Big condo proposal rebuked. Residential high-rises keep popping up downtown without much consternation. But the latest renderings of a building to replace some sturdy 1958 Modernism at 2 Carlton were sent back to the drawing board, because a prominent intersection deserves something better:

Ward 33 appointment marks a win for the mayoral lobby. Jonathan Tsao was appointed fo fill Shelley Carroll’s chair at city hall, following her resignation to run for the Ontario Liberals. The voting by fellow city councillors included arguments over John Tory’s lobbying tactics, which helped to defeat Carroll’s own preferred successor. (A similar mayor-led circumvention affected the last appointment.)

The losing game against loose booze rules. Mothers Against Drunk Driving is taking a stand against the PC party's perennial promises to bring alcohol to all corner stores. Kathleen Wynne has joined the cause, despite previously smiling through the introduction of beer and wine to supermarkets. Behold the Liberal campaign's most ludicrous tweet:

Sam Oosterhoff is facing a former classmate and a Green teen. Curtis Fric, a 20-year-old who started Brock University alongside the Oost, is running against his former classmate on the NDP ticket in Niagara West-Glanbrook. Also running is Jessica Tillmans, the 18-year-old Green nominee; and with 27-year-old Joe Kanee representing the Liberals, the ages of the four candidates add up to 67, which is two decades less than retiring MPP Monte Kwinter.

Conrad Black wonders if anyone wants to read his book about Trump. National Review will seemingly post whatever Black writes, and he visited Rebel Media for a very special episode of the Ezra Levant Show, but even the author of Donald J. Trump: A President Like No Other thinks the book will have a tricky time cutting through the glut. Black rounded out his media tour by calling a Boston Globe columnist, who ponders whether the 213-page love letter is simply an overture to a pardon:

"To begin, I’d like to tell you that you have made the right decision in choosing to be cartoonists. This is very likely a sentence you will never hear again in your life." An antidote to Justin Trudeau’s cringey NYU commencement speech can be found in the text of a speech delivered in Vermont by the illustrator Seth, who spoke about how he faced a hard slog through “mean streets” of Toronto, but then flourished in ways he couldn’t have predicted: