The Search for Christmas... Lights

On Sunday after church and lunch I went on a search for Christmas lights. The night before they had the opening for Cavalcade of Lights at Nathan Philips Square. I was actually down in the area, but skipped it because it was drizzly.

After seeing my friend Gabe's shots I got the idea of going to Brookfield Place to take photos as well as at Nathan Philips Square and the Eaton Centre.

Brookfield Place had a snowflake theme going on. There was one large snowflake on the floor in the middle of the atrium as well smaller different coloured ones hanging from the ceiling in the surrounding buildings. In front of Marché they had this large, white tree sculpture hanging from the roof.

Next I went to the Eaton Centre. I was saving Nathan Philips Square for last because when I walked through earlier they were still dismantling the Cavalcade of Lights stage and things from the night before.

Except for the Christmas tree at the north end, the decorations at the Eaton Centre don't change much. I guess it's expensive to make new ones all the time. For the past few years they've had these large metallic deer set up around the mall.

This year the Christmas tree was an enormous one that sat on the lowest level (in the basement) and rose almost all the way up to the very top of the glass ceiling. You could barely see the green through the red and white lights that covered almost every single inch of it.

I walked the top level of the mall taking shots as well as some of the catwalks above and up the stairs to the parking garage in the middle of the mall. That gave me a few unusual vantage points to shoot from.

Lastly I went to Nathan Philips Square. For the opening of the Cavalcade of Lights they opened the skating rink at City Hall too. Unfortunately the upper level surrounding the square was blocked off. They offer you the best view of the whole square for shots. That was really annoying. I had to make do walking around at ground level.

I think I managed to get some okay shots there with the skaters and Christmas lights and Christmas tree. If I had a tripod it would have been better though.

Toronto Zombie Walk - 2014

They held the 12th annual Toronto Zombie Walk at Nathan Philips Square the last Saturday of October. It's the third year it's been held there. I'm not sure where it was held before because it's only the second time I've attended.

My first year was three years ago. Last year I was planning on attending, but the weather looked threatening. Because of that I skipped it.

The weather this year was similar. They predicted a 30% chance of precipitation and were pretty close on that count. On my way down it drizzled part of the time and there was even some light rain. By the time I arrived it stopped, thankfully. I was happy about that.

Assembly time for the zombies was between noon and 3:00 p.m.. I got there around 1:30 p.m.. There were quite a few people (zombies, photographers and others) there already.

As usual there were a number of children. Being so close to Halloween I think they quite enjoyed dressing up. None of them were afraid of the grown ups with their scary looking faces.

All the zombies looked great again. Their make-up and costumes were really creative. They were more than patient with the "paparazzi" like me who swarmed them for pictures. I stayed until 3:00 (the time the walk started), then headed over to the Eaton Centre.

I caught the zombies on the tail end of their walk coming down Yonge Street (on their way back to Nathan Philips Square). Their route took them up University Avenue to College Street, across to Yonge, back down to Queen and over to City Hall again.

Toronto Zombie Walk

I attended my first Toronto Zombie Walk this past Saturday. This year it was held at Nathan Philips Square at Toronto City Hall.

I had seen pictures from it posted on some of my Flickr.com friends' pages and thought it looked really cool. But, like my first attempt or two at trying to catch the cherry blossoms in the spring at High Park, I kept missing it.

The day had started off pretty gloomy. Spotty showers were predicted throughout the day. I was pretty sleepy from the night before. We had started Friday night hockey a few weeks earlier. I left home later than I had planned.

The event was slated to start at 12:00 noon with the walk to begin at 3:00 p.m. I arrived down at Nathan Philips Square by around 2:30 p.m.

There were a lot of Zombies still lurking around at that time. And there were a great number of photographers stalking them with their cameras as well. Most of them just snuck up and shot pictures of them, but I thought I would ask them to take their pictures. I could get them to pose nicely that way too.

I was down there for over an hour, but didn't stick around for the walk. I'm not exactly sure where they went. Though from checking out a Flickr.com friend's shots it looked like they made their way up University Avenue.

By the time I got home it was raining pretty steadily. Poor Zombies. I hope they're not allergic to water.

Lazy me...

Okay, sorry... I've been neglecting my blog. It's been a week since I've last published.

It's not like I haven't been up to anything either. I do have some things to share. I went to dinner with Dickie at Imperial Buffet on Monday (pictured here)... oh wait... that was last Monday. Anyway, I got a 2-for-1 coupon from my parents. A wonderful invention if I do say so myself. It's funny... Imperial Buffet has been sending these coupons out on a regular basis to my sister and parents' homes. I go there about once every month or two and never pay full price. I don't know how they make money.

I wrote that hockey started again for us a couple of blogs ago. It's going alright. One fellow hasn't shown up for three weeks though. I hope he's paid up already or else we might be short on money. My friend Frank is taking care of the finances this year. He was in charge of the whole operation last year, but this year I'm helping with the rest of the organization. It mostly entails sending out weekly e-mails to see who's going to be there or not and making up the teams.

Gym night has started too. I'm one of the three "captains". Truthfully speaking we don't do much. All we've done so far is chosen our teams and picked the shirt colours. There's no coaching involved. I've been sending out some e-mails to my team members, but people don't really have to respond saying if they're going to be there or not. It's not like we can really grab members from other teams if we're short (I don't think). We'll see.

We had another "Sandwich Run" this evening. It wasn't really an official one though. I just took some of my church friends out who wanted to go. Surprisingly we didn't see very many people where we normally see them. Nathan Philips Square was all but empty. We saw one fellow at the bus shelter on the northeast side on Bay Street. That's his normal spot. There weren't many guys on the benches on the east side of the Square. Same with the south side along Queen or the southeast corner where there normally are 10-15 guys in the summer. Even on the northwest side. I just saw Richard and Raymond and one of Raymond's friends (I didn't ask him his name). Normally there are about 7-10 guys there. Raymond said a lot of the shelters are open on the weekends now. So a lot of guys go to them.

On a sad note, Richard mentioned to me that his friend Ozzie passed away. They used to hang out together at their regular spot in between one of the concrete support beams for the walkway that goes around the Square and a stairway that goes down to the parking area under the Square. Ozzie was a nice, old guy. Smallish fellow with a bushy, white beard. Richard said he was about 65. Though, to me, he looked quite a bit older. I guess living on the street will wear on you. Richard found him passed away one day not long ago. That's sad. I feel for him. He's not getting along with some of the other guys who've taken up residence around him. I guess they're a bit too rowdy. I think some of them drink and cause trouble. One girl supposedly has been stealing stuff too. At least it was a quiet night for the guys who were there tonight. A deserved break for them.

My Toronto - Skating at Nathan Phillips Square

This is a photo of the skating rink at Nathan Phillips Square looking east. I took it in the middle of December, 2006. In the background (behind the arches) is Old City Hall. Beyond that is a shiny, glass office tower by the Eaton Centre.

This is one of the larger outdoor rinks open to the public in downtown Toronto. The other one is by the Harbourfront. It's quite nice down there because of the view overlooking Lake Ontario. Though that can also be a problem because it can be windier and colder there. So there's a trade off that's for sure.

I have to say, skating outdoors is much more enjoyable than skating indoors. Who wants to look at grey, concrete walls when you can look at endless, blue skies and enjoy the wind in your face? You have to make sure to bundle up though. Mittens, a scarf and hat are a must. And though it's forbidden, you can always bring your hockey stick and pass the puck around with whoever else has theirs after the ice has "officially closed" for the evening.

Olympic Torch Relay

Vancouver, British Columbia will be holding the 2010 Winter Olympics next February. Currently the world's longest torch relay (at 45,000 kms) is going on across Canada. Yesterday, day 49 of 109, it passed through my hometown of Toronto. The final stage of the day was held at Nathan Phillips Square at Toronto City Hall.

Women's Hockey gold medalist winner, Vicky Sunohara, was the final torchbearer of the day. She brought it in and lit the cauldron on the stage where the performers had been. The wait was way too long. According to the schedule I found on-line the ceremony was to have been at 7:00 p.m. In actuality it didn't happen until over an hour later. I'm not sure if it was planned this way or if the protesters along the way delayed them. At one point, at Yonge and College, there were about 300 native protesters (according to news reports) blocking the route. The flame had to be split into two to keep on schedule. Originally it was to have gone to Sick Kids Hospital first before coming to City Hall. It was reported they had one torchbearer bring it there and another continue on to City Hall.

My day began when I met my friend Gabe for lunch in Chinatown. After that I went to the library at City Hall to kill some time. At about 6:00 p.m. I made my way out into the frigid night air to stake out a spot to see the flame as it passed by. I was hoping to leave not long after 7:00 because I had to go to gym night. Well, that didn't quite happen. They kept on with the performances and shameless, self-promotion from the sponsors until my fingers and toes were about to fall off. The torchbearer finally entered the square at a few minutes after 8:00. I was so happy to finally see her. Mostly because I wanted to get my shots and get my butt out of the cold. I know it was probably a once in a lifetime experience. And though I had been quite looking forward to experiencing it, I wasn't so cheery after that.

On the plus side, since I missed gym night, I was able to visit a few of my homeless friends around Nathan Phillips Square afterwards. They weren't very happy about the sub-zero temperatures to say the least. Anyway, I hope they enjoyed the chat. I believe they did. And I enjoyed talking with them. Afterwards I had to take a pee. My hands were so cold I couldn't undo the top button on my jeans in the bathroom. I had to wait there a few minutes until they regained feeling. Luckily for me it wasn't an emergency or else you wouldn't be hearing about it ;-)