The Photographer's Ephemeris

Last weekend I was at the library to photograph photographs by Ted Chirnside, an amateur who recorded much about the rural fringe of Metro in transition in the 1950s and 1960s, and then donated much of that to the city. A couple of the shots I was able to capture for myself purport to show the old narrow bridge that once carried Finch Avenue East over the East Don River just a little west of Leslie Street. I was delighted to find them because I know the place well.

(Incidentally, the above shots, today, look something like this.)

But when I was looking at them, a couple of things bothered me. First, the hill leading up from the bridge towards Leslie seemed away too abrupt. There's nothing like that there now. Even taking into account that the newer bridge is probably set higher from the river, it didn't jibe with me. But when I checked the single aerial photo I have of the area from the late 1950s, sure enough, there's steep incline suggested on the east end of the bridge, and a fence line that's visible on the crest in the shots. I'm at a loss to explain the difference in topography today, but there's no denying them's the facts. Things change. A few of the trees still give me pause, but I'm more convinced now than I was.

But the other contra-indicator, and this was a big one for me, was the shadow angles. They fall across Finch Avenue from the north side, which I considered impossible. The sun, I told myself, is always in the southern sky if you're north of the Tropic of Cancer, so the shadows can't fall southerly. Yet that's what I was seeing. Long sunset (or, I suppose, sunrise) shadows across Finch Avenue from the north. Impossible! The photographer, I mused, must have gotten confused over the years as to the location of which particular little tree-lined bridge (and there were dozens of them around northern Toronto and beyond) he was looking at.

But the more I thought about it, the more I started second-guessing myself. I remembered sunsets in the summer, and the angle of them over scenes I knew well, and it struck me that those angles might have been possible by very late in the day. But how could I check? I thought, there must be some resource on the net that will tell you the angle of sunset on a given day at a given latitude. So I went looking.

I found a fantastic new application called The Photographer's Ephemeris. It's freeware, and it runs on Adobe AIR (which is also freeware). It overlays rays showing sunrise, sunset, moonrise, and moonset on a GoogleMaps map set to the location you choose, and is phenomenal for planning dramatic shots. If you know where you want to be standing and where you want to be looking, this thing can tell you down to the minute when you're going to see that. Apparently, with a little bit of work, it can even take the elevation of the horizon into account. This thing is wholly amazing! And it looks cool, too. :)

If you want to see the sun setting over SkyDome (sorry, "The Rogers Centre") from the shore of Algonquin Island, set your camera up just before 9 p.m. on June 17th. :)

Oh, and as for my "impossible" summertime shadows at the Finch Avenue bridge? Oh, yeah. They were possible, alright. Which means I'm cool to go ahead and shoot the "now" scene there with confidence. East Don River, here I come. :)

Retrospectives: Sheppard, Leslie, and the Don

One of the most tortured intersections I’m aware of in the city is that of Sheppard Avenue and Leslie Street. Leslie is, to this day, a slew of discontinuous streets they never really took the trouble to unite; there are at least four sections of it that I know of. But since the 1950s, the intersection of Sheppard and Leslie has been torn up, rerouted, connected and disconnected in myriad ways for more reasons than you can shake a stick at. The 401’s been built through, two level crossings have been underpassed, the 401’s been widened, both streets have been widened, the dogleg caused by Don River’s been corrected by means of a much larger bridge they now share, a subway line’s been channeled under Sheppard Avenue... all this in just 50 years.

One day, I mean to seriously blog about just what’s happened to these two streets in the vicinity of their intersection (or, till about 1968, intersections-plural). Just for now, though, I’d like to share a delightful discovery from the City Archives: a shot of the Sheppard Avenue East bridge over the East Don River from 1964. (The shot faces east, as do the others.)

