Friends, today is January 11, Old New Year's Eve, and it's raining and +10 in Toronto...
So today I was inspired to remember my story-impression about fishing the Canadian way...
It was in 2005, when I once again flew to Toronto to visit my family, while still in Moscow...
Landscape from northern Ontario, 200 km. from Toronto. Photo: April 2010
Fishing the Canadian way, or communicating with nature.
Canada is a country of lakes. There are a lot of them and the largest is Ontario.
Fishing is fun for Canadians sport game, not the target of the extraction.
They immediately carefully remove the caught fish from the hook and release it back into the water. Every Friday, tens of thousands of Canadians flock north and northeast of Toronto to cottages (that's exactly what it sounds like - cottage, i.e. emphasis on the first syllable), nature and fishing. A cottage is a small house with all the amenities, including a bathroom with hot and cold water, refrigerator, satellite TV channels for 300, microwave, hall with kitchen, bedrooms and open veranda. An indispensable attribute of each cottage is a unit with various bells and whistles for barbecue. Also, each cottage has its own small dock. A boat with a motor or a miniboat is always included in their gentleman's set. All these necessary structures for fishing and recreation are usually located 2-3 steps from the shore.
So I had the opportunity to go fishing in the town of Buckhorn, which is an hour and a half drive from Toronto. I was immediately struck by how pristinely clean and well-groomed wild nature. Soil - with elements of moss and stones. Oaks and maples abound among trees. Occasionally there are birch trees. If in Toronto fat and stupid squirrels are running around everywhere, skunks are scary with their stench, and raccoons are stomping in the parks, then there is no need to talk about the living creatures in the local forests. During my two days on the lake, I saw swimming beavers, large lake turtles (!), yellow-red chipmunks, a ferret dragging a mouse and other representatives of the fauna. And the red fox woke me up at 4 in the morning, knocking off with its paws the lid of a garbage bin attached to the wall under the window at a height of about a meter. Looking out the window, I saw the “redhead’s” eyes bulging upward and a lid lying nearby...
I have never experienced such a cool feeling in my life... The float dived into the water before it could reach it. Mostly specimens resembling our crucian carp, only with spines like perch, were caught from the shore, as well as local yellow perch.
In general, my wife had fish soup for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
On Sunday, having woken up at 6 in the morning and in 15 minutes having caught a dozen of these very “carp perches”, and throwing away, almost like a true Canadian, fish smaller than the palm of my hand, I decided to feed these same Canadian fish, as in an aquarium. The water in the lake, by the way, is very clean - visibility, I think, is at least two to three meters.
In general, I feed myself these little fish and suddenly I see a large fish approaching and, having dispersed the fry and bulging its eyes, looks at me impudently.
All this happens at a distance of about one and a half meters. I grab a fishing rod, hook a fat “broiler” worm (the Chinese run the worm business here - they breed it and sell it for $5 a can) and bring the hook right to the alien’s nose. Reluctantly walking around the jig with bait, the stranger decides to try it. Hook - and she's hooked!
The fight ends not in my favor. The fish, breaking the fishing line, goes into the depths. A minute later I look - my friend is returning with a red “piercing” on lower lip. Swims up to the very place where I slipped her the worm...
Try again. I feel that the fish is not particularly interested in my treat...
Very carefully she takes the worm with her lips and moves it aside...
Finally, again the characteristic bend of the rod and powerful resistance, even more like a struggle... I try to grab it with a landing net, but having made an oblique flip in the air and biting off the second jig, this miracle is hidden in the water.
The most interesting thing is that she comes back again, now with two jigs on her lower lip - red and blue... It is clear that they are unpleasant to her, she chews them, trying to spit them out or swallow...
I'm getting excited. With hands trembling with impatience, I put on my glasses to tie another hook to the fishing line. Another try. I bring the bait directly to the “her” muzzle - she doesn’t want it. Again and again I try to attract her with food - in vain.
Apparently realizing that I wouldn’t leave her alone, the wise fish simply began with its muzzle, resting against the sinker, to move the fishing line with all its accessories away from HER place....
Futile attempts to catch this “monster” led to my favorite glasses being trampled into the soil of the province of Ontario... I run to wake up my wife, complaining to her about the opportunity and the fish and, looking at my watch, I notice that this “show” has been going on for almost 5 hours. ..
