Random Wanderings and Wonderings
Unfortunately, this was the best picture we got of this litte curiosity zipping along the westbound 401 this morning. It’s an old Suzuki (Swift, I believe) pulling the rear portion of a similar car that has been chopped in half and converted into a cargo trailer. The writing on the back of the trailer/half-car reads “Suzuki and a half.” Very impressive work.
You remember the Moose in the City, don’t you? For six glorious months in 2000 more than three hundred moose statues stood watch over Toronto, succesfully saving us from the shame of having flying pigs instead. Although some locals didn’t fully appreciate the fibreglass wildlife, I’d rather have the moose than any of the subsequent visitors to our fair city, including aphids, SARS, and Chilean soccer players.
Most of the moose had disappeared by the end of the year, but a few can still be found on display around the city. I recently stumbled upon this poor fellow behind the Ontario Science Centre, covered in dust and jammed up against a wall behind piles of discarded shipping pallets and recycling bins, begging for some dignity in retirement.
Time Moose Scape began life sponsored by none other than the very organization that callously threw him outside like so much trash. Oh, he tried to stay on their good side by getting a new paint job, donning a new suit and bow tie, trimming off his gangly antlers, and even going so far as to have a giant red clown nose surgically attached to his snout. It was all for naught. More enamoured by the latest plastination and big boat toys, Time’s masters cruelly cast the gritty seven-year-old out into the world to fend for himself.
Like any abandoned child, Time has remained close to the only home he’s ever known, scrounging for food and affection in the nearby recycling bins, eventually settling among the empty water bottles and flattened cardboard boxes. But despite the hard turns his life has taken, he keeps a smile on his face. That big red nose could have become a mark of his failure, but Time has chosen to wear it as a badge of courage. It proudly proclaims that one day he will be back among the adoring children inside.
A version of this article originally appeared on Torontoist.
Several months after writing about an ambitious beaver in the Don Valley, I finally got around to making a close-up visit to his meal at the forks of the Don. The trunk of this tree is about 70 cm (28 inches) in diameter and the Beav has eaten through about a third of it. The exposed band that you see here is about 45 cm (18 inches) tall. He’s eaten a lot of tree, but still has quite a bit to go before he can start the serious work of damming up the West Don. Good luck!
Risa and I rode the inaugural Bike Train to Niagara Falls yesterday. We joined dozens of passengers in loading our bikes into the baggage car for the regularly-scheduled Saturday morning train from Union Station. Some, like us, were just tootling around town for the day. Others were staying for a night or two, heading into the U.S., or cycling all the way back to Toronto.
Two hours after we got underway, following a relaxing train ride through the Golden Horseshoe, we arrived fresh and ready for an afternoon of cycling around Niagara. We had a picnic lunch, rode along the Niagara Parkway to Queenston Heights, took a tour at the Sir Adam Beck Generating Station, and generally lazed about for the day.
The train ride back home was just as relaxing as the ride there. Both stood in stark contrast to the average frustrating summertime Saturday drive down the QEW.
There was no shortage of enthusiasm yesterday, with several of our fellow travellers lining up to take pictures of their bikes being loaded onto the train. It’s actually a bit of a sad commentary on the state of our transportation systems when so many people can be so excited about something as simple as taking your bike somewhere without a car.
For anyone considering taking the Bike Train, I’d really recommend that you stay somewhere in Niagara Region overnight or longer. We had commitments for Sunday and couldn’t stay for the weekend, but still wanted to show our support for the service by heading out for the day. Too many bike-friendly services have come and gone over the years without my getting a chance to use them even once. So with this year’s announcement of the Bike Train, I’ve decided to support as many as I can while they’re still around. With any luck, the Bike Train will avoid the fate of everything from the Rochester ferry to BikeShare, all fallen victim to my inability to purchase tickets or memberships in a timely manner.
And yes, I’m still planning to make good on my threat to ride home from Niagara Falls after another Bike Train adventure later this summer.
One of my neighbours keeps monkeys, hanging them from the utility wires along the street. There were only a few until last year, when the population exploded to the current dozen or so lining almost the entire block.
Shortly after we all learned through a Fixer column last year that one of the locals was taking the proliferation of monkeys a little too personally, a petition was affixed to the pole closest to the monkeys’ home pleading for the continued presence of the playful primates.
The monkeys have since spread so far along the street that it’s hard to miss them unless you’re staring at your feet for the entire block. So I have to admit to a bit of amusement at learning that the Toronto Psychogeography Society walked right past without seeing them last week.
In fairness, many of the monkeys were camouflaged by trees at the time and the Society did their stroll under cover of darkness.
A version of this article originally appeared on Torontoist.
Chernobylesque. For some reason, that’s the word that’s been stuck in my mind since I took this picture of the stacks rising at the beautiful Portlands Energy Centre last month. It’s not even that it looks particularly like a disaster zone. It’s just a sensation that the visual evokes. How lucky we are to have it on our waterfront.
Unlike many who are not exactly in love with the PEC, I’m glad that they didn’t use the empty Hearn Generating Station to house a new power plant. When the port lands eventually become a community, Hearn will make one kick-ass community centre, market, museum, shopping gallery, or some combination thereof.
If The Powers That Be absolutely must have a new power plant on the waterfront, I’d rather have it in some anonymous steel box that we’ll be ecstatic to tear down when the time comes. And honestly, better a new power plant than a new power centre.
I saw this heartwarming sight in the Don Valley yesterday: a mother Cat extending a loving arm around its little one, protecting it from the world outside. Poetic, isn’t it? I don’t think the hawks skulking about the park the day before would have been able to carry this kitten away, but someone else might have.
This particular family is working on the Don River realignment project.
It’s so hot that even birds of prey are sitting under the trees trying to get some shade.
I saw this large hawk today in E.T. Seton Park, just behind the Science Centre. It flew a short distance away when I pulled out my camera but settled under another nearby tree and seemed quite content to sit in the shade. I’m really not very good at identifying birds, but after staring at all of the pictures in my Peterson’s, I’d guess that this one is a red-tailed hawk. It seemed too large to be a fledgling but it behaved like one.
Just out for a leisurely stroll…
…while mother/father/brother/sister observes from a nearby tree.
Section 349-23 (PDF) of the Toronto Municipal Code declares that:
No person keeping pigeons shall permit the pigeons to stray, perch, roost or rest upon lands, premises or buildings of any person or upon any public place in the City, except on the property of the person keeping the pigeons.
So all we have to do is figure out who owns all the pigeons in the city and ask him to confine his birds to his own property? We should be rid of them any day now.
I wrote about my encounter with a delivery truck driver in an earlier post. With the two of us living and working in the same neighbourhood, it was inevitable that our paths would cross again. That came on Saturday, a scant three days after our first encounter.
This time, we were headed in opposite directions on Danforth. He was turning his van left at an advanced green. I was in my customary position at a red light, straddling my bike in the centre of the curb lane. Indeed, it’s the very stance I’d maintained during our first meeting.
In stark contrast to Wednesday’s shouts and frustration, we exchanged only smiles and friendly waves on Saturday before heading our separate ways. Surely this shared gesture counts as a small victory in the battle to get motorists and cyclists to respect one another. Maybe we can all just get along after all.