Old and New Toronto - Spadina Streetcars

Another postcard from the 'Flashbacks 2' series. "A streetcar on the Belt Line route (Spadina, King, Sherbourne, Bloor) rumbles by workmen engaged in road repair work, Spadina Avenue, c. 1899"

(Perhaps taken at the same time as my previous post?)

And now, with a similarly old streetcar in the picture:

(Similarly old meaning that in 116 years we can take another photo and compare).

Looking in the other direction, this photo (from 1927) already shows the Waverly Hotel (also in the picture above, just to the left of the '24hr' TTC sign). I was looking to see if the trough noted in the previous post was still there, but I think it would be hidden by the construction huts(?) on that side of the street.

Old and New Toronto - Spadina Water Trough

Number seven in the series of old and new pictures of Toronto. The picture below is a scan of a 'Toronto Flashbacks 2' postcard noting that this is "Spadina Avenue and College Street, 1899. At one time there were dozens of these water troughs in the city for dogs, horses and (thanks to a cup on a chain) people to refresh themselves."

I had heard that there is at least one of these still around - in front of St. James Cathedral at Church and King. No idea if it is the *same* one, but I found it easily enough and it is being enjoyed mainly by pigeons now.

(I've also seen this online at http://urbantoronto.ca/forum/threads/miscellany-toronto-photographs-then-and-now.6947/page-252 and the photo quality is much better than my scan of the postcard). Also, there was another one at Bloor and Christie at one point. And many others of course, including one by the old police station on Pape Ave just north of Queen East.

As for the original location now?

Other than the building in the center (1 Spadina Circle) which used to be the site of Knox College, not many other buildings seem to have survived, though parts of the building between the Scott Mission (to the left of the picture) and the old Knox College building might still be there. Hard to see in the picture above (you'll need to click on it to get a larger view) but there is a three story building on the corner. This picture is zoomed in and from a slightly different angle - with the building circled in red.

So I walked up to get a picture of it, and the roof line looks somewhat like the original picture anyway. The rest has obviously been reworked.

 

Newton's Cradle

Newton's cradle is a popular 'executive toy' that demonstrates conservation of momentum/energy. The steel (usually) balls that it is made with are quite elastic and do not lose much of the kinetic energy of the balls when they hit each other.

(For various things you can do with Newton's cradle, see this link and play the video. It also notes why Mythbusters' large-sized example didn't work as planned.)

When you pull back one steel ball and release it, it hits the other four and the last ball moves off with (almost) the same speed as the first one that hit the four. And interestingly, if you pull back two of the balls and release them, when those two hit the remaining three balls it is almost as if they 'know' that you pulled back two balls, since now the last two balls move off.

But how could it 'know' that you pulled back two balls? Of course, you can go through the equations (fairly straightforward) but the explanation at wikipedia is pretty good for a simplified situation:

"...when two balls are dropped to strike three stationary balls in a cradle, there is an unnoticed but crucial small distance between the two dropped balls and the action is as follows: The first moving ball that strikes the first stationary ball (the 2nd ball striking the 3rd ball) transfers all its velocity to the 3rd ball and stops. The 3rd ball then transfers the velocity to the 4th ball and stops, and then the 4th to the 5th ball. Right behind this sequence is the 1st ball transferring its velocity to the 2nd ball that had just been stopped, and the sequence repeats immediately and imperceptibly behind the first sequence, ejecting the 4th ball right behind the 5th ball with the same small separation that was between the two initial striking balls."

Seems like you only need a few micrometers separation for this to be true, so I'll have to look at that first photo a bit more closely!

Are your drugs *really* expired?

Ever wondered if those acetaminophen you found in the drawer with a 1990 expiration date are any good? Or if they could kill you?

I came across this study
http://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/drug-expiration-dates-do-they-mean-anything
(which is one of many giving the same information - but of course, not *enough* information for you to really make any decision on specific drugs in your house).

They referenced a U S Army study, which you can find online (but it looks like you can’t get it without either being a military/government person, or perhaps paying for it).  This was important to the Army since it could potentially mean savings of multiple millions of dollars in costs (not having to replace their reserves so often).

