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 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.

Ellesmere Road 1952-2009

Ellesmere Road 1952-2009, originally uploaded by Lone Primate.

I was honestly slack-jawed when I saw the upper photo on the Toronto Public Library's website. If you're not familiar with Toronto, you probably won't think much of it... just a photo of a rural scene that's now urban Scarberia. But the thing is, Ellesemere Road is relatively mid-section in Toronto, and the view you see up top is the sort of thing I would have expected to see of the area from the 1920s or 1930s, not in the post-WWII boom. Not the way I imagined this part of town in the days of Leave It to Beaver.

The lower view is one I took this morning, from the same location, give or take a few yards. What was a farm fifty-some years ago is office space today, just off-screen to the left. Frankly, I'm not sure which view I prefer. They both have something to recommend them.

This one's for you, Jim. :)

Embedded slideshow

I'm just curious to see if this actually works. If it does, enjoy. It's a Flickr set about an abandoned residential road in west-central Toronto called Blondin Avenue. :)

Death or Canada

Death or Canada. That's what they called it. P-Doug invited me to come with him to see it, and I remarked to him at the time, half in jest, that had the destination been the US, they probably would have come up with a less gloomy title; one that made the choice sound more palatable, even flattering. Death... or Canada. Well...

Of course, that's being flippant. The documentary, and the book that accompanies it, are actually about the arrival of about 38,000 Famine Irish in Toronto in the summer of 1847. Toronto, at the time, had a population of about 20,000. The documentary makes the point that an equivalent emergency in our own times would imply the introduction of nine or ten million people to this city in one season. And that of those, about a quarter of a million would die of typhus, or the like, in our midst.

It was showing last night at the Bloor Cinema around 7 p.m. There were brief presentations, before and afterward, by some of the people responsible for the film or getting the word about it out. The film itself was the story of the people who chose to flee Ireland for North America, and in particular, the tragic story of the Willis family, who departed as a family of seven, and whose story ended with only the mother surviving. Suddenly the title "Death or Canada" didn't seem like such a strange one to me anymore. Thousands died on the way over, and thousands more in isolation once they arrived. Conditions on the ships were such that one of the presenters said it's less surprising that so many died, as it is that so many actually survived.

It's also the story of colonial reactions to the influx. Some people fled the city for the safety of lodging with rural relatives. But others, doctors, nurses, public officials, and even Toronto's first Catholic bishop, an Irish Nova Scotian named Michael Power, died in the service of the sick and dying, while scores of others risked their lives.

Today, at the foot of Bathurst Street, is Ireland Park, where statues by the Irish sculptor Rowan Gillespie greet the new city with the emotions of the long-ago people they represent. Here, in stone quarried in County Kerry, Ireland, they are engraving the (known) names of the 1,100 or so Irish who died on the shores of Lake Ontario... currently about 675, but growing as research brings them to light.

On the way out, I bought the book, and we were all given a free copy of the inaugural issue of Irish Connections Canada (a re-inauguration of The Toronto Irish News, now going nation-wide). The documentary, in all its power and sobering impact, will be shown on The History Network on March 16th, on the eve of St. Patrick's Day.

The presenters included Eamonn O'Loghlin, the editor of Irish Connections Canada; Professor Mark McCowan, who wrote the book the started the project; Robert G. Kearns, Chairman of the Ireland Park Foundation; and two others whose names for the moment escape me, but who I will fill in as soon as I'm able.

N.B. (March 9) Much to my embarrassment, the producer himself has reminded me of the names of the two others on stage that evening. They were Dr. Donald Low of Mt. Sinai Hospital and the film's executive producer, Craig Thompson. I searched for the Doctor's name but most of my searches brought up the name of a SARS doctor here in Toronto who died in the effort to defeat the disease, rightly garnering him much mention (that unfortunately obscured the search for Dr. Low's name). I'd like to thank Mr. Thompson for reminding me of the names I overlooked, and doing so with good grace. :)

Sopranos Toronto

"sappletown" on YouTube has put up a Toronto version of the opening from the Sopranos. It's fun to watch, especially if you're familiar with the geography of the city. :)

Words of wisdom

Seen in a driveway while walking back from North York Central Library this evening.

Down the Humber and back

I had two adventures kayaking on the Humber last summer. The first time, P-Doug took me down there and introduced me to the pastime. I'd never done it before, but I was delighted to find how naturally it came to me. That time, we were guided down from Bloor to the mouth of the river at Lake Ontario, and then back again.

The second time was in September when my friend R-Lang was visiting from New England. That time didn't go as well for me. I had a devil of a time keeping up, largely because I couldn't keep the kayak straight. I eventually suspected that the stabilizing fin hadn't deployed, which turned out to be the case (it was jammed with sand). I finally had to turn back on my own and fight the thing back to the landing ground, where I cut my palm open falling into the water getting out of the thing, and spending about an hour and a half waiting for P-Doug and R-Lang to return.

Oddly enough, that second experience didn't sour me on the whole thing. I managed to keep my perspective — pretty rare for me, actually — and put to down to an anomalous occurrence that need not spoil things the next time out. And I was determined there would be a next time out.

Well, happily, that came last Saturday. I drove down to meet up with P-Doug and his missus, G, and we all went to St. Lawrence Market, where I availed myself of 6 lbs. of ground chicken (parceled off Monday night into 17 packages to be eaten over the next few weeks), a spicy pineapple-cranberry spread that's nice on toast and quark (a soft German spreadable cheese with no fat content, just milk protein), and my favourite hot sauce, Z: Nothing Beyond. After that we dropped off G back at home and then took the subway down to Old Mill Station, aiming for the 1 p.m. launch. We missed that, but I honestly didn't mind because I was perfectly happy to go at our own pace, rather than be led around.

Just like the second time I went, I brought my cameras. This time, I had the G9 and the infrared S70, as well as my cell phone and PhotoTrackr. I had everything in a little shoulder bag, all packed up in sandwich bags in case I fell in or otherwise got wet. This was, to be honest, of limited utility. To use the G9, I had to take it out and expose it to the elements (though I had the neck strap on, so unless I actually fell overboard, nothing much was going to happen to it). Using the S70, I kept it in the sandwich bag, which had the advantage of guarding it and rending it likely to float, but had the disadvantage of causing glare at certain angles and increasing the risk I'd drop it because there was no way to use the wrist strap and the bag itself was smooth and difficult to hold. I never dropped either one, but I was constantly aware I was risking a lot of money every time I took a shot that wasn't from the chest.

We got to the river around quarter after one and out on it around half past. I spent a lot of time messing with the cameras, taking shots and some movies that turned out pretty nicely in places, I think. P-Doug slowed down a couple of times to let me catch up, but I think eventually he decided that my shutterbuggery (if I can use that term) was bound to hold me back more or less constantly and he drifted down at his own pace. In truth, it's hard to keep in lockstep on a river anyway, unless you're a voyageur. We linked up a few times, especially at the first marsh where he lingered rather longer than I did. By that time, the sunny midday had taken on a decided overcast, and there was a sense of rain in the air, but it didn't seem overwhelming.

I think it was just after the second marsh, as I headed down towards the bridges with a decided pace, that I realized I'd left P-Doug behind. I was around a bend at that point so there was no way I could gage just how far back he might be... I waited for a few moments, but when I didn't see him, I figured he was taking his time at the second marsh and I just pressed on to the bridges and the mouth of the river. I enjoyed the sense of accomplishment in getting there again, and I'd decided to wait for P-Doug there, but right around the time I got turned around, the rain started. I had no idea how bad it was going to be, and the wind was really picking up. I had most of an hour's trip back, too, so I pretty quickly gave up on the idea of waiting around and I headed back. Turned out to be just well because I never did bump into him on the way back.

