as I walk Toronto

Recently I saw a blogTO article about “A massive Overwatch mural” that was being painted on King Street West.  I was curious so off I went to check it out.

below: Here is the mural.   Yes it’s big, but massive no.  When I think massive I think Phlegm’s mural at Yonge and St. Clair, or Adrian Hayles music murals near Yonge and College.   And whoa, what’s that in the bottom right corner?  This is an ad for a video game and this is a picture of Karya, one of the characters.   Under the heading of ‘you never know where things are going to lead’ – Overwatch is a multi-player team game where competitions are held and prizes won.  There is an Overwatch World Cup which was won by South Korea in both 2016 and 2017.  This year there was a Canadian team and they came second.  Yeah Canada!

below: Around the corner is another mural.  This one is painted onto the side of an old brick building by Omen514.  As you can see, it is part of the most recent ad campaign by Sick Kids Hospital to raise 1.3 billion dollars to rebuild the hospital starting with the building at Elm and Elizabeth streets.  The black and white of the mural matches the black and white of the video advertising.   Omen514 had help from Nick Sweetman, Earth Crusher, Poser, and Five S, all of whom are street artists as well.

below: … And another mural in the same neighbourhood.  This one is on the side of the Kiin restaurant (Thai) and as you can see, the name of the restaurant is in the mural.  Again, street art but not street art.  Whatever you choose to call it, it’s much more appealing than a blank grey wall.

below:  Businesses, such as Champs Food Supplies pictured here, have been using murals to draw attention to themselves for a long time.

below:  It is still standing even as it’s being dwarfed by the condo developments around it.

below: And even farther back in time – This is the MacLean building that was built in 1914 (designed by George Wallace Gouinlock).  It is at 345 Adelaide St. West, and the sign is on the east side of building.   Hugh C. MacLean publications  was founded in 1909 by Hugh Cameron MacLean.  It published mostly trade journals such as ‘Footwear in Canada’. The company was bought by the Southam family and become Southam-Macleans… and then finally Southam Business Publications in 1964.  As it turns out, there were two MacLeans brothers in the publishing business,  Hugh and brother John Bayne MacLean who founded the MacLean publishing company that would eventually become MacLean Hunter – the home of MacLeans magazine before it was swallowed up by Rogers Media.

below: This ghost sign is actually a double.    The words ‘head office’ can be seen by the word MacLean and there is a box to the left of that.  The number 33 is on the box and obviously means something.  I haven’t been able to decipher the rest of the sign.

And then there is street art that is just that, decorations on a wall.

After I took the above photos and before I had finished writing this blog post, I came across another Sick Kids fundraising murals by the same artists as the one above.

below: Looking north up Broadview at Thompson street, just north of Queen.

below: The central portion of the mural.

below: In the mural the kids are collecting pieces of lumber, pipes, and concrete blocks.   This is similar to the ad where kids are “running through city streets and alleyways, gathering building materials and running to an empty piece of land ready for construction.” (source)