Proof there is more to the city than the city

So yesterday we took the streetcar about 20 minutes east to The Beaches area of the city. This is somewhere I'd never been before, but Zoe has been a couple of times with Rob. It's a bit different to the hustle and bustle of downtown, instead it is a different kind of hustle and bustle of people and canines.

The first stop was the very end of the streetcar route. The R. C. Harris Water Filtration Plant. This is an internationally renowned piece of industrial architecture. At the minute it is undergoing a lot of restoration so it's not easy to get photos of all of it, but it is still functional and supplies 45% of all the fresh water to the Toronto region.
Right beside the plant is the Lake Ontario coastline that runs to the Scarborough bluffs, a section of headland with what passes for cliffs in this area.
To the west are the beaches that run back towards downtown.
And I'll leave you with a picture of a beagle that kept trying to get up on the rocks to where I was sitting.

Opti Olympics

Well since I've missed a large period, here are two on one day.

A couple of weekends ago the sailing club that Zoe is part of had a "fun" weekend event called the Opti Olympics. An Opti, apparently, is a bathtub with a sail. It may be more technical than that, but it's what it looks like to me.
Anyway they had this event which was to consist of a series of races in these boats, in between the thunderstorns, four boats at a time. The person who is the club photographer was away on vacation so they asked me to do the photography for the event. I agreed, and as a result ended up going out on a speedboat owned by a member of the club to photo the event.
Things started well, the competitors took their time getting out of the quay area and into the open water, where they all made their way to the buoy that was being used as a marker for the races. Some got there quicker than others, but everyone made it eventually. At that point however things changed dramatically. The wind started gusting and things started to go wrong. Remember how I said bathtubs with sails? Well bathtubs usually have the water on the inside, and the lake had the same thought.
One by one all the competitors took on water and sunk in one fashion or another. We got a couple of more speedboats out from the club to rescue the competitors and at a point I had to stop taking pictures and start pulling people out of the water and trailing semi-sunk boats.

People along the waterfront stopped to take pictures, and one of the large touring boats passed us, and then swung round again so all the tourists could have a better look. Eventually even the police sent out a boat to rescue one of our sailors and their boat.
See, this is what happens to boats, and something always seems to happen when I'm out on one.

Weather

Okay, so I know it's been a little while since my last posting, but I just don't always get around to it. Anyway just to placate the masses, here are some photos that have been taken recently of the weather around Toronto.

This first one was taken by Zoe while I was at work one day. A very strange storm system came over the lake. It was very localised and kept sending down tendrils of cloud from the main storm front. Almost like some strange creature living in the cloud reaching down for food constantly.

This was was just a simple shot of a storm front coming into the city. We've had loads of storms of late to contend with, seems there's been a thunder storm every other day for the last month and a half. Apparently July was the wettest July on record for Toronto. That seems right, we've been here less than a year and already had the most snow in 60 years and the most rain ever.

And finally, this is just a shot of the sunset last night. It was raining and with heavy thunderclouds most of the day, but it just happened to have a clear spot just as the sun was going down which made for some impressive pictures.

To Sea

Blimey, it's been a while since the last post. Well I've been busy, but enough of that another time. Last night the sailing club went out on a tall ship for several hours, and I got shanghaied into coming along as well. Out to sea (well lake, but it doesn't sound so good) on a boat with lots of sails, ropes and other thingies that I have no idea what they do. I just spent the time getting out of the way while everyone else did their, well, thing.
Still out onto the water, and still was the word to begin. Very little wind so we didn't really get very far. It took about an hour and a half to get the sails all up and running, however it's a training ship so the crew were teaching everyone else how to do everything. Then we did sail out in the lake a little bit.Eventually we had to come back once the thunder and lightning started over the end of the lake. Coming back in we were presented with a fabulous light show from the, rapidly, approaching storm. It unfortunately got to us about five minutes before we got to dock, so it was a slightly damp end to the evening. Actually it was a very damp end, I've not been so wet in a long long time. At least not clothed.

