Thursday, April 16, 2015

O Canada


The image is a section of Canada's northwest, part of a new political map of Canada, a copy of which I have placed here. It's a big picture, so be patient. For me, it loads and handles ok in Chrome and Firefox — not so much in Safari. For those who didn't know, I'll point out that all of the islands in Hudson Bay — including its southerly James Bay extension — are part of Nunavut.

Wednesday, April 01, 2015

My hood


The picture is an Apple 3D representation of where in Toronto I live and take my walks. I'll try to describe the map in words without recourse to symbols planted onto the image. The bird's eye view looks west toward Raymore Park on the farther side of the Humber river, scene of significant devastation when hurricane Hazel hit in 1954. A built-in-1995 footbridge across the river is visible at the top. The main street is Weston Road, seen curving at the right toward the highrises. Just beyond is downtown Weston — once a village (the orange lot near the bottom right of this 1878 map is my reckoned property), then town, outside of Toronto. The railroad corridor shown under reconstruction at bottom right will hopefully be finished this year.

If you look for an h — let's call it a chair — with legs abutting Weston Road, my street — Sykes Avenue — is the seat and front leg of that chair. My residence is on the south side of the leg part, sixth house in. Sykes runs into Denison Road West, the back of the chair, which then curves and continues until it is stopped by St. John's Cemetery on the Humber, a private cemetery that — strictly speaking — is in Mount Dennis, the community south of Weston. To the right (north) of the cemetery is Denison Park. It is behind this park — looking down — that I get my photos of Raymore island (as I call it) sitting in the deeper water held back by the curved whitewater of Raymore weir, downstream to its left (south).

The cemetery and most of the streetscape is on high ground, contrasted with the low ground of Raymore Park, adjacent bits on the nearer side of the river including the autumn-hued treescape above (west of) the cemetery, and the large school building and mega-housing structures at bottom left, below (east of) the cemetery.

A photo I took this morning of a beaver in the river returning to its den under the island: