Signs

 Joining Tom at Signs2

March/April 2024 Road Trip - Iowa Road Signs

Tuesday Treasures

 Tom hosts Tuesday's Treasures.

Kitchener ON

Austin TX 

Toronto U of T

Toronto St. Stephen in the Fields 2018 (2)

Toronto St. Paul 2018 Bloor St. E

Florence Italy 2019

Toronto St. Patrick Church McCaul St. 2021

Toronto Church of the Redeemer 2024

Toronto St. Andrew's 2024

June 2024 - Toronto ON

I missed featuring/posting this Homeless Jesus in 2024, it is outside St. Andrew's on King St. W in Toronto.

Homeless Jesus are designed by Timothy Schmalz, a Canadian sculptor and devout Catholic. 

Both views of the homeless person and the angel from Timothy Schmalz's sculpture 'Be Welcoming'.

"It looks like a pretty rough-looking person with a hoodie, a backpack with all of his possessions. But then as you walk around the piece, the piece literally transforms into an Angel. The backpack on one side hides the Angel wings on the other side," Schmalz told CBC.

"The hoodie on the one side changes into this flowing hair. And I've created this beautiful, very impressionistic face of an Angel that is welcoming you to sit down right beside."

The sculptor Timothy Paul Schmalz who has a number of pieces including the famous "homeless jesus" statue. Here's a writeup from his website.

The “Be Welcoming” Sculpture was created in 2019, inspired by the same scripture text that is at the center of the “Angels Unawares” monument in St. Peter’s Square, Hebrews 13:2 “Be welcoming to strangers, many have entertained angels unawares.”

The sculpture is a visual interpretation of what is considered one of the most beautiful, poetic passages in the Bible. The sculpture shows a weary traveler/pilgrim who visually transforms into an angel when one walks over to the seat that the figure is welcoming the viewer to take. “Be Welcoming” shows us that all humanity possesses a spiritual nature resembling angels. It reminds us that we can become like angels on our journey through life, and also that spirituality is found only when one is generous to oneself, others, and God.

Monday Mural

 I'm linking up at Monday Mural

December 2024 - Toronto ON

Humber Polytechnic  

Updated - mural in 2025.

Humber has partnered with local Toronto artist Ben Johnston on a mural that celebrates the college’s innovative Bring It recruitment campaign. Johnston also created the custom typography for the campaign’s wordmark.  

The mural, a stunning visual representation of the Bring It campaign, is located at the heart of Humber’s Lakeshore campus, serving as a daily source of inspiration for the entire college community. Johnston's distinctive artistic style, which combines typography and dimensional designs, captures the essence of Humber’s commitment to providing a transformative and inclusive learning environment for all students.  

Monday Mural

 

I'm linking up at Monday Mural

November 2024 - Toronto ON

Unfortunately, both of these were behind barbed wire.

Posted on Instagram

 Jeannie Priscila (@dajenesis) 

Info from Instagram.

Tuesday Treasures

 Tom the backroads traveller hosts this weekly meme.

The Bank of Montreal was founded in 1817 and was the first chartered bank in Canada. It served as the central bank for the country until the founding of the Bank of Canada in 1935. Legislation in 1824 prevented the bank from serving the town of York but it got its break in 1840 when it took over The Bank of The People. This was a reformer bank started in 1835 to provide loans to farmers that the Bank of Upper Canada wouldn’t serve. The Family Compact didn’t like the direct competition of reformers and plotted to have the bank taken over by the Bank of Montreal. In 1885 they opened a branch at Yonge and Front Streets and this building is one of the few in this area that survived the great fire of 1904. The building was designated in 1976 for its heritage value as one of the finest examples of 19th century bank buildings in Canada. It is now home to The Hockey Hall of Fame.

Click here for Bank of Montreal (BMO) history as a branch, it is a most interesting article with extensive number of photos.

My main purpose visiting the Hockey Hall of Fame was to get these photos!!

Built within 10 years of the birth of hockey, the building that houses the Esso Great Hall is a quiet place in which to reflect on the richness of our past. Construction of the building began in 1885, during a period of great prosperity and optimism in Canada's future. Originally a bank, the building reflected the importance of banking in the formation of a country in much the same way that it now reflects the importance of hockey in the building of a culture.

This florid example of rococo architecture was designed by the Toronto firm of Darling and Curry, which also created the similarly august Toronto Club a few blocks away. Used by the Bank of Montreal as a head office until 1949, the building continued to serve as a branch until 1982, when it closed for the last time.