This photo was taken right on the verge of suburbia overwriting the hills and dales of the area. Just for the moment, it was a pleasant country road. See the bridge there, just a simple two lane affair carrying Sheppard alone over the Don. Beyond it, you can see Leslie Street heading away to the north. Back then, there was no Leslie Street on the south side at this point: it would have had to cross the Don. The southern part of Leslie was way up the hill behind the photographer. Anyone traveling along Leslie and wishing to continue along it had to use this stretch of Sheppard for many, many years to do so.

Here’s how the intersection looks now, seen from nearly exactly the same location in 2009. Leslie now crosses Sheppard here, not just meets it; Leslie no longer bows to Sheppard at a stop sign while Sheppard traffic plows through without a thought. They both cross over a much larger bridge that dwarfs Sheppard’s span in 1964.

Taken earlier this decade, here’s another view of the intersection, looking in the same direction. This shot was taken from the bridge that now overpasses Sheppard at the site where Leslie Street once T-junctioned with it on the west side; this is now called Old Leslie Street, a short stub that serves a few businesses. Oddly, thanks to the bridge, it now crosses Sheppard here, which it did not do when it was a going concern up to the 60s. But you can see the “new” run of Leslie south of Sheppard there on the extreme right. Also visible is Leslie Station, a stop on the Sheppard subway line that opened only four or five years ago. The stretch of Sheppard in the foreground was what once united these two legs of Leslie Street, though you would have seen a slope down from here before 1968 when the bridges were put in. Directly behind me in this shot is another bridge for what was a level crossing (more on this in another post soon).

Just for good measure, a couple of aerial shots to show some of the changes. The first shows the area in 1956. The big mess in the middle is Hwy 401 under construction. Leslie runs up and down in this view (as it runs north-south). Leslie’s course has already changed in this view; it used to go straight north till it reached that line of trees in its course and then shot westerly, the course of which you can still see in this shot. Running across the top is Sheppard Avenue, where you can see the wide spread between the two runs of Leslie Street.

And this is the view from 1967. You can see Sheppard Avenue has been temporarily detoured at the Don so that the new bridge it will share with Leslie can be put in. Most dramatically, you can see the pencil-work of planners emphatically planning Leslie’s newer, truer course north to Sheppard. Near the middle of the shot is North York General Hospital, newly built. Subdivision construction is evident at the bottom right, but not yet at the upper right. It was literally only months away.

It would certainly be illustrative to compare those views with this one.

Retrospectives: Finch and Leslie

One of the intersections I've always found interesting in aerial shots of the city is Finch and Leslie. It's another one of those with a dogleg that was straightened out, in its case sometime around 1970 or so. As with the other locations I'm hoping to talk about over the next few days, I wouldn't be bothered blogging about it just on the basis of interesting overhead shots, but because I happened to stumble across some ground-level photos of the area from 1965, which presents the opportunity of then-and-now comparisons.

First some setup. Here's a comparison of area from 1964 and 2009. The intersection is obvious in the upper shot. Leslie Street runs north and south, and Finch runs east and west, and as you can see, Finch once had had a dogleg here of a couple of dozen yards. At the extreme north of the shot, on the left, is Cummer Avenue, which once also carried traffic over the East Don River (just out of sight on the left in these shots) across a one-lane bridge that's still open to pedestrians. It's just the stub of Old Cummer Avenue at the top of the modern shot. You can see where subdivisions were already filling land north of Finch and west of the tracks on Leslie's west side. There's a reason they weren't filling up the land south of Finch yet, which I'll get to later. But for the ground level shots, the photographer was standing on the northwest and southeast corners of the dogleg, and on the south side of Finch just to the west of the level crossing with the railroad tracks.

 

 

An overview of the intersection, taken from the parking terrace of the mall on the northeast side. Finch runs across the view, and Leslie runs from top to bottom. The view looks vaguely southwest.

This first shot was taken at the northwest corner, looking south down Leslie Street. Beneath that, the same view today, more or less. Obviously with all the changes, it's difficult to stand in exactly the same place.