My New Toy

Okay, so not really relevant to the normal run of things on this blog, but I got myself a new toy. After a long long time I now own a bike again.
This was taken over by the docklands of Toronto to the east of where we live. Never been there before but decided to go for a couple of hour cycle yesterday morning.

The bike has 24 gears apparently, but I've only used about 4 of them. Not sure why you need to many gears. I'm currently using it to commute to work. Now I haven't ridden a bike for about 10+ years, yet I can get to work in just over 15 minutes. Using public transit it takes 25+ minutes. So quicker and better for me. Plus it looks like the transit may strike on Monday so it's the best time to buy a bike.

Of course when you buy a bike and you have no car you need to ride it home. When I picked it up on Monday night it was from the store at Yonge and Eglington. About 8km north-east of here. First time on bike in so many years, yes that was a fun cycle home. At least it was mainly downhill.

Bloomin' thieves

Well some people are just brazen about their activities. Some people like to keep their activities secret from the world, while others like to flaunt it and rub it in. Last night thieves and vandals struck in downtown. In the early hours of the morning some hooligans came along and destroyed the CN Tower. They used cutting torches to take it down about halfway up and left a pall of smoke over the area and the now broken stump.
The city is distraught over this. An icon of the city and the country has been cut down in its prime. All that remains now is a bit of a stump looking like a felled tree in the city.

The council says it'll have it repaired soon though. Apparently, and this is the cities best kept secret, the whole thing is just inflatable. Emergency planning had anticipated this may happen sometime so they'd stored a spare in a warehouse in an undisclosed location. Authorities insist that it'll be back to normal in a couple of days, and the world won't notice it was gone. They just need a few people to help inflate it, and foot pumps have been handed out to the populace.

Well better go, the police have just turned up to tell our floor that it is our turn to blow into the nozzles to help in the effort. I'll speak again.

Streetcars and municipal bird

Well, several people have been complaining to me about my complete lack of posts to this here blog thingy. Well to keep them quiet here's a new one. The reason I haven't posted any lately is I haven't managed to find any decent photos, and haven't been taking them lately. Snow is only exciting for so long, but the good weather is coming back, blue skies and temperatures reaching zero. Summer is definitely on the way.

Anyway, as some have heard Toronto has streetcars. Basically trams that crisscross the city along various routes, usually in the downtown area and travelling along an east - west route and letting buses and the subway handle the north - south traffic. I get one to work every day, and they're actually a pretty good service.

This one is running along the dedicated tracks along Queens Quay, the road that runs along the edge of the lake (the lake is about 10 meters behind me in this photo.) Just to the right of the picture, but you can't really see it, the streetcars emerge from an underground tunnel that swings north and goes to Union Station (which is located opposite the building to the left that looks like corrugated iron.) If I am getting the streetcar back from the centre I get it along here from Union. Runs along the lakefront and then swings up Spadina by our complex. Well actually this particular one is going to Bathurst Station and doesn't normally run on this route, but there are track works going on.

And this one is running along King Street. King Street is about five blocks north of Queens Quay. This intersection is King and University, a very popular stop for the streetcar where in the rush hour it tends to empty. The reason? Towards the left of the image you can see a red and white sign that actually reads TTC (Toronto Transit Commission.) Just below that is the entrance to the St Andrew subway station.

One of the reasons it is so busy is that Toronto has an integrated public transport system. People get off the streetcar and into the subway where they may travel somewhere and then get another bus or streetcar. They can do this for the price of one fare (currently a transit token costs $2.75) which covers an entire trip no matter how many changes you need to make. Alternatively you can buy a Metropass for $109 a month which provides unlimited travel on the TTC system.

And just to finish the posting off here is a photo I've taken of Toronto's municipal bird. The crane.

Cranes are all over the city at the moment blocking a lot of the good views. There is so much construction going on. I believe there is more $ worth of construction going on in Toronto at the moment than anywhere else in North America, with the possible exception of Vancouver. However Vancouver's construction is most likely a temporary boom due to the Winter Olympics in 2010.

