Something to smile about!
He’s happy to be hanging out under the Gardiner with a friend….
while another of the gang lurks nearby, keeping an eye on the situation….
Together they are part of “Boom Town”, a temporary creative intervention to brighten the day of passers by. A colourful contrast to the Lakeshore and the Gardiner above it, brought to life by the people at the bentway as well as the Waterfront BIA.
I have blogged a few times about the new Eglinton LRT/subway line that may or may not ever get finished in our life time. As well, I have shared some pictures of the construction that is the beginning of the work on the Ontario line through downtown. But apparently, that’s not all that Metrolinx is up to – I have heard rumours of another LRT line under construction in Toronto, the Finch West line. So I went to investigate.
below: Waiting on the platform at Finch West subway station.
Like so many transit projects in the city, the history of the Finch LRT has not followed a straight path. In 2009 the provincial government announced a new subway/LRT line along Finch from Don Mills to Humber College. But that promise was shortlived – the eastern end was removed a year later. Next, mayor Rob Ford cancelled the whole project after taking office at the end of 2010. City Council reinstated it (the western portion) in 2012 and construction was to begin in 2015 for a 2020 completion date. Work began a little later than planned but at least it actually started. The new LRT line goes from Finch West station at Keele to Humber College, 10.3 kilometres in total. It’s behind schedule but I don’t think that that surprises anyone.
My walking plan was to take a Finch bus westward along the new route and then walk back…. Traffic, of course, was horrible and by the time we got to hwy 400 I was ready to get off the bus. It didn’t help that they were repaving parts of Finch Avenue.
below: Like many plans, changes had to be made along the way since the sidewalk kept coming to an abrupt end….
below: .. and intersections weren’t always easy to navigate.
below: At the eastern end of the new LRT, on the east side of the intersection of Keele and Finch is a new public art installation. This steel structure is 40 feet high and represents Elia Public School which once stood at this intersection. It was designed by Brandon Vickerd. In the photo below, the building behind seems to be another Metrolinx building – that T symbol is on the new LRT stations as well.
below: Also at Keele and Finch – there are already two buildings to access the subway. It seems to suggest that TTC and Metrolinx have structures on three of the four corners of that intersection. Finch West station is on the section of Line 1 (Yonge-University) that opened late in 2017. Pictures from those days can be found at “to the end of the line”
below: Most of the LRT runs above ground. In order to provide easy access with the existing subway line, the LRT goes underground just west of Keele.
below: New LRT trains parked at the new Finch West Maintenance and Storage Facility just west of Jane and Finch.
below: No one will be able to say that they can’t find the stations along Finch. This is Driftwood station.
below: Walking past Norfinch Oakdale station.
below: Track work at Tobermory station.
below: Looking west from Romfield
For the nest few months, three big, bold, and colourful images are on display at Ontario Square on the waterfront. These are “Joy in Resistance” by Frizzkid aka Hana Shafi.
This is one exhibit where the “words on the wall” work well! This is how Frizzkid describes her work: “They are celebrations of diversity and of LGBTQ+ joy, where we envision a bright future; where people can flourish and dream wildly, and be wholly themselves without danger or hate. I have a love of 60’s and 70’s popular culture aesthetics, which spans from the golden age of Bollywood, to Studio 54 disco fever, appearing throughout my work to convey a warm nostalgia amidst the psychedelia. I believe in the beauty of reinvention and fluidity, and to make each piece feel transformative. My chaotic use of colour is meant to invoke powerful emotions that jolt people out of apathy and the exhaustion of doom-scrolling on their phones and to invite them to imagine their ideal future, one where they feel at home in their own skin and beloved by their communities.”
On display until 5th Nov 2023
My previous post was about wandering around the Distillery District which by the way is 20 years old now. Back in 2003 it was surrounded by a part of the city that seemed to have been forgotten. In 2015 the PanAm games were held in Toronto. Athletes Village, i.e. housing for the athletes competing in the games was built new in what was now being called the West Don Lands. After the games, this housing was converted to “746 market-priced condos, 41 market-priced town homes, 250 affordable-rent apartments, 257 student dormitory units for George Brown College, office and retail units, and a YMCA recreation centre.” (Wikipedia) Development in the area continues on all sides of the Distillery.
below: Southside view of the new development on Mill Street (east of Cherry).
below: Northeast corner of Mill and Cherry. Part of this complex is a new Anishnawbe health centre.
below: Eastbound on Eastern Avenue at Trinity Street
below: Fire hydrant in a field of chicory, vacant lot surrounded by a fence.
below: Down and out. Grounded. Election signs left over from the recent by-election for mayor.