We're both coming back. The fish is in place. The wife, who had never been interested in fishing and everything connected with it, grabbed a fishing rod and asked to throw it to “that place.”
Everything is in vain. Seeing me, the fish generally turns its tail towards me and does not react to my wife’s hook...
Evening. The fish is standing. Morning - right there... I remembered a fairy tale about a fisherman and goldfish and all sorts of mystical stories...
A few hours in Toronto is criminally short; the city is large and interesting. What can you see during this time?
Walk along the embankment, climb a tall tower, take a boat ride on Lake Ontario - we'll have time for a lot!
3. The main thing in downtown Toronto is finding adequate parking. And you can calmly walk around the city.
4. We came to Roundhouse Park- former locomotive depot. Other name - Railway Lands.
5. The depot was built in 1929 and was used until 1986. In the photo - EMD GP7 diesel locomotive built in 1953.
6. Now located here Toronto Railway Heritage Centre. The Railway Museum, in general.
7. A 2-4-2 type steam locomotive manufactured by a Montreal company is installed on the turntable. M.L.W. 1942 release.
8. Soft carriage Canadian Pacific "Jackman" 1931
9. There are not very many exhibits, but the museum is also young - only 8 years old.
10. From above you can understand how the depot building with a turntable is arranged. Photo by Alexander Opeikin, taken from the tower.
11. By the way, about the tower, here it is. CN Tower, one of the symbols of Toronto. One of the symbols of Toronto.
12. At this point we split up, Alexander Opeikin went upstairs, we went to the lake. The next 5 pictures from the tower are his. View towards Niagara Falls. We came right from there.
13. Immediately below the tower - Rogers Center, 100% packed with spectators. There's a baseball game going on, Blue Jay ( Toronto Blue Jays) greets guests.
14. View to the east.
16. Inner Harbor, filled with watercraft of all kinds.
17. From here you can clearly see the airport Billy Bishop, a small air harbor located on the island. For this they also call him Toronto Island Airport. Officially named after William Avery (Billy) Bishop, a Canadian World War I flying ace and later Air Marshal of Canada.
18. So Toronto has excellent spotting right in the city center. Excellent, but somewhat monotonous.
19. The airport is used for regional air travel and for general aviation, including medical flights (due to its proximity to downtown hospitals). Small charters also fly here, and citizens’ personal planes are based there.
20. The airport is not fenced; you can swim to the very shore of the airfield (that sounds like it!). In case of disembarkation, however, the SAB will come to you.
21. Flies here Air Canada Express, Pascan Aviation, FlyGTA. The airport is also a hub for a local company Porter Airlines, which has 29 of these in its fleet Bombardier Dash 8 Q400, of course, locally produced.
22. For example, the most optimally priced flight from Montreal to New York is the Porter flight, through this airport.
23. The best spot for spotting is from a boat or boat. There are islands, too, but it’s a bit far away.
24. Suddenly, a World War II bomber droned overhead with its four engines. Yes, this is an Avro Lancaster Mk. X, I immediately understood. You can even fly it here, despite the fact that the year of its construction is the distant 1945.
25. Well, the turntables are circling here on a regular basis.
26. Okay, we passed the aviation unit, or rather flew over. You can hop on a classic hop-on-hop-off bus for a tour of Toronto.
27. Or you can take a boat and take a boat trip to the Toronto Islands. No, not on this boat. You must first go out to the embankment, and this is a puddle.
28. On the embankment there are people, chaos, confusion and garbage. Because of the festival, probably all the guests of the city and half of the residents came here. And they began to actively litter. I read that Toronto is not the cleanest city in Canada, but I didn’t expect this. However, this is a rare case, as Torontonians (or Torontonians?) suggested, everything will be removed by the morning.
29. They gave away the stern ones, they gave away the bow ones. We set sail.
30. It looks like there was once an industrial zone here, which, according to newfangled trends, was converted into a recreational area. It's the same story in Montreal. A good trend.
31. The boat offers wonderful, postcard views of the city.
32. Megapolis, whatever one may say. 2.7 million inhabitants.
33. And this elevator - Canada Malting Silos. These silos, which were erected in 1928, were used to store malt for the brewery next door. They wanted to demolish it, but decided to leave it, designating it as an object cultural heritage cities. The mayor's office promises to turn the building into something similar. Well, like the former tram depot in Almaty. We haven't decided yet.
