Niagara Falls
2011/09/02
Spent the day doing touristy things in Niagara Falls today. I’ve been here twice before, as far as I know. Once as a toddler (I’m told almost fell in because of the hypnotic effect of the falling water) and once in my early teens.
I remember being impressed by the bright neon lights of the tourist strip, and they light up the falls at night, so I went out twice – once in day and once at night.
Amusing building design: tipped over skyscraper
I also went up on the big ferris wheel they have overlooking the river. Here you can see the rivers leading to the falls – a feature often overlooked:
I went on the Maid of the Mist boat tour. It’s a short boat ride that takes you near the American falls and right up beside the Canadian falls. The spray is incredible. They give you a disposable raincoat, but you’ll still get soaked. It was almost hard to breathe there was so much water flying through the air – like being under a dozen showerheads at once. Luckily my camera bag proved itself quite waterproof, but needless to say I didn’t take any pictures that close to the falls. This is when I had to put my camera away:
I did get this panorama of the American falls on the return leg:
The next place I went was Table Rock, which is the name of the best vantage point above the Canadian falls – and where a young woman recently fell in. This compressed panorama doesn’t do it justice – there’s a lot of water there. It’s about 20cm deep where it goes over the edge, and moving fast.
Just below here is an attraction called Journey Behind the Falls. There are three parts to it. Two are tunnels that come out behind the significant overhand of the falls. You can’t get right to the tunnel mouths though – what you see is this:
That whiteness is the wall of water falling down. Sometimes the wind blows some spray into the tunnels.
The third part is an observation deck near the foot of the falls. Lots of spray here too, but I was able to get a more dramatic angle:
On the return trip, at the request of my friend Liam, I photographed the monument to Nicola Tesla, world’s greatest mad scientist.
That’s the documentary view, but I like this angle better since Tesla was inspired as a child to want to harness the power of the Niagara Falls:
You’ll note he’s standing on a partial model of the AC motor, one of his world-changing contributions.
I’m not much interested in the wax museum type stuff that dominates the tourist strip here, but I did go into Brick City, hoping for a Lego extravaganza. Also I had heard the Lego model of the CN Tower that is no longer at the CN Tower was moved here.
Unfortunately it was a disappointment. What you see here is everything:
Basically a moderately substantial Lego collection for a single person. The CN Tower model is not the original, and is not as well done. Lots of trains, and some nice constructions, but also a lot of “canned” stuff – ie off-the-shelf Lego sets that have simply been assembled and added to the mix. Overall this exhibit is less substantial than the touring Lego shows that used to go to department stores across the country.
When I was here as a teenager, there was a big arcade on the strip where I and three other kids spent a crazy amount of money playing Gauntlet II. That arcade is gone and I’m not certain of where it was exactly. There are four new establishments that have (a poor selection of) arcade games, but they more correctly identify themselves as midways:
More shots from the strip:
OMG, there are dinosaurs and the like after those mini-golfers!
A couple of moon compositions:
Night shots of the lights illuminating the falls, and their effect on the cloud of spray:
Night shots of the falls:
A bit blurry, but there was a horse-drawn carriage lit with Christmas lights that I thought was neat:
They also had fireworks over the falls tonight, but I was up on the ferris wheel at the time and there was too much internal reflection in the gondola windows to get good shots.
I had a good time, but I don’t think I need to return anytime soon. If you do come here, the Maid, the Behind observation deck and the ferris wheel are all highly recommended. You can get multi-venue passes to save a few bucks and there are also coupons to be had everywhere.
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Toronto day 7
2011/08/31
Today had three things in it: Shopping, the ROM and one last dinner with Nav.
Shopping
Remember all those stores I was reminiscing about the other day? I revisited a bunch of them today, without my camera bag so I could go inside.
I’m happy to report that the World’s Biggest Bookstore is still pretty good – it hasn’t degenerated into a gift card store like Chapters has. Still two large floors packed with books, books, books. It definitely is one of the biggest brick-and-mortar new-book stores in Canada still.
The Silver Snail is also still excellent. They’ve got a good selection of new and old comics and action figures, but the real highlight is the busts and statues they have on display – very expensive, but amazing. There were several variations on life-size Alien heads, a cutaway Millennium Falcon to scale with the old Star Wars action figures (of which they had many for sale), and best of all, some of Dr. Grordbort`s steampunk rayguns.
Active Surplus is not as diminished as I had thought. They no longer have a storefront, but what they do have is stairs leading to a second-floor store that is still at least two thirds the size of what they used to have. Plus it`s much better organized, so they may actually have more stock now – and they also have a second location now on top of it. This store is an electronic nerd`s dream. I grabbed a basket and walked every aisle, tossing anything that looked interesting in my basket. I ended up spending well over $100 on random interesting junk, and could easily have spent more had I more time.
