Tag Archives: Cityscape

Going Underground

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Thursday 15 September 2022 – In my last post I said I would tell you about our exploration of something that I’d vaguely heard about Toronto. And I will. I promise.

First, however, we had to attempt a photo of the building next to our hotel – the Royal Bank Plaza, which has gold-plated windows.  No, really. Unsurprisingly, there are many photos of this building online, such as this one, But no; we had to have our own.  So, it being a lovely sunny day, and after consultation with the Photographers Ephemeris to check sunshine angles, we hastened out to Bay Street.  This was the result (after a lot of processing to correct converging verticals):

Once again, this (which I think is not bad) was achieved with my mobile phone, as my Nikon’s lens couldn’t capture the whole building in one gestalt.  I could have gone back to the hotel room to fetch my wide-angle lens but (a) the sun would have been wrong by the time I got back and (b) we had urgent business – the day’s project – to attend to.

So, what do you do when walking about Toronto on a beautiful sunny day?  Of course – you go underground.  This is what I’ve been mysteriously referring to heretofore.

Underground……

As you walk around Toronto, you see a lot of grilles in the sidewalks pavements: some small;

and some much larger.

Occasionally, you catch warm air coming out of them, or spot lights of various colours underneath.  This all started to make sense when Sandro, our guide from yesterday, mentioned “the Underground City” – a way of getting between buildings comfortably despite the -30 or -40°C temperatures regularly experienced here in winter.  It’s called PATH, a series of underground tunnels linking building basements and, as we discovered, it’s A Thing – really, Quite. A. Thing – the largest underground shopping complex in the world.  29 kilometres of underground walkways connecting over 70 buildings and incorporating everything that citizens need without them having to go above ground – shops, eateries, medical facilities – as well as the basic businesses it connects (each of whom – banks, department stores etc, is responsible for their own basements, as it were).

It started in 1900, when the Eaton’s department store constructed a tunnel underneath James Street, allowing shoppers to walk between the Eaton’s main store at Yonge and Queen streets and the Eaton’s Annex located behind the (then) City Hall.  It expanded under city planner Matthew Lawson – clearly a man of vision – in the 1960s. Toronto’s downtown sidewalks were overcrowded, and new office towers were removing the much-needed small businesses from the streets. Lawson convinced several important developers to construct underground malls, pledging that they would eventually be linked. What a salesman he must have been.

Anyway, this was something we simply had to explore.

You can get to PATH from our hotel, which we did (actualy the second tunnel ever created as part of what then became PATH); and then immediately got lost, since we had no clues as to compass or street directions.  We (Jane) eventually sorted it out, with some assistance from a nice young man wearing a Security uniform and ad hoc access to the internet courtesy of passing WiFi  hotspots.

It’s extraordinary.

Having got underground to Union Station’s Great Hall

we plunged into the underworld

and blundered about whilst we sorted ourselves out.  From there, we wandered this network of shops,

corridors,

and hallways.

(this last, showing a host of ATMs in a pretty much deserted hallway, reminds me that this was quiet because the sun was shining; during the winter, I bet it’s much busier.)

It’s quite interesting to note, as you move from the domain of one building to the next, that the colours and other look-and-feel cues change at the “border”.

There are massive food halls,

dental and medical facilities, including this pop-up Covid vaccination centre,

special messages among the digital advertising billboards,

fleeting glimpses of the outside world,

and occasional insights into the phenomenal amount of work that went into creating PATH and which needs to go into maintaining it.

After covering a couple of miles of this, we eventually emerged, blinking, into

….Overground….

the upper domain of street level.

We were near the Old City Hall

and its modern replacement,

the setting of which gave plenty of scope for more photographic angles.

We were on Bay Street, which effectively leads back to our hotel, so we walked towards it, and, on the left, spotted another Architectural Thing – Brookfield Place, which is a sufficiently massive building that you can hardly comprehend it from the street, but which houses a lovely atrium, the Allen Lambert Galleria.

The Overground part of the day finished with a visit to one of Toronto’s defining landmarks, the CN Tower, for dinner. It’s about a 10-minute walk from our hotel, and we used our (Jane’s) new-found confidence in navigating PATH to get there without going outdoors – via the Skyway.

As we arrived, we had to pause for the obligatory ridiculous picture up this 553-metre tower, once the tallest free-standing building in the world until the Burj Khalifa in Dubai sprang up.

There’s a security check and an efficient queuing system, which favours People Like Us (i.e. with restaurant reservations – you can just pay to go up to gawk if you want) and then you’re whisked up to the revolving restaurant in just about a minute, in an elevator with a glass door and a (rather scuffed) glass floor.

