Some Queens Quay boat tours have started in Toronto

Water taxis and some tour ships are underway in Toronto's harbour getting an early start on the pre-summer weekend fun. Toronto ferries are running on the winter schedule still, those party-poopers. City Experiences by Hornblower had the Oriole out on Lake Ontario over the past weekend.

Some of the boats are still waiting for warmer temps like Toronto Harbour Tours Inc (May 1), Kajama Tall Ship Tours (May 4), City Sightseeing Toronto (May 11)

Here are some links to some of the boat tour companies: 

www.empiresandy.com
www.piratelife.ca
www.empressofcanada.com
www.torontocruises.com
www.torontoyachts.com/
www.jubileequeencruises.ca
www.pioneercruises.com

looking towards the Kajama

Festival of Cool at Harbourfront Centre

Site Alive Winter Edition is on at Toronto's Harbourfront Centre which is a bright light in the times of Covid. The programming includes the Festival of Cool by the Harbourfront Centre and the Waterfront BIA from 10am to 10pm - January 15 to February 7, 2021 and don't forget to follow the safety protocols.

From Harbourfront's website, "Dear 2021, please be gentle. While there are still restrictions and a lockdown happening in Toronto, it's important to stay home and stay safe, but that doesn't mean enjoying life is canceled. There is still lots happening on the waterfront from amazing restaurants you can take out or delivery from, deals and discounts and even a light exhibit for when you go out for some fresh air and exercise. The illuminated public art was installed to bring light to the waterfront during a challenging time. Harbourfront Centre security staff will be on-site to ensure health and safety protocols are followed, in accordance with the advice and guidelines of Toronto Public Health."

'Iceberg' in South Exhibition Common

"Iceberg is a playful, immersive work made up of a series of illuminated metallic arches that tell the story of an iceberg. Visitors “warm up” the ice monuments to create a visual and auditory symphony.
Creation and execution: ATOMIC3 and APPAREIL
Architecture in collaboration with Jean-Sébastien Côté and Philippe Jean
A production of the Quartier des Spectacles Partnership, created for the 3rd edition of Luminothérapie, Montreal, 2012."

'Sonic Runway' along the Boardwalk

"The Sonic Runway is a light-art installation that converts audio signals into patterns of light, shooting down a corridor of LED-lined arches more than 100-metres long at the speed of sound.
Creators: Rob Jensen, Warren Trezevant
Tour producer: Creos
Music: Classic Roots"

Power Plant Contemporary Gallery is free for 2020

The tall, branded smokestack marks the location of the gallery at Toronto's Harbourfront. BMO Financial Group has made it possible for the gallery to have free admission for all of 2020. Once an actual power plant for the Toronto Terminal Warehouse, now known as Queen's Quay Terminal, the building was converted into an art gallery in 1987 that exhibits contemporary art along with other talks and events.

Dawit L. Petros - Spazio Disponibile  (25 January - 10 May 2020)

From the Power Plant's website; "The Art Gallery at Harbourfront (operating as The Power Plant) is Canada’s leading non-collecting, public art gallery dedicated exclusively to contemporary visual art from Canada and the world. Governed by its board of directors, The Power Plant serves a strong network of community stakeholders and is a registered Canadian charitable organization, supported by its members, sponsors, donors, and funding bodies at all levels of government."

Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa - Asymmetries (25 January - 10 May 2020)

The address is 231 Queens Quay West and here are the operating hours: Tuesday–Wednesday 10 – 5 PM, Thursday 10 – 8 PM, Friday–Sunday 10 – 5 PM. *Open holiday Mondays 10 – 5 PM.  Next door to the gallery is Harbourfront Centre and the Natrel outdoor rink so the area is a must visit if you are in Toronto.

The view of the Power Plant from the CN Tower

Navy deployment in Great Lakes

Canadian Armed Forces HMCS St. John's docked down at Corus Quay over the weekend and is available for tours until October 30, 2019 when it departs at 10am. The ship is in Toronto Harbour beside Sugar Beach as part of this year's Great Lakes Deployment which runs until November 13.

St. John's has traveled through the St. Lawrence Seaway and into the Great Lakes and will stop at several ports along the way, beginning with Windsor, holding shipboard tours and career fairs so visitors can see what opportunities are available as a sailor in the Royal Canadian Navy.

They even brought some friends from the army along

Next stop for the Halifax-class warship is Kingston, then onto Montreal, Quebec City and finally Sept-Iles.

Safety Orange Swimmers in Toronto

SOS by A+J Art+Design of Boston have created a floating art installation at Harbour Square Park along the inner harbour. 25 orange torsos cling to inner tubes, three more than during their first showing in 2016. The polyurethane foam figures change direction according to the wind and currents, mostly pointing in the same direction, anchored to the lake bottom.

They are made to evoke refugees searching for freedom and safety and each one represents approximately one million refugees in the world.

Budweiser Clydesdale team in Toronto

The majestic draft horses of the Budweiser brewery are in Toronto over the weekend, part of a promotion for their new beer - Copper Lager. On Friday they were at Union Station and along King Street, today they were at the LCBO Queen's Quay and tomorrow they will be at the Historic Distillery District (noon to 2pm).

The pilots were dressed in suits of green and their copilot was a cute dalmatian puppy.

