people | as I walk Toronto

Posts Tagged ‘people’

Turban Up! 2016

Posted: May 16, 2016 in events, people
Tags: chairs, colours, event, fabric, outdoors, people, sikh, sikh youth federation, sitting, turban, Yonge Dundas Square

Get your head wrapped!

Considering the cold temperatures, not to mention the rain, snow and hail, there was a great turn out for Turban Up! at Yonge Dundas square today. The event was organized by the Sikh Youth Federation to help raise awareness about Sikh religion and culture. There were martial arts demonstrations, food, an art exhibit, and other examples of Sikh culture, but the main event was the turban wrapping. Numerous eager and friendly volunteers were available to wrap a turban for you in your choice of colour. A few people sported black and dark blue turbans but bright colours were very popular – colours like turquoise, bright greens and blues, as well as pink, orange and red. A veritable rainbow of turbans.

below: He’s out of focus but I like his gumption. Thanks for the smile!

#sikhyouthfederation | #turbanup | #ydsquare

tower building and more!

Posted: May 13, 2016 in events, people
Tags: activities, adult, building, chemistry, corn starch, demonstrations, experiments, fun, kids, lego, outdoors, people, physics, robots, science, Science rendezvous, scientists, U of T, Yonge Dundas Square

I am still trying to get caught up with the photos that I took at Science Rendezvous last weekend. There was so much happening! Lots of people were involved and engaged in the various activities that were available both at Yonge Dundas Square and on St. George street.

below: On the stage at Yonge Dundas square: Start with three identical piles of building blocks and three teams, put ten minutes on the clock and see what towers result. The challenge was to
build the strongest, tallest, or most awesome tower.

below: Teamwork!

below: How do you test the strength of a tower?
By giving one exuberant girl a big orange ball of course!

below: At the end of the competition, all three teams came together to build the tallest tower that they could. It didn’t quite reach the stage roof, but it was close!

… more great activities…..

below: Question: How long does it take the light from the Sun to travel to the Earth?
Answer: sunlight travels at the speed of light (rounded to 300,000 km/s) and it has to cover a distance of 150 million km on average to reach Earth. With a bit of math, the answer is 500 seconds, or 8 minutes and 18 seconds.

below: making paper

below: robots

below: How unique are you? Test yourself for various phenotypes (the product of your genes)… Can you curl your tongue? Can you smell freesias? Is your thumb bent? From answers to these and five other questions you can determine if you are 1/10 (you share similarities to many people) or 1/1000 (you are more unique)… or something in between. Apparently I’m 1/45 and if you’re curious, my thumb is straight, I can’t curl my tongue and I can smell freesias.

below: St. George street.

below: A demonstration using acids, bases, and pH indicators. Technically, pH is a measure of the concentration of hydrogen ions. In practice, it indicates how acidic or basic a substance is. Water, with a pH of 7 is neutral. Acids have a pH less than 7 while bases have a pH greater than 7. A pH indicator is a chemical that changes colour depending on the pH.

below: How much energy is a gummi bear? Find out by heating a little bit of of potassium chlorate in a test tube. Once it is liquid, add a gummi bear. Smoke and flames ensue. When the potassium chlorate is heated, it produces oxygen gas which ignites if there is combustible material, such as sugar, available.

below: Design and construction with K’nex

below: Tetris players

below: programmable Lego vehicles

below: Watch out! Scientists on the loose!

below: The little boxes used in this activity have a marble inside them. When placed on an inclined surface, the boxes tumble to the bottom. Sandpaper prevents the boxes from slipping.

below: Corn starch and water makes a wonderful substance. It’s not liquid and it’s not solid. If you are fast enough you run on top of it but if you stop moving, you sink into it!

tiff and the toilet paper

Posted: May 12, 2016 in events, public art
Tags: Bell Lightbox, CONTACT, downtown, french fries, globe, images, King St. West, Long Weekend, looking, passerby, people, photography, photography festival, razor blade, running shoes, Scotiabank CONTACT, sidewalk, smelling, TIFF, toilet paper, Toronto, typewriter, walking

It’s common to see posters pasted on walls so finding movie posters on the walls of the tiff Bell Lightbox didn’t strike me as unusual. I walked past this display until I noticed the sign that marked this as a CONTACT Photography Festival installation. Fake movie posters, many designed with a touch of humour, that look just like the real thing.

below: The installation, titled ‘Coming Attractions’ covers the corner windows and wall space. The posters were designed by ‘Long Weekend’ which is a collective of artists working out of Winnipeg. They were made from ads and illustrations from old books and magazines.

