The closure of a downtown bank branch is not good news.

The reason TD Canada Trust is closing the branch — as we’re told, by the local press, by downtown spokespeople, even by random passersby when I visited the branch recently — is “homeless people.”

And perhaps this is the reason or is one of the main reasons the branch is being closed.

What we know for sure is that the branch underperformed and no longer justified its existence. This is concerning, especially after recent substantial public investments in our downtown’s revitalization. 

But questions arise. If we apply a little critical thinking, we might ask for instance:

● Why this branch when there is within a ten minute walk a Royal Bank branch, an RBC and a Scotiabank, and a Coastal Community Credit Union branch?

● Is the TD Canada Trust branch different from these others in any way?

● If the homeless population downtown is the reason for the closure of this branch, should we expect to soon see the closure of the others?

● And if there were no homeless people downtown, would this branch have succeeded?

● Would a different use here succeed where this one has failed?

The Port Place redevelopment about 15 years ago was controversial, the challenge was to transform a suburban style shopping centre at the heart of our downtown into a more integrated and pedestrian friendly environment. The outcome, you’d have to say, was not entirely successful.

Downtown retailers know that mutually advantageous foot traffic and “cheek by jowl” proximity are essential to the success of their businesses.  Access on foot to this corner site, isolated as it is from everything around it, is poor.

The Esplanade - Terminal intersection is, I can attest, at least as hostile to pedestrians now as it was before the Provincial engineers had their way with it. Access from Port Place is across an unwelcoming expanse of asphalt.

And recent improvements to connect the site with Commercial Street’s liveliness have apparently done little to improve the commercial performance of the branch.

(An inquiry might also touch on the bank’s recent money-laundering  scandals. Didn’t do the brand a lot of good.)

It’s hard not to suspect that the cause of the branch’s failure isn’t homeless people or even “disorder” (all the best downtown’s have some of that) but a failure of urban design, the failure of suburban-shopping-mall-thinking brought to the needs of the diverse, dynamic urban core.

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Out My Window

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“When I was in hospital in Rome, having the experience of being a paralyzed man nearly dead, my only excitement was in the thought that I could write some of this shit down. That was all I had left.” —Hanif Kureishi

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— The Paris Review (@parisreview.bsky.social) May 23, 2026 at 8:02 AM

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‘I’ve learned first-hand how evil is tolerated’: Colm Tóibín on living in the US under Trump @theguardian.com ​ www.theguardian.com/books/2026/m...

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— Frank Murphy 🇺🇦 🇮🇪 🇨🇦 (@thesidewalkballet.bsky.social) May 2, 2026 at 5:54 PM

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Now streaming. Knowledge Network

https://www.knowledge.ca/

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Epigraph, The Monk Of Mokha, Dave Eggers. 

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@planetmoney.bsky.social has a long history of entering different industries to better understand real-world economics — from buying crude oil to now diving deep into publishing with its first-ever book: “Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces that Shape Your Life.” Read more at @nytimes.com

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— NPRExtra (@nprextra.bsky.social) April 14, 2026 at 12:03 PM

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Mokhtar Alkhanshali is both humble before the history he inhabits and irreverent about his place in it. But his story is an old-fashioned one. It's chiefly about the American Dream, very much alive and very much under threat. His story is also about coffee, and about how he tried to improve coffee production in Yemen, where coffee cultivation was first undertaken five hundred years ago. 

It's also about the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco, a valley of desperation in a city of towering wealth, about the families that live there and struggle to live there safely and with dignity. It's about the strange preponderance of Yemenis in the liquor-store trade of California, and the unexpected history of Yemenis in the Central Valley. And how their work in California echoes their long history of farming in Yemen. And how direct trade can change the lives of farmers, giving them agency and standing. And about how Americans like Mokhtar Alkhanshali-U.S. citizens who maintain strong ties to the countries of their ancestors and who, through entrepreneurial zeal and dogged labor, create indispensable bridges between the developed and developing worlds, between nations that produce and those that consume. And how these bridgemakers exquisitely and bravely embody this nation's reason for being, a place of radical opportunity and ceaseless welcome. And how when we forget that this is central to all that is best about this country, we forget ourselves a blended people united not by stasis and cowardice and fear, but by irrational exuberance, by global enterprise on a human scale, by the inherent rightness of pressing forward, always forward, driven by courage unfettered and unyielding.

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A Free Home for San Francisco Artists, From Dave Eggers and Friends. @nytimes.com ✍️ Melena Ryzik. Gift article. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/25/a...

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— Frank Murphy 🇺🇦 🇮🇪 🇨🇦 (@thesidewalkballet.bsky.social) April 22, 2026 at 9:23 AM

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"...it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.” — Senator Robert Kennedy, 1968 in Capra & Henderson (2013:2).

When I started reading about economics as a teenager around 2000 all I found was stuff saying how outdated GDP was as an indicator. Today I am still reading the same type of articles. GDP is just so easy to explain while other stuff is complex. Source: buff.ly/T7BUssO

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— Simon Kuestenmacher (@simongerman600.bsky.social) April 15, 2026 at 9:00 PM

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As the planet gets hotter, cities around the world are experiencing rain storms with record-smashing intensity. I spent the last few months visiting places -Copenhagen, Hoboken, & NYC- that have adopted a counterintuitive idea: the safest city is one that can take water in. In @newyorker.com

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— Eric Klinenberg (@ericklinenberg.bsky.social) April 6, 2026 at 9:24 AM

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Reimagining the Future of Ireland. ✍️ Colm Tóibín For and Against a United Ireland @nybooks.com @fotoole.bsky.social @sjamcbride.bsky.social www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

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— Frank Murphy 🇺🇦 🇮🇪 🇨🇦 (@thesidewalkballet.bsky.social) April 3, 2026 at 1:01 PM

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