A person carries groceries while walking among cyclists on Queen Elizabeth Drive in Ottawa on April 18, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang As Canadian cities recover and rebuild their economies post-pandemic, there will be increasing…

Imagine having to reconstruct a building that is a designated heritage property. Having to carefully salvage thousands of 100-year-old bricks, and then reapply them the way a mason would have a century ago. Think about the amount of care…

A black swan event must meet three criteria: it must be an outlier, must have a major impact and must be declared predictable in hindsight. (Buiobuione/Wikimedia), CC BY-SA Since the “black swan” metaphor was coined in the 2007 book of…

It is a widely understood notion that when a tenant subleases premises for the entire remainder of its lease term, the common law will consider that sublease to be an assignment. An assignment transfers all leasehold rights to the…

As the fight to stem the impact of COVID-19 continues, without a viable vaccine in sight for the immediate future, social distancing and stringent personal hygiene remains the key advice from governments around the world in halting the…

The speed and means of the coronavirus crisis have taken the world by surprise. In just 3 months, the outbreak has forced countries and economies to shut down, putting millions into isolation. At the time of this writing, the pandemic had…

Discolored water can be caused by heavy metals, such as iron or copper. Iron can also act as a nutrient for organisms to grow in the pipes. Kyungyeon Ra/Purdue University, CC BY-ND While millions of people are under orders to stay home…

Since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11, 2020, countless businesses have closed to comply with governmental restrictions. Leases are still in place, commercial properties are still operating (at low to…

The housing shortage across Canada dominated the front pages in 2019. By the late summer, the national sales-to-new-listings ratio hit 0.6, which indicated a sellers’ market according to Morguard’s 2020 Economic Outlook. As noted by…

I spend much of my life thinking about hospital design. And these days, with the outbreak of novel coronavirus (COVID-19), I’m sure many people around the world are looking at their hospitals in new ways, as patients and staff try to stay…