Toronto Through My Lens

Month: August 2025

Sally, The White Elephant

On the front lawn of a house located at 77 Yarmouth Road in the Christie Street-Dupont Street area, there sits a life-sized white elephant sculpture. Why, you might ask?

The sculpture was created in 1999 by Matt Donovan as part of his student thesis project at Ontario College of Art and Design. The sculpture has a fibreglass and chicken wire body, coated with spray foam over a plywood skeleton. The pachyderm, named Sally (for reasons unknown), stands nine and a half feet tall. Apparently the sculpture originally included a bronze red herring and a flock of life-size concrete black sheep.

In 2003, Sally was given to James Lawson, a friend of Matt Donovan. Thereafter, Sally was placed in front of Lawson’s home, where she has been standing for the past two decades:

Graffiti Alley West

Many people are familiar with Graffiti Alley in the Queen Street West area, near Spadina Avenue. In recent years a second Graffiti Alley has sprung up, this one a little further west from the original. Graffiti Alley West is one block south of Queen Street West like the original, but instead runs between Niagara Street and Tecumseth Street, further west in the city.

I had heard about Graffiti Alley West, and decided I’d like to check it out. It turned out to be a little more rough and ready than Graffiti Alley, less polished and very “downtown back alley”, on the verge of being sketchy. There was some great art there, nevertheless:

AND…

Toronto Chinatown Festival 2025

It just wouldn’t be summer in Toronto without the street festivals. Pretty much any weekend from June to September there is a festival happening in the city, sometimes two or three events on the same weekend.

The Toronto Chinatown Festival is an annual tradition recently celebrated on Spadina Avenue between Sullivan Street and St. Andrew Street. This year, the Toronto Chinatown Festival  celebrated its 25th anniversary, with an abundance of multi-cultural street food, cultural performances and the occasional dragon dance.

I’ve always loved the Chinatown Festival – it’s such a joyous celebration of sound, food, music, colour and cultural diversity in our city:

I didn’t catch her name, but this singer had an amazingly delicate, yet powerful, voice:

This mannequin in the red jumpsuit was kind of freaky…
The CN Tower looms over the Chinatown dragons. These Spadina Avenue dragons form a gateway to Toronto’s Chinatown neighbourhood. They were designed to form the Mandarin character for “gate”.
Waiting for the call, literally: This lady was waiting backstage for her queue to go on. What else to do but check one’s Instagram feed, I guess?

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