Tag: Winter

Categories
City Life

Pikachu Lamborghini

Bloor Street West in front of Holt Renfrew

This is a followup to my previous post which featured a photograph of a tent on the Mink Mile, with its juxtaposition of conspicuous wealth and extreme poverty. I was walking along the same stretch of road during an ice storm when I saw twenty-something shoppers exit Holt Renfrew while a valet pulled to the curb in their bright yellow Pikachu Lamborghini. In light of the fact that a two minute walk to the south will take you to multiple shelters and community hubs while a five minute walk to the west will take you to a soup kitchen, I find moments like this obscene. And on this particular day, when an ice storm produced hazardous driving conditions, the moment descended from obscenity to idiocy.

It came as a surprise to me to discover that not everyone shares my worldview. At the time I made the photo, I posted it on Twitter, and unlike my usual practice, I poked the hornet’s nest (which, it turns out, is the only way you get any traffic on that or any platform). I wrote: “Trust brats take their Pikachu Lamborghini out for a spin in an ice storm.” A sample of the comments that came back:

“brats” just because of their choice of car in this weather? smh. #CheckYourselfBeforeYouWreckYourself

Wow, the comments on here. Some people obviously are VERY wealthy. It happens, and good for them. I LOVE Pikachu #Pokemon

Haters gonna hate

Some comments were more neutral, observing that a Lamborghini has all wheel drive and a low centre of gravity so handles well in adverse weather. Not really on point but, hey, this is social media.

There is something missing from the thread, perhaps because it’s difficult for people to identify what isn’t represented in a photograph but nevertheless present. In this case, what isn’t represented but nevertheless present, is the great horde of the exploited which necessarily hovers in the shadows just beyond the light that shines on conspicuous wealth. If you squint your eyes and look a little more closely, you will see it.

Categories
Country Life

Snow-covered railway tracks in Thunder Bay

Rail marshalling yard, Hardisty Street, Thunder Bay, Ontario

In Thunder Bay, the railway tracks come up alongside Hardisty Street North which is where I was standing when I made this shot. I was struck by the high contrast of white ground, dark rails running to the horizon, and dark utility pole set off against a gloomy sky. When I was done making the shot, I collapsed my tripod, strapped it to my pack, and walked over to Simpson Street. I was heading down to the Fort William side of town.

Because of the light, I made a lot of good photos that morning. Perhaps the most memorable photo was nothing special, at least not from a photographic point of view. I saw what I took to be a small derelict theatre and, without looking too closely, assumed that somebody had bought the building and converted it into a retail space. It wasn’t until after I made my shot that I noticed it was the local Hells Angels club house. I quickened my pace and hoped nobody had been watching me. I worried that if they saw my camera, they might think I was from a law enforcement agency. I’d vanish and people would later find my body in a boxcar off Hardisty Street.

As happens to so many buildings in Thunder Bay, somebody torched the Hells Angels club house almost exactly two years after I made this shot. The CBC article says the cause of the fire was unknown, but come on. This is the Hells Angels we’re talking about.

When I heard about the fire, my lawyer brain immediately wondered if the Hells Angels had insured the place. Given their efforts in recent years to carry on legitimate business enterprises, I don’t see why not. Even so, I tried to imagine the first time an insurance broker met with a Hells Angels rep to discuss insuring their place of business. How would an actuary even begin to go about evaluating potential risk?

Finally, I note that the street address is a fractional number, like the platform where aspiring wizards catch the train to Hogwarts. It seems that fractional numbers lead us into magical realms where we can alter our reality by eating gillyweed or shooting heroin.

Hells Angels Club House, Thunder Bay, ON
636 1/2 Simpson Street, Thunder Bay, ON
Categories
City Life

How many words for snow are there and who cares?

Leaping over slush at the intersection of Yonge & Dundas, Toronto

According to they (as in: “they say”), there are 52 different words for snow in the Inuktitut language. Always, “they” trot out this fact as evidence for a linguistic observation that we tend to develop our vocabulary according to our need. If we are Inuit, snow is important to our lives and so we develop a more nuanced account of snow.

If, on the other hand, we live in Toronto, where urbanization has changed the local climate into an urban heat island, snow doesn’t really dominate our lives anymore. People outside Toronto tend to think our vocabulary has developed more nuance in describing financial instruments and ways to flip real estate investments. As for snow, if the temperature is below freezing, we call it fucking snow. If the temperature is above freezing, we call it fucking slush. That’s about as far as our vocabulary goes.

As for the 52 different Inuktitut words, it turns out “they” were just making shit up. In fact, there are only a dozen Inuktitut words for snow and another ten for ice. For example, qinu is the word for “slushy ice by the sea” and fucking qinu is the word for “fucking slushy ice by the sea.”

