Sculpture

Sharing the bench with a statue

When I spent a couple of months in China just after I retired, I had time to explore the city of Suzhou where I was living and I discovered interesting sculptures all over the city. I was intrigued because most of them had no explanation of what they were all about or why they were installed. Since then I have begun noticing city sculptures wherever I am.  I wrote another post featuring sculptures in Florida as well, but I have collected photos of city sculptures from all over the world. 

The Queen is under there

Here in Toronto I have collected quite a few interesting sculpture photos during my wanderings around the city. Here, most of the statues and art installations do have some descriptions of what they are about and the artist is usually given credit for their work. Some of the sculptures are to honour some respected historical figure but many are simply decorations for buildings here in the city. Yesterday during a walk around Queen’s Square in Downtown, we came across an unveiling of a new sculpture in front of the provincial legislature. The statue itself was covered in an elegant cloth waiting for the reveal, but I later heard that it was a new statue honouring Queen Elizabeth. 

Here are a few of the sculptures I have found so far during my time here.   

These last sculptures decorates our condo complex. They were being installed a few years ago when Ryan & Ben bought the condo. They are stainless steel pieces and are installed outside and inside the two buildings in the RadioCity complex. I recently discovered that they were designed to represent segments of the original CBC broadcast tower which once stood on the site; thus the name "RadioCity". 

Halloween in Hallowed Halls

Last night we went to a concert that was held in a neighbourhood church. The concert was part of a series of Candlelight concerts held all over the world in churches and concert halls. These musical performances are performed in darkened facilities lit with just hundreds of candles. Of course the candles are the new battery powered ones not actual wax candles with real flames. The stage is surrounded by literally hundreds of these candles and once the audience is seated and settled the lights in the building are dimmed and the candles provide the only light. It must have been quite the job setting up and turning all the candles on; I’m surprised the series is not sponsored by Energizer because they must go through a lot of batteries.

The concert we attended was a Halloween special featuring spooky songs played by a string quartet. Songs included “Thriller”, the theme from “Psycho”, and the “Ghostbuster” theme among other halloween themed music. With the candles providing the only illumination, the music was front and centre; you could see the musicians, but the darkness caused you to listen to the music more than watch the concert. 

The event was held in a beautiful old church and the quartet was set up surrounded by candles in the front of the church with a massive pipe organ dimly visible behind them. It created a really appropriate setting for the music. The experience was a unique and very enjoyable evening that I can highly recommend if the series comes to your city.

You can listen to the music on Spotify from a playlist I created from the concert’s program. I tested this ink and it should open your Spotify app if you subscribe to Spotify or it will open the Spotify website and invite you to get a free account.

 Don’t get too frightened by the music. . . . . .

Motoring to Muskoka

Fall colours and a bit of rain

Although there are plenty of things to do here in Downtown Toronto, my Alfa Club drive through the countryside got me interested in venturing out to see more of the fall colours north of the city. I had received a suggested tour of Muskoka that went around Muskoka lake and visited towns around the lake from an e-mail newsletter, so we decided to borrow our son’s car and go and see just what this Muskoka place was all about.

Now I had heard about Muskoka from people who had been there or had heard of

Hook & Ladder Pub

it. My opinion was that it was the ultimate cottage country location; the area that the residents of Toronto and other big cities bought cottages to get away from the city on weekends and vacations; lots of lakes and idilcc water frontage properties. But I also had the impression that the area had been largely taken over by the rich and famous and the cottages were priced in the millions; not at all the “Cape Breton Bungalow” or the British Columbia “camp” I was used to. 

One f the waterfalls

As usual, “out of town” meant a long drive and the tour we had planned was around Lake Muskoka, starting in the town of Gravenhurst at the south end of the lake and it was a 90 minute drive just to arrive at the starting point of our two hour fall colour drive. We had timed our outing very well however and the leaves were at their most spectacular, in full red and yellow colour with most trees still full of leaves, so the drive up was actually very rewarding. 

