Month: August 2009

Exploring Toronto Island

I’d had enough of my laptop and late afternoon boarded the ferry over to Toronto Island. There are three ferries with three different drop-off points; I chose Hanlan’s figuring I’d start on the right of the island and work my way left.

august 13 2009

Of the three my ferry was the most budget, the others you sit inside on seats.  It drops you off right by Porter Airlines.

That’s as close as you can get to the airport.  And there on the right is the now-demolished ‘Hanlan’s Point Stadium’ which the airport is built on top of.  Back in 1910-ish it was the largest baseball stadium in North America; it held 17 000 people and it was here that Babe Ruth hit his first professional home run.  There was an amusement park and hotels and the whole place was the ‘Coney Island of Canada‘ (click that link, it looked amazing).

The baseball team ‘The Maple Leafs’ (we know them as a hockey team now, weird eh) played there until 1925 when they moved to the mainland and the whole place was deleted.

Also here is the Hanlan’s Point Beach, one of only two clothing-optional beaches in Canada; the other is Wreck Beach in Vancouver.  What’s even neater to me is that you can swim in one of the largest cities in North America. 

I biked over to Centreville then and it is very Keri-ish there.  Carnival games, funnel cakes, cheesy rides I’m barely tall enough to ride.  They have a zoo too, look:


When that peacock put his feathers up he was taller than I am.  And that pig was enormus, like the size of a small car.  I didn’t think pigs got so big.  When I was looking at the pig I thought, “I wonder if someone in their past life was all, “oh please life, make me famous, I want people to stand around and stare at me in awe” and they just weren’t specific enough in their wishes and so life gave them exactly that and they came back as a pig that people like me stand and stare at.

I ran out of time and didn’t make it to the last third of the island, so I’ll have to go back.  And bring my blazer because I wanna explore the RCYC, the exclusive 157 year old yacht club. I’ll also have to bring a dress because they enforce a dress code.

Took the Centreville ferry back when… my Blackberry broke.  It was covered in error messages then just shut down.  So no photos from what I found on my ride home which was:

– an exciting display of giant photographs of CDN images at Harbourfront Centre
– Tom was back hanging with Charlie.  He’d been in the hospital and I was glad to see him looking good and gave him the hug I’d promised
– there is a privately-owned boat so big it has a helicopter landing pad, parked right by the H2O Park that is freaking everyone out.   

A Bike Ride with Jody

We did our usual route and we were going so fast into the wind I had to scream to have my stories be heard.  All while this jogger amazingly kept up with us.  Guess I should call him a runner then:  

Me: You can run very fast
Him: You guys are great pace setters
Me: Ya and I feel like you’re getting a good girly-conversation, too
Him: Oh noooo, I’m just running
Me: Sure sure.  Well it’s about to get juicy so you best pick up the pace

august 12 2009

The new throughfare is open, so you can stay along the path instead of going through Ontario Place.  Bottom left are the logos they painted along the way in addition to their slogan, “Welcome to our new Blue Edge”.  I do not get that.  I quite like that fan.

In the middle is me and that giant Inunnguaq along Lakeshore Blvd.  Did you think it was called an Inukshuk?  Ya so did I, till I researched before linking it up.

An Inukshuk is a man-made landmark invented by our Inuit and Arctic people to serve as markers for navigation, points of reference, find food and good hunting here (see one here).  An Inunnguag is similar in structure but looks more like a human, that’s the difference (see one here).

Over 100 Inukshuks are on Baffin Island, the most in one place and therefore a National Historic Site.  It’s also on the Nunavut flag and is one of our mascots for next year’s Olympics.  The biggest one in the world is in Schoemberg, Ontario, see it here.  I’m going to build them everywhere during my big trip. 

That’s my point-of-view of my bike, then my bike’s point-of-view of me, Keri-Moon-Face. Today is the first day I’ve worn shorts in ’09.  

Lastly, as I linked up all the stuff above I see that 90% of the time they’re called ‘Inukshuks’ and not the more correct ‘Inunnguag’ so I’m going to call them the former even if that’s technically wrong because I think it’s better to get your point across than be linguistically correct sometimes.  Holy run-on sentence.