I went to check out Toby`s Famous Eatery, one of three restaurants claiming to inherit the mantle of my old favorite, Toby`s Good Eats. As a test, I had their Buster Brownie – the classic hot fudge brownie with ice cream dessert I love so much. It was good, but nowhere near as good as it used to be.
I was going to go check out Bakka Books as well, but time was getting short so I skipped it.
The Royal Ontario Museum
I`ve always loved the old stone building that houses the ROM. I was distressed to learn they have grown this ugly crystalline cancer on the north side of the building:
But thankfully they didn`t remove any of the old building – it`s all still there, including the old entrance on the east side:
Due to time constraints, I concentrated on the two most interesting exhibits – paleontology and minerology, but also took a quick pass through the rest. Assorted photos follow.
the paleo exhibit is really something – it gives a dramatic reminder of just how big some of these extinct critters really were.
Interesting headgear:
Armadillo the size of a VW bug:
Meow:
Check out these amethyst geodes. The first one is more than six feet tall. I`ve always dreamed of finding a geode, but finding something like this would be mindblowing:
Slice from the largest black mica crystal ever found – three meters by two meters (can`t recall the original thickness):
I like this art deco clock. Must make something like this:
Dinner
Got together with Navtej one last time, and he took me to his favorite Indian buffet – the Tandoori Flame in Brampton. It was great. The food was at least as good as my favorite Indian place out west, and there was a much greater selection here. I tried a bunch of new things. Nav made me try their white pumpkin desert – it looks like an ice cube. Unbelievably sweet – I couldn`t finish a single bite without setting off my coma alert warnings. I don`t think I have ever tasted anything so sugary – not even pure sugar or honey comes close.
Back on the road tomorrow. I`ve had a nice break from driving and am ready to resume my journey now, and I`ve done everything I wanted to do in Toronto.
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Toronto day 6
2011/08/30
Today I returned to the Toronto Zoo to finish off the part I didn’t have time for the other day, and also visited the Ontario Science Centre, a favorite hangout when I was a kid.
In between I attempted to locate one of the last vestiges of Toby’s Good Eats, home of the second-best dessert ever, but I couldn’t find it. To make up, I went to the Mandarin again for supper. How I wish restaurants like this existed on the west coast!
More Zoo pictures
Spectacled owls:
Groundhog – we had these at the farm in Manitoba but I never saw one this close before. They’re cute.
Gila monster, just chillin’:
Burrowing owl, watching the antics of the groundhogs with apparent consternation:
Capybara, the largest living rodent species – and most self-possessed:
Bored panther is bored:
Alert leopard is alert: (I think it liked my bright red shirt)
It was very hot today. The poor polar bears did what they could to cope:
But it was evidently too much for this bowhead whale:
Red panda – cute!
Snow leopard – also chillin’:
Sleepy tree kangaroo:
This tiger was pacing furiously back and forth along a short section of fence. I thought it was because there were tasty yardapes on the other side…
… but it turned out there was another tiger on the other side – perhaps it’s sexy time, yes?
The Ontario Science Center
I was shocked to discover that they close at 6pm – logically they should be open to at least 8pm so families can come after work, right? So I didn’t quite have enough time to see everything, but I got to the important part – the Science Arcade – full of interactive physics demonstrations. This was my favorite part as a kid.
I recognized a lot of the old installations still in use, and there were plenty of new ones as well. Sadly, some of my favorites were gone. There was a mechanically remote-controlled robot arm that you could use to stack foam blocks in a sealed room – that was my favorite of all. There was an Eliza installation, and a machine that said “coffee” in a great variety of intonations. A pendulum-driven spirograph, a Van de Graaff generator and a forest fire fighting computer game. All gone.
I also like how you ride escalators through a forest to get to and from the bulk of the exhibits:
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Toronto day 5
2011/08/29
Today I revisited George Brown College again, both campuses. Starting around 1988 and ending around 1991 I took a couple of certificate courses and a diploma program in electronics at GBC. During that period the electronics program moved campuses from the St. James campus, downtown on King Street, to the Casa Loma campus. That was a perfect time for a packrat like me to be there, as they simply gave away a ton of old electronic equipment rather than bother moving it. I took a lot of it, and had some fun lugging it all home on the subway in shopping carts and hockey bags.
St. James campus
This is on the west end of the 5th floor, looking north. The door on the right used to lead to Mr. Sarker’s office – I don’t recall what his title was, but he was the one I had to get past in order to be admitted to the program. I found him a bit intimidating and it wasn’t easy to get in since I had been homeschooled up until then and had no official Ontario grade 12 or 13 standing, but Mr. Sarker agreed to let me write the same entrance exam that they gave foreign students and I passed it easily.