Categories
Country Life

Winter Scenes: Snowmobiling in Rural Ontario

Elliiott Side Road, Wybridge, ON

This is a recent photograph, shot while walking on a Sunday morning along Elliott Side Road near Midland, ON. It’s in Tay Township which got its name exactly 200 years ago when Lady Sarah Maitland, wife of then Governor General of Upper Canada, General Sir Peregrine Maitland, thought it would be cute to name some towns after her pet dogs. Now, besides Tay, people race their snowmobiles through Tiny and Flos. Before the English, it was the French who laid claim to the region. Like most colonizing enterprises, it was the Bible that led the way. In 1639, Jesuits established a mission that lasted all of 10 years when Iroquois decided they’d had enough and killed them all. Before the Jesuits, the land had been occupied for nearly 10,000 years by the Wendat-Huron people.

The first time I rode on a snowmobile, I was all of four or five. My grandfather had sold his farm south of London, retaining just enough land that he could make a good run from the road to the woods and back on what I presume was an expression of his midlife crisis. Why else would a man in his mid-fifties buy a snowmobile? When I visited in the wintertime, he’d take me for a little spin. My parents raised me as a city boy, so I’ve had little contact with snowmobiles since then. Whatever crisis my grandfather had suffered quickly subsided and his snowmobile gathered dust under a tarp for a few years until he sold it to a neighbour.

Except for indigenous people who live in remote communities, I don’t understand why anyone would need a snowmobile. Every year, we hear fresh stories of people decapitated running under fence wires or sinking through the ice as they make their last run of the season out to the fishing hut. People answer that they’re perfectly safe if you drive them sensibly. But the whole point of a snowmobile is to drive fast; nobody in a midlife crisis wants to drive sensibly. The fact that my grandfather survived his midlife crisis is more a case of god playing dice with the universe than sound planning on my grandfather’s part.

So there I am, a city boy out for a walk with my camera, when several groupings of snowmobiles come roaring down the road in quick succession. My brother-in-law, who lives there, explains that they pay a $300 fee for a permit. Among other things, that permit gets them nicely groomed trails and, implicitly, the assurance that there are no low wires hanging across those trails.

Categories
Street Photography

Winter Scenes: Skating in Nathan Phillips Square

Couple kissing at Nathan Phillips Square

I was standing on the observation deck above the snack bar at Nathan Phillips Square. The marshals had cleared the ice so the zamboni could come out. Most people were bored and wished the zamboni would hurry up so they could get back to skating. But not everyone. At least one couple found a way to pass the time as the zamboni traced its loops around the rink. The woman pulled back, looked up, and saw me with my camera trained on them. She smiled then tapped her partner on the shoulder. He turned and together they waved at me. By then, the zamboni had turned and was making its way to the far end of the rink.

It wasn’t until I was at home processing my day’s captures that I noticed the tagline on the zamboni: “The Passion That Unites Us All.” I’m amazed at how the gods of photography contrive to lend a little something extra to so many of my photos. I couldn’t have timed this shot better if I had tried.

As for the tagline … I’m not sure what I feel for the Toronto Maple Leafs. Although one of the most valuable franchises in the NHL (ranked #2 in 2021 at US $1.8 B), it hasn’t won the Stanley Cup since 1967 and routinely doesn’t even make it to the playoffs. It’s an infuriating club: no matter how badly it does, the fans display an unshakeable loyalty. The club/fan relationship is like one of those increasingly rare relationships that sticks it out no matter what.

Maybe that’s what lies behind the tagline: the passion that unites us all is not a passion for winning but a passion for honouring marriage vows (or whatever the sports equivalent is) for better or worse. As for this couple, who can say what unites them? However, I think it’s heartening they can find ways to pass the time that don’t involve whipping out iPhones and taking selfies.

Couple kissing at Nathan Phillips Square
Categories
Landscape Photography

February Photography Series: Winter Scenes

Tree in Blowing Snow, Wyebridge, ON

For the month of February, I’ll be presenting a series of photographs featuring winter scenes. Fitting given that, at least in the northern hemisphere, February tends to be the most wintery month of the year. Fitting, too, given that I’m Canadian and winter is intimately bound to the Canadian identity. Urban, rural, people, landscape, macro, sport, wildlife, anything goes so long as it’s obvious from the image that I shot it in the wintertime.

