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Edmonton Journal
6 days ago
- Business
- Edmonton Journal
Stadium Yards connects history with community
It's being described as the next best thing to living downtown. Article content 'You're not downtown but you're downtown adjacent, and you're downtown accessible — because of the LRT you can be immediately downtown,' said Russell Dauk, the Rohit Group of Companies' executive vice-president, income producing properties, about its Stadium Yards development, which is nearly two-thirds complete. Article content Article content The Cromdale neighbourhood, east of the city's downtown core, hosts what Rohit calls a transformative, transit-oriented urban village. The seven-acre site, adjacent to Commonwealth Stadium, is also a flagship infill redevelopment, according to Dauk, and is designed to be a walkable, inclusive and vibrant community. Article content When Stadium Yards' three phases are finished — the design stage of the third and final phase is set to begin this summer and plans are tentatively to break ground next year — the neighbourhood will be home to more than 1,000 residential units and possibly even as high as 1,400 units. That will mean some 2,000 people will be calling it home, potentially boosting the area's population numbers into the 5,000-person range. Article content Article content Toggle full screen modePrevious Gallery Image Next Gallery ImageToggle gallery captions Article content Article content 'The launch of Lewis Block marks a major milestone in the evolution of Stadium Yards — a bold, connected community in the heart of Edmonton,' said Dauk. 'We're especially proud to honour Joseph Lewis through The Steersman sculpture, celebrating a legacy of courage, resilience and the values that continue to guide this development and the city around it.' Article content The sculpture, the frame of a striking, red, 21-foot-long canoe with a black steel silhouette of Joseph Lewis, titled The Steersman, is designed to portray symbols of strength, freedom and perseverance — values that Lewis embodied long before the abolition of slavery, officials said. Article content Article content Lewis is one of Edmonton's earliest documented Black fur traders and was a skilled steersman with the Hudson's Bay Company in the early 1800s. He is believed to have lived as a free Black man decades before slavery was abolished. Article content 'When I heard the story of Joseph Lewis being the first Black fur trader here in the city and making his way up to being a steersman, which is a prestigious position on the boat … I just knew in my mind what I wanted to see here,' said local artist and sculptor Slavo Cech, commissioned by the Rohit Group to create the art installation. Article content Positioned so the open canoe lets viewers see the Lewis Block buildings behind it, and even a glimpse of Commonwealth Stadium, Cech added that the viewer's eye will add in whatever they feel should be there, perhaps even the water the canoe would be moving on. Article content The Lewis Block Article content The Lewis Block was close to completion as The Steersman was unveiled; complete enough for its first tenants to move in.
Boston Globe
27-06-2025
- General
- Boston Globe
Runestone that may be North America's oldest turns up in a Canadian forest
The runestone was found on private property in 2015, after the trees' collapse exposed it again to the elements of Ontario. The carvings quickly raised the specter of Vikings — there is only one confirmed Viking settlement in North America, in Newfoundland — but investigation soon knocked that idea down. Nor was the stone a forgery, researchers said, like the Kensington Runestone of Minnesota, which scholars found to be a 19th-century hoax. The Ontario runestone is 'a remarkable find,' said Kristel Zilmer, a runologist at the University of Oslo who was not involved in the project. The stone, she said, 'shows how such knowledge sometimes traveled with people, occasionally leaving behind finds like this one in rather unexpected places.' Advertisement Ryan Primrose, the archaeologist called to the site, near the town of Wawa, was among the surprised. 'I had never expected to encounter a runestone during my career,' he said. He soon reached Henrik Williams, a runologist and professor at Uppsala University in Sweden, who spent hours under a tarp studying the runes in a cold October rain. 'It was a drizzly day — even for a Swede,' Williams said. Advertisement The runes puzzled him at first, so he searched online for some of the words that he couldn't make sense of. He finally landed on a book he had seen before but never much considered: a runic guide published in 1611 by Johannes Bureus, who thought Swedes should use runes. ('I agree with him,' Williams said, 'but that ship has sailed.') He then pieced together the script, finding that it lined up with a Swedish and Protestant version of the Lord's Prayer. As for the boat? 'We're still working on it,' Primrose said. The carving was likely to have taken several weeks, and a Swede was probably responsible, Williams said. 