Results tagged “parks”

When you cycle from the lake up to Old Mill subway on the Humber trail, there is this interesting piece of architecture. It’s a disk on posts. Somewhat intended, it seems, as a shelter. It looks like a space ship landing pod, almost. What is it really for?

Standing on the industrial site known as East Bayfront, which extends from Jarvis to Parliament streets and south from the rail lines to Lake Ontario, Mayor David Miller addressed a crowd gathered in the rain on Thursday morning to witness the groundbreaking of Sherbourne Park.

We’ve heard a fair bit about the state of Toronto’s parks during the current municipal strike. Most tales have tended toward the negative, from fears of contamination stemming from temporary garbage depots to the unattractive aesthetic state that some green spaces have fallen into. But what if the withholding of certain services led to a positive effect on the local environment?

Whatever else you may have thought of former mayor Barbara Hall, she will forever be a champion for besting Boston, whose Brahmins looked down their noses at what would eventually become the award-winning Toronto Music Garden. After much bureaucratic red tape, landscape designer Julie Moir Messervy and collaborator cellist Yo-Yo Ma gave up on trying to build a music garden in New England’s famed city by the sea. Instead, they headed north to Toronto where they were warmly welcomed by Mayor Barbara Hall, Director of Parks Susan Richardson, and financial backer Jim Fleck. Starting with a windy plot at the western reaches of Harbourfront near the foot of Spadina Avenue, Messervy and Ma began to transform the lakeside property into the Toronto Music Garden.

With the recent completion of a swanky new dog park in Allan Gardens arose the installation of two gigantic fibreglass mutts, and though they may seem like they came from a lawn ornament production line, the man behind them is already known for his quirky statuary around Toronto.

       

This year, the winter season has been less than kind to Étienne Brûlé Park. The park, which took a beating in February during a flash thaw, took another one on Saturday when torrential downpours caused parts of the Humber River to spill its banks. On Sunday, we went down to the park to survey the damage, and we have to say that parts of Étienne Brûlé feel more like a treacherous obstacle course than a park. Since February, the city has tried to clear some of the paths, but huge chunks of ice still block most of the walkways near the Old Mill entrance. The parking lot, which sits at the base of the bridge at the end of Old Mill Road, is still entirely obscured by pools of water and dirty, and increasingly dangerous, sheets of ice. We managed to climb over or around most of the obstacles, but recent rains and the warmer weather have weakened a lot of the ice sheets, and we fell through several of them.

High Park Toboggan Runs, ca. 1906-1910. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1244, Item 438."

ZOMBIES: Put on your make-up and rip off your clothes—it’s the 2008 Toronto Zombie Walk! Sponsored by the concurrent Toronto After Dark Film Festival, the walk will stumble out of Trinity-Bellwoods Park, shuffle along Queen Street to Bathurst Street, and heave up to Bloor Street, finishing in the alley behind the Bloor Cinema. Zombies will receive a discount for tonight’s festival screenings. Brain-eating mayhem continues at the Annex Wreckroom for the Zombie Walk Afterparty, featuring Misfits tribute band The Skulls, with guests The Rock Ons and The Von Drats. (No cover, but donations toward next year’s street permit gratefully accepted.) Zombie participants should meet in the pit of despair at the Dundas Street end of the park. Trinity-Bellwoods Park, 3 p.m., FREE.

A funny thing happens on the western waterfront at the end of each summer. The Ex opens its doors to Children Of All Ages®, the Air Show deafens enthusiasts with aerobatic feats, and the City allows people to park—where else?—in the parks!

Every Wednesday, Torontoist receives transmissions from the travel log of Gleebax, the alien Urbanaut, as he explores the foreign land of Toronto.

This year to date has seen the wettest June and July ever in Toronto, and we're only a couple of centimetres of rain away from breaking the rain record for the whole summer. That should shut up the "global wetting" skeptics.

Happy Canada Day! There is lots of stuff going on around town, including fireworks tonight at Ashbridges Bay, Ontario Place, Downsview Park, and Mel Lastman Square, where Mel Lastman will be fired into space on a giant skyrocket.

Residents near the Broadview subway station are used to inconvenience in the name of progress. The station reconstruction project that added elevators, a second streetcar platform, more room for buses, and extra subway exits dragged on for five long years before finally wrapping up in the closing weeks of 2007. For most of that time, the parkette on the north side of the station had been surrounded by construction hoarding and used by crews as a staging and equipment storage area. Residents were promised a rejuvenated and completely restored parkette in exchange for their patience and understanding.

This bold sign near one of the picnic areas in Sunnybrook Park warmly welcomes visitors before sternly laying out the conditions of play. No cycling on hills? No Frisbee without a permit? No kites? Since when? With the busy summer season approaching, are by-law enforcement officers going to be ticketing kids for playing catch or riding their bikes in the park? Fortunately, it looks more like the sign makers are even less familiar with the parks by-law (PDF) than most people.

The corner of Dundas Street West and Indian Grove used to host McBride Cycle, a 21,000 square-foot motorcycle retailer with some ninety-seven years of history behind it. As of last September, however, the store is no more, a death caused in large part by motorcycling companies cancelling agreements with dealerships like McBride's around the country. Beginning in the spring, the building was slowly demolished, and now there is little more at the corner than a bed of rubble, some metal poles, a big garbage bin, and a single line of fence running parallel with Dundas West.