Fire, fire, toil and fire.

So, Wednesday 20th February. A cold day, -10 or so most of the day. I started the day waiting for the streetcar in a massive cloud of smoke. The entire downtown area was covered in a thick black smoke from a fire along my route to work.

On Queen Street between Bathurst and Portland a fire broke out in the small hours of the morning in a shop unit. By the time most people were leaving for work the fire had spread to fourteen separate buildings and had turned into what they call a six alarm fire. Fires over here are rated on a scale which determines what units are deployed to deal with it. It starts at one and only goes to seven. According to reports at its height it involved 30 firetrucks, fire helicopters, dozens of police cars and over 150 members of the fire department. By the end of the day most of the city block had been affected by the fire, some buildings had just collapsed and several others are likely to have to be demolished.

Due to the cold the firefighters visors were freezing up with the spray, icicles were hanging from the hoses, the area around had turned into a skating rink and rescue ladders were frozen solid to the walls. The city had closed off the area for three blocks around. Streetcars were being diverted down any other road that could take them which resulted in my route to work, along King Street, becoming rather congested especially since Queen Street is the major east-west artery in the centre of the city.

The affected buildings were mainly three and four storey structures which included both businesses and apartments in an area just designated of great historical value. The oldest building destroyed was 150 years old, which in North America is very old. Many of the businesses were family businesses one of which had been operating in the same location for 90 years and been owned and staffed by four generations of the same family who also lived above the shop. Theirs was the building that completely collapsed despite the fact the fire started four doors down.

It's a bit brisk out.

So, on the last post I mentioned that it was the night before a major storm was supposed to arrive. Well yes it did. And then another. And then a cold spell. And then another. All in all over the last three weeks we've had about two foot of snow and some really cold temperatures. Last Monday was a mild -18 degrees with a wind chill of -32. There were snow drifts in places of around four to six feet. Roads turn to ice rinks, cars turn to mobile snow transportation devices as people happily drive around with a foot and a half of ice encrusted compacted snow on their roofs.

The city council gets criticised for now ploughing enough, for ploughing too much, for creating barriers around the sidewalks with ploughed snow, for poorly ploughing the sidewalks, for bothering to plough the sidewalks, for burying people's cars in ploughed snow on smaller streets, for not ploughing side streets due to cars being parked there. The list goes on and the city cannot win.

Since the snow has, by and large, stayed around the city has launched an operation to remove the snow instead of letting it thaw off. This mainly consists of getting diggers out to lift the accumulated banks of snow into trucks so they can dispose of it somewhere else. When they clear the mounds of snow they find all sorts of things. People's cars that they haven't seen in weeks, bicycles, benches. In one case up in North York they found a body. A woman had been missing for a week and was found inside a snow bank at the end of a parking lot. No one is sure what happened as yet.

Even the lake has been freezing over. For several days it was more or less solid ice the entire way across the harbour to the islands. Walking down for a look some of it was strong enough to walk on, but some definitely not. That has mostly cleared now after the rain and milder weather at the weekend but it's still only -11 this morning. Mind you yesterday the cold weather made for interesting times for an incident in the city, but I'll talk about that in a separate post.

Top of the world ma!!! Top of the world.

So on Friday of this week (the 1st Feb) we had a major dumping of snow. My work office closed down early so people could get home. Schools had snow days and a reasonable amount of snow fell and it is still falling lightly. However the night immediately before that (31st January) was an incredibly clear night. A good job really as we had the best view on the continent.

On the Thursday night we decided to go out to celebrate my getting a job, getting my first paycheck, and a generally feel good night out. So we went to 360, the revolving restaurant at the top of the CN Tower. Can't beat the view. I challenge any restaurant anywhere else on the continent to produce a better view while you're sat at the dinner table.


They didn't hurry us and we were there nearly three hours, and sat through two full revolutions getting to see all the city and over the lake. It is truly beautiful at night and gives you a good impression for how large Toronto actually is.


