Weekend Roundup

Welcome to The Weekend Roundup...hosted by Tom The Back Roads Traveler


My last rounds were coffee and beer. So it's time for some food and sleep!

1. Starts with "B"
2. A Favorite
3. BLACK - chosen by Tom

Starts with "B"

BOZEMAN BANANA BREAD BEST BEDS BIRTHDAY
Montana

Favourite
BAT BAR Austin TX

BLACK

At the BURGERNATOR the menu is on the BLACK BOARD and you can even have the BIG BANG.
Kensington Market, Toronto.

Déjà Brew
A catchall for leftover beer, coffee and whatever catches my fancy!

Austin TX BOURBON

Willy Nilly

Tom hosts The Willy-Nilly meme

May 2020 - Toronto ON

Queen St. West

Cars and Trucks

Cee's Fun Foto Challenge   Anything to do with cars and trucks


Transports around Toronto

Downtown Toronto

Austin MN

Somewhere in Alberta between Jasper and Edmonton

Signs 2

Joining Tom at Signs2.
Wordless Wednesday Wordless Be There 2day
Gay NYC Dad

Continuing with pit stops...
a stop (as during a trip) for fuel, food, or rest or for use of a restroom.

This time we'll step back in time and visit an historical bathroom at Casa Loma in Toronto.

Click here to see the ground floor.

Casa Loma is one of the top ten tourist attractions and hospitality venues in Toronto. With its unique architecture and enchanting gardens, Casa Loma is one of the grandest residences ever constructed in Canada. At 98 rooms, it is also the largest residence in Canada.

At the time the castle was built, there were 30 bathrooms complete with all gold plated fixtures. In fact, one of the most remarkable rooms in Casa Loma is Sir Henry's private, all marble, gold-fixture bathroom. This amazing bathroom has proven to be ahead of its time with a custom-designed shower complete with an 18 inch diameter showerhead intended to fully surround the body with water. He did not even have to turn around in his shower in order to be thoroughly washed.

Tuesday Treasures Around the World

Tom the backroads traveller hosts this weekly meme.
Travel Tuesday
Our World Tuesday
Image-in-ing
My Corner of the World

May 2020 - Toronto ON

Since we are still being cautious I thought I would use a video I found about Toronto's Junction Transit History.

Junction Transit Part 2

In part 2 towards the end you can see The Stockyards, where we occasionally shop.



Toronto's reputation as "Hogtown" did not start in the Junction, but it was here that the reputation was forged. Like many industries, the stockyards were attracted to the Junction by the many rail connections that give the neighbourhood its name. In the Junction, you could get goods to and from any part of the country.

The Union Stock Yards (later the Ontario Stock Yards) first opened in 1903 at the southwest corner of Keele and St Clair. They were mostly known for dealing in cattle and hogs, although for many years the stockyards also dealt in horses. Frequently, animals would escape and it was not uncommon for local firefighters to be called in to wrangle a stray cow that had wandered onto a busy street.

The stockyards were a place where live animals were brought to be sold. Their presence, however, soon attracted many meat-packing companies that would buy animals and butcher them. These companies were for many years a major source of jobs in the area, and a major source of unpleasant smells.

The stockyards closed in the early 1990s and in recent years the land has been redeveloped as big-box retail space. The stores include Bulk Barn, Linen Chest, Winners, Home Sense,


Photos taken recently.

At the southwest corner of Dundas Street West and Keele Street can be found this plaque erected by the Junction Business Improvement Area.

Here's what it says:

The intersection of Dundas and Keele streets is the heart of the "West Toronto Junction". Near this site stood the buildings that formed the commercial and administrative core of the Town and City, The Post Office and Customs House which stood on the south west corner of Dundas and Keele; and the multipurpose Town Hall which included both the Police Station and Fire Hall which stood where the current City of Toronto Fire Station 423 (built in 1959) is located.

Still standing today is the original Bank of British North America (1907) immediately to the west of this location, the Thompson Block (1889) on the south-east corner, the Bank of Toronto (1911) on the north-east corner, and the Campbell Block (1888) on the north-west corner which housed local businesses at the ground level including the Molson's Bank and on the upper floors institutions such as the Junction School of Music and The Mechanics Institute (which evolved into the Junction Carnegie Library, now the Annette Branch of the Toronto Public Library).