34. Boat trips in the inner harbor are extremely popular.
35. We enter the channels between the Toronto Islands.
36. There is a yacht mooring here.
37. You can go kayaking leisurely.
38. The islands are a large park, with a huge walking area and beaches. The geese feel just wonderful here - they walk in flocks and look with contempt.
39. These guys surprised me. Traveling around Lake Ontario right in your own home - what an idea!
40. Or simply, without bothering, on boards like these with a paddle. Cheap and cheerful.
41. We go back. Heading towards the CN Tower - a television tower, and a bit of a railway tower itself.
42. Downtown is being actively developed and growing upward. In general, Toronto seemed to me a very “American” city.
43. Here we have a kingdom of yachts of all kinds.
44. Today is the second of July, and yesterday, on Canada Day, the world’s largest yellow rubber duck visited Toronto.
45. However, this inflatable duckling is not the only one of its kind. In fact, the giant waterfowl, 18.5 m tall and weighing 13,607 kg, is just a copy of the original creation of the Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman, who has been traveling the world since 2007. But still, impressive!
46v. A little dynamics in the video.
47. More yachts for the yacht god!
48. In fact, you can just take a ferry ride to the islands. They go on schedule. But if time is limited, then you can spend a couple of extra dollars and take a tour like this.
49. I really liked this retro steamboat. It looks very contrasting against the background of skyscrapers!
50. Lake taxi. Service!
51. Profits. We are met by police and geese.
52. Walk around the area a little and drink coffee - there is still time.
53. This is an atypical view of the tower.
54. That's it, time is up, it's time to go. We had to spend a couple of hours getting out onto the highway through traffic jams.
55. Canadians love to go out into nature, to their National parks, and I understand them very much. It's a weekend and the roads are clogged with campers of all shapes and sizes.
56. There are also quite a few huge American articulated trucks.
57. According to the plan, we also had a boat trip along the St. Lawrence River. Interesting place - thousand islands. And this is not just a sauce, but an entire national landmark, divided in half by the USA and Canada.
58. The main tourist point here is the town of Kingston. Well, on the way, we turned into another town called Gananoque.
59. Gananoque is called the gateway to the Thousand Islands. The town itself is tiny, and apparently lives exclusively on tourism.
60. There is also good fishing here.
Relatively few Russian travelers visit Canada, probably primarily because there (unlike, by the way, the USA) a rather complicated tourist visa. However, nothing is impossible, and several years ago I had the opportunity to visit the country of the “maple leaf”. It was a big three-week trip - five days in Canada, then a week-long cruise from Vancouver to Alaska, a week in Alaska and finally three more days in New York. Actually, there wasn’t much of Canada on this trip (Toronto, Niagara Falls and Vancouver), but it was still there, I really liked it, and someday it would be great to return there again - more deeply and purposefully. And today I will talk about Toronto - the largest and most multicultural city in Canada, the largest business and... financial center countries.
Getting to know big cities It’s interesting to start from the top, and only then go into details. One of the best panoramas of the Canadian city of Toronto opens from the CN-Tower, for a long time which was the tallest (553 m) television tower in the world, surpassing the Ostankino TV tower by 13 meters in this indicator, and currently one of the ten tallest buildings on our planet. By appearance and the design of the Toronto TV tower is reminiscent of Ostankino - except that it is a little “heavier” in appearance. The lower part of the CN-Tower is reinforced concrete (up to a height of 457 meters), and the top is metal. The tower has 2 observation platforms - at heights of 350 m and 447 meters, respectively.
2. In the CN-Tower lobby there is an interesting exhibition telling about the tower, the history of its construction, as well as other high-rise buildings in the world.
3. The base observation deck is located at an altitude of 350 meters and consists of several floors. Most of them are glazed, but there are also open viewing platforms. The tower offers wonderful views of Toronto, Lake Ontario and the surrounding area.
4. The famous “glass floor” is a pleasant attraction for lovers thrills. When you stand on it for the first time and see 342 meters of height below you, your heart skips a beat. Although you get used to it later, of course.
