Weekend Roundup

Welcome to The Weekend Roundup...hosted by Tom The Back Roads Traveler
Skywatch Friday
ABC Wednesday

1. Starts with "S."
2. A Favorite
3. Shimmering

For the letter of the week for this round I am going to go with all things TTC, Toronto Transit Corporation.

Letter S

There is a stupendous amount of S's in this post.

Spadina is a subway station on Line 1 Yonge–University and Line 2 Bloor–Danforth. It is located on Spadina Road, north of Bloor Street West. It is the only station open overnight, along with Union station.

The station consists of two separate sections, one for each line, at the same level and 150 metres apart. 

The north–south platforms, which opened in 1978, were originally planned as a separate station, but the TTC decided to join to the existing 1966 east–west station with a pedestrian tunnel containing a pair of long moving walkways.

The long walk between the two platforms was once made easier by a lengthy moving sidewalk that simultaneously delighted and enraged subway users.

This sign can still be seen.

The cost of the moving walkways themselves became an issue when they became due for refurbishment or replacement, and they were shut down and ultimately removed in 2004, leaving the corridor as a simple underground walkway.

The Line 1 and 2 platforms of Spadina Station should really be two separate stops given the physical distance between them. That was the TTC's original plan, but for a variety of reasons, the decision was ultimately made to fashion Spadina as a sprawling interchange.

An underground loop for the 510 Spadina streetcar was added in 1997 near the east end of the east–west platforms. The streetcar platform adds Postmodern finishes to the station's mix of styles.

Spadina's station has not one but three pieces. Two appear inside the newer northern entrance on Kendal Avenue, which was built into an existing brick house at 85 Spadina Road. In its stairwell is Louis de Niverville's playful and surreal enamel mural "Morning Glory", and just inside the turnstiles is "Barren Ground Caribou", an enormous quilt by Joyce Weiland depicting a group of caribou on the tundra.


And inside the main entrance building, on the northeast corner of Bloor and Spadina, is yet another work. Standing just beyond the stairs are three massive cedar house posts depicting the owl, wolf and hawk, and carved by Fedelia O'Brien, Murphy Green and Chuck Heit of the Gitksan First Nation in British Columbia.

FAVOURITE

Souvenirs

TTC souvenirs, for sure! The Spacing Store is a favourite place of mine.

Subway station pins.

Soft cushions!

Stories!

FAVOURITE
Streetcars!
A video of the new streetcars when they were first implemented in 2014. I found this video on Youtube.

BONUS  Subway Song

SHIMMERING

This took some thought. I finally settled on a photo from the Infinity Mirrors Kusama exhibit at the AGO.