All posts in Greater Junction Area

Transportation Safety Board of Canada images of LAC-MEGANTIC train crash, very familiar types of train cars to Junction residents.

By On July 9, 2013 In Greater Junction Area, Railways With 2 Comments Permanent Link to Transportation Safety Board of Canada images of LAC-MEGANTIC train crash, very familiar types of train cars to Junction residents.Permalink

 

Aerial view of charred freight train in Lac-Megantic

 

 

TSBCanada

link to the  Transportation Safety Board of Canada Flickr site

 

Stand anywhere in the Greater Junction Area near the tracks and you will see very similar train assemblies passing by you. Our area also has the housing, and commercial buildings built right up to the railway tracks. The parkland in the community is almost always located abutting the railway tracks or very close by usually by shouting distance. Crude oil shipments by trains have been on the rise for 3 years, seeing a huge increase. close enough to home for community thought?

Below is an excerpt from this Globe and Mail article on the crude oil shipping increase.

Click images to go to the Globe and Mail

Click images to go to the Globe and Mail

fsc_Oil_industry_watches_as_policy_makers_face_rail_questions_The_Globe_and_Mail

 

 

 

 

 

 

John Sewell on Amy Lavender Harris’s Imagining Toronto

By On September 9, 2012 In All Wards, City of Toronto, Greater Junction Area, The Junction, Ward 13 (Parkdale-High Park) With Comments Off on John Sewell on Amy Lavender Harris’s Imagining Toronto Permanent Link to John Sewell on Amy Lavender Harris’s Imagining TorontoPermalink

click image to visit the site

 

Ok went the blogs posts books of interest, normally its a book that I think the readers of this blog would be interested in

 

Here is an an outtake from the  publishes site – here publishers – of John Sewells article on the book.

Imagining Toronto
by Amy Lavender Harris – who lives in the Junction area
Toronto: Mansfield Press, 2010. 333 pages.
$21.95 softcover. ISBN 987-1-894469-39-5

There’s an array of names you can give the place: Muddy York, Toronto the Good, Toronto the dull and/or ugly, the most multicultural city on earth, the city of neighbourhoods, the most hated city in Canada. It’s a long list of possibilities, and as this book makes delightfully clear, for each term someone is conjuring up a way of looking at the place and making it real.

In fact the way we imagine Toronto probably is much more persuasive in realizing the city than any amount of park or concrete, big buildings or small, rich people or dispossessed. It is not so much that art is truer than real life but rather that it is capable of giving us the ability to grab on to some important aspect of the city. The merit of new works of art is that they give us new ways of seeing the city we live in, afresh.

And it is not until one begins to browse this fine book that the scope of ways to think about the Toronto becomes so vast. I counted well over 600 books that Harris refers to along the way, most of them fiction, but also some poetry and plays, and a few even claiming to be non-fictional although they too contained their share of imagining. Some, like books by Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, Anne Michaels, Raymond Souster and M.G. Vassanji, are well known. Many are not, and Harris’s great service is to give the lesser knowns a presence, and to open the door to their delights. Rabindranath Maharaj’s Homer in Flight has entered my must-read list, as has work by Zoe Whittall, Gwendolyn MacEwen (whom I knew about but hadn’t want to treat as seriously as Harris thinks I should), and Phyllis Young as a start.

 

full article here

As train electrification interest in the Greater Junction Area is large, the blog thought it would share a great book on the Future for Interurban Passenger Transport

By On July 5, 2012 In All Wards, Greater Junction Area, Ontario Goverment, West Toronto Diamond project With Comments Off on As train electrification interest in the Greater Junction Area is large, the blog thought it would share a great book on the Future for Interurban Passenger Transport Permanent Link to As train electrification interest in the Greater Junction Area is large, the blog thought it would share a great book on the Future for Interurban Passenger TransportPermalink
Reading the conference proceedings below has provided this author with a greater understanding of the issues related to the Go Transit electrification movement in our area, though the blog would share it.
The Future for Interurban Passenger Transport. Bringing Citizens Closer Together
International Transport Forum 
OECD | 2010 | ISBN: 9282102653 | 556 pages | PDF | 5 Mb

These conference proceedings bring together ideas from leading transport researchers from around the world related to the future for interurban passenger transport A first set of papers investigates what drives demand for interurban passenger transport and infers how it may evolve in the future. The remaining papers investigate transport policy issues that emerge as key challenges: when to invest in high-speed rail, how to regulate to ensure efficient operation, how to assign infrastructure to different types of users, and how to control transport’s environmental footprint by managing modal split and improving modal performance

 

Contained in this post is a link to download this OECD publication who are the copyright holders.