5. Panoramas of Toronto from the height of the main observation deck. Railway Museum.
6. Local airport located on Toronto Island.
7. Stadium roof:
8. And now, using a separate elevator, we will rise even higher - to the Sky Pod observation deck, the highest point of the tower accessible to tourists, located at an altitude of 447 meters. Downtown Toronto - at a glance!
10. Having descended from the TV tower, we head to the port - a nice modern business center along the road.
11. Having gotten to know Toronto “from above”, it’s time to move on to getting acquainted “from the side” - it’s hot outside, so a trip to the forested island of Toronto is very useful. Very nice authentic ferries run from the city to the island.
13. Panorama of Toronto from the lake.
14. At the pier of Toronto Island. The 15-minute mini-cruise on the Thomas Renne ferry is over.
15. We usually strictly write “Do not walk on the lawns” - in Toronto, as you can see, the opposite picture takes place:
16. Weeping willows...
17. And quite Russian ducks. :)
18. In the heat, it’s a nice thing to cool off at the fountains!
20. Lake Ontario is the lowest and smallest in area in the chain of the Great Lakes. However, the shores are still not visible, and the area of Ontario is only one third smaller than Baikal (but in terms of volume of water, no one can compare with Baikal - for example, the volume of Lake Ontario is almost 20 times smaller!).
21. An ancient ferry on the lake.
22. Distance indicator - Niagara Falls, Halifax, North Pole and Vancouver.
23. Coast of Lake Ontario.
24. Interesting navigational signs.
25. Good on Toronto Island!
31. For kids, this is simply a piece of paradise!
34. After relaxing on the island on a hot day, you can return to the city.
35. Return trip by ferry. In the cargo port of Toronto, you can see the characteristic lake ships plying the Great American Lakes system (they are called "lake boats")....
36. ...so are the ocean ships rising from Atlantic Ocean to Lake Ontario and the rest of the Great Lakes via the St. Lawrence River and lock systems.
37. Oncoming ferry.
38. The asphalt of city streets and the yellow school bus are one of the characteristic symbols of America and Canada.
39. Unlike French-Canadian Montreal and Quebec, Toronto is perhaps the most “Americanized” city in Canada, with distinctive skyscrapers and a linear downtown layout.
40. We leave the center of Toronto and mentally find ourselves in England of the 19th century. In front of us is a complex of buildings that currently houses the Parliament of the Province of Ontario.
43. Queen Victoria:
45. And next door is the ancient University, one of the oldest in North America.
46. This is exactly how I imagine a classic English university - gardens and stone buildings covered with ivy, where the centuries-old spirit of knowledge hovers.
47. Linden trees are blooming.
49. King George on a huge horse:
50. There are a lot of tame squirrels in the university park.
We move further and further away from skyscrapers and the noisy center and continue our acquaintance with ancient Toronto. Closer to the outskirts is one of the most striking monuments of urban architecture - Casa Loma. This stunningly beautiful castle was built at the beginning of the 20th century, and five acres blooming gardens in front of the house further enhance the impression.
55. We will take the metro back to the city center. Five minutes - and we are back in the center of Toronto. The ancient city hall is surrounded by modern buildings.
56. It’s getting dark... The sun gilds the tops of skyscrapers...
59. In the evening, it’s interesting to go up to the TV tower again and admire the lights of Toronto from above.
60. The illumination of the TV tower is constantly changing and, accordingly, the upper observation deck of the Sky Pod is “tinted” either red, then blue, or purple.
62. And below, wherever you look, the lights are winking big city... A fascinating sight!
66. Iridescent different colors The TV tower at night resembles a gigantic thermometer towering over the city.
Loved Toronto! And in general, it would be great to spend not a couple of days, but a week on the East Coast of Canada - to visit other neighboring cities - the capital of Canada Ottawa, located on the banks of the St. Lawrence River Montreal, luxurious and not at all American, but rather European Quebec, the main city of French Canadians , on the streets of which, as experienced people assure, you can feel the atmosphere of Paris... However, the route was different then (flight from East to West and then to Alaska), and Canada is a huge country (by the way, the second largest in the world after Russia), which In any case, you can’t see it in one trip. Maybe someday we will be able to return there again? :)
About 20 years ago, the central city was united with its suburbs: in the east with Oshawa, in the west with Mississauga and Etobicoke, with North York and other adjacent towns. The population of the Greater Toronto Area is now almost 6 million people. The city stretches along the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario.
