A big happy face was stomped into the snow of E.T. Seton Park earlier this year and was visible from the Overlea bridge.
Author: Val Dodge
What snow?
Yes, I went for a quick ride on Friday afternoon. It was after the worst of the storm had passed, but before it had stopped snowing and before most of the roads were cleared. Now that I’m working from home again, I haven’t had nearly as much opportunity to ride as I did earlier in the winter.
Despite the media spin, which always leans towards panic and gross exaggeration (with the occasional level-headed commentary masquerading as satire) when it comes to the weather, it was just not that bad a day. I went downtown for some shopping in the morning, ran a quick errand by bike in the afternoon, and then went up to North York for dinner. All in all, it was a pretty normal Friday for me. Oh, and I had to shovel a couple of times. Whoop-de-do.
Although the blowing snow wasn’t all that pleasant, it was certainly not the worst I’ve ever seen, nor was it anything that a warm coat and scarf or balaclava couldn’t deal with. It definitely wasn’t anything to get anxious and paranoid about. The sidewalks seemed well-used, the parks I passed through had obviously seen a day full of playful dogs, and I even encountered a couple of other cyclists while I was out. People generally seemed to be in good humour, taking it all in stride. Yet to read the paper or watch the news, you’d think that the sky had just fallen, that Toronto lay in ruin after the worst natural disaster in all of recorded history struck down the entire city.
Why the overreaction? It was hardly an isolated incident, either; the media regularly predicts mayhem and destruction any time a weather event is on the way, ready to menace the city. Yet from my hours tootling around the city by foot, bike, and subway on Friday, it seemed to me that the people most affected by the weather were those in cars. And most of those were people who simply didn’t use common sense. You know, like if the snow on the street is a foot deep and your car only has six inches of clearance, you’re probably not going to make it all the way down the block. If the roads are covered in snow, you’re probably going to need to give more room when you pass and slow down a bit when you turn. If you’re driving on summer tires and Pottery Road hasn’t been ploughed yet, find another, flatter, route. If you’re trying to zip through that left turn as the light is turning red, you’re probably going to slide into the curb.
Personally, I think that our winter traffic woes would be lessened considerably if winter tires were mandatory on all cars in Ontario being driven within two (three? five?) days of a snowfall. If you don’t want the expense, bother, or safety of winter tires, that’s fine; just leave your car at home a few days a year. If common sense doesn’t tell you to do it, maybe the law should.
No parking #2
Don’t park your bikes here, it makes the street look trashy. I should point out that this is at the front entrance of the store on Augusta, not a back alley.
Mildly uncomfortable weather = day off school
According to SchoolBusMonitor.com, at least some school buses in Wellington County, Dufferin & Peel, Simcoe County, and elsewhere were cancelled today on account of the weather. Wait a minute, buses were cancelled because of wind? Seriously? It’s bad enough that kids get snow days at the sight of a single flake, but now they get wind days too? Is this really necessary, or is it simply a knee-jerk reaction to bus operators’ perception of increased liability?
Pottery Road: The original Toronto Bypass
Somewhat related to my previous post, Pottery Road has a little-known connection to another Toronto street: Davenport Road. The East York Library monograph Fascinating Facts About East York (and some of them really are, at least to east-end geeks like me) says that Pottery Road:
may have been a part of an old Indian trail that crossed the city along what is now Davenport Road and entered the Don Valley through the Rosedale Valley ravine. There are records of the Mississauga Indians having encamped on the Don near Pottery Road as late as 1831.
I always find it interesting that so much of our modern infrastructure follows old trails, watercourses, and terrain, even decades or centuries after after the old features have ceased to exist on any meaningful level. Technology may have brought us huge bridges across the valley and personal motorized transportation, yet there’s Pottery Road, tracing an old footpath in the Don and still used by thousands of people a day. Some things never change.
A natural progression
A recent search (completely unrelated to airplanes, strangely enough) on the Toronto Archives turned up the above results, seemingly telling a tragic story in point form. Who says that search engines don’t have senses of humour?
Old Pottery Road walking tour
Frequent northbound travellers on the Bayview Extension have probably noticed the “Pottery Road” street sign pointing to a glorified supermarket driveway at the top of the hill, just south of Moore Avenue. Some may even have wondered how it relates to the more familiar street of the same name almost 1.5 kilometers to the south, winding up the valley wall to Broadview Avenue. The answer to this puzzle is that the two Pottery Roads used to be one, connecting Broadview and Moore Avenues, roughly following Cudmore Creek for much of its length.
Most of the road was abandoned when the Bayview Extension was constructed in the late 1950s. The section running from Broadview to Bayview was left mostly intact (and the top of it was later realigned to allow an easier climb out of the valley), as was a very short block at the northern end of the road, now flanked by parking lots for a supermarket and a bank.
What about the kilometer of the road that used to connect the two remaining sections? Unlike most abandoned roads that exist only for short stretches of their former selves, old Pottery Road is unique: its entire original route from Broadview to Moore is still open and can be hiked from beginning to end. Read on for the complete walking tour.
Dodge Boat Works
I went to the Toronto Boat Show last week, armed with a “working press” badge that allowed me into a semi-restricted area for the wakeboarding demonstration on the big indoor lake. Fun.
The Antique and Classic Boat Society, Toronto Chapter had a large display outside the show featuring, well, antique and classic boats. One in particular caught my eye, the oddly-named Dodge Watercar from the Dodge Boat Works. Founded by Horace Dodge Jr., son of one of the brothers who established the eponymous automobile company, the Dodge Boat Works shut down in 1936 after just 12 years of production, never quite able to translate the automobile company’s achievements on the road into the same kind of success on the water. You can read the full story of Horace Jr. and the Dodge Boat Works in the Summer 2002 issue of Rudder, the quarterly magazine of the Antique and Classic Boat Society (not the Toronto Chapter).
Supermarket finds: Hurry up and wait
The strangest convenience food I’ve seen since aerosol cheese is McCain‘s latest entry in the frozen foods aisle, Slow Cooker Solutions. The selling point of most convenience foods is how quickly they can be prepared. As microwave ovens became popular in the 1980s, we gradually lost the ability to wait half an hour for dinner. Food preparation broke the 10-minute, 5-minute, and 2-minute barriers. And still it wasn’t fast enough. Only recently have we finally gotten foods ready in a mere five seconds, missing by a mere five seconds our collective dream of having food in our mouths the very instant we think about it.
And then along comes McCain, boasting that its new Slow Cooker Solutions require 8-10 hours for preparation. I would have loved to be a fly on the wall for that pitch meeting.
Those of us with slow cookers are familiar with this drill: cut up and measure the ingredients, dump it all in the pot, wait for 6 hours or so, then spoon out the deliciousness. I’ve got to admit that McCain has some huge cojones trying to convince anyone with a slow cooker that it could be any easier. So naturally, I couldn’t help but try out a Slow Cooker Solution. I’ll add that I bought this in mid-November, long before the annoying commercials started on TV.
The verdict? It’s surprisingly edible. I wouldn’t serve it to guests, but it’s better than most frozen food. The Chicken Cacciatore I tried for this experiment is notable for having only real ingredients on the label; none of the three varieties has any flavour, quite a rarity in the world of frozen convenience food.
Yet I doubt I’d buy it again. If I’m thinking far enough ahead that I’m using the slow cooker, I don’t really care if my preparation time is cut by five minutes. I almost never eat frozen convenience foods, and Slow Cooker Solutions just aren’t good or convenient enough to make me start.
I see faces #2
The retaining strap from my MEC handlebar bag always looks a little alarmed.