City now expects cost of art gallery soil cleanup to be 'at the low end' - Tbnewswatch.com | Canada News Media
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City now expects cost of art gallery soil cleanup to be 'at the low end' – Tbnewswatch.com

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THUNDER BAY — A City of Thunder Bay official expects the cost of remediating contaminated soil around the site of the new waterfront art gallery will be nowhere near the maximum amount outlined in a city report three years ago.

An estimate provided to city council in 2017 pegged the bill for dealing with the issue as high as $5.7 million.

That figure assumed that total excavation, removal and replacement of all contaminated soil would be required.

The same report stated the cost could fall to as low as $250,000, assuming only minimal remediation activity would be needed.

Tbnewswatch.com published the figures last week in a story that updated the city’s efforts to meet the provincial government’s requirements for the redevelopment of brownfield (former industrial) properties.

After submitting two Risk Assessments to the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks in the past year, the ministry recently asked the city to clarify some of the data it provided.

Although the ministry has not signed off on the city’s plan as yet, Director of Asset Management Gerry Broere indicated Monday that he is optimistic about the outcome.

Referring to the cost of remediation, Broere said “I can tell you with confidence that we won’t be near the high end. We will be at the lower end, but not at the lowest end” of the 2017 estimate.

“What we’re looking for from the ministry is confirmation of the strategy that we want to utilize. Based on the strategy that we’ve proposed is the numbers that I’m talking about today,” he told Tbnewswatch without disclosing any revised figures.

The city’s strategy, Broere revealed, includes capping the contaminated material.

He clarified, however, that the city has had no indication yet if the ministry feels the plan is appropriate.

Capping involves installation of a surface barrier that restricts water infiltration into a contaminated subsurface.

Broere also noted that the city won’t be solely responsible for the cost of whatever approach is eventually approved.

He said it will be shared with the Thunder Bay Art Gallery based on the amount of land utilized by each party.

The city is developing some public lands in the vicinity simultaneously with the construction of the art gallery.

The gallery will lease its site from the municipality.

Gallery executive-director Sharon Godwin said Monday “We don’t have the numbers yet,” but added “At this point, we don’t anticipate huge costs around remediation.”

Godwin echoed Broere in saying that’s based on the expectation the environment ministry will not require the removal of large amounts of soil.

A spokeswoman for the ministry confirmed the city has been asked for additional information about its proposal, but she declined to provide details.

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40 Random Bits of Trivia About Artists and the Artsy Art That They Articulate – Cracked.com

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40 Random Bits of Trivia About Artists and the Artsy Art That They Articulate  Cracked.com



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John Little, whose paintings showed the raw side of Montreal, dies at 96 – CBC.ca

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John Little, whose paintings showed the raw side of Montreal, dies at 96  CBC.ca



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A misspelled memorial to the Brontë sisters gets its dots back at last

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LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.

More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.

The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.

They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.

“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”

It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.

Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”

Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.

“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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