I don’t know if it was a juried show, but the display was pretty high calibre, Danica and I thought. It’s really hard to shoot through windows because of reflections, so I’ll just show you a small sampling of the pictures done by kids in ColourCreative classes on the Danforth.
The one above is by “Maxwell”. We loved it. Next, a couple of nice owls, interpreted in completely different ways. Artists: “Daniel” on the left, “Andria” on the right.

There were many more paintings and drawings, all well done and all appropriately inspired by animal subjects, because the window hosting the show belongs to Wag On The Danforth, a pet supply store.

View of Fairmount Park from Upper Gerrard Street East Temporary hockey rink.
Whenever I see figures against a snowy landscape, especially from an elevated point of view, I am whisked back through the centuries to the Lowlands of Western Europe and the timeless paintings of Brueghel.

The Hunters in the Snow, 1565, oil on wood. By Flemish artist Pieter Brueghel the Elder.

With a logo like theirs, wifi would be a natural, no? No. The big box supermarket has been renovated and redecorated. Tables and chairs are offered in the deli section, if you are inclined to nosh. There’s even a new café counter. But a public wifi signal? Not so far. I have written, of course. [UPDATE] Loblaws replied saying that, while no date has been set, there are plans to offer a public wifi signal.

Joni is working on a project I’ll probably say more about later, but it involves the use of slip joint hinges. She sent this photo of some handmade wooden ones that I admire as sculpture.
There are many kinds of slip joint hinges but one kind that most of us know is part of ordinary pliers. You know how they work, to open the jaws wider, don’t you? Simple and ingenious.

It’s fun collaborating on covers for John Robert Colombo’s books, but that doesn’t mean it’s always easy. Easy, of course, would be to use tried-and-true design conventions that we know will work. But no, John likes to try new things and that’s what makes his assignments interesting and challenging.

Late in the Day is the last volume in a series that JRC has been publishing at this time of the year for 10 years. Each book contains poems and what John calls “effects”.

The intersection at Lakeshore Boulevard and Leslie Street has been a mess for a long time, as the new streetcar maintenance facility takes shape.

The big ugly wall will be painted a colour, then trees will be planted to hide it and in a decade or two, it will be hidden, except for the 6 leafless months. And besides, TTC says on Twitter, the Ministry of the Environment made us put it up, so it will look nice and it’s not our fault.

Congestion of automobile traffic along the major arterial route that is Lakeshore Boulevard will apparently not be a problem. As you can see in the artist’s conception, the cars have disappeared. Good thing, too, because getting 30 metre streetcars across the intersection might have impeded cars on the Lakeshore. Here’s a crossing timetable I found in a TTC PDF.

85 outbound trips, between 5:00 and 7:00 a.m.
30 inbound trips between 9:00 and 10:00 a.m.
30 outbound trips between 2:00 and 3:00 p.m.
45 inbound trips between 7:00 and 9:00 p.m.
40 inbound trips between 1:00 and 2:00 a.m.

As the artist’s rendering shows, drivers of the future will not be using Lakeshore Boulevard. Pedestrians, joggers and cyclists will begin to enjoy the intersection. Each day, 6.9 kilometres of streetcar will be passing through the park-like setting.

For comparison, the entire parade route of the Toronto Santa Claus Parade is one kilometre shorter and it’s once a year, not every day.

I can’t say I’ll ever want to be CONSTANTLY on the go, but as my 70th draws near, I should probably add some of those balance activities to my daily walks. Thanks, Mr Jepson! ( … and Danica for the link).

I have been puzzled for weeks by a forest of pipes sticking out of a construction site on Gerrard Street, between Coxwell and Greenwood. What are the pipes for? Today, the sign on a workman’s pickup door led me to this explanation:

So now I know. A foundation-building method I’ve never seen before. The pipes will root the concrete foundation into sandy soil. that Otherwise it would not be stable enough to support a multi-storey building. Hope it works!

My sister’s living room in Salmo, B.C., with many drums, large and small.
Joni takes after her mother Helen, and her grandparents before that, in her appreciation of indigenous arts and culture. Helen responded in her own expressive way, but Joni is more immersed.
Joni plays and sings in drum circles, on drums of her own making. A couple of months ago, she passed a guy who was dressing a deer and asked what he was going to do with the hide. Odd, isn’t it? When you dress a deer, you take its coat off. Anyway, he gave her the hide, she prepared it and made the wooden cylinder from spruce.
She sent one small drum to us as a gift. It came with a fur-covered drumstick and there’s some nice beadwork on the handle.
Depending on where and how you strike it, different sounds are possible.

The “Up” part of the Upland Forest must come from the fact that it is on a mound that was bulldozed into position when developers created the park. The “forest” consists of a slope planted with trees and vegetation native to the region.
The sign may be a little ambitious in its name, not to say pretentious, but the idea is a good one. Native plants pretty much take care of themselves, without requiring fertilizers, pesticides and watering. By showing city slickers how attractive these species are, more may want them in their own yards.

The view today from the Upland Forest, overlooking the artificial but pleasantly reeded Swan Pond.