This shot was taken on the southeast corner, looking north up Leslie Street. If you look at it large, you'll notice the sign heralding the coming shopping centre... which you can see in the modern shot (not too surprising, since that mall's been there since the early 1970s).

 

This next one's a little trickier because the view has changed so substantially. That's kind of the point, I guess, but still, it's nice to have some context to provide a strong contrast. This is the CN line crossing at Finch; a level crossing till 1968 when the underpass was built (note the train just leaving the scene in the 1965 view). These views were taken on the south side of Finch Avenue, facing east towards the Leslie Street intersection.

 

Generally that would be about it, but there's also always been this intriguing little property near the intersection that really stands out in aerial shots. Until yesterday I had no really clear idea about it. I remember when I'd pass it in the early 2000s, it was still a horse ranch... a big house, standing alone, nice fence and trees, and a couple of times I saw horses even on Leslie Street... that's something you don't tend to forget. Whenever I used to drive by and glimpse it, I was compelled to hum the theme song from Dallas. I had no idea how appropriate that was. Four or five years ago, the place finally succumbed and was filled up with new homes... though the big central house remained, which I found pleasing.

Here's how the place appeared from above in 1957, contrast with how it looks today, stuffed with about 70 new homes.

 

Since I was there, I decided I'd finally go in and take some shots of the place. Up close it was even more impressive... it almost looks like the Canadian answer to the White House, don't you think?

 

 

 

 

As I got there, I was happily surprised to see there was a plaque before the home (despite the fact that, apparently, it remains a private residence), confirming my feeling that the place was significant. I was surprised just how significant.

 

 

The plaque reads as follows:

GREEN MEADOWS

Built circa 1950, this Colonial Revival house was the centrepiece of a 300-acre equestrian estate owned by John Angus "Bud" McDougall. As Chairman of the Board and President of Angus Corporation from 1969 until his death in 1978, Bud McDougall was one of Canada's most powerful businessmen, and was reputedly worth over $200 million. McDougald and his wife, Hadley Maude, created this estate near the properties of his business partners E.P. Taylor and W.E. Phillips, and called it "Green Meadows".

The elegant house features a full-height, Greek temple facade. On various occasions, members of the British Royal Family stayed here. The estate included housing for staff, as well as outbuildings for McDougald's horses, dogs and antique and luxury cars.

Under development pressure from North York's growing suburbs, McDougald agreed in 1969 to sell most of his estate if he could keep his horses on the remaining 19-acre lot (a privilege otherwise prevented by law). Maude McDougald resided here until her death in 1996, after which the remaining estate was sold. This house was preserved, and remains a private residence.

The captions of the photos read:

John Angus "Bud" McDougald in his trademark pin-stripe suit, beside one of his Rolls-Royce automobiles, circa 1978.   

A fox hunting party leaves the front gates of the estate and heads up Leslie Street, circa 1960.

(RIGHT) Green Meadows, 1971
Surrounded by suburbs after 1969, the remaining 19-acre estate around the house was kept secluded by trees on its borders. The following structures are visible, from left to right:
1. Gatehouse   
2. Stables for ten horses   
3. Main house   
4. Sunken garden   
5. Swimming pool   
6. Five-car garage   
7. Kennels   
8. Sixteen-car garage   
9. Staff house
10. Staff cottage and garage   
11. Stables and riding arena   
12. Work building   

Green Meadows, 1958. Finch Avenue and Leslie Street meet at top left. The estate ran south from Finch Avenue past what is now Van Horne Avenue, and east from Leslie Street to what is now Don Mills Road.

Retrospectives: Finch Avenue and Woodbine Avenue

One of the places in the city I've found interesting for several years now is what used to be Woodbine Avenue... the stretch between Lawrence Avenue and Steeles Avenue in particular. Much of it wasn't around very long, or at all, really. In the north end of the city, it has the misfortune — or colossal good fortune, depending on how you look at it — to have been in line with the course of the Don Valley Parkway.