'I don't think anybody else would have taken it upon themselves and reproduced it with such exactness,' he said. But although this gave the researchers a time frame — after 1611 — they have found no artifacts to provide a clearer date or purpose for the carving. The trees that fell were about 80 years old, Williams said, so the carving was most likely made at least a century ago. 'How much further back you go, I have no idea,' he said. The discovery puts the runestone among a handful found in Canada and the United States; the oldest to be dated with confidence is from the 1880s. Most 'do not pretend to be old at all,' Williams said, and a few are mysteries — their runes obscure and the purposes unknown. The one in Ontario 'could very well be the oldest one yet,' he said. 'I think it probably is.' In Canada, the researchers scoured regional archives, finding that at least a handful of Swedes were among those employed by the Hudson's Bay Company on Lake Superior in the 1800s, said Johanna Rowe, the local historian. Advertisement Primrose said the stone may have been carved as a personal act of devotion, or to be a point of congregation. 'It still remains a mystery,' he said. 'Most people don't realize what's in their own backyard unless they look,' Rowe said. 'Every community should do a little digging.' Shannon Lewis-Simpson, an archaeologist at Memorial University in Newfoundland who was not involved in the research, said the team was 'probably right' that a 19th-century Swede had made the carving. 'There's a lot of long winter nights up there,' she said. 'Why not carve up a runestone with the Lord's Prayer? But why cover it up with dirt afterward? Humans are strange, and that's why archaeology is fascinating.' The researchers did not immediately share news of the discovery, in part because they had to work out terms with the property's owner. Primrose hopes the site will eventually be open to visitors, but the team has not disclosed the owner's identity or the stone's exact location. Even Wawa's mayor, Melanie Pilon, found out about the stone only a few years ago. 'It was definitely on a need-to-know basis,' she said. When she visited, she said, she felt 'an aura about the site,' calling it 'magnificent.' Primrose said that the researchers now hoped the public could offer more information. 'We invite anyone to please reach out if they have it, especially historical records,' he said. Lewis-Simpson commended the researchers for their caution, noting that many people might jump to conclusions about a newly found runestone. 'If anyone turns up anything that's slightly runic everyone thinks it must be 'lost Vikings,'' she said. Advertisement This article originally appeared in
Hamilton Spectator
23-06-2025
- Business
- Hamilton Spectator
Court approves sale of three Hudson's Bay leases to billionaire mall owner Weihong Liu
An Ontario court approved the sale of three Hudson's Bay Company store leases to billionaire B.C. mall owner Weihong Liu Monday, but lawyers for other landlords whose leases she's also bidding on blasted a 'very troubled' process and lack of information. Ontario Superior Court judge Peter J. Osborne approved the sale of three leases for stores in malls Liu already owns. Hudson's Bay secured approval from the Superior Court of Justice for a $30-million deal with Liu is seeking to buy 28 leases from the insolvent department store chain. Landlords for at least 23 of the other 25 have objected to her purchase plans, according to documents filed with the court last week. Monday, a lawyer for mall owner Cadillac Fairview criticized the sale process. 'The landlords are all uncomfortable with the lack of information,' said David Bish, a partner at Torys law firm. 'The process has been very troubled.' D.J. Miller, a partner at Thornton Grout Finnegan, acting for Oxford Properties said 'there are many troubling aspects about the lack of information.' A lawyer for Liu said she was helping put money in the pockets of HBC's creditors, as well as putting forward a bold new retail vision. 'She is contributing millions of dollars of real value to the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act process,' said David Ward, a lawyer representing Liu. 'She is betting on herself.' As he spoke, Liu and an entourage of her staff looked on from the gallery. Earlier that morning, she arrived clad in a stylish black blazer and high heel boots, carrying a Louis Vuitton purse. She posed for photos beside the court coat of arms and told media she was planning to move to Toronto. The sale of some Hudson's Bay leases comes after the storied department store filed for creditor protection in March, a few months shy of its 355th birthday. In the months after, it looked for a buyer who could keep some semblance of the retailer alive, but the search was fruitless. By June 1, all 80 Bays and 16 stores run under the Saks brands closed, putting their leases up for grabs. A dozen bidders made offers on a collective 39 properties. Liu, who made her money in China's real estate market, wound up winning the leases at three malls she runs because her bid had a superior value and terms, the Bay has said. Anyone who made an offer for leases had to make a deposit of 10 per cent of their estimated purchase price. Court documents show Liu made a deposit of $9.4 million, in addition to $6 million for the three approved leases, which would equate to a purchase price of $100 million for 28 leases. 