below: A large section of land at Parliament and Front that will become the site of Corktown station on the new Ontario Line is surrounded by hoardings. From here the line goes northwest to a new Moss Park station at Queen & Sherbourne – or it goes southeast to the existing railway tracks by the Lakeshore where it surfaces before a new station, East Harbour, at the foot of Broadview ( south of Eastern).
below: Nicholson Lane
below: There is a new mural on the St. Lawrence Community Recreation Centre painted by Darwin Peters from Pikangikum First Nation..
below: On the Esplanade
below: Photography exhibit along the Esplanade, “Mashkiki” by Morningstar Quill about life in Pikangikum First Nation. This photo shows a group of young women making ribbon skirts.
below: The exhibit was produced with the support of Jamii, a non-profit arts organization.
below: For those hot summer days when we’re all looking for a bit of relief!
below: Post more Bills
below: Working on the new north market building, St. Lawrence Market.
below: Looking westward from Front and George streets.
below: Lower Sherbourne
below: McVeighs Irish pub in an old building that is now surrounded by new developments, Richmond and Church.
below: The steeple of St James Cathedral peaks through the gap.
below: This is “Afrophilia”, an installation at the Toronto Sculpture Garden by Frantz Brent-Harris, a Jamaican artist now based in Toronto.
below: A closer look at two of the heads.
below: Crossing King Street.
below: Queen Street East
below: The present state of the northeast corner of Queen and Church (60 Queen St. East). Before becoming a placeholder for yet another condo development, it was a Shawarma’s King restaurant. That old yellow building may be living out its final days – since 2018 a very tall (54 to 57 storeys) building has been proposed for this site. The original proposal had the usual blah glass and steel at street level as shown on the condo website (queenchurch.com) but in November 2020 the existing building (and a couple of nearby buildings on Church St) was added to Toronto’s Heritage Register.
below: Queen Street is now closed at Church Street for work on the new Ontario Line subway. Rumour says that it will be closed 4 (5?) years. Yes, years. The subway will run under Queen Street and connect to the Yonge line at Queen and the University line at Osgoode.
below: Peering over the fence?
below: Looking west along Queen Street towards Yonge (behind the hoardings).
below: Trying to look west along Queen at Yonge.
below: The glass roof of the Eaton Centre is also being renovated and updated. Scaffolding now dominates the upper level of the mall.
below: More Queen Street closed… the closure runs as far west as Bay Street and Old City Hall.
below: Feeding the pigeons at Nathan Phillips square.
below: Group shot! A school group visiting City Hall.
below: Constructing a rainbow heart
below: …. which became an attraction before it was finished
below: Empty planters. Ugliness on Queen Street, right in front of Nathan Phillips Square and City Hall. Neglectful. Toronto can build it but Toronto can’t maintain it.
below: Mayor Gao for mayor! I don’t think that this was a serious candidate?! But then again, there were 101 people on the ballot in that by-election so maybe he was…..
below: The sparrows around Balzacs Coffee shop are as brazen as ever. If you decide to lure them away by throwing crumbs elsewhere, the pigeons will join in the fun.
below: East entrance to the Distillery, on Cherry Street. I suspect that everyone who visits the Distillery takes this photo.
below: Part of a display of some of the products produce by the Gooderham and Worts distillery over the years. The distillery complex built by Gooderham and Worts started producing spirits in 1862. At one time it was the largest employer in Toronto. It also once produce half the spirits made in Canada.
below: There are now many old photos of the Gooderham and Worts distillery from years past scattered around the Distillery District. This one is ” The Office Entrance”. The door is still there, as are many other features seen in the photo.
below: Approaching Parliament, with the large heart painted in rainbow colours for Pride month (June).
below: Home is Toronto
below: Old millstone from the windmill that pre-dates the dsitillery.
“This millstone brought from England on the schooner ‘Kingston’ to the town of York 1832 was used for grinding grain in the historic windmill of Gooderham & Worts. The windmill stood 52 feet southwest by south of this point. It was the eastern limit of the famous ‘Old Windmill Line” on which the original plan of the city of Toronto was based.”
below: Note on the bakery door – Please make sure that the pigeon doesn’t come in with you! Patty the pigeon wasn’t there the time that I went in.
below: The line of painted head and torsos is back. The shapes are all the same but each has bee painted by a different artist. They are part of the ‘6ix Art Outdoor’ exhibit.
below: Two of the sculptures still under wraps. This is at 6least the second time that they have been on display. They were lined up in same place last August. If you want more information about them, I blogged about the 6ix Art Outdoor last year. (follow link).
below: The inflatable couches are there because through July there are night time showings of various movies, Italian movies for the most part I think.
below: Painting by Terran McNeely for Pride 2023.
below: Development notice sign on Mill Street.
below: One of the buildings on Distillery Lane is being refurbished. Yellow crane is for new development on Parliament.
below: There is now a hole on Parliament!
below: … a very big hole!
below: And I’ll end this post with a sigh…. some people
… an art project by Sunday School, a creative agency formed in Toronto in 2017 by Josef Adamu. At the moment there are billboards at a few locations around the city including here at Dundas and Lansdowne where there are 3 images.
