Posts Tagged ‘trinity bellwoods park’
[PHOTO] Six photos from Trinity Bellwoods Park, on a COVID-19 Saturday evening (#trinitybellwoods)
I got to Trinity Bellwoods Park yesterday evening after 7:30, after the peak crowd blanketing the lawn that had made social media earlier that day. I only dipped to the north side of the street to take the photos; the crowds were concentrated on the northern side of the park, but there were still crowds.
We are fucked. Toronto is going to have a second wave.
[PHOTO] Ten photos of Queen Street West, Yonge west to Dufferin
Early Thursday afternoon, I took an extended walk west along ‘a href=Èhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Street_(Toronto)#Yonge_to_University”>Queen Street from Yonge towards Dufferin. Spring is here, but it is not here just yet; the grass is green but the trees have not yet sprouted new leaves. Can it really be only two weeks until the first cherry blossoms appear?
[PHOTO] Eight photos of the Sakura of Trinity Bellwoods Park, May 2018
This post sharing eight of my favourite photos of the sakura of Trinity Bellwoods Park from last month might be late, but the beauty remains.
[PHOTO] Ten photos of Trinity Bellwoods Park (#trinitybellwoods)
I took ten photos of Trinity Bellwoods Park early on the afternoon of the 10th of May, walking south from Dundas Street West south towards the cherry blossoms by Queen West, The park was vivifying, becoming ever greener almost with every step I took.
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[URBAN NOTE] Five links about Toronto neighbourhoods, past and present and future
You’ll never have to spend 20 minutes trying to find your friend in Trinity-Bellwoods Park again.
New York-based cartographer (and former Toronto Star employee) William Davis loves Toronto, and so he knows this is one of the city’s great summer frustrations. It’s because of the geographically complicated, but very popular park, that he and Tom Weatherburn made an interactive map for Torontonians to share their location.
All users need to do is drag and drop a “here” pin on a map of the park. It can be accessed for free at the MapTO website, a personal project with Weatherburn that features quirky and interesting maps on a variety of city subjects.
The Trinity-Bellwoods map is overlaid with easy-to-read icons, including a dog at the dog bowl, a baseball at the baseball diamond, and beer mugs where people like to hang out.
Half of Toronto Community Housing developments will be in “critical” condition in the next five years without additional funding for repairs, according to an internal database provided to the Star.
Already, the data shows more than 30 social-housing properties are in serious disrepair. Of 364 developments — which include houses and groupings of low-rise buildings and towers — 222 developments are ranked in “poor” condition, with dozens edging on critical condition, based on a standard ranking used by the housing corporation.
Those critical sites are homes for more than 3,000 individuals and families.
The data shows a pervasive problem at a time when the city is grappling with how to keep thousands of units open with a $1.73-billion funding gap.
Of the 364 developments, more than 100 were offloaded onto the city by the province more than a decade and a half ago without money needed to cover the repairs. Of the buildings in the critical and poor categories, more than a third were downloaded by the province.
Those affected by the lack of rent controls left young professionals, like reporter Shannon Martin, with no option but to turn to more extreme alternatives, such as couch-surfing.
Young people seeking more reliable housing options are turning to co-op housing—at least, those lucky enough to get a unit.
Toronto renter Donald Robert moved into Cabbagetown’s Diane Frankling Co-operative Homes in September 2016 and speaks highly of his experience.
Robert pays $1,300 for a large two-bedroom unit with access to an underground parking and a small gym, almost $500 cheaper than the average one-bedroom unit in Toronto. Robert explains that, “the best part though has been the community here. Everybody says ‘hi.’”
If you try to imagine your way back into the early 20th century streets and laneways of The Ward — the dense immigrant enclave razed to make way for Toronto’s City Hall — you might pick up the sounds of newsies and peddlers hawking their wares, the clanging of the area’s junk and lumber yards, and shrieking children playing on the Elizabeth Street playground north of Dundas.
Those streets would also reverberate day and night with a jumble of languages — Italian, Yiddish, Chinese. The dialects and accents of these newcomers were considered to be not only “foreign,” but also proof (to the keepers of Toronto’s Anglo-Saxon morality) of the area’s worrisome social and physical failings.
