outside | as I walk Toronto

Posts Tagged ‘outside’

Cliffside murals

Posted: June 30, 2017 in graffiti and street art, public art
Tags: animals, B.C. Johnson, bear, Cliffside, Dan Sawatzy, Elizabeth Simcoe, golf, Half Way house, historic, Jeff Jackson, John Graves Simcoe, John Hood, Kingston Rd., moose, murals, Onondaga, outside, Phillip Woolf, plants, public art, Risto Turunen, Scarborough, Scarborough Bluffs, schooner, Spooners Garage, walls

Cliffside is an area around Kingston Road in the west side of the city and the ‘cliff’ in the name refers to the Scarborough Bluffs. The murals in this post are all on Kingston Road just west of Midland Ave. They are the result of work of Mural Routes, an organization “dedicated to the creation, development and promotion of public wall art” since 1990.

below: ‘Spooners Garage’ by Phillip Woolf, 1992. Art Spooner’s garage in Cliffside was built in 1926 (and rebuilt in 1947). The mural has two parts, each showing a different time period. They face each other.

below: … and the later version

below: ‘H.M. Schooner, Onondaga c. 1793’ by Jeff Jackson 1992. The Onondaga was built near Kingston in 1790 and it served with the Provincial Marine until 1797. It was the ship in which John Graves Simcoe and his wife Elizabeth sailed across Lake Ontario to York (now Toronto) to establish the capital of Upper Canada.

below: ‘Let’s Take a Walk on the Wildside’ by B.C. Johnson, 2016. Canadian plants and animals cover all four sides of Ikki Sushi – herons, bears, moose, beaver, and fox among the pine trees. Creeks, swamp, and waterfalls can also be seen.

below: ‘Cliffside Golf Course’ by Dan Sawatzky, 1991. Founded by George McCordick in 1931, the Cliffside Golfcourse was south of Kingston Road and overlooked Lake Ontario. It closed in 1950. The mural is faded and partially obscured by two trees.

below: The words on the mural tell the story of the golf course.

The last two murals have appeared in a previous blog post that I wrote once upon a time when I didn’t know how many Scarborough murals there were. Even now I’ve hardly scratched the surface.

below: ‘The Half Way House’ by John Hood, 1990. The mural is at the corner of Midland Avenue & Kingston Road which is where the inn and stage coach stop was located. The building was moved to Black Creek Pioneer Village in 1965.

below: ‘The Bluffs as Viewed by Elizabeth Simcoe c. 1793’ by Risto Turunen, 1992. The story is that Elizabeth Simcoe was so impressed by the view of the cliffs she persuaded her husband, John Graves Simcoe, to name the area after Scarborough England where there are similar cliffs.

There are more murals on old Kingston Road both to the east and west of these, but that will be a story for another day.

also see: Heritage Trail Mural 8 – Old Kingston Road

a streetcar, a giraffe, and a few dinosaurs

Posted: June 10, 2017 in graffiti and street art
Tags: alley, alleys, birdo, dinosaurs, giraffe, mural, old, outside, peeling, Sears St., stegasaurus, streetcar, streets, TTC, wall

Streetcar, giraffe, and dinosaurs – these are three words that most people would never have the opportunity to put together in one sentence without talking nonsense.

First, here is the streetcar that I am refering to. It is a mural on Connaught Avenue, on a building that is part of the TTC’s Russell Carhouse (also called Connaught Carhouse). The house in the mural is the Ashbridge Estate which is across Queen Street from the TTC yard. The sign over the door of the streetcar says 505 Hillsdale; I haven’t been able to find out why it says that.

Next on the list is the giraffe – a mural by birdo.

I’m sure that you can see the pattern developing! You’re obviously thinking, “Because the third word is dinosaurs, there must be a mural depicting dinosaurs.” .. and you’d be right. There are four dinosaurs on Sears street to be exact.

Three of the dinosaurs are on the same wall – the two above and the one below. All of them were painted by Mike Kennedy.

The fourth one is across the street. Sears is a street in name only, it’s narrow like an alley.

None of these murals is new but they are in out of the way places and I suspect that not many people have seen them. I hope that they were new to you!

are you going to Scarborough?

Posted: March 18, 2017 in reflections, transportation
Tags: city, Kennedy, McCowan, outside, people, public transit, rapid transit, reflections, Scarborough, SRT, subway, tracks, train, TTC, urban

What to do on a cold day when the wind is vicious and blows right through you? It blows through my hat, my ears and my brain. It makes my head hurt. Not the ideal walking day even with all my winter layers on. I have been thinking about my walk along Sheppard Avenue and some of the issues with public transit and while doing so I realized that I had never been on the Scarborough Rapid Transit. With all the talk about Sheppard subway vs LRT, I decided that maybe I should check it out. So instead of a walk, I went for a ride and took the SRT to McCowan and back.

First I had to get to the SRT which starts at Kennedy subway station.

