Toronto Through My Lens

Tag: BloorStE

Prepping For Pride

Pride Weekend in Toronto is soon upon us. In preparation, this month an explosion of rainbows and inclusion messages from local business and merchants have been appearing in the downtown core. Here’s some of what I’ve come across in the last few weeks:

Eaton Centre

Rogers Headquarters, 333 Bloor Street East

Manulife Head Office, 250 Bloor Street East

OrangeTheory Fitness, 160 Bloor Street East

160 Bloor Street East

175 Bloor Street East

Circle K, 121 Bloor Street East

The Chartered Professional Accountants of Ontario (CPA)

RBC, 2 Bloor Street East

Holt Renfrew, 50 Bloor Street West

TD Canada Trust

A Pride Chicken at Nandos, 832 Bay Street

Ontario Nurses’ Association, 85 Grenville Street

Pride Bicycle Lock, Church Street

LCBO

Rexall, Church & Wellesley Streets

Scotiabank, Yonge & Wellesley Streets

Shopper’s Drug Mart, Yonge & Charles Streets

Jack Astor’s, Yonge & Bloor Streets

Toronto Public Library, Yorkville Branch

The Wine Rack, Church & Wellesley Streets

Dudley’s Hardware, Church Street

And, of course, the epicentre of it all:
the corner of Church & Wellesley Streets

Happy Pride Everyone!

Christmas Lights: Rosedale & Bloor Street East

Finding a few dry moments from the incessant rain of late, I took a little spin last night to see some of the Christmas lights in Rosedale and on Bloor Street East.

Rosedale

The owners of this Rosedale home went to some *serious* effort to recreate The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, along with a miniature Whoville:

Moving on to Bloor Street East:

Allegedly, there are 138 lit Christmas trees along Bloor Street this Christmas; I never stopped to count…

“Community”

This bronze artwork, by sculptor Kirk Newman, is located between the two Manulife Financial buildings at 200 and 250 Bloor Street East. The piece consists of twenty-one life-size figures, representing a cross-section of those who typically work and live in Toronto.

Commissioned by Manulife, the sculpture was completed in June 2001.

“Community” in the wintertime

“Safe Hands”

Sitting in front of the 76-storey tower One Bloor East (1 Bloor Street East) is a sculpture everyone calls “the oil cans”, and it’s easy to see why. Designed by Israeli-born, UK-based designer and architect Ron Arad, the installation is actually called Safe Hands. It stems from the City’s One Percent for Public Art Program, which mandates that 1% of project costs of building a condo/new highrise must go towards public art that is clearly visible at all times from publicly accessible areas.

The sculpture consists of a pair of intertwined stainless steel multi-jointed fingers with ruffled surfaces in spots, and flashes of bright yellow and red where sections end. Rising 88 feet high, the sculpture was designed by Ron Arad, and produced locally by Stephen Richards of Streamliner Fabrication Inc.

Originally planned as a dynamic sculpture with moving upper sections, the piece was redesigned as static when logistics proved too onerous (and likely too expensive to fix should it have broken at some point). The piece evokes a feeling of motion, which I’m sure was the intent of the sculptor’s design.

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