Nevertheless, I found a separate study:
http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1377417
which gave some good information on some specific drugs. One thing is that Acetaminophen seems to have a long shelf life. They looked at some drugs that were at least 28 years(!) past their 'expiry' date and the 250mg Acetaminophen tablet still had 249.2mg of active ingredient!

Various caveats on temperature and humidity of course – and some good rules of thumb (if it smells bad, or is starting to ‘crust over’ or change colour then consider it to be going bad).

If you find any other good sites with more information please let me know.

Asteroids and commerce

Like many people, I have been fascinated by the thought of asteroids whizzing around the sun (and occasionally close to, or into, Earth). When I was young I had a poster on my wall that included all the planets and two asteroids - Ceres (actually a dwarf planet) and Eros. Interestingly, although Ceres is the largest asteroid (at almost 1000 km in diameter) Eros is quite far down the list (and is only about 34 x 11 x 11 km).

Side note: there are some pretty good pictures of Eros (from the NEAR-Shoemaker mission) and some incredibly good pictures of Ceres (from the NASA Dawn mission). The Dawn mission also captured great pictures of Vesta, which is about 525km in diameter and the second most massive (and third largest) asteroid.

But the really 'valuable' asteroids could be quite different. (Unless there is something under the surface of, say, Ceres that has more value to us. Perhaps the bright spots on Ceres signal something there?)

But to get back on topic - I recently found a site that ranks asteroids by criteria such as 'most valuable', 'most cost effective' and 'most accessible', as well as giving information on their orbits and their next closest passes by Earth. Take a look at: http://www.asterank.com/. It seems like a pretty good informational site (outside of the rather speculative valuations).

Most of the 'most valuable' are not easily accessible, and many of the 'most accessible' are not valuable. The 'most cost effective' list ranks them by a combination of value and accessibility - ranking '1999 JU3' as the best bet. You can click on that row to see information about the asteroid and its orbit, etc. Or you can enter a name into the 'Lookup' field (hint: enter a few letters and then wait - it will then bring back a filtered list in the lookup field).

Some other interesting possibly mine-able asteroids:
1. One of the most massive metallic asteroid is probably ‘16 Psyche’ (could seriously damage the prices of Nickel, Cobalt and Iron)
2. Or ’21 Lutetia’ (would hit the same commodity prices)

I also saw that ‘2011 UW158’ is ranked as a very valuable asteroid for the Platinum in it. It just made a close pass by earth (http://www.space.com/30074-trillion-dollar-asteroid-2011-uw158-earth-flyby.html) but won't be back for almost 100 years. Also, if a 'trillion dollars worth' of platinum suddenly entered Earth's platinum market, I'm sure it would quickly be a tiny fraction of that!

(If looking up on the 'asterank' site, put ‘436724 (2011 UW158)’ in the lookup field)

#NoToTorontoOlympicBid number 3

OK - now I remember why I was against Toronto making an Olympic bid! It will cost me a lot of money and mean less for actually improving the city.

As promised in the last '#NoToTorontoOlympicBid' post, I read a couple more articles on the olympics and recommend you do too.

The first was an article from the Globe & Mail - 'Why Toronto Should Say No to the Olympics'. And it references this article by Richard Florida looking at the book by Andrew Zimbalist that shows why hosting mega-events is a bad deal for the city involved.

Perhaps we can just follow Boston's mayor's lead. And for a few hints on how to influence the result, see this article on How Boston Kicked Out the Olympics.

Namao Air Force Base - Air Show

Here are a number of photos from an (early 70's) visit to the Namao Air Force Base. If anyone can give a more exact date please let me know! In the meantime, I'll see if I can find the negatives that the photos came from and see if there is anything on them to give a better date.

Namao was always a fairly low-key place - at least, it wasn't in the news much! If you're looking for information on the base look at this Edmonton Public Library link, or (of course) your friendly neighbourhood Wikipedia entry for CFB Edmonton.