To start getting to know Toronto, let's look at the city from a height of 360 meters.
Toronto skyline photographed from the CN Tower on August 1, 2004 (taken from Wikipedia).
Click! The download is 1 MB, but the scale of the picture deserves it!
Business center of the city - downtown- built up with administrative buildings, mostly high-rise.
We'll take a better look at them a little later, when we climb the CN Tower - until recently the tallest building in the world.
In general, the appearance of Toronto is completely different from European cities. Many people do not like its architecture; it is considered a “big village” due to the many small houses. Indeed, old buildings cannot be called architectural masterpieces. Here are typical Toronto streets a few blocks from downtown.
My assumptions regarding the emergence of such an architectural face of Toronto are as follows. In Europe and Ukraine, for example, cities developed in the early and Middle Ages “from the center” - there was a mountain on which the prince-ruler lived, and the houses of the inhabitants were budded around. Hence the city’s gravitation towards the center: there is a central square, a central street, a central government. In America and Canada, people settled vast uninhabited territories: everyone founded their own farm where they wanted, without much respect for the central government. So the cities turned out to be sprawling, without clearly defined centers with many small estates. But, as a necessity, with good roads and large powerful cars.
Now Toronto is going up very quickly.
Despite the global crisis construction new high-rise buildings are being built here on every street, literally every 5-6 blocks.
On this site, a residential high-rise building will be built in just 2 years, already in 2013.
And there is a policeman on duty near each construction site, regulating traffic in the event that a crane or truck enters/exits the construction site.
We have the opportunity to compare the pace of construction in Toronto. I cut out from the panorama of Toronto (given above) the fragment that I also photographed from the same CN Tower, but in 2011.
This was the case in mid-2004.
This happened by mid-2011.
In a place where there was an empty area and only green grass (in front of us and along the left highway), about 20 skyscrapers were built in 7 years!
Public transport
Toronto is crossed by several expressways that have no parking, crosswalks, left turns, or other obstacles.
The city has a metro (it is believed that there are 4 lines, but in fact there are 2 lines, but quite long), an electric train, buses, and trams in the center of Toronto.
The green and yellow lines are the metro. Red ones are trams.
Both subway and tram lines have preferential directions in the cardinal directions: from north to south and from west to east (when describing the route, Torontonians also say “vertically” and “horizontally”).
These are two-story suburban electric trains Go Train companies are stationed at a depot in downtown Toronto.
Interestingly, one of the final stops tram located underground, i.e. by tram you go straight into the tunnel to the metro trains.
To reduce noise, the tram rails are laid on a rubber base.
Stations metro that I saw original design they do not differ. Similar to our underground passages.
At metro stations there are no attendants monitoring the boarding/disembarking of passengers. Such “lookers” travel inside the carriages: one for two carriages. Everyone has a small closet, from which the attendant comes out when the train arrives at the station and looks left and right at the movement of people. It seems that the “lookers” perform their functions only in work time, late in the evening I did not notice them.
Torontonians have this tradition: if in the morning, entering the subway, you took a free newspaper to read, then when you exit the car, you do not take it with you to throw it away, but leave it on the seat for the next passenger. This is how Canadians save paper. True, this has reverse side: by the end of the day, a lot of these same newspapers are scattered around the carriages.
Travel rules V public transport Toronto is like this: by buying one token or ticket (for 3 dollars, if individually from the driver, or for 2.5 dollars, if you buy a dozen tokens at once), you can travel by subway, bus, and tram. The main thing is to drive in the same direction all the time, i.e. don't go back to the beginning. Such a trip looks something like this: arrived at the airport, got on the bus at the stop and threw a token into a metal box near the driver, got to the desired metro station, rode on the metro, possibly with a transfer to another line, got off at the desired station, changed took the tram and drove home. Similarly, you can travel with transfers on trams alone, for example.
And in order to ensure that when transferring to another transport they believe that you have already paid for the fare earlier, the driver takes a paper transfer ticket in exchange for a token, which is then presented upon transfer.
At all city transport stops there are timetables, which are strictly observed. By the way, city buses in Toronto are equipped with hybrid engines, i.e. operate both on diesel fuel and on electric batteries (to reduce air pollution with exhaust gases).
An interesting detail: on buses and trams, a long cord is stretched along the left and right windows from the driver’s cabin to the end of the cabin. And if you need to get off at the next stop, you simply tug the cord slightly and a bell will ring, indicating that the driver has heard you.
And one more thing: the bus/tram door will open at the stop only when someone is standing on the step in front of it. Those. Before you go out, you need to go down one step near the door - this will be a signal for it to open automatically.
During rush hours, the transport is, of course, filled with passengers, but not like ours - like herrings in a can. Canadians protect their personal space and do not violate someone else’s. Therefore, the bus is considered full if passengers begin to touch each other with their sleeves! In this case, people simply do not enter the salon anymore and calmly wait for the next bus.
The conditions created in Toronto for cyclists.
There are special lanes on the central streets where only cyclists, taxis and buses can travel. Stopping in such lanes is also dangerous.
IN Lately In Toronto, another advantage is being introduced for cyclists - at traffic lights they are given a place in front of other cars. And this is explained with the help of special shields.
That’s why there are a lot of bicycles in the city, unusually many.
Bicycles are “parked” everywhere!
There are special posts along the roads to which two bicycles can be tied.
And if there are no posts, then the “steel horses” are simply tied to trees.
There are also such bicycles.
And this is not a wheel that was stolen. Take a closer look, this is a real unicycle!
And even the police ride bikes!
And in Toronto, you can often find bicycle stations like this.
This company, Bixi, founded in 2008 in Montreal, has expanded its activities to many countries around the world, offering for a few dollars to move around the city, picking up a bicycle at one station and leaving it at another. Bixi's Toronto arsenal currently has 80 stations and 1,000 bicycles.
There are many on the streets elderly and disabled people. Unlike ours, they do not sit locked up at home, but participate in the life of the city. They travel mainly in large cars, while wealthy pensioners have small carts in which they travel along sidewalks and shops.
All sidewalks in the area of street intersections smoothly decrease to the level of the pavement, thereby allowing cyclists and wheelchair users to ride freely on roads and sidewalks.
Why is the girl here? Roll your gaze down the girl and see a smooth transition from the sidewalk to the pavement.
Each store or eatery also has a gently sloping entrance for wheelchairs, in store parking lots there are always several spaces for disabled people, which no one occupies.
The buses have access for wheelchairs and special equipment. places where they can be secured so that they do not roll around the cabin while driving. I was extremely surprised to see how, at the request of an elderly person (not a disabled person!) the bus “sat down”, i.e. dropped to the level of the sidewalk, grandfather entered, the bus rose to normal level above the ground and drove off.
In downtown Toronto there are pedestrian crossings with sound signals for the blind and their guide dogs. When it is allowed to move in one direction - some whistles, when in a perpendicular direction - others.
In Canada it is customary to separate garbage into several types and dispose of them separately. Therefore, on the streets of Toronto you can find not only the familiar large trash cans, on which it is written what to throw away where, but also special bins with three holes for various types of garbage.
One hole for waste that can be recycled (paper, plastic), one for bottles, one for other waste. By the way, Canadians also throw out garbage at home, sorting it: one for recycling, the second for organic waste, and the third for everything else.
In general, Toronto is a fairly clean city, there is almost no garbage on the streets. Rarely, but somewhere in the corner you come across crumpled paper cups from coffee or an abandoned plastic bottle from under Coca-Cola.
There are practically no MAFs familiar to us on the streets of Toronto. But in some especially busy places, sandwiches are still available: in stalls like this...
or special vehicles.
And a few more pictures from the streets of Toronto:
- these two-story mansions (several families live in them and they are called townhouses) stand literally on the neighboring blocks with downtown skyscrapers,
And here is shawarma, but in a more civilized form,
Double decker sightseeing bus
Fire engine,
These are the kind of trucks used to transport furniture when moving,
Cool three-wheeled cars,
Motorbike true admirer Christ.
Two words about mobile communications In Canada. It works here to slightly different standards than in Ukraine and Russia. For example, not GSM-900 or GSM-1800 (like ours), but GSM-850 or GSM-1900. Keep this in mind when choosing which phone to take with you to Canada.
In conclusion, another point that I drew attention to: when large quantities Cars in Toronto don't smell exhaust fumes at all. I took a special sniff while walking through the very center, crowded with cars. Probably, the high quality of gasoline and modern engines have an effect. But the negative thing I can say about downtown is that due to the tall skyscrapers, little sunlight hits the streets - you can’t sunbathe here...
No... This is not Rio de Janeiro.
Toronto began to surprise me from the first minutes of our stay in this multicultural capital North America. Modernity and backwardness, cleanliness and dirty gateways, the pulsating rhythm of life and the desolation of “dormitory” areas, sameness and diversity, unpredictability and surprises. Toronto continues to amaze me to this day, after living there for a year and a half. What is 19 months of living in a metropolis? Nothing. There is still so much to learn, study, discover. And this makes me happy, because I know for sure that I will not be disappointed. This may not be the city of my dreams, but it is definitely a city in which it is very interesting and comfortable to live, so I will live here for now... Ideally, it would be to talk about every trip, every walk, of which we take a lot, but I don’t have enough time or letters on the keyboard, so I have to quickly talk about this and that. Just look, and I’ll get enough of a pseudo-guidebook - in my old age I’ll be leading tours around the city of my first emigration...
01.
The glorious city of Toronto has a tall TV tower, several soulless skyscrapers, a couple of TimHortons cafes and a monument to Lesya Ukrainka in the center of the largest city park. There is, for example, an interesting park with sandy beaches, observation decks, picnic areas and white cliffs. The eastern part of Toronto's shoreline is known as Scarborough Bluffs- a geological miracle of Canada - a fault that demonstrates to a double-study geologist the delights of sandy-clayey rocks native to ice age.
02.
Geologists can correct me if they know how to more correctly translate the beautiful term escarpment into Russian, but I will continue to use the word “fault”. So, this fault stretches across the territory of the glorious city of Toronto for 14 km, highest point fault - 65 meters above Ontario level. About 70 thousand years ago, when I was still a sixty-nine thousand nine hundred and sixty-eight year old boy, this excavation was the shoreline of an ancient glacial lake.
03.
I suspect that for some time archaeologists happily dug into these 70,000-year-old rocks and found the remains of 70,000-year-old worms and snail-saurs, but then capitalists came and began to build their dachas and summer houses around and along the fault. Sand and clay are not the most reliable construction material, I certainly wouldn’t build a house on the edge of such a cliff. In the mid-20th century, Toronto residents came to their senses and banned construction, taking this geological reserve under protection. But several home owners by that time had already become active participants in house slides and avalanches. From latest news- in August 2008, another landslide undermined the foundation under one of the houses.
04.
The rift rocks, of course, are not really rocks, and they are not white at all, but gray-blue. Dark gray when they get wet, blue when they reflect the sky and cold water Lake Ontario.
05.
Its name is Scarborough Bluffs received in honor of the English city of Scarborough in Yorkshire, coastline which consists of chalk rocks. It was them that the English Colonel John Simcoe recalled while walking with his wife around the city of York he had just founded, which would later be renamed Toronto.
06.
Kilometers of walking routes will not let either a beginner or an experienced tourist get bored - beautiful views and nature, all this within the city, 10 minutes from its center.
07.
There is a beautiful park and a wonderful bay, the water in which is quite cold. There is a yacht club nearby: yachts, boats, catamarans, jet skis - life does not stand still.
08.
In general, who would have thought that sun, waves, sand, seagulls - this is all about Toronto. Although, wait, wait, I haven’t shown photos from the Toronto Islands yet - that’s where the resort is!
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By the way, these places are actively used by surfers to conquer the waves. Yes, yes, Lake Ontario in windy autumn weather can produce quite high and angry waves. Skating, skiing, bicycles, roller skating, football, tennis, squash, basketball, baseball, hockey, curling and wind and non-wind surfing - name me one type of sports activity that cannot be done in Toronto...
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This is the city of Toronto, today it is the city of White Rocks.
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It's a creepy city, there are no girls, no one plays cards. Yesterday I stole a silver spoon in a tavern, no one even noticed.
©film "Formula of Love"
P.S. There are rocks, but where is the city? The city is right there, right behind the rocks, where residential areas and the highway immediately begin.
Here overall plan. A - city center, city hall. B - Scarborough Bluffs. The distance between A and B is 13 km.
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