Muskoka itself was a bit disappointing. The fall colours were beautiful, but the

The locks were not working

cottage country I was expecting was obviously somewhere else. There were lots of very ordinary little cottages in beautiful settings on the lake, but there were also many closed and shuttered businesses, and not just “for the season”, but permanently closed with broken windows, leaking roofs, and yards and parking lots overgrown with weeds and covered in debris. The cottages we saw did not look like million dollar ones, unless the real estate market here is really very overpriced, and the full time locals did not look like they were benefiting from the influx of cottage people every summer. You could see that many of the businesses we passed were geared to the cottage industry with lots of small hardware stores and boat storage facilities full of motorboats put to bed for the winter, but there were also many failed enterprises looking very deserted and sad. 

Bracebridge Main St.

Although it was not what I expected, we still had a lovely day exploring Lake Muskoka. We stopped at the Hook & Ladder Pub, a cute little place with a firefighter theme for a delicious pizza for lunch, and then at the Sawdust City Brewery for a drinks and sandwich supper. It rained a bit, but there was also sunshine, and we stopped to photograph a couple of nice waterfalls and to explore the shops in a some of the towns we passed through. 

Those million dollar cottages were obviously hidden away down side roads away from the curious eyes of “day Trippers” like us. 

Couldn't resist putting in one old car photo

The Muskoka Chair

Muskoka Lake

Bracebridge waterfalls

Bala Falls

Caution . . . Construction

Beautiful new bridges

Today was a cold day, but a sunny one, so we decided to continue our waterfront walk. My goal was to go down to the western end of the downtown Toronto waterfront and try to see the new bridges that had been built in Nova Scotia to be installed here to provide better, more attractive access to the Toronto Port Lands. The area itself is actually a bit of a mess with empty lots, heavy industrial, aging grain elevators and piles of “stuff”, mixed with a yacht club and a nice beach park at the end of the road. There is an actual marine port with access for seaway freighters as well as cruise ships, but coming from Halifax with one of the best harbours on the east coast, Toronto’s Port Lands do not look that impressive. 

Walking the new bridge

There are four of the new bridges being installed but only one is actually installed and being used, while the other three are seriously under construction. Once done, these new bridges will take this rough Industrial area much more attractive, and I assume encourage some more attractive development of the underused areas of the Port Lands. These bridges are elegant attractive structures, providing a vehicle roadway, a two lane bikeway, and a nice wide pedestrian walkway. The bridges are painted white on the exterior and each is a different colour on the inside. They will be a big improvement over the narrow temporary bridge and the old rusty lift bridge. But Really . . . what do you expect from a Nova Scotia product? 

Oh, and there was lots of construction . . . . 

One of many detours

Our walk to explore this section of Toronto’s waterfront was not easy. Once finished the new bridges with provide a nice direct route, but we had to walk around a large parking lot, across a thin rubber track across a narrow bridge which we had to share with vehicle traffic, then back and forth via construction detours, closed sidewalks and roadblocks. The rusty lift bridge only supports one lane of traffic and the pedestrian walkway is a temporary wooden one that replaced a rusted metal lane. Information on Wikipedia says that the lift bridge is historically significant and is being restored and rebuilt, but it looks pretty bad right now. 

Caution

Fortunately we survived our walk through the construction zones and continued our walk to Cherry Beach where the road ends at an attractive city park. On the way I can provide an update on an earlier post about the “sea can” market. We walked by a business that promises to provide a converted shipping container for any purpose - perhaps that is where all the ones used for the market came from. I think I recognize the shipping container washrooms . . .

And then we had retrace the route and do it all over again to get home.

Toronto Beach Sand - construction debris

Need a shipping container?

"Sea Can" Washrooms ready to go

Toronto . . . not a skyscraper in sight

The lifeguard is not on duty

The CN Tower hiding behind a pile of mud