We had a nice dinner, with courteous service from our waiter, Juan, and (because they didn’t give us window seats) I made a bit of a nuisance of myself squeezing past tables to take photos of the views of the city and the islands as we slowly revolved past them.

(The Rogers Arena had its roof open today)

Whilst we were eating, the sun set and, after dinner, we went down a level to the observation deck, where hoi polloi had been gawping at the view and taking selfies, to look at the city by night,

and also to mark the forty three years since Jane’s last visit.  This is her original photo.

Note that the landmark in her photo, the white Bank of Montreal building, has rather more surrounding masonry now than it used to. (We do have a night time shot, but it hardly makes any sense, hence not included here.)

We then joined the 10-minute queue for the elevators back down to ground level and headed back to the hotel for a final drink in the…

….Wobbling Free

Library Bar, which is a very classy place in which to have a martini.

And that was it for the day. And for Toronto, really, since tomorrow we leave for Ottawa after an absorbing, varied and enjoyable three days here.  If all goes well, we’ll take the train and have an entirely unremarkable day, in which case I’ll be back to report on Ottawa in a couple of days’ time.  I hope you’ll join me then as we continue our eastward journey.

Onto Toronto

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Tuesday 13 September 2022 – First things first: I haven’t written anything about yesterday. That’s because there’s not much to write. The satnav got us to the airport in the rental car; Avis took it back without demur, despite the bug splatter on the windscreen, we stood in the check-in queue for a WestJet flight to Toronto which took off and arrived approximately on time, we were wafted to our hotel – the Royal York, another city-block-size Fairmont slab of masonry – we had drinks and dinner before bed. (By the way, Toronto was originally called York because the settlers didn’t want to use the native, Mohawk, name Tkaronto.)

The only thing worthy of mention was the arrival at Toronto airport. Our instructions said that someone would meet us “in the lobby”. When we got to what passes for a lobby after you leave the baggage carousels, it was quiet – too quiet. Not only was there no-one there to meet us, there was no-one there to meet anyone, which, you must agree, is odd, There was a desk there labelled “pre-arranged transfers”, with a lady sitting behind it. After a couple of minutes I decided to ask her if she knew anything about our expected transfer, expecting a blank look and a shrug. However, she consulted her computer and told us that our driver would be there in five or six minutes. So we went and stood outside the door, where there were chaotic scenes of punters trying to find drivers and vice versa; after a couple of minutes a chap bustled pass muttering “Dr. Jane?” so we flagged him down and he whisked us to the hotel. I don’t know how that system works, but I was quite impressed.

That was yesterday; today was a day with no formal programme. Jane had had a chat with the concierge, which meant, though, that There Was Now A Plan. For once, this did not involve going for a wander. Yet.

Instead, we opted for the hop-on-hop-off bus tour (in part, at least, because the weather was looking a bit doubtful). The bus we’d intended to catch was (a) a little bit early and (b) wasn’t quite following the route that the bus company’s map described and so wasn’t stopping where we had expected. But we stood in the middle of the road and waved, and the nice driver let us on anyway and we stayed with the bus until it reached the harbour so that we could join the cruise that comes as part of the ticket price. The cruise basically goes out to the Islands in the lake (Ontario – one of the five Great Lakes you remember from your geography lessons, because you were paying attention, weren’t you?) that the city lies beside. I hadn’t realised until that point that Toronto’s harbour featured any islands, but there they are – 14 of ’em.

Obviously, going out on the water gives many chances to take photos of Toronto’s skyline.

The central island even has a small airport on it – Billy Bishop airport, named after a Canadian WWII flying ace. Other islands feature marinas, parks, residential areas and all sorts of other entertainment possibilities too diverse to go into here.

At least one of the smaller islands features more cormorants than I have ever seen in any one place before in my life.

There were thousands of ’em! Fortunately it was not a hot day, so the smell, which is apparently legendary, was not too oppressive. They’re not the most popular of wildlife around these parts, we understand; partly because of the smell, and partly because the guano appears to be killing the trees.

After the cruise we walked back towards the bus stop, past a very cute wavy boardwalk

which is one of many curiosities that the city has to offer. Once back on the bus, in occasional showers of rain which were thankfully only intermittent, we started to get to grips with mainland Toronto.

Which is messy.

It’s an inevitable consequence of the climate. The guide on the bus explained that Toronto has only two seasons – Winter and Construction. During Winter, it’s too cold to do any building work, so once the weather is warmer, the city is afflicted by a plague of road and construction works.

Toronto strikes me as being similar in many ways to London. There are some lovely older buildings, squashed in and towered over by modern ones.

Above is our hotel. There is some lovely brickwork

and some streets have got attractive older properties in them.

