Wednesday, July 29, 2015

A Stroll Down Yonge St.

July 2015 - Toronto ON

I've been doing some camera strolls around town over the last week. There is nothing like summer in the city.

Click here for University St.
Around the AGO
St. Patrick's Church
Inside the AGO


I started from the College Park subway station and then headed down Yonge St.

Yonge Street (pronounced "young street") is a major arterial route connecting the shores of Lake Ontario in Toronto to Lake Simcoe, a gateway to the Upper Great Lakes. Until 1999, the Guinness Book of Records repeated the popular misconception that it was 1,896 km (1,178 mi) long, and thus the longest street in the world; this was due to a mistaken conflation of Yonge Street with the rest of Ontario's Highway 11. Yonge Street is in actuality 56 kilometres long.



I hadn't seen these two guys before, carved out of the trees.
"Tucked away in a small wooded park behind the College Park building, Bear and Eagle are two large wood carvings by Thomas Penney, installed in 1983. Conflicting sources indicate that the carvings are either cedar or white oak.

Supposedly, the original plan was for a family of bears (male, female and baby) to dwell in this space with the eagle, but only a male and a female bear were installed.

The female bear went missing around 2000, about the same time that the annual Spring bear hunt was banned in Ontario. Coincidence?" Source

Wonder what he is looking up at?




Lots of decorated utility boxes along Yonge.


Yonge St. is still a mixture of old and young, it used to be a rather run-down strip but not anymore.

An example of the old
The Zanzibar Tavern is one of Toronto's oldest nightclubs, celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2010. The bar originally opened as live music venue, one of several on Yonge Street between Gerrard and King in the 1950s and 1960s. The Zanzibar featured jazz and blues in the early 1960s. In the second half of the decade it became the multi-media "Zanzibar A-Go-Go" dance club featuring rock and roll and go-go dancers and then topless female dancers. In the 1970s the tavern became a strip club, reflecting the transformation of the Yonge Street strip from a live music centre in the 1960s to a centre for the sex industry in the 1970s.


 It's not hard to find a hot dog - street meat on any corner.


Ryerson College


Lots of shopping available.


Dundas Square and the Eaton Centre - always on a tourist map. A cacophony of billboards.





I managed to snap this when the busker stepped away. He was doing sidewalk drawings.


These kids don't appear to be enjoying their summer vacation - here there are promoting something called the Epicentre of Spiritual Knowledge.
On the corner behind me was a man with a Jesus t-shirt ranting about everyone going to hell.




There are three lovely theatres in one block.




We've reached the corner of Yonge and Queen St.



Check back on Saturday, I did some window shopping.




Yonge and Front St. The Hockey Hall of Fame. The opulent former Bank of Montreal branch at the northwest corner of Yonge and Front streets, built in 1885, also forms part of the Brookfield complex, and now serves as part of the Hockey Hall of Fame. It contains portraits of all Hall of Fame inductees, and houses a number of hockey trophies, including the Stanley Cup.




 Yesterday I mentioned I would show the inside of Brookfield Place.


Although Brookfield Place is a modern office complex, it contains a significant heritage component. In the 19th century, this block was described in the Globe newspaper as "the most valuable business block in the city", although much of it was subsequently destroyed in the 1904 Toronto fire. The fire spared a row of a dozen commercial buildings at the corner of Yonge and Wellington streets, the facades of which were restored decades later and incorporated "in situ" into the Brookfield Place development.









And at Wednesday Around the World
Look Up, Look Down challenge hosted by Travel With Intent.

3 comments:

  1. I really have to photograph inside Brookfield Place sometime... the effect is spectacular!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dundas Square for tourists? Yep, tick.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I enjoyed strolling with you :)
    Cute bear, and he certainly seems to have spotted something interesting. Thanks for linking to the Challenge.

    ReplyDelete

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