On the other side of King street, and just a but further east, is a series of eleven large images taken from past editions of ‘Toilet Paper’, a biannual magazine founded by Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari. They hint at advertising and they blur the line between fantasy and reality.

below: Muhle is a German company that makes shaving products and one of their blades looks identical to the one in this picture.

If you like these images, you might also like Toilet Paper’s website.

it’s all about the DNA

Posted: May 10, 2016 in events, people
Tags: activities, adults, bananas, biochemistry, building, chemistry, design, DNA, Dundas Square, experiments, family, kids, people, Ryerson, science, U of T

Did you know that we share 50% of our DNA with a banana? Bananas don’t have DNA that codes for eye colour and we probably don’t any genes that produce yellow peels. What we share is similar basic biochemistry, such things as DNA replication, cell metabolism, and regulation of cell growth, to name a few. One thing that you can do with banana DNA is easily extract it. We all know that cells are too small to see and that DNA is even smaller, BUT if you mash a whole a banana, you can produce enough DNA to make a small clump. That was one of the activities at Science Rendezvous this past Saturday.

Science Rendezvous is science outreach festival that occurs across Canada, a day when science hits the streets. This year it was May 7th. In Toronto, there were information booths, demonstrations, and activities by students from Ryerson (at Yonge Dundas Square) and students from U of T (St. George Street).

“There’s no place like GenHome” is a project by Ryerson students to break a Guinness World Record by building the longest DNA model. DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is a double helix. Although it is a complex molecule, it can be broken down into components called nucleotides. Nucleotides consist three parts – deoxyribose which is a sugar molecule, phosphate, and an organic base. At the risk of being too simplistic (because the chemistry of DNA is way beyond the scope of this blog), the sugar and phosphate of the nucleotides form the backbone of the double helices. The organic bases are in the space between the two backbones and if they are ordered properly, the bases hold the double helix together.

A couple more things you need to know about DNA. First, there are four bases, adenine (A), thymine (T), cytosine (C), and guanine (G). And second, bases come in pairs and only certain pairs can exist if the double helix is to form properly. Adenine has to pair with thymine and cytosine has to pair with guanine, i.e. A with T and C with G and nothing else.

How would you build a DNA model? The Ryerson University students wanted to get people involved in the project and if you were at Science Rendezvous, you could have become part of their DNA model.

below: Bases need partners and so do you ! Find a partner and take a spin.
Are the two of you A & T or G & C?

below: Next, have your picture taken with your base letter.

A few moments later your picture is printed and ready to attach to the DNA model.

below: My partner for the activity adds his G (toe to toe with my C).

I don’t know how long the DNA model is at this point. I was hoping that there would be some information online but nothing has shown up yet.

Also, If you want to try extracting the DNA from a banana, the instructions are online at numerous sites including Scientific American. You will need a banana, water, salt, detergent, rubbing alcohol, and a coffee filter. Have fun!

*** a little breather after all that molecular biology ***

below: At Science Rendezvous they were walking together until she saw my camera and then she tried to get away. Hmmm…. Mr. Scientist Creature (mutant science rodent?!), maybe she was embarrassed? 🙂

Dysturb

Posted: May 9, 2016 in events, graffiti and street art
Tags: black and white, conflict, CONTACT, downtown, exhibit, Kensington, outdoors, paper, paste up, people, photography, photography festival, photojournalism, public art, Scotiabank CONTACT, Toronto, urban

Spread around Kensington and Chinatown are 20 large black and white photos taken by a number of freelance photojournalists who are part of a group called #Dysturb. One of their goals is to present photojournalism in new ways, including as street art, with the aim of engaging people and encouraging discussion of global issues. The images are part of an exhibit for the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival.

