beach | as I walk Toronto

Posts Tagged ‘beach’

Paul Estrela Lane

Posted: November 23, 2017 in alleys, graffiti and street art
Tags: #monicaonthemoon, alley, beach, car, cat, cbs crew, chairs, dajenesis, Danforth, faces, head, illustrations by kim, Japanese, kanos, kittzen, lane, laneway, Mediah, murals, octopus, people, soccer, surf, teeth, tokyo, victorful, waves, wings, woman, Woodbine

Have a seat!
It’s another tour of laneway street art.

Today’s blog features Paul Estrela Lane which runs for one block on the northside of the Danforth ending at Woodbine Avenue. Some of the garages and fences have been painted with bright and cheerful murals. There are quite a few paintings considering the fact that the lane is only one block long. Here they are…..

below: A mural by mediah and the CBS crew.

below: Another contribution from the CBS crew but this time in collaboration with kanos, a French artist, from Paris. More of his work can be seen under ikanografik on instagram.

below: A warm summer day by the surf.

below: Toothy grins and googly eyes, coloured monster faces all squished together to completely cover the back of this building. It is the work of monicaonthemoon.

below: Listening to music as her orange and pink hair blows in the wind, by Kim

below: Marine life swimming in the laneway, an octopus with orange eyes looking at you, and what I think is a squid on the left. Painted by kittzen.

below: Wings by monicaonthemoon aka Monica Wickeler

below: The work of dajenesis aka Jeannie Priscila

below: More goofy faces

below: Japanese characters painted by Tokyo. Hint to street artists – if you want to be found, your moniker should be something that doesn’t bring up millions of unrelated hits on a search engine. Any ideas about what he might be saying?

below: And last, partially obscured by the car, a profile in shades of blue in front of a cat with marvelous green eyes.

water water everywhere

Posted: June 18, 2017 in landmarks, locations, nature
Tags: amusement park, beach, benches, Centre Island, Centreville, ducks, flooding, green, Lake Ontario, lifeguard station, people, picnic benches, rain, sandbags, signs, swans, Toronto Islands, trees, Ward's Island, water

Lake Ontario is still higher than normal and one of the areas of the city most affected by this is Centre Island. All of the islands have been flooded to some extent but the low lying Centre Island was the worst hit.

below: Sandbags along the shoreline by the Ward’s Island ferry dock.

below: Sandbags in the water too.

below: Ward’s Island beach

Although the water level has gone down a bit since early May, large sections of Centre Island are still flooded. The ferries to Centre Island and Hanlons Point are not running and the Centreville amusement park is closed.

below: The Centreville train tracks are under water.

below: Waiting for the next train arriving on platform one. The train is late and it may be a long wait.

below: Making the bees go round!

below: The ducks are happy! So are the geese, swans, and other wildlife (if you can call them wild!). Carp have been seen spawning in the flooded areas.

below: This is the view across to the Royal Canadian Yacht Club which is on its own island. Two chairs hang overhead. In the background is the Toronto skyline.

below: The constantly changing Toronto Skyline as it is today.

below: Waiting for the water to recede. The Centre Island website says that the amusement park and all facilities (food vendors, washrooms, etc) are closed until further notice.

laid back catching rays

Posted: June 8, 2017 in nature, people, waterfront
Tags: beach, dog, flood, Kew Beach, Lake Ontario, lifeguard, muskoka chairs, people, reflections, sitting, sunshine, Woodbine Beach

Yesterday afternoon was perfect for a stroll along the boardwalk. I hadn’t been in that part of the city since the flooding occurred earlier in the spring. The lake levels are still high but that doesn’t prevent people from enjoying the sun and sand.

below: Party time behind the fence! This scene caught my eye because of the positioning of the chairs behind the fence (part of the beach is closed after the flooding). It wasn’t until I looked at the picture on my computer that I saw the LCBO bag between two of the chairs and the can of Palm Bay on one of arm rests.

below: The lifeguards are now manning some of the stations. Because of the flooding, there is a pool behind the lifeguard where there was once beach.

below: The remnants of sandbags ebb and flow with the waves. Grounded. Just enough sand to keep them from floating away.

below: The high water levels have encroached on the dog park.

below: Look! An aerial view of Stonehenge! LOL. And with that smile (I hope!)… and with sand between my toes and in my sandals, I’ll leave you for another day.

