Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Photo: The Aftermath

There were high hopes a month or so ago for the Leafs to go all the way--or at least, as far as they could have gone before they inevitably blew it. The last time I was in a city where the hockey team went almost all the way, half the downtown core was practically in ruins the next morning. In Toronto, the response to the Leafs' defeat was somewhat more muted, if only because the last forty-six years have diminished expectations somewhat. Nevertheless, following one of the Leafs' many defeats, there was at least a limited outpouring of frustration--fortunately for the insurance companies, it was only poured out on the tourism pamphlets they keep in front of the Air Canada Centre box offices.



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Friday, June 21, 2013

Photo: Raccoon on the Prowl

One New Westminster day in mid-October while I was going to buy groceries and wondering how I would make my move back to Toronto work, I noticed a point of movement on the other side of the street, small and brown and furry. It's common enough to see squirrels skittering around, whether you're in British Columbia or Ontario, but it's rare that I see raccoons going about their business in broad daylight. This one took its time, ambling across front yards and driveways before finally disappearing up the hillside.

Probably trying to get into one of the dumpsters.


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Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Photo: Below the Tracks

Parts of the 'L,' Chicago's rapid transit system, have been in service for more than a hundred years--and it shows. When it comes to structures so old, rust and grit are unavoidable. These tracks at North Franklin and West Ontario may not win any awards for cleanliness... but they are, at least, still standing, and for now that's what's important, I suppose.



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Sunday, June 16, 2013

Photo: Above the City

More than six months after coming back east, I still find myself thinking back to my time out west... I believe it will be a long while yet before I'm able to put that whole experience in proper context with everything else. Some days it feels like an extended dream, like I was never really there at all, that there couldn't be a place in the world like Metro Vancouver; others it feels like everything front of me is what really isn't real. It's hard to parse out sometimes, and even harder to put into words. Still, there are times--when I'm walking to the grocery store or waiting for a transfer at Bloor-Yonge--that I look back with fondness to my life in New Westminster. In that respect, here it is: downtown New Westminster, captured from a train crossing the SkyBridge, on an uncharacteristically sunny day back in March 2012.

It's all still so familiar.



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Friday, June 14, 2013

Photo: Beneath the Bridge

Sometimes the city changes so fast that it's difficult to recognize it once you've been away for a while--something that I was reminded of those times I came back to Toronto while still living in New Westminster. Before going out west, I'd lived at Queen and Dufferin; at the tail end of my time there it was an area in flux, with new condominiums going up and the Dufferin Jog elimination project thoroughly underway. When I came back in 2011, construction was complete and Dufferin Street was continuous all the way north. That change is still ongoing--the mini-mall photographed here has since been torn down, replaced by a construction pit that will, presumably, by filled by another condo.

So it goes.



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Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Photo: Union 2011

It hasn't even been two years since I took this photo of Union Station, but already the scene's changed dramatically. Off in the background, you can see the stub of the L Tower, today almost complete; in Union Station itself, the new glass train shed hadn't even been started yet. The crowds of commuters are pretty much the same, though--except with usage increasing year-over-year, there are even more of them now then there would have been before.


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Sunday, June 9, 2013

Photo: At the Edge of Dawn

It's not often I'm in a position to get a photograph of the sunrise, and even rarer when I can do that from an aircraft in flight. My most recent opportunity came up in November 2011, somewhere in the air between Fredericton and Toronto. As I recall, the horizon presented itself as a rainbow band for what felt like half the flight, until the sunrise finally caught up with the west-speeding plane. Except for the lack of any curvature, it almost looks to me like the sort of photo you'd expect to see taken from orbit.



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Friday, June 7, 2013

Photo: Philadelphia Flyer

Yes, I forgot to post a photo again yesterday. I remembered this when I was halfway to the subway station on my way to work; that's always how it goes. Again, I apologize for the newly unreliable schedule--here I thought I could handle something every other day with no problems. NEVERTHELESS. It has been some time since I've done a transit photo here, and the recent greyness in Toronto puts me in the yen to post up something bright and green. In that idiom, while I was in San Francisco back in 2011, one of the many vehicles I captured was this shot of a restored PCC streetcar on the F Market line, wearing the 1947 colors of the Philadelphia Transportation Company--incidentally, one of the few cities represented in San Francisco's rolling streetcar museum that still runs its own.

They're not as stylish as the PCC, though. Few things can be. I mean, look at that Art Deco trim!



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Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Photo: A Line in the Sand

I really don't know what's up with this notice I found posted at San Francisco's Ocean Beach back in 2011. It's not as if it was a temporary thing--sure, the buses and streetcars in San Francisco are as thoroughly graffitied as this sign, but it takes time for that sort of stuff to appear. It's not as if the beach was off-limits, either; there were plenty of people there when I went, but those brutal winds coming in off the Pacific make it not so much of an actual sun destination. I suppose it's just one of those things.




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Saturday, June 1, 2013

Photo: An East York Snowscape

On days such as today, with a humidex above thirty degrees sucking the energy out of a person, it's easy to forget that snow is a thing that exists--yet it hasn't even been two months since the last time it visited Toronto. One thing I did note about this year's winter was that it took a surprisingly long time to become winter-like; although it was snowing when I touched down at the end of November, it didn't snow again for nearly a month afterward. By the time late January and early February came around, it was starting to look more like I remembered winters looking. In this photo, the snow has fallen heavily on East York--enough so that even Main Street didn't seem to have seen much in the way of plows yet.



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