The DVP was built in the early 1960s. Originally, it went as far north as Sheppard Avenue, where it petered out to become Woodbine Avenue immediately to the east of Fairview Mall. It had assumed the course of Woodbine south of that point, though for at least some of that stretch, there never actually had been a road, just the allowance. I don't believe there was ever an intersection of Woodbine and Lawrence, for example. The Don River's twists and turns simply made that unfeasible for people much before about 1950.

For many years, there was talk of extending the DVP northward, at least as far as Steeles Avenue, where Metropolitan Toronto ended. Eventually, the province took over the idea, and assumed the DVP from north of the 401, recreating it as the first stump of the 404. By 1976, the expansion was underway, and Highway 404 was well and truly born as it ate up Woodbine Avenue south of Steeles. At that point, it deked to the west, leaving Woodbine Avenue extant in York Region, where it is today a major thoroughfare. But in Toronto, that section of Woodbine is gone.

I'm used to roads being paralleled by, or bisected by, or underpassed by superhighways, but the idea of one taking over the course of a regular road is a strange idea to me. What made it possible is that so little actually existed on Woodbine Avenue inside Metro. For me, the most interesting dislocation caused by this was the intersection of Finch Avenue and Woodbine, which, of course, no longer exists as such (the relatively newly created intersection of Woodbine and Van Horne Avenue also ceased to exist at the time, though in a different fashion: for about ten years, the two streets met at a simple at-grade intersection; now Van Horne is carried by a bridge over the trench of the 404 with no interchange between them at all). (View below, Woodbine and Van Horne, 1970.)

Finch Avenue, for its part, has been a broken, fractured collection of several discontinuous roads across the north end of town, united in little but name until quite recently. Where it met with Woodbine was no exception. It formed a dogleg of about 30 yards. Just a little east, where it met Victoria Park Avenue, the separation between the two discontinuous parts of "Finch Avenue" was nearly half a mile! Below is a modern aerial view of the area. The red lines represent the broken course of Finch Avenue back in 1965. The yellow line was the course of Woodbine Avenue then, and Hwy 404 today. The blue line is Victoria Park Avenue. The two teal dots represent the approximate locations from which the 1965 photographs further below were taken.

This began to change in the 1960s, and was completed with Finch Avenue's own completion in the far west end in the 1990s. As for the dogleg at Woodbine, it was eliminated in 1976-1977 with the creation of Hwy 404 (you can see the new "swoop" of Finch Avenue in the modern aerial view above). A comparison of the 1965 dogleg intersection and the modern interchange:

The photos below, from the City of Toronto Archives' website, show the intersection of Finch and Woodbine in 1965, probably taken by someone who knew the view wouldn't survive the decade by much. The first photo was taken on Finch, facing east to the intersection with Woodbine, from the position of the lower teal dot in the aerial view. To the left in the picture (that is, north), you can see the disconnected continuation of Finch eastward towards Victoria Park Avenue, out of sight beyond the rise. Much of that stretch of Finch still exists today as a couple of residential streets (Pawnee Avenue and part of Micmac Crescent, to be specific) and a path through a park. It would be impossible to see this view today, because this is where Finch crests Highway 404 over a bridge in the middle of their interchange. Finch then veers away to the south, away from the old dogleg, to meet up with the other stretch of Finch at Victoria Park. Note the trees across Woodbine, marking the little lost homestead visible in the 1965 view in the comparison view above.

A similar view today.

This photo was taken on Woodbine Avenue to the north of both parts of Finch, facing south towards the 401 out of sight off in the distance, from the position of the upper teal dot in the aerial view. Today, the view would be southbound down the 404; back then, it was a two-lane road taking cars down to the DVP, and leading them north from it.

A similar view today (taken from approximately the location of the truck and the car in the above photo).

Another view of the intersection... this one from a book about Toronto dating from the late 1970s, and showing the view from the hilltop north of the homestead, facing west towards where Finch now meets Don Mills Road beyond the crest of the hill.

