My Walk Across Canada

Alternate title: My Walk From One Canada to Another

A sunny September day, I set out to walk across Canada in Paris.

I started at the Place du Canada and set out for my destination, la rue du Canada, seeing what I could along the way.

Place du Canada is tucked away behind the granite Belle Epoque extravagance of the Grand Palais (the Rocky Mountains?), right on the bank of the Seine (the St Lawrence?). I thought it bizarrely apropos that the intersection of Franklin D Roosevelt Avenue and Queen's Way was the Place du Canada.

Ironically, the Rue du Canada abuts the Rue de la Guadeloupe, which the French decided to keep in exchange for handing over Canada to the British after the Seven Years War in 1763.




A beautiful view of the place. Maybe meant to represent the Praries?


Some friends I picked up along the way.


My Canada includes Quebec.


Weird and spooky abandoned market I came across.


Canada Retouch? Indeed it does.


Destination: Rue du Canada




Rue du Canada seen from the intersection of Rue de la Guadeloupe.

North York – North Yuck!

Alternate Title: Suburbs; the Worst of Both Worlds

Almost one year into working in the blanched concrete monotony that is North York, I can truly say that suburbs are my own personal vision of hell. Depressing Stalinist apartment blocks huddled together against the vast anonymous spaces of wasteland. Strip malls and car lanes. Hulking fortresses of big box stores defended by moats of endless parking lots. Isolated people buffered from real human contact by six lanes of traffic and cracked, decaying sidewalks.

I can’t think of a single positive thing to say about suburbs; sprawl destroys farmland and greenspace, makes public transit impossible and forces an even greater dependence on the almighty Mammon of the car. Really, people who live in suburbs are eco-terrorists with their huge carbon footprint, greenhouse-gas cars and pesticide lawns. If were up to me, we’d blow them all up and start all over. (Or conversely, we could build a wall around the suburbs, blow them all up, and then start a specialty channel where we watch the survivors build a new society out of the rubble of Pickering or Thornhill).

In honour of MMC and my Battleship Adventure* to the furthest reaches of North York, the Fairview Mall and to the very end of the pointless Sheppard line, I present to you my North Yuck Photo Essay.