Namao is closed now, but at one time (see the first link) it had the fourth longest runway on earth and was a backup landing location for the Space Shuttle!

CT-114 Canadair Tutor

(Thanks to those who pointed out that it was not a CF-104 Starfighter. More than one reader of this blog!)

CT-114 Canadair Tutor

CF-115 Buffalo

Cockpit of an early Huey (I think) helicopter

CF-130 Hercules

Early Chinook helicopter(?)

Old and New Fort Saskatchewan - The Fort itself

I visited 'The Fort' recently and went inside the newly built reconstruction of the original 'Fort on the Saskatchewan'. Some very interesting information - and you can feel a little like you were really there just after it was built (around 1875).

Here's a photo from one corner of the (newly built) Fort.

And here's a much earlier photo from almost the same location.

A few differences are obvious - plastic bins and the picnic tables - but it's surprisingly close overall. The old photo was taken after the 11ft walls (stockade) were taken down and the original guard house (low building towards the middle of that picture) had been removed. Plus a more recent building shows up (to the left rear...the ice house as I understand from my newspaper correspondent from The Sturgeon Creek Post - a publication I recommend reading if you want to keep track of what's going on in The Fort. The Sturgeon Creek Post is also the original name of the NWMP post that became Fort Sask). A few other things are 'close' - the chimneys in the men's quarters, the height of the flagpole, and some minor building differences - but these could also be due to the difference in timing. It's not clear when the old photo was taken - I got it from here.

Finally, a picture that I liked from the junior officers quarters - makes sense that there would be buffalo hides on the beds but they still had a big impact when we opened the door and first saw them!

#NoToTorontoOlympicBid number 2

I did a little reading of some of the more moderate articles on the economics of holding the Olympics, and the results seem to be summed up by the following (from the New York Times article "Does Hosting the Olympics Actually Pay Off?")

1. The Olympics won’t make a country rich.

2. They’re not even good for tourism.

3. But they will make its people happy.

I'd quibble with that last one, but it does seem that it makes a lot of sports fans in the country happy and as long as they're not asked to pay for it directly (like Montreal), they're OK with the false economics, etc.

I personally think it is a major waste of money and perpetuates the old boy's club of the IOC (see my last post) rather than focusing on furthering amateur sport and international cooperation. Hard to say whether it's worse to spend 10's of millions of dollars (or roughly $100M in the case of Chicago for the 2016 games) and lose, or to spend that money and 'win'.

So now I'll read some of the really negative reviews and see what they say!

#NoToTorontoOlympicBid

All I can do is point to this post and ask that the one or two readers of my blog also fight any attempts by various promoters of the Olympics to take our money.

(OK, I *can* do more - and both hope I don't need to and hope it will be useful - if needed)

Here's the image from Jim's blog that none of you probably want to see:

Our lilac bush's spring growth

Took this first photo in mid-April, just as our lilac bush was starting to get into its spring growth.

It was nice to see something green starting out after a long winter!

Then, as I was looking at the lilac recently I wondered what this particular branch looked like now. It was hard to tell exactly which one it was, but I believe that it is this one:

(May not be exactly the same branch, but the new growth looked pretty similar on all of them. The stems have also changed colour making it harder to match.)

The new growth above this junction now measures about 60cm - that's roughly 2ft for those not yet comfortable with this new-fangled metric stuff - and that's after only 1 month!

Old and New Toronto - Bayview Extension

Here's another 'old and new' comparison, looking at an old (1939) picture of the Royal Train (actually, the Royal pilot train) coming down the Don Valley. It would doubtless have gone right through the old Don Valley Station (recently updated blog entry - for those of you who follow this blog closely:-) ).

Lots of info in the fine print (you can click on the picture to see it much larger). For those who love trains, feel free to add info in the comments!

The reason this caught my eye was actually not the train, but the McColl Frontenac Oil Co. Limited building in the background on the left. I used to work for Imperial Oil, and when they bought Texaco Canada (formerly McColl Frontenac) it was always referred to as McColl Frontenac in any documents - some legal reasoning behind it I guess.

