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Canadian Urbanism Uncovered

Cherry Street Bridge

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Last night we did some midnight exploring of the Portlands and Cherry Beach area. Saw some folks parked in cars with steamy windows as per usual, but also noticed Christmas lights strung around the top of the Cheery Street drawbridge. We wondered if it is some kind of clandestine guerrilla beautification project where somebody was able to climb it and find a power source, or just a bit of whimsy on the part of transportation officials. Either way, it’s a nice flash of colour on a dowdy strip of road (magnificent and massive piece of drawbridge infrastructure notwithstanding).

Photo by Liz Clayton 

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6 comments

  1. I love this area, I frequent it regularly in the summer for kitebaording sessions at cherry beach. It’s a very interesting place to explore. I’m always enchanted by the idea of how busy it would have been 100 years ago, ships stopping in on their way to Chicago or other great lakes port cities.

  2. Lake is really low right now — but we hardly had any rain over the summer. On the train to Ottawa on saturday there were some really bare patches of the lake — empty marsh type areas — towards Belleville.

  3. i run through and around there all the time and was smiling at the sight of the lights there last night!

    that portlands area has a bevy of places to explore, just a month ago, as the crappy, big box cdn tire was being built and they were grating the parking lot, i picked up 10-15 circa 1930 bottles -medicine,soap booze etc. the new lakefront park is being completed too and looks like a really solid public park and space.

  4. I suspect the lights are left over from a movie shoot. Last weeekend I thought that the boat which has been parked at the bridge for years had been replaced by another one but on a closer look I saw it was only a new name (in Chinese) painted on the side. Were we being Shanghai?? What’s with that ship anyway?

  5. The guy I was sitting next to on the train on Sunday worked in film and said they had turned the inside of that ship into a casino. So perhaps it’s all related.