After Only a Few Days Away

So I spent the holidays with family down in the States, as usual, and today was my first day out walking around and seeing the neighborhood again. I was only gone a little more than a week, but there's a few new things about.

Down at Ireland Park, the high winds and water have left a wreck - bricks torn out, gravel scattered, and sand everywhere.

Bricks torn out at the far southern end
of the quay, by Ireland Park.

The bricks tossed haphazardly a couple meters
away, and its gravel scattered all over.  And,
for extra fun, wet sand everywhere.

I'd usually assume vandals had been at it, but up at the corner of Dan Leckie and Queens Quay, the muck out has been washed and blown up out of the harbour, too and now it's all over the sidewalks.  That'd be a bit much, even for bored kids.  I think Mother Nature is the only vandal who goes this far.

The garbage is strewn like this for a long
way along the sidewalk and bike trail.

But humans have been here - back behind the Community Center, someone's been leaving messages in chalk.

Happy New Year, everyone!

A Day at the ROM

The Pompeii exhibit at the ROM ends on January 3, so we went for another day.  It's a large exhibit, and I actually missed some things the first time through, as it turns out.  But a couple other things, first.

This is the ship's bell from the Erebus, one of the two ships from the Franklin Expedition that tried to find the "northwest passage" that would let ships get from the north Atlantic to the north Pacific by going up over Canada.   If you don't know the story, the result was that the Erebus and her sister ship, the Terror, were frozen into the ice for two winters, and all crew members eventually lost after they attempted to walk back to civilization.  The story is only now being pieced together as artifacts are located.  There's good, if heavily fictionalized, account, called The Terror.

There's also a great pterodactyl (or something similar) over the main lobby area.  Check out the size of those drumsticks:

Down in the Pompeii exhibit itself, I turned left where last time I'd turned right and found this interesting windchime on display:

Oh, those crazy Romans.

My photo of this didn't turn out last time - a bronze statue found in a garden:

Many of these bronzes have white stone eyes and coppery pupils.  The effect is somewhat unnerving.

Srsly?

Noticed these on the subway today:

I pixelated the URL because hey, if they're going to pay the TTC for advertising, they don't need me driving my vast number of (one to three) readers to them.

I don't disagree that pollution is an issue, and people who live within a certain radius of an airport likely get more than their fair share of exhaust and fuel dumped all over them but chemtrails?  Once their site mentioned that, I just rolled my eyes and looked at their links.  They also link to a site that argues the Sandy Hook school massacre was "just a drill" and no one actually died.  So, that's pretty much how seriously these ads should be taken.

I was mostly just surprised to see that up there in between all the holiday show ads that have been covering the subway ad-space for the last month.

Anyway, happy holidays.  Me and my Christmas shrub are ready.

Roundabout

I've been wandering around with a GPS-based capture-the-flag game lately (more on that elsewhere), so ended up wandering west on Lakeshore yesterday up to the Expo, then back home through Coronation Park and Little Norway Park.

But I ended up going behind things and around things I don't normally bother to.  There are some sculptures... or art or something behind the newer condo building at Lakeshore and Dan Leckie.  I've not seen them at night, but I think they'd be awesome if they lit up then:

They kind of remind me of big clay beads, in their way.

On the west end of them they're still working on the old Loblaw headquarters at the corners of Bathurst and Fleet and Lakeshore.  It looks much the same as always from the front, but from the back you can see the gutting:

It's a super busy worksite.  I'm very glad I don't live right next to it as so many do.  (And especially so seeing how the construction plans call for a 41-storey tower to be built in this otherwise mid-rise area.)  Here's a concept drawing of what the ground floor area will look like that's posted outside the site:

On the other side is the toy soldier statues, which I always feel are kind of Christmas feeling.

but maybe shouldn't - they're a memorial to the War of 1812 after all.

Plaque reads:
DOUGLAS COPELAND
Monument to the War of 1812
Two abandoned toy soldiers pay tribute to Toronto's history in this artwork.
Without Fort York there would have been no Canada - the British would have
lost Canada to the Americans in the War of 1812, and Canada
would have been absorbed into the United States.
Commissioned by Malibu Investments
and unveiled by
Deputy Mayor Joe Pantalone
November 2008

I feel like that could have been better written, but there you go.  Product of a committee, I'm sure.

Further along, I visited the old lighthouse.

And even further along, Exposition Place's Princess Gate, replete with Nike (though it's almost impossible to get a photo of the thing without streetlights, electrical wires, and condos getting in the way of the shot, so... sorry for the badly placed street light).

There really wasn't much to see in Coronation Park yesterday though - the park was mostly empty except for the offleash area which was full of playing dogs, so that was nice.  Back through Little Norway Park, I spotted this fellow being very suspicious of me and my little dog.

Seeds and Boats

The middle part of this past week has been really gloomy, but at least warm enough I could stand to have my hands out of my pockets to take photos.

The garden is getting all dried out, but that makes for some pretty seed bits:

And I was out at all of 3:30 the other afternoon and noticed it was already dark enough that lights were coming on.  Yeesh.  The Jubilee Queen was also all lit up and getting ready for a dinner:

More to come, so long as the warmer weather holds...

December So Soon

Wow, it's December already.  In the mad end-of-term rush, I've nearly forgotten to take photos.  Nearly, but not entirely.

I was on the second floor roof of the St. James campus today.  This is the rooftop:

And this is what can be seen in the opposite direction:

That's the corner of King and George, and I'm really surprised it's not been taken over by some massive condo residence by now.

And this photo I took last month:

The sign was put up in response to this ugly atrocity of a fence.