Anyway, now there is nothing much I could recognize except for the tracks and the Dundas Street bridge in the background at the far right. (Update from sharp-eyed reader - the pylons supporting the high-voltage lines also look to be the same).  Perhaps I should have waited until there was a streetcar on the bridge to have another similarity.

Some fun facts about McColl Frontenac:

• Seems like Billy Bishop was once a vice-president at McColl Frontenac (given the position by an old friend after Bishop lost his fortune in the 1929 stock market crash).
• They bought the old Hotel Elliot at Church and Shuter in 1930
• And they even helped cause the Don River to catch fire

The stubby

For all those who remember when beer came in a more practical shape (Quoting Wikipedia: "Some of the expected advantages of stubby bottles are: ease of handling; less breakage; lighter in weight; less storage space; and lower center of gravity").

And of course, not wanting to advertise any specific brand here, feel free to go to this Canadian Living article to look at other brands of stubby! Or to this site - http://www.stubby.ca/ - to find out more than you ever needed to know.

I was never that much of a beer drinker, but recently came across the above ad in an old scrapbook (don't ask me why I kept a piece of newspaper for 30+ years!).

But related to the stubby, I did drink Uncle Ben's pop (soda for any American readers) when I was a teenager - always cool to be holding a 'beer' bottle and walking around downtown!

Are Rocket Booster Tests Slowing Down (or Speeding Up) the Rotation of the Earth?

Seeing the recent solid fuel rocket booster test got me to thinking about how much this might change the rotation of the Earth and thus the length of our day. What if it shortens the day?! It would be "Give us back our 11 days" all over again.

Anyway, The calculations seemed simple enough and follow for your viewing pleasure. (Note: if you find any major errors I'll just fix the blog and pretend it was right all along).

First, the change in angular momentum of the Earth is (F)(d)(t), where 'F' is the force of the rocket engine, 'd' is the distance from the axis of rotation, and 't' is time. For this blog I'm going to try and get the maximum effect, so we'll assume the engine is set parallel to the ground at the Equator (i.e. perpendicular to the radius), and facing East (or West).

The change in angular momentum = (moment of inertia)(delta omega) where 'omega' is the angular rotation of the Earth in Radians/sec.

For this calculation I'm going to assume a big rocket thruster produces roughly 10,000,000 Newtons force (the one linked to above may be slightly larger) and runs for a minute. The moment of inertia of the Earth is about 8 x 10³⁷ kg m², and the radius of the earth is roughly 6500 km. Putting this all together gives:

(8 x 10³⁷ kg m²)(delta omega) = (10,000,000 kg m/s²)(6,500,000 m)(60 s)

Doing the math:
(delta omega) = 4.9 x 10^-23 rad/sec

Seems pretty big so far - after all 4.9 is no small number. But it would be useful to see just how much the x 10^-23 affects it. (Side note, this reminds me of Avogadro's number which is 6.02 x 10²³)

So how much of an effect is this? How long will it take the Earth to slow down or speed up enough to add or subtract another second to the day?

1 second is 2(pi) / (24)(60)(60) radians
so 4.9 x 10^-23 (t) = 2(pi)/(24*60*60)
t=1.5 x 10¹⁸ seconds or roughly 4.7 x 10¹⁰ years (or approximately 10 times the age of the earth!)

Maybe not quite such a large effect!

20150316 Update: Seems that similar calculations have been done ('stopping the world' using Space Shuttle boosters) and the numbers are similar - with the caveat that it's only really valid if the Earth has no atmosphere! Oh well, it probably only works for spherical chickens in a vacuum (Big Bang Theory reference to the spherical cow metaphor).

So how cold was it in Toronto this year?

There was a lot of talk about the frigid arctic air 'hovering over Toronto' (or some such) this year, so I thought I'd check against our prairie cousin Edmonton.

It's actually quite easy to do this.