Kensington has had a problem with taggers for a while. Often street art gets vandalized in that area. The #Dysturb photo that was at 56 Kensington (under Mona Lisa) has already been torn down and a couple of others have been ripped.

Pictures of some of the images that are part of the exhibit are shown below. I have included a partial transcription of the words that accompany each picture.

Libyan Coasts, August 1, 2015
Photo by Christophe Stramba-Badiali/Haytham

West African migrants are seen aboard a boat, approximately 20 nautical miles off the Libyan coast, as they are about to be rescued by Medecins Sans Frontieres. The MSF-hired ship, named Argos, was patrolling the waters off Libya when it encountered one rubber dinghy carrying a total of 111 migrants including several children and infants. “

Barpak, Ghorka District, Nepal, May 9, 2015 ”
Photo by Renaud Philippe/Hans Lucas

Children play in a cloud of dust and gravel thrown by an Indian army helicopter landing in Barpak Nepal. The community is at the epicenter of the devastating earthquake that struck April 25, 2015, taking over 8000 lives. Of Barpak’s 1400 houses, only 20 remain standing. The rest of the town is a pile of rubble that blends into the rocky landscape. An archway that somehow survived the quake greets visitors with a rueful ‘Welcome to Barpak’.”

Shaanxi Province, Henan, China, February 27, 2014
Photo by Sim Chi Yin/Vii

Gold miner, He Quangui, battling silicosis, struggles to breathe while cradled in the hands of his wife Mi Shixiu. After many attempts to stabilize his breathing, in the early hours of the next morning her tried to kill himself to end the suffering. He contracted the irreversible disease working in illegal gold mines in China’s Henan province. He is among some six million workers in China who have pneumoconiosis – the country’s most prevalent occupational disease.”

Cizre Turkey, October 30, 2015.
Photo by Emilien Urbano/Myop for Le Monde
NOTE: I took this picture on Friday. Today (Monday) it was gone.

A militiaman from the PKK Youth wing YDG-H in Cizre Turkey. The Patriotic Revolutionary Youth Movement (YDG-H) – the militant youth wing of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) – are battling to defend their neighbourhoods from Turkish security forces. The YDG-H has been acting as a paramilitary force in Cizre for the past few months and has closed off several Kurdish neighbourhoods with their armed checkpoints and patrols.

Fort McKay, Alberta, Canada, August 12, 2015
Photo by Ian Willms/Boreal Collective

Dez, 7, plays in his bed. Dez was born with an underdeveloped heart and has received multiple open heart surgeries. His family and healthcare professionals in Fort McKay believe that his condition was caused by environmental pollution. Fort McKay is an indigenous community that is surrounded by oil sands developments.”

Kunduz City, Afghanistan, November 18, 2015.
Photo by Andrew Quilty/Oculi

Najibah tries to comfort her daughter Zahara, 8, as they weep over the grave of their husband and father, Baynazar. Baynazar, 43, was wounded by gunfire on his way home fromwork during the Taliban takeover of Kunduz in late 2015. He was taken to the nearby Doctors Without Borders (MSF) trauma centre. In the early hours of October 3, during his second operation, a US AC-130 aircraft attacked the hospital for more than half an hour, killing 43 MSF staff, patients and nurses. Dozens more were wounded.

About #Dysturb

#CONTACT16

from Riverside to Leslieville

Posted: April 22, 2016 in locations
Tags: bench, cafes, Canada Dry, graffiti, history, Leslieville, mountie, mugs, murals, people, Queen Elizabeth, Queen St. East, reflection, rubiks cube, statue of liberty, stores, street scenes, streetcar, tea, troll, windows

A walk along Queen Street East from Broadview to Greenwood.

below: Welcome to Riverside, mural at the corner of Queen and Grant streets featuring the sign on the Queen bridge as it crosses over the Don River.

below: Farther east on Queen Street, at Curzon, there is this ‘Greetings from Leslieville’ mural.

