Random Wanderings and Wonderings
Almost a year ago in this space, I featured the best (& worst) new business name; today, I bestow the same honour on an old business name. I have no idea how long pants store Rear Ends Pantacular was in this location on Yonge Street north of Davisville, but they’re not there any more.
Trail detour? Maybe when the harbour was frozen over a couple of months ago, but not right now. This sign is next to the condo construction site at Stadium Road and Queens Quay and is either intended to get cyclists and pedestrians around occasional intrusions by construction equipment into their realm or a forgotten relic from some long-ago temporary trail closure. Either way, shouldn’t it be pointing to the path straight ahead instead of directing unfortunates to make a right turn into Lake Ontario?
I stumbled across the Zig Zag-by-the-Lake bike races in Marilyn Bell Park on Sunday afternoon. The riders all looked quite relaxed as they zipped around the course at what seemed to be about twice my best speed. Consider this a sneak preview of next month’s Toronto Criterium.
More pictures below the fold.
With the TTC strike on (and possibly over by tomorrow), I thought I’d get out and enjoy the promised bike lanes on Queen’s Quay. I couldn’t find them at first, but then realized that in all its wisdom, the City had put them smack in the middle of the road. And what wonderful bike lanes they are: nice and wide, smoothly paved, and grade separated. I think this temporary installation is even better than the original Quay to the City almost two years ago. I could live without all the streetcar tracks cluttering the lane, though. What’s up with that?
I was surprised that the new bike lane was so deserted on such a nice day. I heartily encourage more cyclists to take advantage of these lanes while they last.
If you’re thinking about Space Invaders right now, you probably spent a lot of time exchanging $5 bills for 20 quarters in the arcades of the early 1980s. But according to homeowner Eugene Popov, the inspiration for this colourful garage door wasn’t a youth spent feeding coins into game consoles; it was a few years living in South Africa.
He took the motif from the Ndebele people of northern South Africa, who are renowned for their distinctive traditional house painting with repeating geometric patterns and bright colours. After coming to Toronto, Popov wanted a little something to remind him of his former home. So why did he choose the garage door as the canvas for his remembrance? “I had a rusty garage door,” he explained, “and wanted to do something different.”
I’m still trying to figure out how I cycled and walked past this for two years before noticing it last weekend.
A version of this article originally appeared on Torontoist.
Winding up our Spring on the Spit series, this photo was actually taken early in the fall, after nesting season is over and the cormorants that nest in these trees have abandoned them for the season.
The area that contains these trees is off-limits to people during nesting season (April through August, if memory serves). After all, cormorants are Important Birds and need their privacy. Exploring this area each autumn, I always think it’s a shame that cormorant droppings destroy the habitat here. I’d like to think that it’s all part of nature’s cycle, but it’s possible that there are just too many cormorants here doing too much damage. It’s an eerie place to walk through when the birds are gone, and it looks like a war zone to boaters in the Outer Harbour.
Toronto and Region Conservation is hosting a public meeting on April 3 (PDF notice) at the Mennonite New Life Centre on Queen Street East to discuss possible approaches to cormorant management in Tommy Thompson Park.
This old Quonset hut is familiar to anyone who has gone for a stroll or bike ride on the Leslie Street Spit. Shawn Micallef wrote an article in the Star last fall about the history of Quonsets in general and this one in particular:
Above the front door are the faded words “Testing Building.” It once housed the Toronto Port Authority’s gauge for measuring lake levels.
It has played a role in films over the years, including Bulletproof Monk and Canadian Bacon. For the 2006 Michael Douglas film, The Sentinel, it was converted into an east coast fishing shanty, complete with lobster traps.
Shawn also reports that the Quonset will be demolished and a proper visitor centre erected in its place. Although the building is obviously past its best-before date, I’ll still miss it when it’s gone.
Tomorrow: the final edition of Spring on the Spit.
There’s no big story behind today’s spring picture from the Leslie Street Spit. I just liked the way these icicles formed on the pontoon bridge and got as close to the water as I reasonably could to get the picture. There’s always beauty and order in nature.
There’s a good-sized beaver lodge not too far from the southern tip of the Leslie Street Spit. It’s in the pond behind these trees, just out of camera view. Even if you miss the lodge during your visit, you can’t miss the work of its residents throughout this section of the park. The tree in the foreground of this picture has a large pile of fresh shavings at its base and will probably be felled by the industrious beavers within a few days. Their impressive lodge is big enough to be seen on Google Maps.
I didn’t notice whether the beavers on the Spit have been tackling any trees as large as their Don Valley cousins have been.
Today’s spring picture from the Leslie Street Spit shows us an artfully-placed traffic pylon pointing up at last week’s waxing gibbous moon, already high in the sky in the late afternoon.
As an aside, I always used to think this phase of the moon was called a waxing gibbon until I was old enough to realize that the term would more accurately describe an ape with a Brazilian.