1. I went to wunderground.com (I know you can get the info from other sources, but I like the name) and looked up 'YYZ' for Toronto. I then clicked on 'Almanac for <today>', 'Custom', and entered Nov 1, 2014 to March 14, 2015 (Pi Day of course), clicked on 'Get History' then scrolled down to the bottom and clicked on 'Comma Delimited File'.
2. I then copied the data into Excel (didn't bother saving and then importing to Excel as I find it faster to just copy into Excel, then select 'Data', 'Text to Columns' and get the data in columns that way).
3. I repeated steps #1 and #2 for Edmonton and copied into a second tab in Excel
4. Finally, I created a 3rd tab that contained the same column headings and first column (date) and filled the cells with the Edmonton temperatures minus the Toronto ones. Then created a simple scatter chart (see below)

This whole exercise took less than 5 minutes - amazing what you can do with a basic source of info combined with a tool like Excel.

And the results? (Hopefully you can click on the picture below to get a slightly larger version). It looks like Edmonton was generally quite a bit colder in November/December (makes sense...it gets colder faster there) through to about Jan 12th. But after that, the graph is often in the positive range - meaning Edmonton was warmer! This is often because Edmonton's temperature is swinging to warm temperatures for a few days. Also - looking at the numbers - from Jan 13th onward Edmonton had 37 out of 60 days where the maximum temperature was warmer than Toronto's, but only 23 out of 60 days where the minimum temperature was warmer. So Edmonton still gets colder at night (it's probably all those darned cloudless days and nights :-) ).

Block'd (Part 2)

Here's a more detailed follow-up on my original Block'd post with some practical advice for how you can get scores over 1,000,000 or so ('Marathon' mode). In order to get to a very high score (e.g. my high score is 100,410,143) you will need to learn to control boredom - above about level 40 or so you have effectively beaten the game and the rest is just rote play.
(My explanation of going so far is that I was interested to see if the high score would 'roll-over' correctly to 7 digits. My particular game - on my old Nokia phone - has some other glitches where it can screw up if you go over level 128, so there was *some* reason to believe that other issues may arise:-) )

As mentioned in the original post, the key strategy is to try and get the maximum points every 4th and 5th levels so you can maximize the number of 'wilds' that you have. Then, use these judiciously over the next few levels so that you have some available for the next big level.

So minimizing the overuse of 'wilds' can pay dividends. A few simple situations and how to handle them follow. These will probably only make sense if you either play the game, or have read the earlier post! And to use a chess analogy - this is kind of like learning the endgame positions so you can recognize how to win them, and which ones to avoid.

First, a simple case (see below). To clear this without losing lives you might think you should put a wild on the top right (red) block (to clear it and the yellow), then place a wild on the top left (red) block to clear the rest. However this has a simpler solution...just place a wild on the middle blue block and clear the bottom row, and then you can clear the two reds as they will be side by side.

Now that you've seen the general approach, here's a quiz. In all cases, how do you place the minimum number of 'wilds' in order to clear the level without losing lives.

1.      

2.     

3.    

Answers:
1. Just need 1 wild (on the white)
2. Just need 1 wild (on the bottom white)
3. Need 2 wilds (e.g. one on the right hand red, then one on the white)

And what you will have seen by now, is that you don't want to get a very simple end position like:

Since you need 2 'wilds' to clear this. Don't forget, you can place them both before clicking to clear. (e.g. place a wild on each of the green blocks then click to clear).

I probably won't do any more posts on Block'd, so my knowledge of the 'middlegame' strategies for 'Marathon' mode, as well as how to get high scores on the 'Speed' mode will probably be forever lost.

Old and New Toronto - Pape and Withrow

Probably not much here for anyone who doesn't live in the area, but a typical case of widening a road and removing trees. A little less 'grand' a street than Jarvis (prior to widening) perhaps, but typical of many.

Here's a picture of Pape, just north of Withrow and looking south (1917). Keep an eye out for that horse-drawn carriage (in the middle of the picture) later in this blog. There is an old mailbox on the far left, and note the lights all attached to the poles at quite a low height - maybe they weren't bright enough to be higher?

The widening occurred a few years later (1922). Here's what it looks like today.

