On Dragon Hill: Slippery Tracks

My Alexa “home assistant” was flashing with a yellow circle this morning which means I either have a delivery from Amazon or there is a weather warning. “Alexa, what are my notification?” Produced a weather advisory of a frost warning for back home in Dartmouth: here in Toronto the forecast was for record high temperatures of over 24ºC. Sounded like a good day for an outing to explore another page of my “111 Things not to be missed in Toronto” book.

This time I elected to go visit the Humber River Arch Bridge in the west end of the city on the Lake Ontario waterfront in the suburb of Etobicoke. Similar to the lovely bridges I visited on the Toronto Portlands, this bridge is an arched design but is a pedestrian and cyclist bridge which spans the mouth of the Humber River where it flows into Lake Ontario.

Another Labyrinth to walk

The bridge is about 15 km from the condo, so we knew we would have to take public transit. I looked at options and decided on a route involving a walk, then a subway trip, a streetcar ride and then a walk along the waterfront to the bridge. Unfortunately this was the day that TTC (Toronto Transit Corporation) who I have been bragging about, finally let me down. After walking from the condo up to Subway Line 2 on Bloor St. The crowds of people standing outside the subway station suggested something was not working as smoothly as usual. Apparently one of the subway trains had deposited gallons of hydraulic oil all over the tracks under the trains. Steel wheels, steel tracks, liberal coat of slippery oil . . . . the trains were sliding right through the stations, unable to stop. A whole section of the line was closed for the day while the mess was cleaned up. There were shuttle buses available but the crowds of people waiting to use them discouraged us from this option.

Does it mean "Go turtle speed" on bridge?

A discussion with a TTC employee told us that a walk of four or five blocks allowed us to rejoin the subway and head west on the section not affected by the oil spill. Fortunately, being retired, we were only going out exploring the city, not going to work and keeping the economy going as were the people waiting for the shuttle buses and we did not mind the walking detour. And the rest of the transit trip worked perfectly.

We managed to find the bridge and walk over it, take lots of photos, explore a new section of the Toronto waterfront parks, walk another labyrinth, see the Toronto Skyline from a completely different viewpoint, find a pub with a lovely view out over Lake Ontario for drinks and lunch, and I can note another page of the 111 that we have visited.