January, 2010
January 31st, 2010
The latest installment in this series brings us to Meadowvale Village, a well-preserved rural settlement that is now all but lost in Mississauga’s sprawl. Indeed, without a map, Meadowvale is difficult to find, as road diversions and detours has removed all through traffic, with a complex detour necessary to follow long-established routes.
Meadowvale was established in the 1830s as a mill town on the Credit River and as a service centre for northern Toronto Township, featuring schools, churches, stores and a tavern. The Gooderham and Worts distillery empire had a significance here, even constructing a mansion built as a summer house for the Gooderham family. Later businesses included a auto service station and additional shops, but until the 1990s, Meadowvale remained a separate, distinct community.
Unlike Thistletown, Meadowvale had direct railway access. In the 1870s, Meadowvale became a stop on the Credit Valley Railway, which went from Toronto to Orangeville via Brampton (with a “branch” to St. Thomas via Milton and Galt from Streetsville), but quickly acquired by the Canadian Pacific. In 1917, the Canadian Pacific was joined by the Toronto Suburban Railway’s short-lived Guelph route, serving mostly small towns and villages between the line’s Keele and St. Clair terminus and Guelph. (The TSR Meadowvale Station survives, but is now on the grounds of the Halton County Radial Railway museum near Rockwood, itself on the old TSR route.) However, Meadowvale never became very prominent; losing out to larger nearby communities like Streetsville, an incorporated town and a major railway junction; and Brampton to the north, which was larger still and the county seat for Peel.
January 30th, 2010
We got the power.
Street Scene will appear each week showcasing the illustrations of local artist Jerry Waese.
January 30th, 2010
Spacing Saturday is a new feature that highlights posts from across Spacing’s blog network in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and the Atlantic region. Spacing Saturday …
January 29th, 2010
Front Street east towards Church Street 1880 - 2009
…
January 28th, 2010
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvzkjxSf9gg[/youtube]
Earlier this week, the local media jumped on the news that councillor Adam Giambrone is set to launch a mayoral bid after he sent out invitations to an event to “celebrate Toronto” on Monday, Feb. 1st.
Spacing just caught wind …
January 28th, 2010
EDITOR’S NOTE: Spacing is pleased to again partner with Heritage Toronto on their upcoming Building Storeys exhibit at the Gladstone Hotel that runs from Feb. 4 to 27. A collaborative effort by Heritage Toronto and members of the photography groups the Shadow Collective and the DK Photo Group, Building Storeys is a visual documentation and anecdotal exhibit of the city’s heritage building and sites. This is the first in a series of posts on Spacing Toronto connected to the exhibit, and is by Derek Boles.
In 2010, the former Canadian Pacific Railway John Street roundhouse, a highly visible structure located adjacent to the Rogers Centre and the CN Tower, is being transformed into the Toronto Railway Heritage Centre. Eight kilometres to the north sits another considerably less conspicuous building that once performed a similar function to the downtown roundhouse. In the Leaside section of Toronto, northeast of Laird Drive and Esandar Drive, is the former Canadian Northern Railway Eastern Lines Locomotive Shop built in 1919. It’s hard to believe that this huge 92 x 46 meter building remained largely hidden away until 2006, when surrounding industrial buildings were demolished, clearly revealing the structure for the first time to passersby and residents west of Laird Drive.
January 28th, 2010
There’s lots to look up at.
Street Scene will appear each week showcasing the illustrations of local artist Jerry Waese.
January 27th, 2010
The Toronto Star today published an article on the front page, with the all-caps headline above the fold, “JAYWALKING CITY“.
In the article, the reporter stood on Yonge St. north of Front during lunch hour and watched people cross in the middle of the block. The reporter then wrote that this behaviour was illegal, and said as much to some of the pedestrians. The gist of the article was about all these pedestrians behaving illegally, and relating it to the rash of recent pedestrian deaths in the city.
One problem: Crossing mid-block is NOT illegal.
The reporter had the law wrong, and the basis of this story is false.
It is perfectly legal to cross the street mid-block in Toronto. The law says you can do it as long as you don’t interfere with traffic, and you’re not right beside a crosswalk.
Since there are lights at either end of that block, I’m guessing that there were plenty of gaps in traffic that the walkers used to cross safely. Furthermore, traffic in this area is dense and slow, which also makes it easy to cross without interfering with traffic. No doubt a few of these pedestrians forced cars to slow or stop to avoid hitting them — those few were indeed in breach of the bylaw. But the vast majority of pedestrians who cross mid-block wait for a gap, for the simple necessity of self-preservation.
The cutesy “info-graphic” that accompanied the story showed just how far off base the story was in its assumptions. Two of the four species of “illegal jaywalkers” described, the “peacock” and the “chicken”, are in fact crossing completely legally by waiting for a gap. The other two, the inattentive and the speedsters, aren’t necessarily illegal — it would depend on circumstances.
The reporter could have found out the real law easily. They could have called Toronto Police; they could have talked to the Star’s resident urbanist, Christopher Hume, who actually understands pedestrian issues; they could have talked to one of the five other Star reporters who have called me in the past two weeks and written good stories about pedestrian deaths; they could have called me, or any other pedestrian activist; they could have looked it up online; they could have talked to a lawyer. Instead, the Star put an article on the front page with no research, based on false assumptions, and disseminating a false interpretation of the law across Toronto.