This is now at the northwest corner, looking east.
The room on the left that has the windows in the “before” picture was the open computer lab for the electronics department students. It had a few IBM XTs and a bunch of teletypes in it – the latter being used to take computer-scored math tests administered by a minicomputer at the other campus. (I had the distinction of finding errors in one of the math tests, and getting points for it once I made the instructor work through the problem himself.)
For about half of my time at GBC I was in charge of maintaining the PCs in this lab and in the CAD lab further down the hall. I did the same after we moved to the other campus. That was a blast – I learned a lot about PCs and snagged a lot of “evaluation copy” software for myself. Plus I got to keep the lab open for students to use during the teachers’ strike, and pulled in a large TV set to hook up and play games on. Ahh, abuse of privilege.
Casa Loma campus
The Casa Loma campus has also had extensive renovations. Then:
Now (slightly different perspective):
The building and stairs on the left are all new, and the campus has expanded into several nearby buildings (as has the St. James campus).
This lonely, difficult to find room at the back of the fourth floor is where we did some of our most difficult courses, and where we worked on our “thesis” projects to complete our electronics diploma program. Those were fun times and we (meaning our class, as we all went through as a cohort) were a really close unit by then.
Towards the end we had a class picnic over on Center Island, which is an awesome picnic spot – often cool in the summer because it’s surrounded by water. I went there today to relocate the picnic site and redo a couple of other old photos.
These three are from the class picnic outing:
Waiting for the return ferry:
Too many stories to tell from that class.
On another occasion, me with my paternal grandma, Cecile:
Miscellaneous Center Island then and now:
If nothing else this demonstrates an improvement in photographic technology.
While I was in the Casa Loma area, I also returned to check out our first Toronto residence, 42 Dupont Street:
It hasn’t changed much. When we saw my mother off at the train station in Brandon that one winter, she got a room in this house – actually two very small rooms at the front. Once she found work, my father and I came out to join her. It was very cramped, and though we weren’t supposed to have the dogs inside, we sometimes did bring them in rather than leave them sitting in the truck for all to see.
Shared kitchen and bathroom. Very thinly blocked off door to the rear apartment where we could hear a clearly disturbed man making noises for himself. Freight trains in the back yard at all hours. It wasn’t a great experience. But the landlady was very nice, and she let us house-sit her condo down at Harbourfront for a while when she was on one of her frequent tropical vacations.
And my third major destination for today was:
The CN Tower, Canada’s greatest phallic symbol. Interestingly, the blurbs inside still refer to it as the world’s tallest tower, though it isn’t anymore.
I’ve been in it once or twice before, but I barely remember it. I took this panorama on the previous occasion: 
And here’s my do-over from today: 
I’m a bit annoyed that the main observation deck is one-third occupied by the restaurant – the lower deck where you can walk all the way around has its view obscured by safety fencing, though I did put some effort into defeating that using narrow depth of field – a couple hundred photos worth, which will have to wait until I find some gigapixel stitching software.
I could have gone up to the even higher observation dome, which I would hope has an unobstructed view all around, but there was an 80-minute wait for that, so I passed on it. Instead I went into the restaurant and coughed up $17 for “Canada’s Best Burger” (false advertising) and finished the panorama there. Also here’s another shot of the gold building from that perspective:
Also had a mind to check whether or not photography is permitted on TTC property and it is, for non-commercial purposes, so here’s a shot of Union Station:
And Bloor Station:
I know Toronto’s subway system isn’t unique in this respect, but I think it’s a nice touch that every station has a slightly different combination of color scheme, tile shape and tile pattern – each station has its own unique look and feel, and once you get familiar with them you know what station you’re at just by the blur out the window.
I love the subway. I could see myself living in Toronto again if I could ride the subway every day.
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Toronto day 4
2011/08/28
Had occasion to stop by the St. George subway station today. Another memorable building razed:
This building, or rather the one that used to be here, across Bloor from the varsity stadium and across the other street from the subway station, was significant for three things.
First, this was the location of what I thought of as the primal Swiss Chalet location – they always seemed to have the best chicken soup here.
Second, my mother lived above that Swiss Chalet with her first husband for a while.
Third, around the corner from that Swiss Chalet was a copy shop that had self-serve photocopiers for the obscenely cheap price of 5 cents per copy, back when I was a student at GBC. When I was at the nearby Casa Loma campus I always came here to do my photocopying, and even copied an entire book once.
Today I went to the CNE. The only photo of note is of these cute miniature horses:
The rest of is is the same as any other fair like the Calgary Stampede or the PNE, just much larger. I had those miniature cinnamon donuts, looked at the housewares and arts & crafts, played some midway games, etc.
