[PHOTO] “Deeds Speak” (#oldtoronto, #yorkcounty)

The Toronto Plaque website explains the significance of this sculpture, located [i]n front of the parking garage of the building on the east side of Berti Street just north of Richmond Street East”, quoting its 2010 Heritage Toronto plaque. Here’s what it says:

The adjacent York County Coat of Arms and the female figure inside the entrance once adorned the York County Registry Office, formerly located on this site. Commissioned by the County in 1941, the sculptural reliefs were created by Jacobine Jones, a leader in the field of architectural sculpture, who later became the Director of Sculpture at the Ontario College of Art. These sculptures remained with the building when the County left this site in the mid-1960s. Before demolition of the old building in 2008, the sculptures were removed. They were reinstalled on the present building in 2010.

“Deeds Speak” was the motto of the 3rd Regiment of York Militia, and has survived the liquidation of old York County to remain the motto of York Regional Police.

Wikipedia’s article on Jacobine Jones provides a convenient overview of the life of this sculptor, most active in the mid-20th century.

[PHOTO] Boundary helix, Church and Wellesley

[URBAN NOTE] Seven Toronto links: #DoorsOpenTO, Eglinton Crosstown, Lake Ontario, public art

• Transit Toronto notes that both the Eglinton Crosstown yards and Lower Bay station were open this weekend past for Doors Open. I got to see both!
• Urban Toronto looks at the newly revealed Eglinton Crosstown vehicles.
• blogTO observes the rapid flooding faced not only by the Toronto Islands but by the waterfront generally.
• blogTO reports on the exciting possibility of a ferry connecting Etobicoke, at Humber Bay Shores, to the downtown.
• Building a linear park over the subway trench between Davisville and Eglinton stations in midtown Toronto is an idea that appeals to me. blogTO reports.
• NOW Toronto reports on a slew of original coffee shops around Toronto, including a laundromat hybrid on Dufferin.
• Urban Toronto celebrates the Ron Arad sculpture Safe Hands at One Bloor East.

[PHOTO] Abraham Etungat, Bird of Spring

This casting of Bird of Spring by Inuit sculptor Abraham Etungat, known for his sculptures of birds with wings upswept, is a casting made in bronze from his original carving. Blogger Bill Andersen noted in 2016 that this particular casting is one of several made of the original “Bird of Spring”, produced by a foundation that wanted to spread Canadian art across the country. Ryerson University’s casting has at least two siblings, one bronze in Halifax and another bronze in Vancouver, with still another fibreglass copy in Calgary’s Connaught Park. NeaTO has a 2016 post going into more detail about the history of this particular casting.

[PHOTO] Four photos of The Water Molecule, Niagara Falls (#niagarafalls)

I do not know why The Water Molecule, a 1967 sculpture by Derek Costello of a water molecule down to the nuclei and electrons, was ever apparently controversial. I am glad that it is in a public space, poised in the Rosberg Family Park just a couple of blocks south of the bus and train stations on Erie Street at Queen, visible to at least some visitors.

<

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: homelessness, Port Lands, housing, Winter Stations, Cracked Wheat

• There will be a new shelter for homeless youth in Scarborough soon, capable of housing several dozen people. CBC reports.
• Christopher Hume at the Toronto Star suggests that much of the controversy, at least, over Google’s plans in the Port Lands is misjudged.
• Tess Kalinowski at the Toronto Star shares some locally new ideas for increasing housing supply.
• Winter Stations is back this winter at Ashbridge’s Bay! Global News reports.
• Sarah Ratzlaff at Spacing interviews sculptor Shary Boyle about her new work, Cracked Wheat, on display in front of the Gardiner Museum.

[PHOTO] Quatro (1991), by night

The mobile Quatro, made of stainless steel by William B. Martin in 1991, hangs above the escalators connecting to the Queen subway station in the lobby of One Queen Street East, at the corner of Yonge and Queen. John Warkentin’s 2010 book Creating Memory: A Guide to Outdoor Public Sculpture in Toronto goes into detail about this work, about how its brilliant rings of steel reflect the light at this street corner. Compare this photo taken during the day and at a different angle.

//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

[PHOTO] Flight Stop, Michael Snow

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• Centauri Dreams considers, in the light of potential climate change extinction, the definitions of habitable exoplanets. Do we assume life to be too flexible?
• D-Brief notes that the Dawn probe found evidence of organic compounds, amorphous carbon, on the surface of Ceres.
• Lauren Madden at the Everyday Sociology Blog urges people to resist the impulse to misclassify the causes of mass shootings as senseless randomness.
• Hornet Stories takes a look at Jobriath, the man who for a brief time in the mid-1970s was an out queer rock god, on what would have been his birthday.
• Imageo notes that anthropogenic climate change risks plunging the global climate back to the heat and high sea levels of 50 million years ago, to the Eocene.
• JSTOR Daily notes how the fairy tale stereotype of the passive female character was created by moral reformers following the Protestant Reformation.
• Language Hat notes the Ao language, created by utopian early 20th century dreamers from Lithuania’s Jewish community as a universal method of communication.
• Mark Liberman at Language Log notes the emergence and evolution of the word “biomarker” over the past half-century.
• Simon Balto at Lawyers, Guns and Money writes about a frightening encounter on a night out with his partner with an aggressive person who kept calling him a “snowflake”. What does this, the embrace of this word as a supposed critique, say about racism and conservatism in the United States now?
• The LRB Blog notes the prosecution of the Stansted 15 for blocking a deportation of refugees on terrorism. What does this say about the administration of justice and borders in the United Kingdom now?
• Marginal Revolution notes that, in China, scientists convicted of fraud will face serious hits to their social credit ratings.
• The NYR Daily takes a look at the “toxic femininity” of women on the American far right.
• Roads and Kingdoms looks at the struggle of Mayan peoples in Guatemala to secure their land claims in the face of commercial agriculture.
• Daniel Little at Understanding Society takes a look at how government enacts policy, not doing so as a unified whole at all.
• Window on Eurasia notes the deep hostility of Lukashenko in Belarus to any talk of deep integration with Russia, something he sees as tantamount to Belarus’ annexation into Russia.
• Arnold Zwicky takes a look at the remarkable steel-banded sculpture of Fernando Suárez Reguera, and of sculptors like him.

[PHOTO] Illuminated, Yonge and Dundas