The rain was never more than showers, really, but it fell for about fifteen, twenty minutes and I was convinced it was probably going to get worse. I was paddling pretty steadily, pausing when my arms tired. I noticed that it was mostly my left arm that seemed to tire, probably because I'm right-handed. The trip back always seems longer than the trip down (of course, you're going against the current, however slight) and I felt the pressure to get back before it really opened up on me. But it never did.

As I was approaching the landing ground, just above Bloor Street, I could see P-Doug's distinctive hat atop a figure beside another. Conversing, I figured, with the kayak owner. I wondered how long he'd been waiting. But as I was closing in, I happened to notice a deer on the east bank of the river. She noticed me, too, but didn't run away. I had to get a picture of her. I circled back, and took a number of shots. Then, I turned on the video function and got a wonderful 30 second movie of her as she wander away, and then loped off as the subway train arrived with its distinctive racket. I then turned back to end the excursion.

We headed back on the subway to rejoin G and all went to my place to watch Miller's Crossing and enjoy a spaghettini and sausage dinner, courtesy of P-Doug and his culinary skills. A pleasant day all around. Even for the deer, I bet.

Unsquare Toronto

It was a bad idea 50 years ago...

Toronto trustees narrowly approve black-focused school
CAROLINE ALPHONSO AND JAMES BRADSHAW
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
January 30, 2008 at 12:49 AM EST

TORONTO — In a tight vote, Toronto District School Board trustees Tuesday night approved a contentious proposal for a black-focused school that opponents argued would be the equivalent of segregation.

The 11-9 vote in favour came after an evening of impassioned pleas both for and against the school from community members, including one from the mother of slain 15-year-old Jordan Manners.

Tuesday night's vote means that an alternative Afro-centric school will open in the city in September, 2009, but its location and grade levels are still to be determined.

I've thought about it, and while I understand the intentions behind it, I'm opposed to this. I think it's a very, very bad idea. We need more interaction and more inclusion in a society like this, not less. I'm sorry, this is segregation. It will promote different standards. It will lead to disparities in resource allocation — perceived, if not real. It will exacerbate the alienation already fostered by race when it makes that very aspect a matter of public policy. This does not serve the community interest. Where does it lead us? Chinese schools? Indian schools? Arab schools? Nordic schools? Is this good for Toronto? Is it good for Canada?

I agree that the teaching in schools is too Eurocentric. At least it was 20 years ago when I was there. There was discussion of what happened in Europe leading to the European colonization of the Americas and then our role in several European wars. Little was said of Asia; nothing of Africa outside of the slave trade. That should change. This country is forged of threads from around the world; it is in the interests of every Canadian to understand the history, trends, and motivations of every culture and society that has come to these shores to contribute. We need to learn about one another, because it's now about learning about ourselves. Breaking off from one another to go to our own rooms and stare at our own pretty navels is not the answer. As has been demonstrated concerning Eurocentism, it is, in fact, the problem.

Two Nights in a Toronto Hotel

Just like the name says. I've just spent two nights downtown on business, put up in one of the city's premier hotels. My second hand Canon PowerShot G9 arrived on Wednesday, just in time for the fun... enabling me to take several time lapse movies of the wonderful views to be seen from the hotel.

Music by the Canadian comedy team of MacLean & MacLean (rest in peace, Gary).

Blondin Avenue, better late than never

Sometimes these things have a long history. Sometimes I forget to blog them, or I write them up elsewhere. I don't mean to be one of those people who blogs every time he sees a butterfly or eats a really nice cheese sandwich, but there are some things I ought to record... mostly so I remember them in detail over time, but also because I think they'll be of interest, if only to a few like-minded people. And so, better late than never.

It usually starts with maps. At some point a couple of years ago or so, I noticed that Flindon Road, on what used to be the border between North York and Etobicoke, seemed to once have bridged the Humber River; my supposition was right, it did. I've been there a couple of times and my interest in the place has grown as I've explored it.