I also found a picture taken from a spot just north of the above (and looking north) during the actual road widening (Aug 1922). (Wonder if that horse-drawn cart on the right is the same one as in the first picture?! It has a similar look, but can't see any wording on the back of the carriage in the top picture - may just be too dark or far away to see.)

Some other Toronto 'before and after' road widening pictures can be seen at:  http://www.blogto.com/city/2011/10/that_time_when_toronto_widened_the_streets/.

Old and New Toronto - Withrow Park

I had found the following old picture online - showing skaters near the North East corner of Withrow Park (1923). Since it is close to where we live and many of the buildings are still around I thought I'd take a more recent look.

The nearest building (toward the left center) is still there (washrooms) and the houses in the background (along Logan Avenue) are mostly still there.

When you look at this today, there is a new building (Clubhouse) to the right of the washrooms, but even in winter the houses along Logan are almost impossible to see. Lots of tree growth in the last 90 years!

The original picture was probably taken from slightly farther North (to the right) than the above, but that is now landscaped more and didn't seem to compare quite so well - I include it below for interest.

And to think that the area that is now Withrow Park was once planned to be just a continuation of the surrounding streets and houses.

The 1899 Goad Map shows Withrow Park as proposed streets and housing. It also shows each house that had been built so far! And if you look closely you can see our house - the first one on Withrow between Pape and Carlaw.

The 1910 Goad Map shows Withrow Park as a park and the rest, as they say, is history :-)

ps If you like exploring old maps, this link is pretty neat: http://peoplemaps.esri.com/toronto/ You can move around kind of like Google Maps, and can choose different years (slider in the top right).

Old and New Toronto - King Looking E From University

Number four in the series of old and new pictures of Toronto. What looks like a somewhat boring corner now (King St W, looking East from University) still has one interesting older building visible.

I had found this picture (below - and again, from the 'Flashbacks 1' postcards book) and thought I'd check it out (it being very close to work too). This is King Street West, looking East from University Avenue (circa 1886).

The building in the center is the Rossin House Hotel, demolished in 1969. Given that there's nothing much visible today (see below) I wasn't even going to publish this picture, except that the (circled) building in the background - partially obscured by the light pole - looked interesting, somewhat older, but wasn't even in the first photograph.

Then, I found another old (but more recent than the first) photo, from 1936 taken from almost the same spot (just from the South side of King) and there it was - the tall building on the right in the background. It's now called Commerce Court North (above) but was the *Bank of Commerce* building in 1936. They merged with the Imperial Bank of Canada in 1961. And this was once the tallest building in the Commonwealth.

And the other tall building (closer, and in the left-center of the picture) is the original Toronto Star building - used as the model for the Daily Planet in Superman comics but sadly no longer around.

20150213 - Update: Thanks to Mark Brader for both giving me the dates for the Bank of Commerce building, correcting other errors I managed to introduce, and pointing out the interesting crossover between the streetcar tracks in the first (oldest) photo. "The streetcars then in use were symmetrical:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Horse_drawn_streetcar_Toronto_1880s.jpg
so a short-turn just required moving the horses to the other end and setting the switch to go into the crossover."
Easy to miss, but then something that I won't miss in future (or is that "in the past"?)!

Old and New Toronto - Old Don Railway Station

This was a slightly more difficult photo to find an equivalent for, since it looks like the Don Valley has been significantly 'terra-formed' in this area. I had first found this picture (below) when looking at some old 'lost' railway stations in Toronto:

It was originally located just south of Queen St on the west side of the Don River. At that time, the Queen Street bridge was lower and just went over the river. This changed a lot when the new high level Queen Street bridge was built (starting in 1911). See also the Toronto Railway Historical Association's site.

I took the following from between a couple of new buildings just south of where Queen and King come together just west of the Don.

Although the central part of the bridge has a similar look to the first photo, it's not the same structure (and is probably about 20' above where the original was). There are still train tracks running along the road (Bayview extension) which is visible around the middle of this picture. So the original station was probably on the road between the front end loader and the back hoe. Update: Actually - assuming the river and the tracks haven't moved, then the true position would likely be on the other side of the tracks, where the stairs down to the walking trail are. Here's my best guess:

Turns out that Don Station had been saved and moved to Todmorden Mills in the Don Valley in 1969. Interestingly, we had gone there about 10 years ago (Oct, 2005) and I had taken pictures of it (see below).