Like those other fairs, the CNE used to have a pretty good temporary arcade on the midway. I played a lot of Crude Buster last time I was there. This time I found two tents identified as arcades, but one only had UFO catchers and the other one only had a handful of crap games. What a waste, but not unexpected.
I also found a really good dessert place in the food building – had a nice, dense chocolate cake and there were several others I wanted to try. Unfortunately the proprietor only operates at the CNE and doesn’t have a regular storefront I can go to another time.
I walked over to Ontario Place to repro these two photos:
The first is the distinctive Ontario Place buildings of the future. The only thing I remember about them is that last time I was inside, in one area there was a video loop playing various early CG animation shorts to some catchy proto-techno music, and I was mesmerized by it. I spent most of an afternoon there watching that loop over and over again.
the second picture is me in front of the Cinesphere, home of the Ford Film Festival. We used to attend the festival occasionally to watch the year’s best films on the IMAX screen. I always wonder why other cities’ IMAX theaters don’t do that – it’s a great idea.
Anyway, I couldn’t get a clear picture of whether or not I could go on the Ontario Place grounds without paying admission, so I settled for taking this picture of both buildings instead:
After concluding my bidness at the CNE and Ontario Place, I got back on the streetcar and headed to Queen Street, home of a few of my favorite places in Toronto.
Spotted this interesting storefront. If it says anything let me know:
Also thought this was cute (look closely at the second floor of the corner building):
Also, WTF? This might work for Apple, but it’s not going to work for you:
Favorite spot #1: The Silver Snail. A fancy upscale comic store. The storefront has changed, but it’s still there:
Favorite spot #2 (this is all within a single block of Queet Streen BTW), Bakka books – specializing in science fiction and fantasy. It appears they have relocated. They used to be here:
Favorite spot #3: Active Surplus. They used to have a double storefront and basement, but are now reduced to this little loft:
Active was an electronic nerd’s dream store back in the day. They had mass quantities of all the usual electronics supplies at great prices, but they also had lots of really random stuff that would come and go – ie actual surplus. Things like laserdisc players (cannibalized one for the laser, back when lasers were expensive), photocopier control panels, assorted LCD displays, servo systems, etc. Even sometimes had non-electronic surplus like comics – a large chunk of my comic collection came from here because it was super cheap and they had some really oddball stuff, some of which, like Mars and E-Man, turned out to be pretty good.
Favorite spot #4: Just around the corner from Bakka…
… I think in that garage door at the end of the building, there was another electronics surplus store. They tended to have even more obscure stuff that Active, and Nav and I used to go into both regularly just to see what they had. I bought some pretty nice LCD displays at this place for steal prices.
No tour of Queen Street would be complete without the CityTV building:
I liked CityTV a lot back when it was young, back when Moses Znaimer was in control. They ran great movies every night (the bulk of my VHS tape collection was recorded off CityTV) and had some good original programming too.
I saw John Candy getting out of a limo in front of this building once.
CityTV also had the best program announcer ever. I don’t know who he is though!
And the famous CityTV parking lot:
Where many, many news reports and interviews were filmed. There were often creative gimmicks visible here too – it’s CTV now, but still note the truck crashing out of the billboard below the logo. Its front wheel spins too.
Continued on to the Eaton Centre, with its iconic flock of geese:
There is a two-floor McDonald’s here where Nav and I sometimes ate. One time we were sitting on the second level when I accidentally spilled my water on the table. We thought nothing of it, until a few minutes later a staff member came up to ask about it – apparently the water had landed on a businessman on the first level, and he was pissed. Poor architectural design there!
Just north of the mall, I’m glad to see the World’s Biggest Bookstore (no longer a guarantee) still present:
This was my favorite new bookstore back in the day, because it was the world’s biggest bookstore! Also Nav’s friend Todd worked here. Hi, Todd!
Around the corner from the bookstore on Yonge Street:
There used to be two really grungy arcades on this block. They were narrow but very deep – the back end was a ways from the street. My parents were leery about me going in here, always concerned that I would get framed on drug charges because someone would slip something in my back pocket when the OPP came in on their regular patrols.
Played a lot of Hammerin’ Harry here, and Nav and I ogled that cheesy “holographic” game when it came out, but we never wasted any money on it because it was clearly a gimmick, not really holographic, and not much of a game either – following in the Dragon’s Lair footsteps of trying to pass off visuals as a game.
And that’s it for today’s trip down memory lane.
BTW, if you’re bothering to look at the GPS tracks on my posts you’ll find them a little glitchy while I’m in Toronto, because my logger loses signal while I’m in the subway. I should tweak my processing software to insert breaks in the path in those cases, but I don’t have time at present.
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