology and Afro-Indigenous Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, did his own digging and found the pope's ancestry reflected the unique cultural tapestry of southern Louisiana. The pope's Creole roots draw attention to the complex, nuanced identities Creoles hold, he said. 'There is Cuban ancestry on his maternal side. So, there are a number of firsts here and it's a matter of pride for Creoles,' said Jolivette, whose family is Creole from Louisiana. 'So, I also view him as a Latino pope because the influence of Latino heritage cannot be ignored in the conversation about Creoles.' Most Creoles are Catholic and historically it was their faith that kept families together as they migrated to larger cities like Chicago, Jolivette said. The former Cardinal Robert Prevost's maternal grandparents — identified as 'mulatto' and 'Black' in historical records — were married in New Orleans in 1887 and lived in the city's historically Creole Seventh Ward. In the coming years, the Jim Crow regime of racial segregation rolled back post-Civil War reforms and 'just about every aspect of their lives was circumscribed by race, extending even to the church,' Honora said. An American story of migration The pope's grandparents migrated to Chicago around 1910, like many other African American families leaving the racial oppression of the Deep South, and 'passed for white,' Honora said. The pope's mother, Mildred Agnes Martinez, who was born in Chicago, is identified as 'white' on her 1912 birth certificate, Honora said. 'You can understand, people may have intentionally sought to obfuscate their heritage,' he said. 'Always life has been precarious for people of color in the South, New Orleans included.' The pope's grandparents' old home in New Orleans was later destroyed, along with hundreds of others, to build a highway overpass that 'eviscerated' a stretch of the largely Black neighborhood in the 1960s, Honora said. A former New Orleans mayor, Marc Morial, called the pope's family's history, 'an American story of how people escape American racism and American bigotry.' As a Catholic with Creole heritage who grew up near the neighborhood where the pope's grandparents lived, Morial said he has contradictory feelings. While he's proud of the pope's connection to his city, Morial said the new pontiff's maternal family's shifting racial identity highlights 'the idea that in America people had to escape their authenticity to be able to survive.' African American influence on Catholicism The Rev. Ajani Gibson, who heads the predominantly Black congregation at St. Peter Claver Church in New Orleans, said he sees the pope's roots as a reaffirmation of African American influence on Catholicism in his city. 'I think a lot of people take for granted that the things that people love most about New Orleans are both Black and Catholic,' said Gibson, referring to rich cultural contributions to Mardi Gras, New Orleans' jazz tradition and brass band parades known as second-lines. He hoped the pope's Creole heritage — emerging from the city's 'cultural gumbo pot' — signals an inclusive outlook for the Catholic Church. 'I want the continued elevation of the universal nature of the church — that the church looks, feels, sounds like everybody,' Gibson said. 'We all have a place and we come and bring who we are, completely and totally, as gifts to the church.' Shannen Dee Williams, a history professor at the University of Dayton, said she hopes that Leo's 'genealogical roots and historic papacy will underscore that all roads in American Catholicism, in North, South and Central America, lead back to the church's foundational roots in its mostly unacknowledged and unreconciled histories of Catholic colonialism, slavery and segregation.' 'There have always been two trans-Atlantic stories of American Catholicism; one that begins with Europeans and another one that begins with Africans and African-descended people, free and enslaved, living in Europe and Africa in the 16th century,' she said. 'Just as Black history is American history, (Leo's) story also reminds us that Black history is, and always has been, Catholic history, including in the United States.' Hope for the future Kim R. Harris, associate professor of African American Religious Thought and Practice at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, said the pope's genealogy got her thinking about the seven African American Catholics on the path to sainthood who have been recognized by the National Black Catholic Congress, but haven't yet been canonized. Harris highlighted Pierre Toussaint, a philanthropist born in Haiti as a slave who became a New York City entrepreneur and was declared 'Venerable' by Pope John Paul II in 1997. 'The excitement I have in this moment probably has to do with the hope that this pope's election will help move this canonization process along,' Harris said. While it's not known how Leo identifies himself racially, his roots bring a sense of hope to African American Catholics, she said. 'When I think about a person who brings so much of the history of this country in his bones, I really hope it brings to light who we are as Americans, and who we are as people of the diaspora,' she said. 'It brings a whole new perspective and widens the vision of who we all are.' Reynold Verret, president of Xavier University of Louisiana in New Orleans, the only historically Black Catholic university, said he was 'a little surprised' about the pope's heritage. 'It's a joyful connection,' he said. 'It is an affirmation that the Catholic Church is truly universal and that (Black) Catholics remained faithful regardless of a church that was human and imperfect. It also shows us that the church transcends national borders.' ___ Winnipeg Jets Game Days On Winnipeg Jets game days, hockey writers Mike McIntyre and Ken Wiebe send news, notes and quotes from the morning skate, as well as injury updates and lineup decisions. Arrives a few hours prior to puck drop. Bharath reported from Los Angeles. ___ Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. ___ Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP's collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
CBC
04-03-2025
- CBC
Renowned Saskatchewan sculptor Victor Cicansky dies at 90
Acclaimed Saskatchewan artist Victor Cicansky, famed for his sculptures of everyday garden produce including canned vegetables and ceramic outhouses, has died. He was 90. Cicansky was born in Regina in 1935 to Romanian parents and spent his early years learning to garden. That passion for the garden became his life's work, with Cicansky creating colourful glazed clay sculptures of the fruits and vegetables he grew. "He was special. Right from the get go I thought this guy is amazing," said Regina artist Wilf Perreault, himself a nationally acclaimed artist most famous for his paintings of back alleys. Cicansky's early career was spent teaching elementary and high school. During those years Cicansky enrolled in a pottery class, which led him to a ceramic residency at the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Maine and then to the University of California, where he received a master's in fine arts, according to the Canadian Encyclopedia. Upon returning to Canada, Cicansky taught at the Banff School of Fine Arts, the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and the University of Regina. It was at a U of R lecture that Perreault first met Cicansky, a meeting that developed into a lifelong friendship that also included renowned Regina sculptor Joe Fafard, who died in 2019. "I think the three of us were definitely influencing each other," Perreault said. Cicansky elevated his humble subjects — including vegetables, outhouses and Volkswagens — with his talent and sense of humour, Perreault said. "It was the way he played with it and the glazes he put on those pieces of ceramic. It went beyond what it was," Perreault said. "It was all playful and serious at the same time." Joe Fafard's daughter Gina Fafard, who owns Slate Fine Art Gallery in Regina and represents Cicansky's work, said her memories of Cicansky go back to her early childhood. "Very joyful. You could tell the energy and love that he put into his work was who he was," Fafard said. Cicansky achieved international acclaim during his life. He received the Saskatchewan Order of Merit in 1997, was made a member of the Order of Canada in 2009 and was awarded the Saskatchewan Lieutenant-Governor's Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts in 2012. "Vic was just one of the icons of the Prairies artists. He was a huge part of our community and I know an inspiration to many of the artists coming up," Fafard said.