But despite the fact that many mainstream Torontonians saw The Ward as an impoverished blight on the face of the city, the neighbourhood resonated with energy and culture and music — evidence of the resilience of the stigmatized newcomers who settled there in waves from the late 19th century onward.
Photographers recorded fiddle players and organ grinders with their hurdy gurdies, playing as mesmerized children listened. After their shifts ended, one 1914 account noted, labourers whiled away their free times playing mandolins or concertinas as they sang rags and the Neapolitan songs so popular at the time.
“When sleep in crowded rooms seems all but impossible,” journalist Emily Weaver observed in The Globe and Mail in 1910, “the people of ‘The Ward’ are astir till all hours, and the Italians amuse themselves by singing in their rich sweet voices the songs of their far-away homelands or dancing their native dances to the music of a mandolin or guitar in the open roadway beneath the stars.”
As the mother of a 16-month-old boy, Michelle Usprech is looking to leave the Financial District where it’s just “suits and suits and suits,” for a more family friendly vibe, and she’s got her eye on Leslieville.
But one of Toronto’s most family-friendly neighbourhoods may be a victim of its own success as signs from the Toronto District School Board have cropped up, warning parents in Leslieville their children may not be able to attend their local school because of possible overcrowding, school board spokesperson Ryan Bird confirmed.
Those signs warn that “due to residential growth, sufficient accommodation may not be available for all students,” despite the school board making “every effort to accommodate students at local schools.”
[. . .]
It’s a concern for some parents, including Kerry Sharpe, who lives in Leslieville and has a four-month-old daughter named Eisla.
“It’s still early days for me,” she said, but, “it is a concern. Even daycare, that’s hard to get into, so I don’t see it getting any better.”
[PHOTO] Eight photos of sakura from Trinity Bellwoods Park, Toronto
Yesterday afternoon, I had the good fortune to take a stroll through Toronto’s Trinity Bellwoods Park on what was arguably the first day of the year. In that park, adjacent to Queen Street, are a couple dozen cherry trees. Much younger than the ones in High Park and by Robarts Library, these were in full glorious bloom when I saw them.
[URBAN NOTE] “Finally – free WiFi in Toronto is coming to Queen West”
Michelle Da Silva’s brief article in NOW Toronto notes that Queen Street West in Toronto will finally get some free public WiFi–indeed, already has it. Now for the rest of Toronto to follow suit!
Accessing free WiFi in Toronto can often mean ducking into a McDonalds, Starbucks or other fastfood chains. In “world class” cities, such as Tel Aviv, New York City, Seoul, Barcelona, Bangalore and Osaka, free Internet access is readily available everywhere.
The neighbourhood of West Queen West is hoping to change that. Starting February 23, anyone walking along Queen West between Niagara and Markham streets will be able to access free WiFi by logging onto FREE WQW WI-FI.
The service is being offered by the West Queen West BIA and Besify, a Markham-based Internet firm. This stretch of Queen West marks the first phase of a project. Rob Sysak, executive director of the WQW BIA, says that phase two of the project, which includes Queen West between Gladstone and Dovercourt, will launch in March.
[URBAN NOTE] “Sold! How to make $900K on a Toronto house flip”
blogTO’s Derek Flack looks at how a house downtown, in the area of Trinity Bellwoods, managed to rise in price by almost a million dollars between its listing in June of last year and its sale now.
Every week in Toronto it seems like a handful of homes sell for so far over asking that you wonder if the world’s gone mad or if real estate agents aren’t relying on under-listing properties even more frequently than before given the intense seller’s market it the city.
This isn’t, however, the only way to get a sense for just how high demand is in Toronto right now. In fact, it’s better to track a property that’s hit the market multiple times in a relatively short time span to get a sense for how hot things have got.
Case in point, this house at 40 Beaconsfield Ave. The Mash has tracked this one for a while, and for good reason. It hit the market last June for $1,490,000, ultimately selling for $1,700,000 just over two weeks later.
Shortly thereafter, its neighbour at 38 Beaconsfield sold for $2,096,000. Well, you know what happened next. The thought that #40 could be moved for more cash crossed someone’s mind, and it was given interior renovations before being listed at $2,450,000 this month.
A Bit More Detail 