Random Wanderings and Wonderings
This little plaque on the facade of 778 King Street West, just west of Tecumseth, has intrigued me for years. Either it’s wrong, or there are a lot of angry people walking along King Street.
It seems that this is the work of an American artist named Jenny Holzer, as part of a collection of works called Survival. That said, I don’t know if this is an original installation, a reproduction, or merely an homage.
Has artist Christo wrapped the water tower at Warden and Eglinton? You (and I) would be forgiven for thinking so, but the Warden Tank is just getting some much-needed maintenance.
Alternative title for this post: “It’s the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.”
This coffee shop opened a few months ago near Queen and Broadview:
I have no joke here, I just like saying, “F’coffee.”
I noticed this beautiful new wayfinding sign in E.T. Seton Park today, just behind the Ontario Science Centre. It’s everything you could want in a sign: bright and easy to read with clear directions. Unfortunately, it’s backwards. The “south” arrow is pointing north, and the “north” arrow is pointing south. Oops. It was probably meant to be mounted on the other side of this post or on one of the still-signless posts nearby. I guess it was a long day for the sign-installing crew.
The older sign above, just metres away from the first, doesn’t fare much better. It points the way to Don Mills Road, but directs lost souls up a pathway that was removed and barricaded after being replaced by a nearby link.
Many cities around the world have their own versions of the CN Tower. Seattle has the graceful Space Needle, Calgary has the creatively-named Calgary Tower, Rotterdam has the squat Euromast, and even Niagara Falls has the Skylon. Yet despite the best efforts of all of the imitators, several of which are such fierce competitors that they copied our own CN Tower years before it was even conceived, none of them are quite as towery as the original.
But I didn’t realize until I rode by the other day that Scarborough also has its own version of the CN Tower near Lawrence & Galloway:
It’s not quite as grand as the others and it lacks a revolving restaurant, but it makes up for those shortcomings with a healthy coating of rust and a certain suburban je ne sais quois.
I frequently see antennae of various descriptions perched atop water towers, but this is by far the largest such specimen that I’ve encountered.
1) Canoeists on the Don River:
2) A cyclist crossing the DVP (and not getting killed in the process):
Both of these pictures were taken at about the same time, looking north from the Queen Street bridge. The first was made possible by the annual Paddle the Don event. The second came courtesy of the weekend closure of the Parkway. This guy had actually been riding northbound (in the southbound lanes!) but was chased over the barrier and off the highway by a works crew that passed him a few seconds before I took his picture. Hey dude! The Ride for Heart is next month.
I always hear about old streetcars sitting out in farmers’ fields or doing duty as storage sheds in the middle of nowhere, but I’d never seen one for myself until this past weekend. This one is on Finch Ave in Pickering, just east of Scarborough-Pickering Town Line.
I would have gotten in closer for some pictures, but the place was plastered with ‘no trespassing’ signs and there was no one around for me to ask about it. I assume that they’re tired of having transit and photo geeks crawling all over their property, but what do they expect with a rusting old PCC sitting in their front yard?
All it takes is a bit of time. This is my great-grandparents’ North York house around 1942 and again in 2007. The sapling they’d recently planted is barely a lawn ornament in the 1942 shot. Sixty-five years later, you can’t see the house for the tree.
Back in the mid-70s, there was big controversy on Brooke Avenue in North York. The owners of 196 Brooke, just east of Avenue Road, wanted to add a second storey to the house to create room for their growing family. It was quite the scandal in this suburban neighbourhood dominated by bungalows.
Petitions circulated in protest and several residents declared that it would mark the end of the neighbourhood as they knew it.
The proposal didn’t even include a full second storey addition: the roof peak was only moving up by about six inches. In fact, it was closer to a shed dormer than a second storey, effectively a protrusion from the side of the attic that changed the shape of the roofline but had virtually no impact otherwise.
Granted, it’s not the prettiest addition ever to grace a house, but it’s hard to see what the uproar was about, especially considering that the street already hosted a handful of modest two-storey homes.
My great-grandparents lived a few doors up the street and were virtually alone in their non-opposition to the planned abomination. I remember listening from the kitchen one day when my great-grandmother told one of the petition-toting neighbours that it was none of her business if the family wanted to add to their house. It didn’t affect her one way or another and she didn’t understand why any of the other neighbours were so pig-headed. Even though the entire neighbourhood seemed to be against the development, North York council allowed the construction anyway.
Thirty years later, Brooke is one of those streets overrun by monster houses. In the block between Avenue Road and Elm Road, only 4 bungalows remain on the north side, surrounded by monster homes built within the last 20 years. A few more bungalows survive on the south side. The original monster house (on the left in the picture below) that caused the uproar 30 years ago now looks tiny compared to the true monsters that line the street.
But wait, there’s a bonus to this tale: one of the few bungalows left on the block is the one where my great-grandparents lived. The house of the only people who didn’t oppose development is among the small handful that haven’t since been developed. You can’t buy irony that good.
The zoning application for 2050 Ellesmere Road in Scarborough covers all the possibilities except, strangely enough, condos.