…from their copyright statement,

You can copy, download or print OECD content for your own use, and you can include excerpts from OECD publications, databases and multimedia
products in your own documents, presentations, blogs, websites and teaching materials, provided that suitable acknowledgment of OECD as source
and copyright owner is given.

 

The Future for Interurban Passenger Transport. Bringing Citizens Closer Together
International Transport Forum 
OECD | 2010 | ISBN: 9282102653 | 556 pages | PDF | 5 Mb

These conference proceedings bring together ideas from leading transport researchers from around the world related to the future for interurban passenger transport A first set of papers investigates what drives demand for interurban passenger transport and infers how it may evolve in the future. The remaining papers investigate transport policy issues that emerge as key challenges: when to invest in high-speed rail, how to regulate to ensure efficient operation, how to assign infrastructure to different types of users, and how to control transport’s environmental footprint by managing modal split and improving modal performance.

 

Download link form OECD

Download from this blog

The American retailer Target is coming to the Junction and is probably already targeting you

By On February 21, 2012 In 30 Weston Rd Stockyards Redevelopment, Greater Junction Area, Ward 12 – York South-Weston, Ward 13 (Parkdale-High Park), Ward 14 – (Parkdale-High Park) With 2 Comments Permanent Link to The American retailer Target is coming to the Junction and is probably already targeting youPermalink

As the NW of St Clair Ave west and Keele St. / Old Weston Rd is moving to bricks, mortar, and asphalt with a lot of green, an interesting article in this weeks New York Times magazines details how the retailer Target – one of the anchor retailers at the site targets its customers for greater sales.

The article uses a example of purchasing for unborn babies –

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St Clair Avenue West Road Improvements recycle St Clair W. in the GJA

By On October 19, 2011 In Greater Junction Area, The Junction, Ward 11 (York South-Weston}, Ward 12 – York South-Weston With 4 Comments Permanent Link to St Clair Avenue West Road Improvements recycle St Clair W. in the GJAPermalink

 

This stretch of St Clair Avenue West could have been called meat packing central 15 years ago. The Maple leaf meats research centre stood on the lot where the Pharma Plus store is now.  Ont the North side of the street was the distribution wing of Maple Leaf Meats, a business that dominated this part of the street.

Now with houses to the north and retail to the south this finalizing of the road widening will all but complete the public street changes to crate a walk-able and people friendly area.

 

 

Arts in eating shops… aka restaurants, cafes, coffee jails etc

By On October 13, 2011 In Greater Junction Area, The Junction, Upper Junction, Ward 12 – York South-Weston, Ward 13 (Parkdale-High Park), Ward 14 – (Parkdale-High Park), West Bend With Comments Off on Arts in eating shops… aka restaurants, cafes, coffee jails etc Permanent Link to Arts in eating shops… aka restaurants, cafes, coffee jails etcPermalink

Artist BenSlow (uk)

Many restaurants in the GJA and in the of city of  Toronto serve up works of art – usually surface pieces – paintings, and some collage, along with their food fare. Often the works are for sale.

The works often offer some degree of collective beauty and the restaurant proprietor often works to imbue some esthetics into the choices of what art to display.

Unforgettably it all comes down to a assemblage of commercial needs of the restaurant and the artist, mingled together in an mix that just does not work, creating  all to often a situation that does neither any real good.

The restaurant is allowed to not address the real aesthetic design needs required to address their own clients and offerings. The artist who may sell a few works, struggles with a secondary viewing experience for the work, and often reduces the efforts of other methods of showing and sales.