To kick off this series, I offer a landscape image, tree trunk in the foreground of a snow-covered field, line of trees in the background. Blowing snow adds an atmospheric effect. Whenever I’m out in blowing snow, I wrap my camera in a plastic zip lock bag with a little hole cut out for the view finder. Basically a camera condom for extra protection. When the weather gets extreme, I have a fancier “official” condom made from thick clear plastic. It’s like the difference between Saran Wrap and a Trojan.

As with virtually every landscape image I’ve ever made, I used a tripod for this one. However, I’ve discovered something interesting about using a tripod in snow. The guy who sold me my fancy Manfrotto carbon fiber tripod told me it would be the last tripod I’d ever own, implying that the materials are virtually indestructible. Guess what? I found a way to destroy a carbon fiber tripod.

Not far from the site of this image, I drove the legs of my tripod into a snowbank and the legs splayed, driven outward by a layer of ice hidden under a light dusting of snow. I heard a crack and one of the legs went wonky. On examination, I discovered that, no, you can’t crack a carbon fiber tripod transversely like a broken leg, but if you jam it just right, you can crack it lengthwise in line with the fibers.

Incidentally, I don’t want to be taken as dissing Manfrotto products. I immediately went out and replaced my tripod with another Manfrotto. However, don’t believe anyone who tells you carbon fiber is indestructible.

Categories
Street Portrait

Winter Street Portrait

On Monday (Jan 17th), the skies opened up and dumped 33cm of snow on Toronto. Because the city tends to be a heat island, it doesn’t usually get much snow. Not since 1999 when mayor Mel Lastman called in the army have we had such a heap of the white stuff. Although a storm can be disruptive, if it isn’t too destructive, it can be a positive event. As I found on Monday, people were cheerful. It gave us something in common to talk about that wasn’t pandemic related. People smiled and—always a plus from a street portrait point of view—they were happy to pose for photos.

I was crossing Dundas when I noticed a camera raised and pointed in my direction. When I got to the other side of the street, I said: “Surely, you could find a more interesting subject than me.” He said: “Don’t call me Shirley.” No he didn’t. That’s silly. What he really said was that he didn’t actually take my photo because, as he was framing the shot, he noticed the camera slung around my neck. He doesn’t need photos of other photographers.

It’s a minor matter and nothing really hangs on it, but I disagree with his concern about shooting photographers. Given today’s prevalence of cameras, especially now that smartphones are delivering images of a reasonably high quality, I think it’s important to document what strikes me as a significant cultural shift. In about 1930, my grandmother paid $3 to buy a Kodak Eastman Box Brownie. She was a teenager then, and like teenagers of any age, she wanted to be in on this new thing. I’m sure if she could, she would have used it to take selfies. She might have shot a couple hundred photos when she bought it and virtually all of them are lost, but she contributed to the several millions of photos that people made that year. She proved to be an early participant in an exponential rise that will see people in 2022 collectively shoot an estimated 1.7 trillion photos. The sheer volume in play today suggests that this is something worth investigating.

In any event, I have no scruples about shooting people who carry cameras around their neck. Besides, I’m in close enough here that you can’t see the camera in any event.

Categories
City Life

How do you pronounce Toronto?

Construction Crew, Toronto

One of the things I love about Toronto is that a majority of the people living here weren’t born in Canada. What’s more, a majority of the people living here identify as belonging to a visible minority. That means there are huge opportunities for personal and cultural enrichment. If I let people in, they can shake me from my complacency and show me fresh ways to engage the world around me. This is a gift.

As a middle-aged white male who was born here, I acknowledge that bias inevitably creeps into my impressions of Toronto’s multicultural life. For example, I tend to regard Toronto as a place which, relative to other places, puts far less pressure on newcomers to conform to some hegemonic view of local culture. Then again, as I’ve never been a newcomer, I could be mistaken.

However, there is one matter which demands absolute conformity. If you want to claim you’re from here, you have to pronounce the name of this place without the second “T”. Nobody is from Toronto. We are from Trawna. I don’t know why. That’s just the way it is. You can find a good example of this in the hit song by The Kings, The Beat Goes On/Switchin’ to Glide. There, they rhyme Trawna with wanna and Donna.

Another way to pronounce Toronto is “construction.”

Categories
Public Art

Larry Sefton Memorial

Larry Sefton Memorial, by Jerome Markson

Typically, I avoid shooting a work of public art if all I’m doing is documenting its existence. That feels parasitic. I should leave the work alone to do whatever it’s supposed to do, whether that means interact with its environment or with the people who encounter it. But there are times when I feel drawn into conversation with a work, as I did when I approached this arrangement of girders by the architect Jerome Markson. There was something about the falling snow and the red wall behind it that lent it a something more. I met it in a fleeting moment that would vanish when the snow melted and the sun came out to cast shadows across the scene. There was a surplus in this moment.