It goes without saying, I suppose, that virtually nothing in these shots still exists. The land in these views is now under either the highway, or the suburbs that were already being built out of sight up the rise on the right in the second photo. For me, it's one of the more dramatically-changed streetscapes in the city, which is one of the reasons I've found it so fascinating.

Parting shot: this is the location of the little homestead on the east side of Woodbine, today.

Old driveway, new road

MapArt map books of the Greater Toronto Area have been a tremendous boon to me in my quirky hobby of exploring closed and unused roads and bridges. Since I bought my first one in 1990, not too long after getting my license, the hours I've spent pouring over the road grid have been some of the most fascinating of my life. The hints at what was, or what might eventually be (and in some cases, has come to pass), have fueled so many of my trips, and since digital photography has come of age, it's been all the more rewarding... increasingly so as the city continues to change out from under photos I've taken before.

MapArt's start eventually blossomed into investigations of the aerial photos at the City of Toronto Archives. What the maps merely hint at, these photos can confirm or deny, as you'll see below.

One of the intriguing things I found, but until just last weekend never really followed up on on foot, was an aspect of the gap that used to exist in Etobicoke's road grid west of the Humber. Up until quite recently, there was a substantial dearth of means to get back and forth between Albion Road in the south and Highway 7 in the north. The principal means one would have rightly expected to use, Steeles Avenue and Finch Avenue, did not cross the Humber until rather late in the region's history. Indeed, for all intents and purposes, Finch Avenue was a dead issue altogether west of the Humber, to the point that it eventually had to elbow its way though existing subdivisions to eventually make its way west into Mississauga. With the exception of a Rowntree Road — a residential street whose narrow, one-lane, wood-decked bridge still exists but has been closed to traffic for decades — there simply was no way across the Humber in this area until Steeles finally leapt the river in 1983. Finch Avenue didn't continue west of the river until 1988, which is astounding to me.

The one "cheat" that always stood out to me was a two-lane hospital driveway leading up from Islington Avenue just a little south of its T-intersection with Finch over the river itself. It always looked to me like this might have been a shortcut across the stretch that, until about 20 years ago, was unserved by a proper road. It twisted and turned, but eventually would have led drivers to Kipling Avenue, and access to the roads of Rexdale (ever the poor cousin in Etobicoke, it seems to me).

The driveway leads to a hospital that seems, given the various names it's had over the years, to be dedicated to the health — particularly the emotional health — of the children of the region. When I was in university, I had an English professor, a Czech author of some renown, who made a sly comment on this trend of political correctness. Speaking of a woman who had been consigned to 'The Home for the Desperately Poor', he remarked, "...because in those days, they didn't use fancy names; they just said it." And so, the hospital in question, on the various maps I have, has been styled first "County Branch Hospital for Sick Children", then later "Thistletown Hospital", then "The Ontario Hospital for Emotionally Disturbed Children", and finally, "Thistletown Regional Centre for Children and Adolescents". Seems the pits for political correctness was in that third example, from c. 1970 to c. 1990.

Some time ago, I went to the Archives to photograph that intersection as it appeared over the years. You can see the driveway shoot off northwesterly at an acute angle, until eventually it was cut off by the construction of Finch Avenue, and to which, strangely enough, it does not connect.

Here's how Finch and Islington met in 1950. Islington Avenue comes in at the bottom, crosses the Humber on a narrow bridge, and then heads north-northeast, where a very anemic-looking Finch Avenue meets it gasping and dies in its arms. South of the river is the driveway to the hospital, neatly lined with what look like recently-planted trees.


Here's nearly the same view in 1960 (I didn't match this particular photo with the other three, which all do line up precisely). You can see that the principal change here over ten years has been the arrival of suburbia.