At Kennedy I was a lost tourist as I searched for the route between the subway and the SRT. Here the SRT trains run above street level so it took a couple of escalators and some stairs to reach the platform.

below: Standing on the platform and waiting for the train. Kennedy station is at Kennedy & Eglinton and I think that this is the view looking east from there.

below: The train arrives.

below: Leaving Kennedy station. The first part of the route is north and runs parallel to the CNR & Stouffville GO line train tracks. The red and white cars are the original colour from when the SRT opened in 1985. In 2015 the TTC began painting the cars blue to match the colour scheme that now goes with “Line 3” on the TTC maps. They also began two switch over the name of the SRT to Line 3 Scarborough.

below: I wasn’t the only tourist on the train! After being on the subway, it felt a bit like being on a toy train. The cars are smaller. The trains are powered by linear induction motors which are quite different from conventional motors. They push themselves along the tracks using alternating flat magnets. That’s a very simplistic description of the science of induction motors but I’m sure that you can use google to find more information if you are interested!

below: The Scarborough RT, also referred to as TTC line 3, covers 6.4 km on its route from Kennedy station to McCowan station. There are six stops, Kennedy, Lawrence East, Ellesmere, Midland, Scarborough Centre, and McCowan. Note the blue colour on the map!

below: Ellesmere station. Apparently it is the least used station in the system, less even than Bessarion.

below: Looking out the back window. The tracks are standard gauge whereas the subway runs on tracks that are wider so the TTC can’t run their subway cars on these tracks.

below: This is the view at McCowan station, the end of the line. Although it was a very quiet ride to McCowan, the train was full on the ride back to Kennedy with Scarborough Centre being the most crowded station. It took 40 minutes to go from McCowan to Bloor/Yonge.

***

sunlight and shadows on a winter morning

Posted: March 6, 2017 in abstract, reflections, shadows, windows and walls
Tags: abstract, balconies, blue sky, buildings, downtown, exterior, grass, half house, light, lines, outside, patterns, peaked roof, posts, reflected light, reflectionsonies, shadow, trees, winter

Early Saturday morning was cold but beautiful –
brilliant blue overhead with the sun still low in the sky.

below: Striped grass

below: This is the Bell building from the Simcoe Street side. The blue glass, vertical lines in the concrete, blue sky and strong tree shapes made for an interesting few minutes while I experimented with different angles and views.

below: The ghostly look of reflected light

below: A single pole and its shadow, alone on a wall.

below: Three reflected windows reserved for the president.

below: A half house, a fun find. Once this was a semi-divided house where the shared wall created the peak at the front of the house. With its partner gone, the remaining house looks incomplete.

below: A tree in silhouette seems to dance in front of the other buildings.

below: Phantom balconies, mirages on the concrete.

summer in the city, June edition

Posted: June 15, 2016 in people
Tags: boarders, boy, cars, cat, fountains, hitching a ride, nathan phillips square, outdoors, outside, patio, people, skateboards, summer, sunny, water, woman, Yonge Dundas Square

Summer in the city – enjoying the summer weather!

below: Toronto street art in Graffiti Alley.

below: skateboarders

below: Enjoying a quiet moment, late afternoon.

below: Painting shingles – June 4th was 100 in One Day, a day where community activites are promoted. One of the activities on Kenwood Lane was shingle painting.

below: Running through the fountains at Yonge Dundas Square

below: World Naked Bike Ride participants cycle through Kensington.

below: Relaxing at Nathan Phillips Square. #sitTO is a campaign to increase the number of places to sit in public spaces.

below: Distillery District

below: Patio, College Street

inside Leslie Barns

Posted: June 6, 2016 in events, locations, transportation
Tags: building, cameras, Doors Open, interior, kids, Leslie Barns, new, outside, PCC, people, Peter Witt, photos, pipes, riding, streetcars, tours, tracks, TTC, vintage, wires

As you all know, the TTC is replacing their older streetcars with new longer Bombardier streetcars. Or at least they are trying to 🙂 Because they are longer, they don’t fit into existing “garages”, hence the new Leslie Barns facility. Located on Leslie St., south of Queen, it is the new streetcar “home”. It is where streetcars are parked, maintained and repaired. It has been in operation since Nov 2015 but the first chance the public got to peak inside the finished complex was at Doors Open on the 28th of May.

below: While waiting for a streetcar at the corner of Queen and Broadview on the way to visit the Leslie Barns, I saw this renovated TTC streetcar from the 1950’s.

below: The streetcar tour involved riding a new streetcar through a maintenance bay in the building and then around the parking lot out back.

below: Exterior, parking space for at least 100 streetcars

below: Special bays have been constructed with space for workers to access both the underneath and the top of the streetcars. Because the cars have been designed to ride low, a lot of their workings such as the HVAC and propulsion systems are built into the roof of the car.

below: It’s a big space! …. 17,510 square metres (188,500 sq ft) in fact.

below: A spic and span shiny paint room

below: A myriad of colour coded pipes

below: There were renovated vintage streetcars on display. On the left is a 1921 Peter Witt streetcar and next to it is a PCC streetcar from the early 1950’s.

below: Interior of a refurbished Peter Witt streetcar with its wood trim. The Witt cars were built for the newly formed TTC in 1921. They entered service on Broadview in October of that year. By 1923 they were operating on seven routes. The last Witt streetcar was retired in 1963.

below: Looking out the window of a PCC streetcar built in 1951. PCC stands for Presidents’ Conference Committee, which was a group of operators from the USA and Canada who got together in 1938 to design a new electric railway car. By the late 1950s, the TTC owned the largest fleet of PCC’s in the world. The last one was retired in 1995.