Tag Archives: Cityscape

Onto Toronto

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.

More Discouvery

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Tuesday and Wednesday 30 and 31 August 2022 – Utter Monster Post Alert! Get yourself a large drink before attempting this one!

Part One of our Canadian odyssey (rugged-north-west-and-wildlife) ended as we arrived in Vancouver on Monday with the prospect of taking it easy and drawing breath after three full-on weeks of Relentless Tourism. So, how did we spend our first day of taking it easy? Of course – an 11-mile walk. With lunch. Obviously.

Actually, one thing first. Having had a late breakfast (our specialist subject if at all possible) we were psyching ourselves up for going out when we were startled by a loud blast of four chords. At first, since we’re by the cruise ship terminal, we thought it was a ship leaving, but eventually rumbled that this is something that happens at midday every day in Vancouver – the Heritage Horns. We had actually heard them on our first visit, but because we were by the Gastown Steam Clock, I had thought it was part of that performance. You can hear the chords as the first notes on the video I recorded at the time:

For our walk, Jane mapped out a route which would see us walking around some or all of False Creek and visiting Granville Island, which are south of downtown Vancouver. Here’s a map of the first 8 miles to give you an idea of the geography:

To get to Granville Island, you can walk down, erm, Granville Street, along which can be found several interesting buildings which hark back to the early 20th century.

We also noticed, in the pavement, some stars.

This turned out to be the British Columbia Entertainment Hall of Fame. Immediately we started to try to think of famous Canadian entertainers, roughly on a par with famous Belgians. Quick! Name some!

Now I can say I have photos of Michael Bublé and Bryan Adams.

We wondered why Granville Street was the home of this Hall of Fame and eventually spotted a theatre or two, and the Orpheum

originally a vaudeville house and now home to the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. I hope today’s audience can spot the difference.

We passed an architecturally fascinating building which revealed a secret that I’ll share with you later.

All of a sudden, we found ourselves committed to walking across the water beside a 4-lane highway, which wasn’t the original plan; we’d fondly believed we could find a way directly on to Granville Island, but now were several hundred feet above it with no way down. We did pass one interesting sight whilst on the bridge, though. All together now, to the tune of “What Shall We Do With The Drunken Sailor?”:

Again, more on this later.

We (Jane) eventually found a way off the bridge and on to the southern shore of False Creek, hence bypassing Granville Island completely. But since we had a Nice Lunch planned on the island we knew that we’d be back, so we started off on our trek round the eastern edge of False Creek.

Which is lovely, especially on the glorious sunny day we had. It offers great views of the city

and look! there’s that fascinating piece of architecture I mentioned earlier. I shall reveal later the secret of why it doesn’t tip over.

The walk around False Creek is very pleasant; there’s a pedestrian trail and a separate and segregated cycle trail (along which the traffic is occasionally quite dense). As well as great views of the city, it offers

a formally Protected View between buildings to the Two Lions – peaks which give their name to the Lions Gate Bridge north of Stanley Park;

this cute bridge;

some interesting artworks;

and the Science Park. This takes you to the eastern end of False Creek. The route back towards Granville Island along the northern shore is equally pleasant, with many diversion on the way.

The “Time Top”, an installation by Jerry Pethick, which is enlivened by a shoreline cartoon engraved in kerbstones by William Ritt and Clarence Gray

“The Proud Youth“, a new installation from 2021, part of the Vancouver Biennale public art festival;

an installation which presumably moves as the tide changes;

and, bizarrely, under the Granville Street Bridge, a chandelier – again, a newish public art installation from 2019.

So, by this stage we had completed the circuit round the eastern bit of False Creek, but we were now separated from Granville Island – and lunch – by the creek itself. Fortunately, there’s a ferry service to take one across the gap.

Aquabus (Latin) – to, for, by with or from water.

Granville Island is most noted for its Public Market, which is a wonder – sort of like Borough Market (for those who know it), but more so.

The area outside is also a very nice and slightly quirky place to be,

and you get a great view of the Burrard Street Bridge.

There are buskers and entertainers Doing Their Thangs – this chap was Quinn – ex-Cirque du Soleil and as well as being very skillful (spot the knife coming in from the right for him to catch) was very entertaining.

We walked around the perimeter of Granville Island to get back to the ferry point. It was very pleasant in the sunshine, with a kids’ splashpark and play area and some nice waterside dwellings.

There were some shenanigans between a “pirate galleon” (note, though the modern outboard engine)

and a poor sap in a small boat, obviously set up to be a target

and then left to bail his dinghy out as the galleon buggered off.

We passed the Ugly Silos again

and discovered that the faces are, you guessed it, a quirky art installation, this one a spray-painted mural by twin brothers Gustavo and Otavio Pandolfo. Even the gates and fences of this place (a cement works) were decorated quirkily.

Nearby was a pavilion of some sort. We never established what it was for, but it has some great carvings on the pillars

and there’s another grizzly bear artwork nearby.

We caught the ferry back to the northern shore across a short but busy stretch of water

and walked back to the hotel along pavements occasionally decorated with leaf imprints

passing the final photo of the day, another scene with interesting light caused by low sun and reflections.

Oh – I must reveal the architectural secret of that remarkable building which appears to be about to fall over. Here it is, seen from the city side.

What a brilliant design, eh?

That was it for the day, and we had a relatively early night, disturbed only by a strange pulsing buzzing noise which seemed to be coming from outside the hotel. I went out to check, and there was a huge thumping and rumbling coming from the port as a large container ship was being dealt with; the low frequency and high decibel count of the noise meant that the sound laughed at our double glazing as it passed through into our hotel room. Fortunately it didn’t ruin our sleep too badly.

We had resolved to make the middle day of our time here a real time to relax. No, really relax, and save some energy for tomorrow. So, what did we end up doing? Relaxing in the room? A spa session? Gym workout? Erm – going for a walk. Only a little one, honest. We wanted to see the Marine Building,

which is very close to the hotel. Completed in 1930, at the time of its opening it was the city’s tallest skyscraper – and the tallest in the British Empire – and it is listed among the best Art Deco buildings in the world. Art Deco is catnip to Jane, so off we went.

My word, what a place!

The entrance is a bit of a clue.

and then you step inside….

It’s a treat for the eyes, it really is. Obvs, we have many more photos, but I hope that gives you the general idea.

We did a small but important piece of shopping whilst we were out (see later) and on the way back saw the cathedral that we’d been unable to get to in our earlier visit to Vancouver. (We’d been to the Holy Rosary Church, but not Christ Church Cathedral). But there it was, dwarfed by the tower blocks around it,