'That is not really a business plan, that is a full-circle investment,' Liu's lawyer Ward said in recommending the court accept the three-lease deal. The remaining 25 leases are in Alberta, B.C. and Ontario properties she doesn't own. The Bay has yet to seek court approval for the arrangement, but landlords for the spaces are overwhelmingly opposed to her moving in. In an interview with the Star's Estella Ren last week, Liu claimed that she has faced 'discrimination' and 'rude treatment' while seeking landlord consent for the leases she hopes to acquire. B.C. billionaire Weihong Liu has revealed new details about her plan to assume more than two Liu said she met with five or six landlords in early June, and most were friendly — but one representative from a major Toronto landlord whom she refused to name was 'extremely rude' and 'stormed out' after just five or six minutes, making it clear he did not support Liu's proposal. The Star was not able to independently verify this claim. 'I was treated unfairly and rudely — you could even call it outright discrimination,' Liu said. 'They told me I had no experience and no track record.' She pushed back on that view, arguing that even Hudson's Bay, despite being founded in 1670 and conducting business for more than 300 years, still ended up shutting down. What truly matters, she said, is understanding consumers. With files from Estella Ren and The Canadian Press
Yahoo
20-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Archaeologists Found a Slab in the Middle of Nowhere—With the Lord's Prayer Carved in It
Here's what you'll learn when you read this story: A rock carving discovered in the Ontario backcountry started a search for the meaning and history of the site in 2019. The carving features what experts now believe to be an 1800s runic interpretation of the Christian Lord's Prayer. The find may be traceable to an employee of the Hudson's Bay Company. In 2018, the toppling of a tree near the township of Wawa, Ontario, revealed a rectangular piece of bedrock (about four feet by nearly five feet) etched with 225 symbols alongside a depiction of a Viking longboat. Eventually, a local historian came across the odd finding—now known as the Wawa Runestone—and reported the find to the Ontario Centre for Archaeological Education (OCARE). You can see the stone here. The team at OCARE, led by archaeologist Ryan Primrose, decided to keep the stone concealed from the public until they could gather more details about its origin. And now, they're finally talking about the object for the first time. 'Well, it's certainly among the least expected finds that I think I've encountered during my career,' Primrose told the CBC. 'It's absolutely fascinating.' Initial research, according to an OCARE statement, showed that the carving was likely written in Futhark characters—a runic script once used in northern Europe and Scandinavia. This led some experts to think that the carving must have been completed as far back as the Viking era, especially considering the second carving of a boat (which resembles a Viking longboat, contains about 16 occupants, and is flanked by several crosses or stars) found adjacent to the script. Primrose, it turns out, was wise to hold off on publicly announcing it as a Viking-era find. In 2019, he brought in Sweden-based expert Henrik Williams, professor emeritus at Uppsala University, to consult on the site. Williams confirmed that the inscription was runic, but disagreed that it was Viking in nature. Williams said that the runic writing was a version of the Christian Lord's Prayer, which had been carved in Futhark. 'The text conforms to the Swedish version of the Lord's Prayer used from the 16th century and is written using a variation of the runic translation developed by Johannes Bureus in the early 17th century.' OCARE stated. 'It must have taken days and days of work,' Williams told the CBC. 'They are really deeply carved into the rock. Someone must have spent a couple of weeks carving this thing.' While tough to pinpoint, OCARE researchers believe the inscription itself dates to the 1800s. Williams believes the creator of the carving had to come from Sweden, and as Primrose researched the history of the area, he found that the Hudson's Bay Company hired Swedes in the 1800s to work at remote Canadian wilderness trading posts—including the Michipicoten post, located not far from the Wawa carving, the CBC reported. Whether this was a popular religious site—the inscription was found under soil after the tree fell, and no other artifacts have been found nearby—or the work of a single person toiling alone is still a question. But with this announcement, many other questions have been answered. 'Canada now has a total of 11 objects claimed to bear runes but only five in fact do so, and three of those constitute modern commemorative inscriptions,' Williams wrote in an OCARE report. 'The Wawa stone is Ontario's first with actual runes, the longest runic inscription of any on the North American continent […] and the only one in the world reproducing the Lord's Prayer.' You Might Also Like The Do's and Don'ts of Using Painter's Tape The Best Portable BBQ Grills for Cooking Anywhere Can a Smart Watch Prolong Your Life?