Flotsam and Jetsam and others

Posted: February 21, 2017 in people, public art, waterfront
Tags: art, beach, blue, bottles, boys, chairs, clear, Collective Memory, empties, evergreens, families, flotsam, Flotsam and Jetsam, girls, interactive, jetsam, kids, Lake Ontario, lifeguard stations, messages, North, notches, ovals, paper, pine, plastic, recycling, reflections, reflective, reusing, studio PERCH, The Beacon, The Illusory, trees, University of Waterloo, water, Waterfront BIA, waterfrontTO, winter stations, wood

Two empty chairs sitting in the sun. This photo is only a half truth; it suggests that the beach was sunny but empty yesterday when I took the photo. Sunny yes, empty no.

Back in the winter of 2015, I discovered the first “Winter Stations” event on a day when the temperature was -20C. There weren’t many people there that year! In contrast, yesterday was a beautiful and unseasonably warm February Sunday. Temperatures hit the double digits and lots of people come out to take advantage of the weather. It was also the first weekend of the 2017 version of ‘Winter Stations’. Although the installations officially opened today, all but one of them were completed and ready for the public yesterday.

below: One of the installations is “North” which was designed by studio PERCH in Montreal. Yes, it’s Christmas trees hung upside down. They are prickling to walk between. This year there seems to be a recycling and reusing theme in a lot of the installations. At least I hope these trees weren’t cut down specifically for this project.

below: Another installation is “Collective Memory” designed by Mario Garcia (Barcelona Spain) and Andrea Govi (Milan Italy). People are encouraged to leave messages in the bottles.

below: Paper is provided as are the bottles. The walls are constructed of horizontal empty plastic water bottles with the openings all on the inside of the structure.

below: The sun shining through the plastic bottles makes for some interesting effects.

below: Like most of the installations, “Collective Memory” encloses a lifeguard station.

below: The installation that wasn’t ready yet is “The Beacon” designed by Joao Araujo Sousa and Joanna Correia Silva (Porto Portugal).

The installation in the background in the above photograph is “BuoyBuoyBuoy” designed by Dionisios Vriniotis, Rob Shostak, Dakota Wares-Tani, and Julie Forand (Toronto Canada).

below: One of many photo ops!

below: Notched ovals made of wood and clear plastic were used to build this installation. The wood pieces were either painted white or covered with silvery reflective material.

below: More reflections, this time in “The Illusory” designed by a group from Humber College School of Media Studies & IT, School of Applied Technology.

below: Someone has already written on (scratched?) the surface.

below: “The Illusory” in front, “Flotsam and “Jetsam” behind, and lots of people in between.

below: “Flotsam and Jetsam” was designed by a team from the University of Waterloo. It consists of cubes made of wire cages. The cages on the bottom are filled with empty plastic bottles of different colours and shapes.

***

The Winter Stations will remain until the 27th of March.

one reason is…..

Posted: February 15, 2017 in Uncategorized
Tags: beach, blue sky, Caribbean, ocean, palm tree, sand, swimmers, water

You may have noticed that I haven’t posted for a while. Quite a while actually.
Reason # 1? I spent some time on a beach. It was sunny. It was warm.

Friars Bay and beach, St. Martin, Caribbean. palm tree, turquoise water, white sand beach, rocks in the foreground, sunny blue sky day. One boat in the water as well as a few swimmers

Not a Toronto beach!

How did you start the new year?

Posted: January 2, 2017 in events, people
Tags: bathing suits, beach, cold, costumes, frigid, Habitat for Humanity, hats, icy, January, Lake Ontario, New Years day, people, Polar Bear Dip, sand, shreak, snow, splash, Sunnyside Park, swimming, towels, waterfront, winter, yell

Did you do something lazy like sleep in and then stay in your jammies all day?
Did you stay home and stay warm?

I know a few people that did just the opposite! More than 60 people took the plunge and got wet, frigid cold wet that is. The 12th annual Polar Bear dip at Sunnyside Park was well attended this year and these are some of the brave and crazy people who were there (and the less brave and crazy who came to watch, support, and take pictures of the swimmers).

below: The event is a fundraiser for Habitat for Humanity and over $64,000 was raised this year. Habitat for Humanity had a team who participated, they could be spotted wearing orange T-shirts and orange hard hats.