Sometime earlier this year I mentioned it to P-Doug as a possible outing, and directed him to Google Maps to show him the area. Casually, almost as an afterthought, he expressed interest in a little slice of pavement, completely isolated from the road system. Obviously, it had once been connected. What was it? I admit, I wasn't initially all that fired up about it. It looked to me like just part of a parking lot that had been abandoned, or something. But Google still had it labeled "Blondin Avenue", and I guess I was intrigued just enough to eventually check it out. Well, it turns out it was once quite a bit more than what I'd imagined.

I found myself at the City Archives on Friday, August 17, 2007, to research the bridge at Flindon Road. In the course of that, I also decided to look up the chunk of pavement. It turned out that Blondin Avenue in Weston was part of a now-vanished section of postwar suburbia. It used to have a substantial number of homes on it. For about fifty years, dozens of families made their homes there. Equally surprising to me was the discovery that at least as many homes had once been on the south side of Walsh Avenue, which today seamlessly turns Albion Road into Wilson Avenue and vice versa. All of this seems to have changed in just the last decade or so. Today, it's virtually erased from the city, memory, and even the eye. Almost from the imagination.

Let me start you off with some of the images I got at the Archives, matched to a modern image courtesy of Google Maps.

Blondin Road is the little diagonal cut at the lower left. This is how the neighbourhood appeared in 1950. At this time, the 401 had not yet been built. You can see that the handful of homes on Blondin are among the very first in the entire area.


This is how it appeared in 1959. The 401 existed by then and had an pitchfork-shaped offramp at Weston Road just south of what you can see in this view.


Here's how the neighbourhood looked in 1975. You can see the "new" offramp system of the 401 now, built in the mid-60s. Notice that Wilson Avenue no longer connects to Weston Road, but at the time, Blondin Avenue itself still did. That must have made for some intense moments as people barreled off the 401 into people trying to make turns at 15 mph from Blondin onto Weston. Little wonder that the shots of 1983 show Blondin ending in a cul de sac just shy of Weston. Take note, too, of the plaza at the increasingly complicated intersection of Albion and Weston at the upper left.


Here's how the place looks today, more or less. Blondin is cut off from the road system, and all its homes are torn down. Amazingly, and inexplicably, so are all the homes on the south side of Walsh... with the single exception of one, #35, which you can see at about the centre of the image. Even the plaza at Albion and Walsh is gone, replaced by a sales office for condos. This image is a screen cap from Google Maps.

Now here's some of what I saw when I was there Saturday, August 18, to explore what I'd seen from "above"...


Looking down Wilson Avenue eastward. To the left is Walsh, which in modern times sweeps traffic from Albion to Wilson and Wilson to Albion. What you're seeing here is a largely forgotten, but still open-for-business (literally) butt-end of Wilson Avenue... it's still officially called Wilson Avenue, in fact.


Turning around, this is the view. Until the mid-60s, what you would have seen would be Wilson Avenue straight to Weston Road. When the 401 was expanded from four lanes to the current express-collector system in about 1965, Wilson was cut off from Weston by the land requirements of the new interchange of the 401 at Weston Road. But the intersection of Wilson and Blondin, just the other side of the heap of rubble, was still open. Until fairly recently (and I'm not sure exactly HOW recent; I'm hoping some of you might know), there would have been houses on the right beyond the foreground tree.


Climbing the rubble that segregates Blondin from the street grid, this was my first view of what was once a tidy residential street. This is Blondin Avenue as it looks today. Jaw-dropping. It looks like something out of the Love Canal Photo Album. I think this scene would be heartbreaking for anyone who once lived there, especially if you grew up on this street. I'm no expert but the rate of decay here suggests to me that the neighbourhood was torn down 10-15 years ago. Does anyone know for sure?


This is a shot of Blondin Road as I moved past a fallen tree above and headed towards a rubble field that seems to have been dumped in the mid-point of Blondin Avenue.


A couple of views across the field that was once two rows of houses and their adjacent backyards. The second, infrared, shot is probably the remains of someone's driveway.


Humanity has a knack for making lemonade from lemons. Here, in the debris field in the middle of a one-time residential street, someone is growing vine vegetables. Looked like plum tomatoes.