West Australian
19-06-2025
- Business
- West Australian
Raymond Da Silva Rosa: Universities win support of the public by pursuing shared goals
Australian universities are often accused of being run like for-profit corporations — a charge that is only half-accurate. US economist Gordon Winston aptly described universities as part-car-dealer and part-Church, devoted partly to commerce and partly to ideals that lend it support from stakeholders. An effective combination of commerce and ideal principles is what enables universities to survive for centuries. The pure pursuit of for-profit commerce is too risky in the long run. During lean periods, it is the support of stakeholders who share the university's vision that allows it to survive. Two examples: the once great for-profit Hudson's Bay Company, founded in 1670, filed for bankruptcy in March 2025; in contrast, Harvard University, founded a few decades earlier in 1636, is still going strong, fortified by a US$53 billion ($81.6 billion) endowment made possible via generous donations from stakeholders who support its ideals. UWA's founding in 1911 shows the importance of shared vision. It wasn't the opportunity to make a profit that prompted the establishment of WA's first university. Rather, it was that the great and the good of Western Australia, including Sir John Winthrop Hackett, then-editor and owner of The West Australian, who wanted a university that reflected the State's ambitions. These ambitions are what prompted Thomas Walker, the-then WA minister for education, to urge his fellow inaugural UWA Senate members in 1912 to '… do things on a scale worthy of our great destiny!' Hackett provided essential funding that seeded UWA's endowment. Given their hybrid nature, an ongoing challenge for universities is knowing when to act like a charity and when to behave like a for-profit entity, with considerations such as efficiency in operations taking precedence over ideals. It's easy to get the balance wrong, particularly when the impact of misjudgment doesn't show up in the near-term. Research is one area where universities are at risk of imitating for-profit entities too closely. Managing research activity by using a measure such as the number of publications produced over a set period may appear reasonable to establish accountability and spur performance, but is misguided when pursuing high-impact research. To be clear, the principle 'publish or perish' has long applied to academics in universities. Historian Steven Turner says that as far back as 1737, a report that the professors at the university in Frankfurt-an-der-Oder were unknown because they published nothing resulted in a command from Berlin to the academics to begin writing. The issue is evaluating quality. University ranking systems, based mostly on research published in prestigious 'hard-to-get-into' academic journals, have made it easy for university managers to use these publications as a measure of productivity and quality. The problem is that prestigious journals favour conventional wisdom when accepting papers. Mostly, it's OK because conventional wisdom is mostly right. The drawback is that radical ideas, which happen to be correct, risk getting rejected. Famously, UWA's Barry Marshall and Robin Warren took years to convince a sceptical medical establishment that gastritis and peptic ulcers were due to stomach infection caused by the bacterium helicobacter pylori. Fortunately, they persisted and weren't sacked for research underperformance in the interim. It's straightforward to improve a chronically unproductive research team by managing them via the numbers. It's much harder to develop a high-performance culture that identifies talented people and promotes risk-taking and persistence. In such an environment, breakthroughs won't appear on schedule. There will be many failures and an occasional large triumph. Fine judgment, not numbers, is the key to high performance research management. Universities win the support of the public not by wholesale adoption of the methods of industry but by pursuing shared goals. Universities can't be held to account too closely and will often disappoint, but in the long run it is vital they win the trust and affection of the community that supports them. It's tricky work. Winthrop Professor Raymond Da Silva Rosa is an expert in finance from The University of Western Australia's Business School