There are many interesting little stores on this stretch of Queen Street.
All the benches have been painted in cheerful colourful stripes.

below: On the 21st of April (yesterday), Queen Elizabeth II celebrated her 90th birthday.
A number of stores and restaurants had displays in her honour.

Queen Street East was developed as long ago as the mid 1800’s and remnants of various decades can be found as one explores the area.
below: … details such as this fading Canada Dry sign. The formula for Canada Dry ginger ale was developed in the early 1900’s by John J. McLaughlin, of the same McLaughlin family whose early automobile factory led to the start of General Motors. This ginger ale was patented in Toronto in 1907. Usually the words ‘Canada Dry’ are written in red, not yellow. Is there a time when Canada Dry used yellow lettering?

below: At the corner of Queen and Coady there is also a ghost sign for Coady Sweets as well as an advertisement for Coca-Cola.

below: Call it luck – even a vintage car drove past while I was there.

below: An old KitKat advertisement on the side of Boston Discount Store. If you look closely, there is also an original Boston Ave street sign at the top right of the KitKat ad.

below: Even older are the buildings in the mural of Queen St. East circa 1926. I am not sure if this an accurate depiction of a particular stretch of Queen Street. It might be interesting to do some research to find out if the picture can be retaken, 90 years later. So far I have been unable to find out anything about a Jackson Brothers store on Queen East.

below: A sign of the new, some of the new TTC streetcars are now running along Queen Street.

below: A mural depicting Frank Zappa along with the words
“Stupidity has a certain charm. Ignorance does not.”

below: Like so many places and streets in Toronto, there are condos going up here too.

below: The railway tracks pass over Queen Street. A number of years ago the underpass was decorated with paintings of different animals and those paintings remain in good shape.

below: Once upon a time trains served this area. There was a railway station here but it is long gone.

transcription:

“In 1896, the Grand Trunk Railway opened its Queen East Station to serve Toronto’s growing east end. Renamed Riverdale Station in 1907, the building stood here on De Grassi Street at Queen Street East. Its dramatic turret, bay window, and a deep overhanging roof were defining features typical of small railway stations of the period.

In 1904, a streetcar collided with a freight train at the level crossing on Queen Street East, killing three people and injuring 18. This and subsequent accidents led to the elevation of the new Union Station railway corridor above city streets and sidewalks. The station was moved in 1927 to accommodate the new embankment for the underpass, the first of nine to be completed. Dwindling passenger numbers during the Great Depression led to the closure of Riverdale Station in 1932 and its demolition in 1974.”

below: Looking west from under the railway bridge.

below: A train themed mural in an alley just off Queen Street.

420 Day 2016

Posted: April 21, 2016 in events, people
Tags: 420, cannabis, crowds, Dundas Square, high, medicinal, people, pot, smoke, weed

The 10th annual 420 Day celebration in Toronto was held this year at Yonge Dundas Square.
By mid-afternoon the square was very crowded but most people didn’t seem to mind.

#420day | #420toronto | #420toronto2016

Fight for 15 and fairness

Posted: April 16, 2016 in events, people
Tags: $15, banners, cars, crowd, dollars, employment, fifteen, flags, gathering, honking horns, IATSE, labour laws, march, Ministry of Labour, money, OPSEU, people, police, protest, protesters, rally, unifor, union, University Ave., wages

Rally and protest in front of the Ministry of Labour building on University Avenue.

April 15 was chosen as the day for rallies and protests across the country in support of a $15/hour minimum wage as well as other changes to labour laws. Changes such as equal pay for equal work and fair scheduling.

#15andfairness | #OntarioWeWant

15andfairness.org

Sackville Street murals

Posted: April 6, 2016 in graffiti and street art, locations
Tags: apartment building, Bruno Smoky, children, Elicser, elicsr, flying, hoardings, housing, kids, men, murals, people, Regent Park, Sackville St., Shalak Attack, street art, tchc, Toronto, urban renewal, wall, women

Sackville Street, just south of Dundas, is right in the midst of the Regent Park renewal project. It is also the site of two murals. First, there is bright and colourful mural which is painted on the side of a new apartment building.