Other photos by the group are on display at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Two examples are:
below: “Jump Ball” is an ongoing project that explores the relationship between basketball and the African Diasporic communities. Home is not restricted to private spaces, it is also found in unity. Here, in “Jump Ball: Toronto (2019)”, you can see carefully composed pairings of young men in vibrant Ghanaian Kente cloth or a Senegalese boubou on the basketball court (what is identity? how does basketball bring young men together?). These were photographed by O’shane Howard.
below: Another series of pictures is “Ten Toes Down”, photographed by Kreshonna Keane. This series features a ballet dancer in her home – a Black dancer in a field that is almost exclusively white. Home is not just a building. Home is the body; home is self expression.
below: This image by Carlos Idun-Tawiah can also be seen in a parking lot by 80 Spadina Ave (see above, at Lansdowne & Dundas).
Sunday School’s Instagram page
below: At 460 King West (at intersection with Spadina) there is a mural on the wall and a poster in the Pattison advertising space. Both are part of the CONTACT Photography Festival.
Jake Kimble is a Chipewyan (Dëne Sųłıné) from Treaty 8 Territory in the Northwest Territories. The original photograph is of Kimble at age 6 or 7 and it was taken by his mother. In it he is wearing a cowboy at and apparently he was on his way to the Calgary Stampede.
“I was told that peace was mine to keep.” On the CONTACT webpage that describes this installation, this text is “the statement of a promise unfulfilled or a burden to bear. The phrase implies both that peace was his, and its opposite—that he was to be the peacekeeper”.
There are now three large images on display at Ontario Square (on Queens Quay near the foot of York Street). Collectively, they are “Double Pendulum” by Maggie Groat who has constructed them as wheatpaste collages. They are part of this year’s CONTACT Photography Festival.
below: Butterflies constructed from other shapes and objects. Does this show the interconnectedness of all things, as in the “Butterfly Effect”?
…for 100 years. At the moment there is a selection of old TTC photos on display at Pape subway station in celebration of 100 years of Toronto Transit.
below: Already lining the walls at Pape Station are images of Pape station itself and the surrounding neighbourhood. This is ‘Sources/Derivations’ by Allan Harding MacKay. You can see the reflections of one of the old TTC photos in this section of MacKay’s artwork.
The TTC posters are at platform level between the westbound and eastbound trains so you can look at them while waiting for a train.
below: First Pride bus, 2008
below: People waiting for the North Yonge bus at Eglinton station, 1950s
below: Waiting for the subway. “Line 1 customers ride the higher capacity Toronto Rocket (TR) subway train on its 2011 launch. By 2017, Line 1 had grown by 8.6 km.”
below: Two posters, two eras. On the left: “A chartered TTC bus circles outside Rosedale station in 1961 as it awaits passengers. Only one other station, Davisville, from the original 12 was a surface station.” On the right: “Rushing to catch a Peter Witt streetcar along its Yonge Street route on a summer day in 1930.
below: “A TTC car picks up scholars with disabilities outside their school in the 1920s.” A couple with their COVID masks on sit in front of more images from ‘Sources/Derivations’ by artist Allan Harding MacKay.
below: “On a warm day in 1994, customers eagerly wait to board an Articulated Light Rail Vehicle streetcar along Queen Street at University Avenue.
“Resilience” is a photography exhibit at Cedarbrae Library.
It is the creation of Scarborough Made. This is a group founded by Alex Narvaez x Sid Naidu in 2019. It uses photography and cinematography to document positive stories about the people of Scarborough with emphasis on identity and culture.
“Resilience:
The ability to recover from challenges or adjust easily to change.
Resilience exists all around us.
We see it in the movers and shakers, the cultural change makers and creative instigators.
We see it in our neighbourhoods, from the small businesses to our healthcare and essential workers.
Resilience is what lives in our narratives and exists within our identity.
Our resilience as a community is stronger when we stick together. With it, we can overcome the challenges and build towards a better future.
The portraits you see as part of this public art installation represent the many faces that embody resilience. Pulling from both past and present works of Scarborough Made artists, we’ve created this exhibit for you to see and reflect on the humanity that exists within our community.
Resilience is us
Resilience is you
Resilience is Scarborough. ”
Artists
as I walk Toronto 