Winter Stations Ice Breakers 2019

Harbourfront's Waterfront BIA has brought back the winter time art installations along Queens Quay West in Toronto, presented by PortsToronto. Five new creations were selected from over 100 Canadian and international proposals and placed between Lower Simcoe Street and Lower Spadina Avenue. This year's theme of "Signal Transmission" inspired these Ice Breakers which are on display starting January 19th and and running until February 25th. Sadly, a replacement for the big, red teddy bear from 2017 did not materialize. You can also see last years outdoor art installations on my post here; Ice Breakers 2018.

The five pieces are placed from east to west are The Connector, Tripix, Stellar Spectra, Chroma Key Protest and Tweeta-Gate. The four winning exhibitions were chosen by jury; two from international teams (Tweeta-Gate and Connector) and two from local groups (Chroma Key Protest and Stellar Spectra) while Tripix is a student contribution from Ryerson University.

The Stellar Spectra tubular exhibit built into the bridge's sight-seeing overhangs. 

Looking through the entrance portal of Stellar Spectra towards Chroma Key Protest

Stellar Spectra by Rob Shostak and Dionisios Vriniotis (Toronto, Canada) looks like a matched set of icy sentry posts guarding the cold waters of Lake Ontario. Made of white plastic pipe built into a circle and if you go inside the structure and look up, you can see the bright colours of the filters hopefully lit up by sunshine (see photo at top). 

The Queens Quay temporary art installations overlap with the other Winter Stations competition that takes place in The Beaches starting on Family Day, February 18th - here is my post of the 2017 Beaches installations. The stated goal of the works are to bring visitors back to the waterfront during the cold, winter months. From the Waterfront BIA website; “As a sponsor of Ice Breakers, PortsToronto is supporting an initiative that brings colour, warmth, and activity to the water’s edge, inviting people out of their buildings to take a winter walk along the Waterfront and appreciate Toronto’s unique landscape at this time of year,” said Deborah Wilson, Vice-President, Communications and Public Affairs, PortsToronto. “We are thrilled to once again support this art exhibition and look forward to seeing the 2019 winning installations further brighten the city’s lively winter waterfront.”

Chroma Key Protest

Chroma Key Protest by Andrew Edmundson of Solve Architects Inc. (Toronto, Canada) is made of 25 chromakey green placards held in place by steel buoys and arms. The are supposed to resemble a group of protesters holding signs.

Tripix

Tripix by Ryerson University (Toronto, Canada) looks like a rather large, three-legged spider. It features kaleidoscopic effects within the interior of the sculpture. You are supposed to take pictures through the funnel-like openings, something I of course missed.

“Signal Transmission may be approached as an exploration of data, digital and analog communication, including the various modes and codes involved; it may also veer into the realm of biology, ecology and sociology. Simply, Signal Transmission is about how humans and other species speak – to each other and to our self, internally,” says Justin Ridgeway, another Winter Station co-founder who is also responsible for the competition brief each year.

Tweeta-Gate by Eleni Papadimitriou and Stefanos Ziras of Space Oddity Studios SOS (Athens, Greece) consists of walkway framed by yellow gates of various shapes depicting different architectural styles. Occasionally you can find tiny bells mounted to the sides of the gates so it sounds like little notifications.

The Connector by Alexandra Griess and Jorel Heid (Hamburg, Germany) is a disc covered with a spaghetti-type arrangement of flexible, black corrugated pipe. They pipes are supposed to be colourful and are shown as orange on the website, however they are very much just plain black. The tubes are hollow and can conduct sound so if someone talks into one tube, someone else can travel around the base until they hear that voice - a soupcan-string type of early communication installation. It could also represent the cut off snake-haired head of Medusa.

See more photos of the installations after the jump.

Toronto Music Garden at night

The winter is cruel to the waterfront in winter, no one wants to freeze their asses off while watching ice in the water bob along to the waves. Only hardcore runners still make the journey along the path beside the waters edge and bikers risk their balance when snow and ice makes the day treacherous. But a couple things make the journey worth while - Winter at Ontario Place, the upcoming art installation Ice Breakers along Queens Quay and the Toronto Music Garden park.

Okay I was riding along the pathway in December, in the evening, cause I am crazy as well and I came upon the lights of the Music Garden. Illuminated musical notes hang from the gazebo as the purple and white harps follow along the curving pathways. The lights are part of the Spectacle of Lights stretching from the garden park to the spiral tree at the Westin Harbour Castle Hotel. The display is on from November to April.

The music garden is a great place to enjoy a summer day along the water. "This delightful garden — a reflection in landscape of Bach's Suite No. 1 in G Major for unaccompanied cello, BWV 1007 — was designed by internationally renowned cellist Yo Yo Ma and landscape designer Julie Moir Messervy, in collaboration with landscape architects from the City of Toronto's Parks and Recreation department. Two Canadian artists created special features for the Music Garden: Tom Tollefson, architectural blacksmith, fabricated the Music Pavilion; and Anne Roberts, Feir Mill Design Inc., designed the Maypole."

Putting the H20 into HTO Park

The increased water levels in Lake Ontario aren't only affecting the Toronto Islands they have impacted harbourfront along Queens Quay. So far the water has closed off part of the urban beach HTO Park and brought the waves onto the wave decks. If it keeps going, by my terrible calculations, it should be up to the observation deck of the CN Tower soon (I will recheck my numbers later).

The Spadina Wavedeck

You can also find some Tiki Taxi's parked in the docks as most of their business has dried up with the closing of the Toronto Islands to all but residents of Ward's Island. The Canoe and Kayak club doesn't have to use a ramp anymore, the dock is level with the concrete wharf. Unfortunately the rain is still in the forecast.

See more moist pictures after the jump.