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Queens Quay Swan

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This afternoon I was walking along Queens Quay, head down (was the ugly part around Spadina) and came across this dead swan lying peacefully in the middle of the sidewalk. It was huge. I should have put some kind of marker in this picture to show its size. It seemed almost placed there, the head curved gently back towards its body. There was no obvious sign of why it died, as it was clean. For a moment I thought it might be sleeping, but no.

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10 comments

  2. How bizarre, Shawn. It’s like an overly symbolic scene from a bad art-house movie. After finding the swan, did you gaze broodingly over the harbour, then engage in elliptical conversation with a mysterious woman with a foreign accent?

  4. the ugly part around spadina? 🙁 that’s my favorite part! on one side is a gorgeous green space that used to be a garbage dump (including the toronto music garden!) there is also the water, the island and a lovely boat. in the other direction is the cn tower, and, get this. if you look up spadina, it looks like the cars on the gardiner are flying, and the occasional streetcar trundles down the tracks in between those new, glassy towers. it looks exactly like an idealized 1950’s future.

    i love that place.

  5. Hit a building perhaps? I can’t recall ever seeing a dead swan in Toronto.

  7. this may sound paranoid, but it’s sometimes a good idea to let the city know – animal control or whatever, especially with birds because of West Nile, and now H5N1. At the NW corner of Dundas and University is a clump of newpaper boxes shoved in with their doors really cramped closely to the ledge from the subway entrance stairwell. I once saw a dead pigeon lying in that little crevice. It seemed like such a violent image for some reason, it bothered me for the rest of the day…

  8. Wow, that is a sad image to be hit with when opening the Wire. I hate to be oversensitive (well, I am whether I like it or not), but could it be linked instead of displayed? I can’t be the only one who’s too sensitive for this kind of thing, can I?