#dothedip | #topolarbear

37,000 tons

Posted: May 30, 2016 in history, landmarks, locations, waterfront
Tags: beach, history, industry, large, pile, pink umbrellas, processing, queens quay east, raw sugar, Redpath, sugar, sugar beach, waterfront

A sweet post.

This is what 37,000 tons of raw sugar looks like.
The Raw Sugar Shed at Redpath Sugar is 27m high, 155m long, and 43 m wide. It’s a big space!

Raw sugar is brought to the Redpath Sugar facility by ship. When it is off-loaded from the ship it is brought into the warehouse by conveyor belts that run down the middle of the ceiling.

below: There isn’t a ship in the harbour at the moment so the green crane waits.

below: You can see a holes in the foreground of the next photo. This is one of many holes in the floor of the Raw Sugar Shed. The raw sugar is pushed through these holes to another series of conveyor belts below.

below: Photo taken from the entrance to the Raw Sugar Shed, taken at Doors Open. Raw sugar is taken by conveyor belt (upper far right) to the processing plant next door.

below: A lingering remnant, railway crossing signs from when a railway ran here.
A guard sits by the entrance to Redpath Sugar.

The railway serviced the industries that were built along the Toronto waterfront, The LBCO, Loblaws, the ‘Toronto Star’ newspaper, Molson Breweries, Dominion Malting and others, relied on the railways. Completed in 1959, the Redpath refinery was the last industry built along the waterfront. You can just see the railway tracks in the photo below, running between Queens Quay East and the Redpath building where they dead end. Since the tracks only dead ended there in 1985, that helps date the picture. Rail service ended in 2008.

aerial view of the East Wharf portion of the Toronto wateterfront, vintage photo from the 1970's or 1980's

photo credit: Originally from City of Toronto Archives but found online at Old Time Trains.

Today, Redpath Sugar is one of the last industries operating on the waterfront; The area around it is rapidly being redeveloped, including the space right next door that is aptly called Sugar Beach.

good morning Cherry Beach!

Posted: April 8, 2016 in nature, waterfront
Tags: beach, Cherry Beach, feeding, icicles, lake, Lake Ontario, lifeguard, nature, outdoors, pebbles, sand, seagulls, shore, spring, water, waterfront

It was a nippy morning at Cherry Beach today. The ice has been off Lake Ontario for a while now and the snow that fell this past week has melted. There was only a small clue that winter is still clinging on.

The morning started off grey but it wasn’t long before the sun came out.

below: Cherry Beach lifesaving station in the distance.

(Except for a few airplanes and the shouts of a lacrosse tournament in the distance) the only sounds on the beach were the chirps and tweets of birds and the squawking of seagulls.
The noises increased when food arrived!

There was even a lovebot hanging out at the beach, standing tall at the lifeguard chair.

animals and birdo birds in Roncey

Posted: March 18, 2015 in graffiti and street art, locations
Tags: alley, baboon, beach, birdo, birds, cabana, destination mammal cabana, dogs, faces, giraffe, hot day, lane, mammals, man, murals, ostrich, Queen St. West, rhino, rhinocerous, Roncesvalles, ske1, spudbomb, sticker, street art, summer, sunglasses, tiger, Toronto, turtle, uber5000, umbrella, urban art, woman, women, zebra

On Queen St. West, just before it meets Roncesvalles Ave., is the Corona Restaurant and Nightclub. Along the wall of this building are a number of pieces of street art. Only a small section is visible from the street.

If you follow the alley that runs behind Queen St., you will find more street art alongside the same building.

The back part is a mural entitled ‘Destination Mammal Cabana’ by Birdo, Spudbomb and SKE1. It was painted in 2012.

On the north wall of the same building…..

If you look closely at the above picture, on the right hand side metal pole supporting the landing, is a sticker. Below, that sticker up close.

Looking west along the alley towards Roncesvalles Ave.

but if you walk slightly west, away from Roncesvalles, you will encounter two more pieces by Birdo. The ‘Dreamer’ is on the same building as the Destination Mammal Cabana that is pictured above.