All this is not to say art in eating shops in not a good idea, it just isn’t in the way its being done here. To make it work the artist must be allowed to view the restaurant as a canvas. This would of course need the normal discussions between artist and  businesses owner  who must also search for a body of work that attests with their own vision. Looking at the images posted with this post need I write more to give proof of the success of the method.

 

same guy as above, not named in this caption to assist is creating a memonic.

Textiles in the form of screen printing at Wise Daughters Craft Market

By On October 7, 2011 In Greater Junction Area, Junction Retail, The Junction, Ward 13 (Parkdale-High Park), Ward 14 – (Parkdale-High Park) With Comments Off on Textiles in the form of screen printing at Wise Daughters Craft Market Permanent Link to Textiles in the form of screen printing at Wise Daughters Craft MarketPermalink

BIG secret activity comes to Junction, , which is why the Junction is so luckily to have Wise Daughters running this project,

Textiles are the Big secret in Canadian Craft, outshining the other three craft areas taught in Ontario in this authors opinion. Surface work has traditionally been a large part of the work explored, taught and made at the two craft schools in Ontario. Students in the Fabrics 1 at Sheridan’s Crafts and Design program start early working with lino cut blocks. As well over the course of their training students receive a great amount of immersion into aspects of surface printing, much of it in the use of screen printing.

3 dimensional fabric work is also just well purported in these schools.

The greater GTA has two resident programs in well outfitted studios, one at Harbourfront in the cities core and the other in The Living Arts Centre in Mississsauga 2 both which are great stepping stones into full time craft designer/maker. (which is not a profession in this decades long craft artists thoughts)

Groupings of makers in a learning, sharing and creation opportunity such as this one offered by Wise Daughters are terrific for the continual redevelopment of craft in the Junction 3 and Ontario itself. After witnessing many such courses take place at various galleries and centers, you should know the atmosphere often takes  on the beauty of the teaching experiences at the educational settings at the full time schools – craft can do that, bring out everything in a person.

Interested in the deep unbounded nature and history of textile craft in Ontario and the world – read and view the works of Skye Morrison – the former studio head of the textiles studio at Sheridan’s Crafts and Design program and a Doctor of  folklore (Cornell University). Text 1 link  Text 2 link to Dr. Morrison’s Red Threads project.

Click image for texty textile story

 

One issue this author has, sure have fun with the creation of your own stencil graphic, as offered but explore the inter-connectivity of the craft process by studying and remaking images of historical and complementary textiles printers, it can make you float.

Oh and Men textile printing is simply not just for female craft-persons.

 

 

3079B Dundas St. W. TO, crafts@wisedaughters.com - 761 1455m or click image to attend the WD site

 

3079B Dundas St. W. TO, crafts@wisedaughters.com - 761 1455m or click ikme to attend the WD site

Wise Full Nov calendar pdf 

  1. changed from textiles to fabrics in last few years ↩
  2. Full discourse: me saying  the Living Arts Centre in Mississauga is great, can be read as self servicing as I and my studio team at the time designed, and build out the studio in 1996 though 1997 ↩
  3. The junction was once a major Craft area in Toronto ↩

Brooklyn street furniture for tree pits

By On August 9, 2011 In Greater Junction Area With 3 Comments Permanent Link to Brooklyn street furniture for tree pitsPermalink

 

One of the items especially troublesome in the in Junction is restaurant lineups that can occur sometimes in the Junction. Sunday mornings can be bad. The problem is much more insidious in  Brooklyn. Yet a local Brooklyn business booster group got a much of artists to come up with some designs and some such as the one above provide not only a great place to sit while waiting for table but just for chatting.

 

 

 

Venture just outside greater Junction area for lunch

By On August 4, 2011 In Greater Junction Area With 4 Comments Permanent Link to Venture just outside greater Junction area for lunchPermalink

Venture just outside greater Junction area for lunch or supper towards Etobicoke just before Royal York Rd. and you will find Magoos burger restaurant, a popular eatery, well known for its burgers and especially their application of cheese and mushrooms.

Plenty of parking as its in a strip mall.

MAGOO’S GOURMET HAMBURGERS & ICE-CREAM

4242 Dundas Street West , Etobicoke.

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