Time to go take another look - but not at the same location it seems, since it was moved again in 2009 to a new location downtown. See it here at Roundhouse Park, or see this wikipedia article which has some more information including a picture very similar to mine.

Old and New Toronto - Bay by Old City Hall

On the same (bitterly cold) day as my previous post, I walked a block north on Bay and took a photo to try and capture the same scene as the postcard below. The description on the back read:

"Torontonians take to the streets following the news of 'Victory in Europe', May 8, 1945.

A Victory Bond Drive promotion decorates the City Hall's clock tower."

And here it is today:

The buildings to the left have changed a lot, and the near buildings on the right. But the lower part of the 'Hudson's Bay' building is (a somewhat modernized version of) the original, and of course old city hall is much the same. I notice that my photo shows the gargoyles near the top of the clock tower better than the original . (The clock itself is cut off in both photos)

20150202 Update: The original picture shows a symbol (the number '8' in a wreath) both on the bottom of the donation thermometer and also along the side of the Simpson's store. Thanks to Mark Brader for finding out that it was a temporary symbol -- the 8 refers to the 8th victory-bond drive of the war, a 20-day campaign that had started on April 23. See also further information at this page on 'National Flags of Occasion'.

20150204 Update: I was sure that I should have been able to see at least a couple of gargoyles on the original clock tower picture - then found this:

"Four gargoyles were placed on the corners of the Clock Tower in 1899, but they were removed to the effects of the weather on the sandstone carvings in 1938. In 2002, bronze casts of the gargoyles were reinstalled. The replicas are not duplicates as the original designs were lost."

That was from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_City_Hall_(Toronto)

According to http://tayloronhistory.com/2012/04/22/enjoying-torontos-architectural-gems-old-city-hall/ one of the gargoyles actually fell off and went through a roof. This link also contains some interesting background including how the architect Lennox had the letters of his name carved under the eaves...I'll have to drop by and take a look.

Old and New Toronto - Bay and Adelaide

I had always wanted to take some current photos at the same location as some old historical photos, and show the differences. And since I have a couple of books of postcards showing old photos of Toronto (pictures are from the City of Toronto Archives) - what could be easier? Click on any photo to enlarge it.

I started with a photo from the 'Flashbacks 1' set. The description on the back read:

 "A city traffic officer attends to his semaphore at the Bay-Adelaide intersection, 1922.

Hotel Widmer is on southwest corner."

Since I work nearby - and since it was bloody cold today - the stars were obviously aligning for me to try and get a similar shot. I think it's tough to know what relative focal length the original photographer used, and I found that my shots tended to show the vertical lines as 'leaning in' more. I think this is due to the camera not being totally level - as I angled it very slightly up in order to get more building in the frame.

Anyway, it looks to me as though there is still one building around. In the original photo if you follow the Hotel Widmer to the left (down Bay St) there is a three story building, then a gap and then another building. That last building looks like it still exists in the more recent photo - and there's a low building where the gap was. The last building also has a half dozen extra floors from the original photo.

More to come!

(2015-02-02 Update: The Widmer Hotel doesn't seem to be mentioned too much, but I found this interesting story about a Captain Jackman who had died and one of his sons lived at the Widmer Hotel. This son was Harry Jackman - but not the same Jackman family as Henry Rutherford (Harry) Jackman and his well-known son Hal Jackman.)

(2015-06-02 Update: Another Widmer Hotel picture from the past (just click on the picture, or the 'Click here to view/add tags' link on that page). Looks like someone else still doing the 'stop/go' traffic control - and once again it's nasty looking weather - this time in 1928)

(2015-07-23 Update: The building on the left (that now has a half dozen extra floors) has 'Bank of Montreal' carved on its front. And the corner building has 'Canada Permanent Building' carved into its stone.)