Here's 1973. You can see that the old narrow Islington Avenue bridge has been replaced by the one that exists now, and that a more-robust, but still truncated, Finch Avenue meets it directly over the river. What I found most fascinating in this view is the naked arrowhead of the bridge on the west bank, ready to one day shoulder the burden of Finch Avenue, should it ever dare to leap the river and continue west in the direction the bridge itself seems to be urging. I'm not sure when the bridge was built, but I do know that promise wasn't met for a very long time... not until about 1988.


Here's the view today, and more-or-less how things have looked for about 20 years, give or take. Finch Avenue finally crosses the Humber and heads west. Incredibly, even this was not the completion of Finch Avenue; there was still a short gap between Kipling Avenue and Albion Road, behind the Albion Centre mall, segregating most of Finch from the stretch slowly built up in the 70s and 80s to serve Humber College and the newly-constructed Highway 427 (none of which appears in any of these shots); a gap that persisted right into the 1990s. You can see that the driveway to the hospital is now completely cut off by the completion of Finch Avenue here along its ancient road allowance. The section of the driveway south of Finch is now nearly indistinguishable.


And so we come to my walk down the old driveway. I parked in the south lot of the hospital, got out, and headed down on foot. Just beyond the parking lot, the driveway is closed to vehicle traffic.


As I came to the major upper bend in the driveway, I noticed a little stone bridge and pathway on the north side, so I diverted from the driveway and had a look. It's a melancholy walk up to some of the buildings, and I can't imagine what it was ever built for. Even if one had walked to the driveway in decades past, the driveway itself didn't really lead to any amenities. It seems to serve no purpose, now or then, that I can think of.

But it was certainly photogenic.

I returned to the crest curve of the driveway. Even in broad daylight in the late summer sun, it's a cold, oppressive place.


A little further along still, I came to the mouth of a gravely road leading off to the north and skirting the heights over the river. In the 1973 shot a little further down, you can see this trail once let some some sort of outlier building or buildings. There seems to be nothing in that vicinity now but a clearing. Nevertheless, this trail seems to receive at least some measure of maintenance, though as you may have noticed, none of the neglected street lamps in this area have been kept up.

On the side path, I found a little stone bridge, and a manhole cover dated 1960. (P.S. Looking at the photo now, I strongly suspect that's poison ivy creeping along the edge of the bridge there...)


Back on the main road, I resumed my trek down to Finch Avenue.


At the end of the driveway, cut off from Finch by a chainlink fence and a drop of 2', I was nearly run over by a teenager racing down on a bike. He narrowly missed me and turned onto a footpath on the east side. I had wondered if I would find an access to the roads, or under them, when I got there, and his speedy, confident zip into the trees was my first solid indication that that was the case. So I followed.

The chainlink fence had been widely and thoroughly pried open by pedestians. One branch of the trail seems to lead down the steep hillside to the river; the other takes one to Finch Avenue.


To remind you of what you're about to see, and how it differs from the area traditionally, here's a wider view of the 1973 shot. Emerging from the woods, I would be climbing onto the point of that big white arrowhead — only today, it carries Finch Avenue west across the field on the left side of the image.


Finch Avenue. The apartment building, which does not appear in the 1973 shot, is on Islington Avenue. Islington Avenue itself, up to sometime in the 1960s, would have been at the extreme right of this shot, at the end of the row of trees along Finch, and would have crossed its original narrow bridge just behind me over my right shoulder.


The views below have only existed for about 20 years. Before that, you'd have seen a grassy field, and cars turning either north or south when they T-junctioned at Islington.


Looking west up the "new", post-1988 stretch of Finch Avenue.


A wide-angle view of the intersection, looking east.


Manhole cover in the "new" section of Finch. Dated 1988.


A millennium plaque on the bridge. This suggests to me the bridge must have undergone some sort of work in 1999 or 2000.


I headed back down the path, and back along the abandoned (by all except myriad pedestrians and cyclists, apparently) driveway.



I found this strange, leaning tree somehow a poignant icon of the nature of the place.