Good morning. A new park that will be unveiled tomorrow in Toronto is an ambitious example of moving rivers to bring civic imagination to public spaces. More on that below, plus catching up on First Nation leaders meeting with Prime Minister Mark Carney on Bill C-5 and Ukraine’s cabinet shuffle. But first:

Today’s headlines

• Documents used to assess asylum and deportation cases omit Trump’s edicts on gender, deportations and detention
• Hedge funds sort out winners and losers as Couche-Tard’s bid to buy 7-Eleven owner collapses
• The British government has announced plans to lower voting age to 16 in national elections

On a sunny July afternoon, the Don River flowed into Toronto Harbour. Its banks were lined with lake sedge, switchgrass and Canada anemone. Paths and bridges laced through the landscape, which looked as if they had always been there.

In fact, this stretch of river and its surrounding lands − now known as Biidaasige Park − are entirely manufactured. They are not a work of nature but a feat of civic imagination.

They are the product of a $1.5-billion effort known as the Port Lands Flood Protection Project, which has redrawn the mouth of the Don and conjured vast new public spaces from what had long been a civic afterthought.

This week, Therme Canada revealed more visuals of its controversial Ontario Place facility – a sprawling private spa complex on what used to be parkland.

The PR rollout emphasized “sustainable” and “inclusive” aspects of the design. But this is still the same disastrous project it’s always been. It is a private stadium-sized recreation facility that has no business existing on a waterfront, accompanied by an enormous parking garage. And it’s not getting better.

The turtle rises from the water, poised to move toward the chamber of Toronto City Hall. This six-foot-tall limestone gesture of re-emergence is the centrepiece of the new Spirit Garden at Nathan Phillips Square, which brings an Indigenous presence to the city’s ceremonial heart.

At the garden’s centre sits the Teaching Lodge, a hybrid of longhouse and circular wigwam fashioned from glue-laminated ash. The structure invites local Indigenous communities to gather for ceremony and reflection. “It represents a cross-cultural approach to Indigenous design,” says Brian Porter of Two Row Architect. “How can one structure represent the traditions of peoples from across the continent?”

Toronto City Council had a chance this week to take a clear, practical step toward solving its housing crisis.

Surprise: It did not. Instead, the city’s leaders cowered before the most reactionary elements in local politics and seemed ready to waste $60-million in the process.