Clearing the debris field and catching an unhindered glimpse of the remainder of the road towards Weston.


A couple of shots approaching the end of Blondin Avenue, where it once met Weston Road.

Here's the cookie. Today, and for over 20 years now, Blondin Avenue ends in a cul de sac at the very edge of Weston Road, which you can glimpse through the gap in the trees at the left. Beyond the trees on the right, you would have been able to see a plaza at one time. Until sometime around 1980 or so, this would actually have been an intersection exchanging traffic between Blondin Avenue and the northbound lanes of Weston Road. Immediately to my right once stood what appear to be a couple of large multi-unit low-rises, and across the street on the right, there were bungalows... single-unit homes. Just off to my left would have been the TTC terminal you will see in one of the shots below from 1968, showing a bus turning at this intersection, viewed from the other side of Weston Road.


These signs are visible from the field just south of Blondin Avenue and a bit north of the 401 offramp to northbound Weston Road.

At this point, I headed back. Blondin road takes about ten minutes to walk, but part of that is getting over the three or four dunes of sandy debris dumped midway. Anyway, the shots from here on in are the return trip away from Weston and towards Wilson again.


Heading east in infrared, just before the resumption of the debris field in the road.


Views of Blondin heading towards Wilson after clearing the debris field.


This once would have been the view of anyone heading off the work, turning onto Wilson from Blondin... before all the crap was dumped here, of course.

Having cursorily explored Blondin, I decided to walk up Walsh, the other half of this devastation. I was particularly interested in the state of the one, solitary survivor of all this...


Somebody's driveway once, fronting onto Walsh Avenue.


This is the only house still remaining on the south side of Walsh, #35. As you can see by the car and the state of the place, someone still lives here. This is a great mystery. Why only this place? Did everyone else sell except them? Why didn't they sell, then? What's to become of this one, single remainder of that lost neighbourhood?


And here it is... looks like it could be the reason for it all. At the corner of Walsh/Albion and Weston Road, where the plaza used to be, is now this small sales office for this development. I wonder how long they've been sitting on the land? Have they owned it all along, or did they just buy it up once the homes were torn down... and if so, why were they torn down in the first place? Are these guys waiting for the moment they can clear #35 off the block as well?

...Most of the above is cribbed from my post on Urban Toronto from late August. Other people there chimed in with interesting information.

Construction plans for the site... Notice the gap for 35 Walsh Avenue. I'm reminded of that cartoon where Bugs Bunny fights off the burly construction worker to save his burrow, and a huge apartment building features a semi-circular divot all the way up, clearing his property. :)


An aerial photo, looking southward, from 1953...


And perhaps most amazing of all, the following information and image...

Blondin was well known as a bus loop until the interchange was built - it was the end of the Weston 89 Trolley Coaches, as well as serving Wilson and Woodbridge buses. I have a postcard somewhere that shows a Marmon-Harrington Trolley Coach pulling out of Blondin Loop (with the post war 1 1/2 floor houses behind) in the early 1970s.

The Westchester sales office has been abandoned for at least a year now. Don't know what Sorbara Group is up to there anymore.

There were a few more houses on Walsh a few years ago, they all went quite slowly, I think.

Here's the postcard. It's by Ted Wickson (TTC staff photographer) from 1968.


The image shows a bus turning onto southbound Weston Road from Blondin Avenue. The houses in the background are, of course, gone... as is the terminal on the right... and Blondin Avenue itself, actually. This turn would have been impossible circa 1980 when Blondin was disconnected from Weston.

I came back about two weeks later with P-Doug and we had a look around.


Here's the path that once led from the disconnected end of Blondin Avenue to Weston Road. The path you see here would once have been the sidewalk to the left of the turning bus in the shot above, and in close proximity to the now-missing homes in the same image. I find that idea deeply wistful, verging on depressing. Imagine how it would be for people who once called it home.


This is where the strip plaza on Weston between Blondin Avenue and Walsh Avenue stood until sometime in the 1990s.