There are some great artistic flourishes on some buildings

and plenty of standalone artworks around.

(what, you may ask, is the reason for the expression on the cat’s face? The answer….

….a fountain of 27 dogs, all aiming at the golden bone!).

Other things we noted as we passed: striking modern architecture;

the huge indoor St. Lawrence market

(where, incidentally, against all my expectations and in the very first boutique we looked at, we found a supply of Twinings Earl Grey teabags sufficient to last us for the rest of the holiday);

an Ice Hockey Hall of Fame;

a central square (Yonge and Dundas) with a blaze of huge digital advertising hoardings;

incredibly confusing traffic instructions;

a heritage railway museum

(including this tiny train which ran on compressed air to reduce the risk of causing a fire in the rope factory where it was used);

and the historic Distillery District, now a place of eateries and shopperies.

Some of these photos were taken from the bus (mainly by Jane) and others on a subsequent walkabout (see, we couldn’t resist going for a walk, after all – we were lone rangers in Toronto).

Because we leave Toronto by train in a few days’ time, we also looked in on Union Station

and noted, outside a side entrance to our hotel, cars parked on double yellow lions.

All this was from covering a mere fraction of Toronto – there are more lovely brick buildings, churches, University premises and all sort of other interesting things to see, all mixed in with the paraphernalia of a bustling, modern, big city – monstrous high-rise apartment and office blocks, tedious traffic queues, noise, homelessness and pollution – many things to like and many that are less attractive. But all in all it was a good day, and we felt that the walking we did justified a few cocktails in the hotel bar once we got back there.

Tomorrow is Niagara Falls Day. We hope that the weather will be kind to us and I hope to be able to bring you some photos of the experience (though I expect everyone’s seen masses of photos of the falls before now). Tune in tomorrow to see how we got on, won’t you?

A River Runs Through It

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Sunday 11 September 2022 – I promised you photos of the magnificent edifice that is the Fairmont Macdonald Hotel in Edmonton, and you shall have them.

The hotel is something of an anachronism. Edmonton is just this city, you know? High rise offices and apartments; obviously a workmanlike rather than a stylish city.  And then you have the Macdonald.

The historic and impressive hotel, named for the first prime minister of Canada Sir John A Macdonald, was built as an early 20th century railway hotel (like so many of the Fairmont portfolio) and occupies a commanding position overlooking the North Saskatchewan River that runs through the city. But, as you can see, it is dwarfed by the modern high rise buildings that tower over it. If you ignore them (and this is easy to do whilst seated on the patio, glass in hand, because the bulk of the hotel is between you and the towers), it’s a very pleasant oasis; we certainly found it very comfortable, and it was a pleasure to sit out on the patio. It overlooks the hotel gardens

which it is nice to wander through, and one gets a decent view looking south over the city’s suburbs.

We had only a single day in Edmonton with no formal items on the itinerary, so there was nothing for it but to go for a walk. Obviously. The river runs through a valley – unimaginatively called the River Valley – so it seemed only reasonable to go and explore that area.

Just by the hotel is something excitingly called a “funicular”, and technically that’s exactly what it is – a railway running up the side of a hill. However, I lived in Stockholm (Sweden) for many years (many years ago, now) and even then many of the the underground stations had a lift that simply ran beside the escalators that most people used. The Edmonton funicular is very reminiscent of that; if it ran vertically instead of at an angle, it would simply be a lift. You can see it on the left of this photo.

It leads down to a platform, the Frederick G. Todd Lookout, which gives good views along the river. From there, it’s easy to walk to the Low Level Bridge, seen here in the foreground

(there are a lot of bridges across the river, rather like Newcastle upon Tyne.)

We had a lovely encounter with an eccentric as we started to cross the bridge.  The eccentric, by the way, was a yellow labrador dog, called Lollipop.  Her owner is a chap (originally from Montréal, not that this is relevant beyond the fact that he identified us as being from the UK rather than Australia) who one might think was taking her for a bit of exercise whilst he cycled along.  The reality appeared to be the other way round; Lollipop had so much energy that she positively pulled him along.  He said that she could pull him for 35 kilometres on the bike, and, looking at the extraordinary energy emanating from this dog, I could believe him.  They had first accompanied us down on the funicular and Lollipop was panting as fast as a watch ticks – about five times a second, I reckon.  I was worried that she was over-exercised, until we saw her running, leaping, swimming and begging for more things to run after. I have never, ever, seen a dog with so much dynamic energy.

We pottered across the Low Level Bridge, which gives a nice view of one of the other bridges, the Tawatina Bridge, as well as the Edmonton Queen sternwheeler riverboat.

