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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to Niagara Falls
2011/09/01
Not much to comment on today. I left Toronto as I arrived, under dark clouds and rain. Took Lakeshore Drive down to Hamilton – slower than the superhighway, but a much more pleasant drive.
No pictures today – didn’t really stop anywhere scenic.
From Hamilton I went south to Binbrook, a small town where my mother once lived for a short time, then west to Niagara Falls through the back roads. Nice area – lots of little hobby farms. But I see it being gobbled up by the expanding suburbs of Hamilton and Niagara Falls.
Although I did live in Hamilton for a short while and had some notable experiences there, I didn’t stop in on my way though, and I don’t think I will on my way back north either. I don’t have a whole lot of happy memories associated with Hamilton, and there aren’t really any particularly meaningful spots to photograph.
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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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Toronto Memories part 1
2011/08/25
Today I revisited three of the four places I lived in Toronto, rode the subway a bit, (delightful!) walked through the Underground, revisited one of my college campuses and met up with some relatives I’ve not seen in ages (and some I’ve not met before).
First stop: 11 Newton Drive. This was actually the third place we occupied in Toronto between our two stints at the farm in Manitoba.
I don’t have a “before” picture handy for this one. It was a small two-bedroom house with a decent-sized yard. We had a garden beside the house and the back yard was all surrounded by tall hedge which gave decent privacy and some quiet.
We adopted our most recent cat (Dude) here. He was a feral kitten who kept coming into our yard looking for food. My father started feeding him and since there was no sign of anyone considering him missing, we soon adopted and attempted to tame him. He was a surprising find for a stray – a Burmese Blue. Silvery dark grey fur, with sky-blue skin underneath. He adapted well to the house overlord lifestyle and stayed with us until his death of pneumonia sometime around 1998.
Anyway, this place has since been torn down, along with the neighboring house, and reincarnated as this:
Is that a house or a storefront? I can’t tell.
Here’s some nearby rephotography though. Yonge Street looking south from the end of Newton Drive then:
And now:
Not much difference is immediately evident from the photo, but there are a lot more high-rise buildings in the distance down between Finch and Sheppard, and most of the businesses in this area have some Arabic language on the signs now.
And looking north then:
And now:
Very little change there. Even the mall just up the street from here is the same as it was 19+ years ago, when last we were here.
I walked south on Yonge for a while, passing this strip mall on the way:
If you notice right near the middle of the photo, there is a bowling alley sign. I often used to stop off there to play games, as they had an arcade. It was actually mostly pinball – they had an impressive row of pinball machines, and since the best video game they had was the fairly crappy Simpsons side-scroller, I played pinball more than video games.
The North York town hall area has been built up, but the library where I did most of my research when I was taking electronics at George Brown is still there, in the back of this building:
And the fourth and final house we occupied, 93 Hillcrest Avenue, has also been razed and replaced.
With this:
This is where we lived when I completed my training at GBC, and when we bought our first Intel-based PC, a ‘386 with a whole 4MB of memory and a 128MB hard drive – and Super VGA graphics, all for under $2,000!
I had a huge upper-floor bedroom that I really liked, and I was sad when we had to pack up and leave this place to return to Manitoba.
Moving on, our second residence in Toronto was in this crappy little apartment building:
It was noisy, we paid a ridiculous sum per week rent, rode the elevator with drug dealers, and they didn’t allow pets so we had to keep our dogs cooped up in the truck in the parking lot – that really sucked because we could easily have got into trouble with animal control authorities for that, and it was awful for the dogs too. Thankfully we weren’t there very long.
Here’s me on the balcony, from when I was starting to look for work. This was before I started at GBC, and I felt the need to earn some money. You’re not likely to see me in duds like this again.
This area is still a slum despite the shiny new buildings going up.
Also still present is the sub shop across the street:
I used to hang out here for hours at a time. This is where I learned to master Shinobi, getting every possible point and finishing the game without dying once. There were a crowd of kids about my age who also hung out and took turns at the game. One of them wore a felt trenchcoat and had a pet rat living on his person – the coat was easy for the rat to climb around in and on. He smelled. The proprietors yelled at me once for having a persistent cough that was annoying the paying customers – and they had a point. I had a particularly bad cold that year and I had a frequent dry cough that didn’t go away for two months.
Next I went downtown to walk around a bit. First stop, Union Station. very nice train station, and this somewhat obscure spot in the lower level:
used to be home to a pretty decent arcade. Great place to stash kids between connecting trains. This is where I played most of my Moon Patrol, and where I mastered Wardner.
Obligatory shot of the gold building:
Interesting bit of trivia: Management of some other office buildings nearby sued when this thing was built, on the grounds that the reflected sunlight was raising their air conditioning costs in summer. They lost, on the grounds that there is a complementary season.
I then walked north through the Underground, which is a series of connected below-ground mini-malls that together comprise one giant mall. You can walk all the way from Union Station to the Eaton Center without going outside, with shopping all the way. I found that my favorite Underground cookie store, Treats, is still in business but their cookies are no longer as good as I remember.
City Hall:
And looking in the other direction, First Canadian Place (the white building at center):
My mother worked there as an office temp for a while. Remember I mentioned earlier that I was looking for work at the time? I also signed on with the same temp agency, and my first assignment was in another office building down here. Sorting paper files. It didn’t work out well – I was paired with another teenage temp, and all he wanted to do was loaf around in the file storage room playing cards. My first professional dilemma. I turned him in, and then also quit myself because I didn’t like the office environment.
Interesting digital display I encountered on Bay Street. Dynamic wall displays are coming closer to reality:
Oh, and I’m sure that five gigadollars will totally solve all the banking problems.
Moseyed over to the St. James campus of George Brown College, where I started my electronics training. Then:
Now:
This building had a cavernous enclosed courtyard inside it, with games. I mastered Black Tiger here, and also played a lot of Cyclone – the machine that taught me to appreciate pinball. That courtyard is now filled in by hallways and classrooms. The rest of the maze-like interior is roughly the same as before though. Too many stories associated with this place to go into now.
This monster nearby:
sits mostly in the parking lot of what used to be a Goodwill store – a notable one because they had a huge basement department for electronics, and had a weekly computer auction. I got my first Apple II kit here, as well as an Osborne portable and an Apple III (which I foolishly stripped for parts instead of waiting for eBay to be invented).
And just around the corner from that:
The basement of that red brick building used to house an Active Components store, which was a very convenient source of parts for those of us in the electronics program at GBC. Now empty.
After all that, I took a spin through the St. Lawrence Market and then went to the new Distillery district for dinner. I met up with my aunt Winnie and cousin Tanya, whom I haven’t seen for about 22 years, as well as Tanya’s husband Ralph and my second cousin Ayla (daughter of Tanya’s sister Angela Rose). I had never met Ralph or Ayla before, both having come on the scene long after I last saw anyone from this branch of my family. It was a good evening of much conversation.
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