Posts Tagged ‘sugar beach’
Canada Day on the waterfront
Posted: July 1, 2023 in locations, people, waterfrontTags: bicycle, bikes, boats, Canadian flag, condos, dogs, Emprire Sandy, ice cream, Kajama, Lake Ontario, Martin Goodman Trail, muskoka chairs, people, Queens Quay, sand, splash pad, sugar beach, sun tanning, walking, water, waterfront, yellow umbrellas
a summer day, a city meander
Posted: September 13, 2022 in construction, people, transportation, waterfrontTags: Alanna Cavanagh, Cherry St bridge, CN Tower, condos, Corkin Gallery, development, Gardiner Expressway, lake, Lake Ontario, Lakeshore Blvd., parliament st., peppers, Pioneer Tour boats, queens quay east, St. Lawrence market, sugar beach, sunflowers, vegetables, waterfront
Another day, another walk through the city starting at the Distillery District and heading west towards the waterfront and downtown Toronto.
below: Posing under the heart, Distillery District.
below: Posing with the LOVE locks.
below: Flowered Dress Madonna” by Ann Agee, 2021 as seen in the Corkin Gallery in the Distillery District.
below: Looking east on Front Street from Berkeley. Police Division is the old brick building. Both sides of Front are lined with black hoardings as redevelopment of those sites started recently.
below: Berkeley St., south of Front
below: Another hole in the wall; another vacant lot waiting for redevelopment on Parliament Street. More tall buildings coming to the Distillery District.
below: Looking south from the end of Parliament Street and across Lakeshore Blvd to the start of Queens Quay East. Many changes here!
below: The CN Tower peaks through the gap created by one of the onramps for the Gardiner Expressway.
below: No Parkin’, Victory Soya Mills in the background
below: Looking east towards the Port Lands redevelopment. The new Cherry Street bridge is in the background.
below: From the same spot on the waterfront as the above picture, but looking in the other direction.
below: Queens Quay East
below: Relaxing by the lake.
below: Sugar Beach, spectator section, in the shade.
below: On the rocks, Sugar Beach
below: I am not sure who this is or why he’s on the waterfront. He’s made of wood – someone constructed him and left him here.
below: Closed – ramp to the the eastbound Gardiner at Lower Jarvis.
below: Lower Jarvis
below: A bucket full of bright and cheerful sunflowers on the sidewalk by St. Lawrence Market.
below: Market Street closed to traffic at Esplanade.
below: Marvelous peppers and other veggies for sale at St. Lawrence Market
below: Someone’s looking a little distraught. Remember how your parents used to say that if you frowned too much, or you made too many weird faces, your face would freeze in that position? That is what this poor fellow reminded me of. “Frozen” in time on the side of St. Lawrence Hall.
below: In a window. The title of the painting is “Alone” so perhaps she is alone in the city albeit surrounded by flowers. Unfortunately, they are yellow and blue flowers so I suspect that there is Ukrainian symbolism at play here and that ‘alone’ has a much deeper significance.
below: Leader Lane ends at Wellington.
below: Mama elephant and her two little ones are still walking through the courtyard behind Commerce Court. They haven’t reached the pool yet (but at least there’s water in the pool now).
below: This is one of the five Big City Blooms murals found around the city (west side of Commerce Court). The big bold and cheerful flowers in reds and pinks are the work of Alanna Cavanagh.
below: Same Commerce Court building as the above picture but from a slightly different angle.
below: Narrow city alley views, framing the gorgeous stone and brick work on the older building with its arched windows.
below: There appears to be a forest path in the middle of Brookfield Place. It is actually a photograph that is part of an exhibit called, “Take Your Seat With the Group of Seven, Nature the Inspires Us”. (now gone from Brookfield Place).

below: In this exhibit, locations used by the Group of Seven in their paintings were revisited. Photos were taken using a red director’s chair, placing the chair in the artist’s position. In this set of images, two small paintings from Coldwell Harbour are paired with a large photo of present day Coldwell Harbour – the chair is small but you should be able to see it on the rocky outcropping. The harbour is on Lake Superior near the town of Marathon.
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East Bayside
Posted: May 17, 2019 in construction, old buildings, waterfrontTags: chairs, condos, construction, development, film, lights, LRT, offices, pink umbrellas, sand, sugar beach
The other evening I was going to try some evening photography along the waterfront starting around Sugar Beach. As I walked down Lower Jarvis, this view caught my attention – looking west along Lakeshore Blvd. It’s a view that has been changing very rapidly. I counted at least seven cranes as I stood there waiting for some of the traffic to clear.
below: Sugar Beach. Unfortunately a film crew was already here so I didn’t stick around.
below: One of the buildings to the east of Sugar Beach is a new George Brown College building.
below: Film crew trucks ready to be loaded back up
The strip of green that you see on the right side of the above photo is part of Sherbourne Common (at the foot of Lower Sherbourne Street). From here east to Parliament is now being developed as East Bayside and is a continuation of the now completed development from Jarvis (Sugar Beach) to Sherbourne. East Bayside is bounded by Queens Quay and Lake Ontario as well as Sherbourne and Parliament. 1800 residences are planned in this space.
below: Some of the condos are under construction. Same old same old; yawn. They may look a little more interesting from a distance, but at street level they are hopelessly banal. If you want to buy a condo here, there are only a few left in the two buildings known as Aqualina and Aquabella. In the latter, only 3 are available, starting at a two bedroom suite for 2.8 million. Five million dollars will get you a three bedroom penthouse with two terraces but if you want to pay an additional 1 1/2 million you get 4,000 square feet on two floors (3 bedrooms and 2 terraces as well).
below: At least the “linear park” and waterfront path is being continued eastward along Lake Ontario.
below: Work is also underway on Queens Quay East. As a frame of reference, the tall building behind the billboard is in the Distillery District. Lakeshore Blvd and the Gardiner run behind the buildings with the blue trim.
What hasn’t yet been started is construction of two office buildings that will front on Queens Quay, called T3 Bayside. They are going to be made of wood which should be interesting.
There has been a lot of talk for the past 12 to 14 years about extending streetcar service along this route. So far a lot of planning and a lot of talk but that’s it. An LRT right of way running along the south side of the street has been approved but the East Bayfront LRT project, (aka Waterfront LRT) has stalled because of the usual political shenanigans and financial hiccups. A major part of the delay has been the question of how to link an East Bayfront LRT to Union station. The present tunnel is barely sufficient for the streetcars that use it now. Just recently (April 2019) the city released a report on how to address this issue. I haven’t read it all yet (it’s 40 pages long) but the gist of it is that the city is considering two options – 1. rebuilding the tunnel or 2. building an automated people moving system of some sort and leave all streetcars out of the tunnel.
below: There is a small trench down the center of the street.
Any ideas what’s being planned for the north side of Queens Quay?
below: Queens Quay turns towards Parliament Street. The blue building is a Sidewalk Labs information centre. The land that Sidewalk Labs wants to develop, Quayside, is close by – south of Lakeshore and east of Parliament. It also includes the little strip of land between Queens Quay and Lakeshore, i.e. that answers my question above about what happens on the north side of Queens Quay. There was some rumour (plan?) about Sidewalk Labs being involved in development of some of the Portlands but is that still on? As to what their plans are or where they are at now, I have no idea. That’s probably another blog post!
37,000 tons
Posted: May 30, 2016 in history, landmarks, locations, waterfrontTags: 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.

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.



























































































