The Tawatina Bridge looked interesting, so we headed that way along a trail through the park, getting a closer look at the riverboat,

and, through the sort of serendipity that only aimless wanderers can achieve, had a wonderful half hour around the bridge, which is a double level, rail and pedestrian bridge. For a start, you get another view of the riverboat, hotel, lookout and funicular;

and the view along it is interesting

with some nice artwork on the ceiling.

There was a lot of noise, which came from a crane that was doing something mysterious on the river bank.  We stopped to watch, intrigued by bubbles coming up near the crane’s bucket,

which turned out to be from a diver who was attaching the cable to things to be extracted from the riverbed.  The appearance of the bicycle elicited a small cheer from the observers! It was great to work out what was going on, but it was only a few hundred yards later, as we left the scene, that we realised that we had never actually established why this was happening.  Anyway, we retraced our steps to the Low Level Bridge and carried on along the trail, which went through a park engagingly called Nellie McLung Park.  We had seen another interesting bridge further along the river

and wanted to explore it.  As we wandered, we had some nice views of the city of Edmonton, which is very colourful on a sunny day.

As we approached this bridge (which is the Walterdale Bridge, by the way),

we saw signs for “EMBFEST”.  I wondered whether the EMB meant “embankment”, but it turns out that that it stands for “Edmonton Mountain Bike“.

Having watched for a bit, we carried on to the Walterdale Bridge itself

and walked across, with the vague objective of finding our way back to the hotel past the City Legislature.  On the walkway underneath the bridge on the north side are two cryptic numbers.

These show the flooding levels in two particularly dramatic years.

At this point it was clear that we’d dropped down rather a long way, as the city was by now well above us; Jane had worked out that the Legislature was just where the city’s High Level Bridge debouched onto terra firma.  We headed, therefore, towards it and the one beyond it

which is another multi-level bridge, the Dudley B. Menzies Bridge (are you taking notes? There may be a quiz later), which itself gives some good photo opportunities.

If you’ve managed to follow this thread, you’ll know that we had, somehow, to get back up to the level of the main city.  Apart from calling a cab, the only route appeared to be

this one – the gloriously-named Royal Glenora Stairs. This staircase appears to be somewhere where people go to work out

and it certainly is hard work to get to the top.  in order to keep you all informed of the scope of my suffering, I started counting the steps until Jane pointed out that some kind soul had actually written numbers every ten steps, all the way up. Unfortunately, there has been a mishap with the counting as, by the time you get to the top, there are  competing versions of the truth.

Whatever, we were glad to get to the top.

We passed by the Legislature, an impressive building which was, sadly, covered with scaffolding and other signs of repair work being undertaken. I’ve done my best to disguise this in these photos.

Then we started to head back towards the hotel.  The hotel address is 100th Street, and we saw that avenue numbers for the Edmonton grid was also in the high 90s.  It would have been great to get some kind of photo of 100th Ave crossing 100th St, but sadly reality doesn’t permit this. The area generally seems to have a heritage component

but we didn’t find explicit explanation for this beyond the fact that 102 Ave leads past the Archives and the city museum.

As we reached the hotel, there was another statue of Robert Burns.  We’re not quite sure why, but this statue is directly outside a hotel called MacDonald, so the two may be linked. Google hasn’t helped me find out why Canada and Burns are particularly linked.

Jane had found something she particularly wanted to see, but it had to wait until after dark.  In order to entertain ourselves until then, we allowed Tyler once again to entertain us with courteously and efficiently-served drinks and a late lunch.

After dark fell we tottered out in search of the intersection of 104th Street and 104th Avenue.  In doing so we passed an engaging clock outside the Westin Hotel

and a couple of buildings which would probably have looked very ordinary in daylight, but which were attractive in the dark.

Eventually, we reached our objective – the Neon Light Museum, which had its external display switched on.

All these are signs from the 1960s which were donated to the Edmonton City Council, who eventually settled on a location to set them up as a tourist attraction.

The walk back went past other nice lighting,

a striking mural

and a quirky display of light boxes.

So my description of Edmonton as being merely workmanlike is a bit dismissive.  Our hotel does its bit to bring colour to the scene as well,

and so, all in all, we had a very agreeable day in Edmonton – sunshine, agreeable temperatures and some interesting things to see. I don’t know how much more the city might hold for tourists, and we certainly won’t find out, as we have to leave sharpish the next morning to get to Toronto.  That will be a day almost entirely taken up by travel, and thus not good material for an entry in these pages.  However, Toronto should be a splendid place for tourists like us to wander round and gawp at things, so please come back in a couple of days and I hope I will have interesting stuff for you to read.