Bye bye, BBC World Service

So now BBC World Service has shut down its shortwave service to Europe and north Africa. The end of an era. I wonder when they’ll cut off the remaining 100 million shortwave listeners in the rest of Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.
The story in the Guardian quoted Simon Spanswick, the chief executive of the Association for International Broadcasting, as saying, “Everybody now has to use different ways to engage listeners. Nobody in the developed world listens on noisy, crackly shortwave anymore.”
Oh yeah? I do.
BBC World Service transmissions to North America ended some time ago. Now apparently Europe has been deemed a “highly developed marketplace” in which listeners can access the BBC in “a variety of ways, including FM, satellite and online,” the Guardian story said.
In addition to this old Nordmende (that needs a tube replaced), I have a small collection of portable shortwave radios. It’s not always convenient to fire up the ol’ laptop and dial up the CBC or BBC. I’ve used my little shortwaves to try to pull in a broadcast from Radio Canada International when I’ve been away from home, or to find the BBC World Service when I’ve wanted to hear an English-language newscast. It just isn’t the same, at the end of a hard day of sightseeing or travelling, to curl up with a laptop under the covers and listen to the radio. I don’t always travel with a laptop anyway.
Radio should be listened to on the radio, dammit.

Goofin’ around with Google

I got this from Chicago architecture writer Lynn Becker’s blog:

Go to Google.
Type “Find Chuck Norris.”
Hit the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button.
Chuckle heartily.

Rear window, part 2

It was snowing like mad when I woke up on Friday, and, anticipating the storm, I had brought work home with me on Thursday night. In fact, I was tipped off when I overheard a colleague say that he was going to bring work home with him and not come in if we got the storm that was forecast.
He (who shall remain nameless, but not blameless) did indeed brave the snow and wind and showed up for work on Friday, but I, the lone wuss of the office, stayed home.
As I worked, I gazed out my window through the storm and saw my across-the-lane neighbour barbecuing lunch.
Hardy carnivore.

St. Terry of Assisi

Ah, Terry is tired tonight. I am on a committee that reviews animal research that’s done at one of the teaching hospitals. I am tired because tonight I read all 17 new research proposals we’ll be discussing at next week’s meeting. It’s mostly mice and rats that are involved, but they have to have adequate anesthesia and analgesia too.
I just got home and it’s late and I’m tired and Euripides wants to play and his claws need trimming so when he paws at me to be picked up, he really scratches. And then I bark at him.
I gave most of my energy tonight to little mice and rats, and now I am barking at my cat. Not so saintly…

Oh, the picture. It’s the neon sign for a pet supply store in my neighbourhood. I also shoot clever neon signs. Remind me to tell you someday the hilarious story about how I looked all over San Francisco for a neon penny loafer.

New identification?

On Saturday, I spoke to the ROM Walkers, the volunteers who lead walking tours around Toronto and environs, based at the Royal Ontario Museum.
They’re such a knowledgeable group, I’m not sure I told them much they didn’t already know.
While I often learn things when I give these talks, I came away with a huge prize on Saturday.
When I was talking about what fun it is to wander around the Queen’s Park legislature building and spot all the anonymous faces in the carved foliage, I showed the above picture.
Regina Virgo, the ROM Walkers’ leader, immediately said, “Laura Secord!”
And I think she’s right! I hadn’t considered that before, but I could see it almost immediately. Look at this common portrait of Secord, one of our heroes of the War of 1812, and tell me you don’t see the resemblance:

Thanks, Regina!

Serenity

I haven’t posted for a few days. I’m tired of taking pictures of the hole in the ground at the end of the street. I’ll return to that when there’s something more to show.
I’m also having some trouble with post-holiday re-entry to real life. So I thought I’d post this picture I took last summer of Kali, my friend Denyse’s cat, meditating before one of the several shrines Denyse has in her apartment in Montreal. She looked so … meditative and serene and placid…

…until she decided to jump up and check out the Buddha and the bamboo more closely.

Our Lady of York (aka Deeds Speak), cont’d

Leslie Gash from Toronto Housing kindly sent me this picture (courtesy of Bird Construction), showing the two sculptures from the old 60 Richmond Street East building safely in storage.
The pieces—of the County of York coat of arms, with its motto “Deeds Speak,” and a woman holding a building and a scroll and standing atop the coat of arms (I’ve named her “Our Lady of York”)—were created by Jacobine Jones, a prominent Canadian sculptor of the mid-20th century. Jones was the sculptor behind several other bits of architectural decoration in Toronto—notably some of those on Kerr Hall on the Ryerson campus, and the four figures in high relief on the Canadiana Building, across Queen’s Park Crescent West from Queen’s Park.

There goes the neighbourhood (part 3)

When I got home from work on Tuesday evening, I was surprised to see that even this little bit of the House on the Corner was still standing. I don’t know why they couldn’t finish the job on Tuesday.
When I arrived home on Wednesday, the lot was empty. I wasn’t surprised.
But even the backhoe was gone. The flatbed had come, loaded up the backhoe and drove off … no doubt to the next demolition site. And they seem to have taken their portable loo with them.

CORRECTION: The portable loo is still there. It just didn’t show up in the picture.

There goes the neighbourhood (part 2)

On Saturday, the backhoe landed with much noise, arriving as it did on a flatbed. There was a great cacaphonous chorus of backing-up beeping announcing its arrival—which was actually a help, I suppose, as it was the signal for me to get my camera.

Here you can kind of see that the front door has been removed, possibly sold to an architectural salvage firm. This view adds to the eeriness, though, because the interior stairs, bannister and railing make it so clear that someone lived here relatively recently.
On Monday morning, the garage was levelled and the upper right part of the house had been demolished.
I fully expected to find only an empty lot when I arrived home from work on Tuesday, but there’s still a bit left—probably because piles of brick and whatnot had to be carted off before any more could be torn down. So if I get up early on Wednesday, I’ll have another picture of the last bits of this house.

There goes the neighbourhood (part 1)

This corner house (before the fence) was the grand entrance to our stretch of Woburn Avenue in North Toronto. It was listed for sale in the Fall of 2006 thusly: “100 WOBURN AVE, TORONTO, Ontario – $1,300,000 — Large Gracious Traditional 2&3/4 Storey Centre Hall 5 Bdrm Brick Family Home. Double Garage With 2nd Floor. Extra Large Lot. 1 Blk To Subway. Opposite Parks. Walk To Wanless & Bedford Pk Schools, & Yonge St Shops…”
It sold about a year ago and its demolition has begun in earnest.

I took these pictures in the August and November of 2007 ( although I intended to start sooner, before the fence went up), to document the decontextualized destruction of a sense of neighbourhood. This grand old house is going to be replaced by three — count ’em: three — townhouses, which you can read about here, here and here.
You’ll note that while the asking price for the original house was
$1.3-million, the listed prices for the three that will replace it total about $4-million.
Sometime in November, the tree was taken down, and in the last week or 10 days, the front door disappeared.
Today, some heavy equipment was moved onto the site. Pictures to follow.
So continues the stucco-ification and shoe-horning of North Toronto residential neighbourhoods.
To be continued.