After the sale of alcohol in the Junction was banned in 1903, theatres became the town's main cultural venues. Two of the earliest still stand today but are no longer used as theatres, the Wonderland (1907) and the Crystal (1909). The Beaver Theatre 1913 seated 800 and introduced the Wurlitzer organ to Toronto audiences. The Mavity (1919) had an upper level with removable seats for dancing and a rooftop garden.

The Junction challenged Toronto itself for industrial development by offering rail sidings, cheap water for steam-driven machinery and tax free status. Transportation links also helped the town to become a retail centre for the farming area west of Toronto. From the beginning, The Junction offered jobs, investment opportunities, fresh air and liberal politics within commuting distance of conservative Toronto. The early spirit of independence and pride lives on to this day in The Junction.


Also mentioned in the video is this lumberyard.

At the Dupont underpass.

Click here for more of these murals.

Foto Tunes

Tom hosts Foto Tunes

July 2020 

Another shameful tale of our treatment of our workers who pick our fruit and vegetables. 

Agriculture is big business in Windsor-Essex, with more than 175 farms, greenhouses and wineries contracting some 8,000 official migrant workers to help raise and harvest the crops every year.

Ontario has started onsite testing as a way to tackle the COVID-19 outbreaks on farms and in greenhouses in Windsor-Essex County. But the government's measures overlook approximately 2,000 undocumented migrant workers in the area, and fears of deportation prevent them from coming forward.

Click here to read about the disgusting living and working conditions we subject these workers who do the jobs we can't be bothered doing.

Things don't change and Canadians shouldn't be patting ourselves on the back that we treat people better than in the States and other countries.

This is the Irish version I grew up hearing before I realized the Mexican connection.

Deportees - Paddy Reilly

A protest song describing the Jan 28th, 1948 plane crash near Los Gatos Canyon 20 miles west of Coalinga in Fresno County, California, USA. Woody Guthrie wrote the lyrics in protest to the racial mistreatment of the passengers before and after the accident where 32 people died... 28 of them were migrant farm workers that were being deported from California back to Mexico.

After the incident, newspaper and radio reports didn't name any of the Mexican victims... they were merely referred to as Deportees. On the other hand, The Fresno Bee, a daily newspaper serving Fresno reported all the names of the deceased that were known to them... more

Although the song is not an Irish Folk song in the true sense, it has been embraced by many Irish performers and as Paddy Reilly says, "There is an exception to every rule".

DEPORTEES

The crops are all in, the peaches are gathered
Oranges packed in their creosote bins
They're flying them back to the Mexico border
To take all their money to get back again

So farewell to my friends, good-bye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maris
You won't have a name when you fly the big aeroplane
All they will call you will be deportees.

The sky-plane caught fire over Los Gatos canyon
The fireball lit up and it shook the hills round
Oh who were those friends that were scattered like dry leaves?
The radio said they were just deportees.

So farewell to my friends, good-bye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maris
You won't have a name when you fly the big aeroplane
All they will call you will be deportees.

Is this the best way to till our good orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
To lie on the ground and to rot 'neath the topsoil
And never know no name except deportees?

So farewell to my friends, good-bye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maris
You won't have a name when you fly the big aeroplane
All they will call you will be deportees.

Some of us are illegal, and some were not wanted,
Our work contract's finished and wev'e got to move on
It's six hundred miles to the Mexican border,
They chase us like rustlers, like outlaws, like thieves.

So farewell to my friends, good-bye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maris
You won't have a name when you fly the big aeroplane
All they will call you will be deportees.

This is the original as performed by Woody Guthrie.

70 years after the plane crash the song is still relevant as Joan Baez sings it in 2018.

A positive Coronavirus version of Amazing Grace.

Monday Mural

I'm linking up at Monday Mural



May 2020 - Toronto ON

Just before Dupont Street ends at Dundas West, it passes under a set of railway tracks…it's a confusing tangle of streets here!


It is an Art Starts project using cycling as a theme. Lead artists Joshua Barndt and Jamie Bradbury along with 5 youth artists took 4 weeks to complete the mural. The mural was funded by the City of Toronto’s Graffiti Transformation Program.

Across the street

And the city of the future.