One of my favourite Toronto park moments is the allée of silver maples that cuts north-south through Dovercourt Park in the west end. The park is half-way between Dufferin Street and Dovercourt Road, and half-way beween Bloor Street West and Dupont Street. If coming along Shanly Street one block south, you look north up Salem Avenue and are treated to the allée continuing the line of the street through the park.

Apart from the lack of strong formal elements in most Toronto Parks (especially allées), this park is additionally special in that it is a park along the lines of the real English “square”. It is surrounded by small residential streets on all sides, and it is larger than most of the other Toronto “squares”. It successfully works as a whole where so many others dissolve into a collection of uncomfortable uses. The allée also brilliantly divides the park into an open field on the west side (laid out for baseball – I think unfortunately), and a series of more discreet uses on the east side, including a kids playground, a community centre, and tennis courts. If there was a wrought-iron fence around it and the baseball field was just an open field, it could almost be an English “square”.

Unfortunately, the silver maples are (as are so many of Toronto’s majestic Acer saccharinum) reaching the end of their life span. There are gaps in the allée already, and the City has started replanting the missing trees (though bizarrely, by my eye, they are not placing them along the line of the centres of the existing trees, but along their forward edge – very disappointing).

Sometimes simple spaces work best. Many of our new parks, such as the Central Park in the West Railway Lands (Concord Adex Park), or Wychwood Carbarns Park, will be so crammed full of programme, there’s no room for simple space and a grand idea. I can’t help think that we’ve lost something along the way with our busy-body urbanism.

I am pleased to report that the ringless bike posts along Dundas Street West east of Keele that I described last week have been re-ringed (well, a lonely two are still ringless, but it’s an improvement). It’s good to know that the City’s services are capable of working this fast when they’ve been made aware.

All credit should go to Matt Blackett over at the spacing wire who saw fit to give the orignial incident widespread exposure (see here) and then Dylan Reid who followed up with contact information to get the problem fixed (see here).

By the way, the cafe opposite McBride’s Motorbike shop I mentioned in the original post is called “Cool Hand of the Girl”. Give it a try. The Agora cafe a few blocks west of Keele is also a good bet.

I stumbled across an energetically created hopscotch “board” on the sidewalk of Delaware Avenue north of College. The tireless kids got up past number 450 before petering out. I must say, that would be one hell of a workout to play! Unfortunately it rained briefly on Friday night and the “board” was gone by Saturday. Urban ephemera make for beautiful urban moments.

I know it’s old news. But it still boggles the mind. Toronto’s new waste and recycling receptacles are too big for the old inner city neighbourhoods. It’s rare enough to have a nice clear and wide sidewalk along many streets what with newspaper boxes, advertising sandwich boards, tree planters and all the rest of the streetscape paraphenalia. The last thing we need is a giant perpendicular garbage billboard taking up half of a sidewalk. Just look at the photo (taken at the corner of Ossington and Dundas) – it is actually taking up half the sidewalk!

And as for revenue, in the receptacle in this picture both sides have ads advocating recycling which I sincerely hope the City didn’t have to pay for – but of course, since this network of multi-tasking billboards are run for profit, you can bet those recycling ads won’t last for long.

I like to think that these abominations won’t either.

Edit: the spacing wire just answered my question (see here).

There’s a whole stretch of Dundas Street West, east of Keele Street, where all the Bicycle posts have lost their rings. It’s quite curious. Have they been stolen? Is it vandalism? Is there an official reason behind it? With summer fast approaching and fairweather cyclists snapping up all the available lock-up space, I don’t like to see unusable bike posts.

And here we have the ultimate combination – the ringless bike post next to the cut off stump of a poor little failed street tree. Toronto’s uplifting streetscape in the flesh!

FYI – there’s a cool new coffee shop with excellent fair trade organic coffee right around here – just across the street from McBride’s motorcycle shop (before you grimace, let me tell you it was $1.50 and was a great cup of coffee – organic milk and cream as well). As a matter of fact, the whole area’s hopping these days. Having grown up in the Junction, I’m pretty happy with the way things are going.

While you’re in the area check out Pandemonium, a great used book shop at Keele and Dundas – or if you can make it further west, the refined The Book Exchange stocks only very good condition used books – but don’t go by their website, it’s the pits.