as I walk Toronto

This is another “walk with friends” post; three of us out enjoying a May morning looking for signs of spring (and summer!), bits of art, and other eccentric little details.  Like all good walks, this one started with a coffee and a bite to eat.  In this case, at Rustle and Still on Bloor West, a Vietnamese coffee shop

where I tried their purple sweet potato croissant.  Highly recommended!

We walked more or less south and west from Bloor and Palmerston to Queen and Dunn.   This is some of what we saw. … Starting with the colours of spring with lots of greens

below: Flowers such as these big purple balls of allium

below: More purple – Bergenia Crassifolia flowers seem to want to jump out of the garden.

below: Grape vines coming back to life.

below: Crabapple tree blossoms in abundance

below: … and flowers of a different kind. Purple orchids on a garage door painted by Trexlorian.

below: Spring colours here too…  Fabulous bright orange toes!

And other colours too….

A red shed (or gate?).  Also, the metal gate and fence with the circles is unique!

A bright pink house (with red trim! … and a green front door)

below: The ivy has gone crazy here but the cheerful blue trim hasn’t been hidden… yet!

And while we’re looking at houses, one little house stand alone dwarfed by the large brick house on one side.  Even the other houses on the left are larger.

below: Another tiny house stuck in the middle!

below: This is actually a row of three little homes where the outer two have a peaked roof.

There seem to be a lot of houses that have expanded upwards with third storey additions, or new rooftop balconies.

below: An alley view –  What caught my eye here was the fact that all six houses have an upper level (rooftop?) balcony with a wood railing.

below:  And then there are the houses that look like they have never changed.  This one still has the old asphalt shingle siding in fake brick colour.

We came across this Joe Road front yard where someone must be a Toronto Maple Leafs fan.

below: This is the view of Joe Road from across the street, the neighbour’s view

below: The yard is full of stuff, knickknacks of all sorts.  The interior is dark and some of it is difficult to see without trespassing.  Some of it is held together with spray foam insulation.

below: A fish on a plaque, a black and white cow, and that red and white thing – is that a painted rock?  What kind of symbol is that (if anything)?

below: Superman, a chicken, a cow, a man’s head carved out of stone, a large blue Disney something or other, and various other toys and trinkets piled high.

below: Darth Vader (but with a bit of extra white?) and an owl guard the upper level.

below: Another yard, another set of animals.  This time it’s a pelican, an orange butterfly, and a sheep in a little garden that looks like so neat and tidy.  Someone has put a lot of work into this space.  Two yellow tulips are in bloom – they are real but I’m not sure that the orange lily is.

below: Creativity on a slightly grander scale (complete with “Beware of the dog” sign).

below: Hiding his face.  The enemy remains unseen.

One sign that you are in Little Italy or Little Portugal is the requisite religious icon by the front door

Little Italy and Little Portugal both claim portions of College Street

below: The mural on the side of a building at College and Crawford celebrates Branca Gomes who was the first Portuguese teacher in Toronto.  She started teaching in 1964 at the First Portuguese School on Augusta.  She also taught at Alexander Muir Elementary from 1969 to 1974.  The small green space in front of the mural is the Portuguese Pioneers Parkette.

below: Across the street from Branca Gomes is this  mural.  in 1937 Sam Sniderman, along with his brother Sidney, opened Sniderman’s Music Hall record department in the family store at 714 College Street.  They later moved the store to Yonge Street where it became ‘Sam the Record Man’ (or colloquially, Sam’s).  In their heyday, the early 1980s, there were 140 Sam the Record Man stores across Canada.  The mural was painted by sumartist (aka Paul Glyn-Williams).

below: Neither Italian nor Portuguese but Slovenian in a mosaic above the door to a church.  Marija Pomagaj, Mary of Perpetual Help, or more loosely, Mary, Help of Christians.

below:  Greens, yellows, and purples in the vertical panes of glass.  What this photo fails to show is that the green and purple form two large cross shapes on the front of this church, the Toronto Spiritualist Temple on College Street.  There is a third cross, in blue, to the left of the purple.

below:  This billboard above the Ladybug Tavern on College is actually part of the CONTACT Photography Festival.  Two figures draped in yellow stand under a palm tree, one of whom is wearing a bird-like mask.   It is part of “Window into Bassam” by Nuits Balnéaires, an artist from the Ivory Coast (where Grand-Bassam is a city).

below: At College and Ossington, a mural by Alice Pasquini (in  partnership between the Istituto Italiano di Cultura Toronto, the College Promenade BIA and the City of Toronto).

We explored a few alleys …  where we encountered a few faces and strange creatures

No faces in this lane but the barbecue looks shiny and new… and ready to use.

below: How many raccoons live here?!

below: Infill housing? – with an air conditioner and a satellite dish.

below: Black Lives Matter 24/7 in both directions

Graffiti that we saw:

below: The man behind the mask, by Bruho

below: A stencil of a penguin and its little one

below: Paper paste-up of a lions head with its eyes blacked out.

 

With thanks to Merle and Nancy who went wandering with me that morning.