Eating in a revolving restaurant does have its own peculiar problems though. The main one is if you get up to go to the washroom, when you return your table isn't where you left it. Also figuring out where the exit is afterwards takes a bit of a wander as things obviously move. Only the main dining area revolves, the kitchens and main amenities are in the centre and that bit stays still.

Get ready for mayhem Mayhem MAYHEM!!

So, last week instead of going to see American Football we instead saw, in the same stadium, Monster Jam. A three hour event of monster trucks, quad biking, monster trucks and demolition derby.

A silly afternoon spent with very loud engines and lots of expensive looking monster trucks smashing themselves up to the delight of the crowds. Seems everyone was only there to see the crashes, I know I was. They flip. They roll. They land on their roofs. They break. They smash. They have to get towed off the arena by a digger. Still it was entertaining.

Lets play some FOOTBALL!!!!

So on Saturday last week we went to our first (American) football game over here. It was an American College Football game being held at the Rogers Centre for some reason or another. Anyway we'd never been to one, and since it's only about 150m from out front door it seemed rude not to. So we went.

Rutgers University was playing Ball State University (personally I didn't know the US had a Ball State, I'm pretty sure it's not one of the 50 I've learned about, I'll look it up and get back to you.) Due to the joys of random ticket allocated we were just off the centre line on the Ball State side, so I guess we were cheering for Ball State then. Note to self, don't sit on one teams side and cheer for the other, it just gets messy.

The universities certainly put on a large show. Each side has their own marching band and several sets of cheerleaders (spares I suppose in case they break one) plus their mascots running around the field (or at least freshman students dressed up as mascots in some kind of weird hazing initiation.) Probably about 200 people officially involved on each side due to that, plus all the fans that followed them up to the Great White North from the Land of the Free.


Anyway it was a fun enough game to watch, even though Ball State didn't know what to do with the ball most of the time. Either their quarterback forgot he should really get rid of the ball before five burly armoured mean people jump on him, or the receivers he was throwing to were scared of trying to catch it. Whichever happened Ball State lost 52-30.


It was a good day out anyway. We'd never been to a major sporting event before so it was a new experience every way.

Ice, Snow and Mount Sinai

So on Wednesday of last week I went for a walk to the west of downtown, towards the Exhibition area by the lake. It had snowed the day or two before, it was icy and cold. Bit windy as well. As you can see in the photo below, the temperature board reads as cold.

A fun walk, even if when I took my gloves off to change lenses on the camera it felt like a wind chill of -25 degrees C (which it was.) Still it was a good walk. Stretch the old legs, explore somewhere I've never been. I decided to go for the walk as I had an interview in the area the next day and wanted to find where the place I was going beforehand, just to ensure I knew how long it would take to get there.

I came across this Inukshuk as well. Inukshuk are markers left by the Inuit and other first people in the western and arctic regions of Canada to act as navigational markers and meeting places. Apparently it is very hard to orientate yourself when all you can see is ice and snow, or rolling plains. Obviously this Inukshuk isn't authentic and has just been made to look nice in a park, but there are still hundreds or thousands of real ones around Canada.

And what about the Mount Sinai section of the title you ask? Mount Sinai is the name of the closest hospital emergency room to us (we think.) It is where we had the joy of spending Friday night last week. Nothing terribly serious though. While at Ikea earlier in the day and loading a friends car I managed to somehow (I don't know how, I don't recall doing it) taking the top right off one of my knuckles. Anyway four and a half hours of pressure and ice later when it won't stop bleeding we decide it would be best to go to the emergency room (as told to by a nurse on a telehphone helpline.) So the ER on a Friday night, the usual assortment of people there under police escort, security guards with other people, and lots of genuinely sick people (which just made me hide my pathetic wound under my coat.) Still for a Friday night I was reasonably impressed that such a non-threatening injury got me seen in three hours, even if they did give me a tetanus shot as well. Aw well, such is life.