The building remained largely unused until its restoration by BCE Place (now Brookfield Place) for use as the Hockey Hall of Fame (except for the rumoured presence of Dorothy, the ghost of a former teller who took her own life after a failed love affair with the bank manager -see below).

Customers entered the Banking Room through the building's main doors on the southeast corner.

Entering the Esso Great Hall, you find yourself in a room that was once the largest bank branch in Canada. 

The banking room is three stories in height. The lower portion of the walls is covered in rich cherrywood. 

Richly modeled detail abounds in the Hall, framing the mezzanine on the west side. This was the former boardroom, behind which was the bank manager's private apartment. 

Measuring 70 by 70 feet, the room rises to a 45-foot-high stained glass dome. Rendered in the best traditions of classical symbolism, the dome is the largest of its kind in Toronto. Constructed by Joseph McCausland and Sons, it features 24 fanned panels that depict allegorical dragons guarding gold from eagles. Around the outside are a cornucopia of fruit and flowers. In the centre, eight circles bear emblems representing what were then the seven provinces and Canada. The task of restoring the stained glass to its original glory was given to Andrew McCausland, the great-great-grandson of builder Joseph McCausland, whose son Robert was responsible for the original design.

 Toronto - The suicide happened on March 11, 1953. Dorothea had come in much earlier than the other tellers and went straight to the upstairs bathroom where she stayed for a period of time. She eventually came down and went back up to the bathroom where she shot herself with the banks .38 calibre revolver. The 19-year-old was carried down in a Windsor-style chair and rushed to St. Michael’s Hospital. She died 22 hours after shooting herself in the head, which doctors considered a miracle.

For year’s nobody knew the true identity of the woman who killed herself and stories have been floating around for years on why she killed herself. People who have told the ghost story referred to the ghost as Dorothy. However, after some investigative digging by The Toronto Star the woman’s identity was finally revealed. Her name was Dorothea Mae Elliott.

According to source Dorothea was having an affair with either a married teller or branch manager. After confronting her lover and being rejected she shot herself in the upstairs bathroom. However, there have been a number of other rumours as to why she killed herself.

Click here to read more fascinating stories of Dorothy sightings. Now we want to know more about the BMO ADD department that operated out of that building in the 1980s!

Weekend Roundup

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TEAPOT

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TRAINS mural Roundhouse Bremner St. TORONTO

TRUCK

Funchal Portugal - coffee

Weekend Roundup

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SPIDER Barcelona Spain

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STAIRCASE SCULPTURE Toronto click here for more information

SHOWY

Pink St. Lisbon Portugal

Weekend Roundup

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RECORD Nashville TN

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ROADRUNNER ON ROUTE 66 Seligman AZ

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Obidos Portugal

Signs

Joining Tom at Signs2.

Wordless Wednesday Wordless Be There 2day

 Las Vegas NV

St. Louis MO

Weekend Roundup

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The Kickapoo Turnpike is a 19.6-mile (31.5 km) controlled-access toll road in the U.S. state of Oklahoma.
The Kickapoo people (Kickapoo: Kiikaapoa or Kiikaapoi; Spanish: Kikapú) are an Algonquian-speaking Native American and Indigenous Mexican tribe, originating in the region south of the Great Lakes. Today, three federally recognized Kickapoo tribes are in the United States: the Kickapoo Tribe in Kansas, the Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma, and the Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas. The Oklahoma and Texas bands are politically associated with each other. The Kickapoo in Kansas came from a relocation from southern Missouri in 1832 as a land exchange from their reserve there.

KEEPER

Weekend Roundup

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HAMBURGER 

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HOPE

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HOT air balloon Cathedral City CA

Wedding Bells Will Ring

February 2025 reposting Las Vegas Wedding Chapels for Valentine's Day.

UPDATED FEBRUARY 2025

New Finds

UPDATED March 2024

A new one for my archives.

UPDATE  we drove by in February 2025 and this was open.

Also found in 2024 on Fremont.

Even Denny's gets in on the game.

Wedding couple on Fremont.

Town Square

UPDATED February 2023

As of June 2022 - A company that controls the name and image of Elvis Presley has warned wedding service companies in Las Vegas not to hold ceremonies centered around the singer.

The licensing company, Authentic Brands Group, has sent cease-and-desist letters to several wedding chapels, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports. A cease-and-desist order is a legally enforceable order from a court or government agency that directs a person or organization to stop an activity.

The letter states that the company will no longer permit unapproved use of Presley’s name, likeness, voice image or other materials related to the music star. The letter also said that “Elvis,” “Elvis Presley,” and “The King of Rock and Roll” are legally protected names.

So...Couples dreaming of an iconic Las Vegas wedding may feel all shook up if Elvis isn’t allowed in the building.


ORIGINALLY POSTED February 2017 - Las Vegas NV

Wedding Bells

I thought I'd show some of the wedding chapels around Las Vegas for Valentine's Day.
These are from several visits over the last few years.

Let's Go To Vegas - Faith Hill

The majority are in the downtown area.

Las Vegas, Nevada is a popular place for people to get married. And many wedding service companies in the city offer Elvis-themed ceremonies.
Presley has longstanding ties to Las Vegas. His 1964 movie, Viva Las Vegas, led to a music hit of the same name that became the city’s unofficial theme.

Presley himself got married in Las Vegas in 1967 to his wife Priscilla.

We walked around The Little White Chapel and even though there was a security guard he encouraged us to walk in.

A Little White Wedding Chapel has been the site of many quick celebrity weddings. It is noted for its Drive-Thru Tunnel of Vows. It was established in 1951 or 1955, and has married about 800,000 couples. It employs ten ministers.
Charolette Richards, the owner, also has had association with the Little Church of the West.

Richards has worked at the chapel since the late 1950s. She came into the wedding business after her first husband abandoned her in Las Vegas, and Merle Edwards, who worked in the wedding chapel business, rescued her from the street and soon after became her second husband. He died in 1982. She has presided over the marriages of Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney, Michael Jordan, Britney Spears, Bruce Willis and Demi Moore.

There were cars parked in the "tunnel" and as I was taking photos I heard someone say "and now the fun part...Do you NAME take NAME to be your lawfully wedded wife?" 

Well, I turned around in surprise, and realized that a couple were actually being married at the drive-through!!

As we walked back to our car there was another drive-through wedding taking place. Elvis was just walking into the office, you can see him in the corner of the photo.

At another chapel Kathleen and Monte had just tied the knot.

Built in the 1950s, the venue was host to hundreds of thousands of weddings as Silver Bell Wedding Chapel, including the celebrity weddings of Burt Bacharach and Angie Dickenson in 1965 and Rodney Dangerfield to Joan Child in 1993.The venue was also featured in the television movie Saved by the Bell: Wedding in Las Vegas and the film Lost in America. In 2002 a fire damaged most of the building. It was sold and renovated under new ownership and re-opened as Mon Bel Ami Wedding Chapel in 2003.

Chapel Bells

No worries if you decide to tie the knot in the spur of the moment you can rent a tux.

Chapel of the Flowers is known for being the wedding location for Dennis Rodman and Carmen Electra, as well as the setting for the reality TV show "Happily Ever Faster" on TLC (TV channel). Ronnie Vannucci, the drummer for The Killers, worked as a photographer at the chapel while the band was recording their first album, "Hot Fuss. Additionally, Chapel of the Flowers has also served as the location on several celebrity occasions, including for the music videos "Last Name" by Carrie Underwood filmed in the Victorian Chapel and "Why Wait" by Rascal Flatts starring David Arquette as the groom and comedian Ron White as the minister. 

Mogul Richard Branson also orchestrated a publicity stunt where he served as Best Man for a UK couple, with the wedding taking place at Chapel of the Flowers.

Elvis is always available to perform your ceremony.

On the other side of town.

Originally built as part of the Last Frontier Hotel located on an isolated stretch of highway that would one day become the famous Las Vegas ”Strip”, the Little Church of the West upholds the heritage of Las Vegas with its unique architecture. It’s a freestanding replica of an old west mining town church. With an exterior of cedar and an interior of California redwood, the chapel looks much the same today as when it was first built. As the town grew with the population boom caused by the construction of near by Hoover Dam, Fremont Street began to pulsate with wall-to-wall casinos. As first class resorts began to dot the desert skyline and big name entertainment lit up the beckoning marquis, the stage was set for the Little Church of the West to take its place in the annals of Las Vegas history.
Attesting to its historical significance, the Little Church is listed on the National Registry of Historical Places, the only such place on the “Strip” with this honor.