Bethany @MacBarbie07 meetup in #Toronto

YouTube sensation Bethany Mota hosted a meet and greet at the Aeropostale store in the @TOeatoncentre and there were a few gazillion fans waiting in line on Monday, August 26, 2013.

Beth is "a teenage girl who makes videos for da youtube. Check 'em out for fashion, beauty, vlogs, DIYs, and more! Vlog Channel: Bethanyslife".

#Toronto Comic Festival Cosplay 2013

There were more people than usual walking around in costume lately. Several joined the Buskerfest crowd and posed with impressed festival attendees.

Fire Finale at #Toronto Buskerfest 2013

A ball of flame shoots high into the sky during the Saturday, August 24 crowd pleasing fire extravaganza at the Scotiabank @BuskerfestTO. A consortium of fire performers get together ahead of time to discuss and plan the night's exciting show, the the show goes on and even the Sauruses get into the act.

See more flames and juggling after the jump.

#Toronto Scotiabank Buskerfest 2013

OMG I love @BuskerfestTO! The official opening of the street performer festival began at noon today as the Fire Guy hosted the launch event at Yonge-Dundas Square in Toronto. Mayor Rob Ford’s assistant presented a plaque to the Scotiabank rep, yada, yada, then it was right into exciting performances that presented just a small group of the festival’s over 100 buskers. The event runs from Thursday, August 22 to Sunday, 25 at Yonge Street just around the Toronto Eaton Centre. Three giant beasts called Sauruses wandered the square, meeting and sometimes scaring the visitors as they brought their long necks and heads down to the people. See photos of the Fire Finale on my post here.

Expect to see some Toronto favourites like Silver Elvis and Kate Mior, while performers from around the world descend on our city from places like Sweden (Charlie Caper), Australia/UK (Dream State Circus – last year’s People’s Choice winners), Netherlands (Lisa Lottie: Bend it like Barbie) and even Quebec (Catwall Acrobats: Teeter-board Act, photo at top). The big change this year is the move from the St Lawrence Market area to smack dab in the middle of downtown.

Seb Whipits

Bring some donations in Support of Epilepsy Toronto and some change to reward the hard working and entertaining performers.

Sauruses

Lisa Lottie

Seb getting onto his unicycle with the help of the Fire Guy

Seb and his flaming whips

Please note that the city will have some street closures for BuskerFest from Thursday to Sunday (Aug 22-25, 2013):
- Yonge Street from Queen Street to Gerrard Street will be closed from Thursday, August 22 at 6:15 p.m. to Sunday, August 25 at 11:59 p.m.
- Yonge Street will be closed from Gerrard Street to College Street from Saturday, August 24 at 9 a.m. to Sunday, August 25 at 11:59 p.m.
- Other road closures on local streets including Victoria Street, Gould Street, Edward Street and Elm Street will take place from Thursday, August 22 to Sunday, August 25 to accommodate BuskerFest.

Catwall in the air

Dream State Circus

Silver Elvis

See my video of the creatures below

See more fun after the jump.

Yellow Brick Road to Ryerson

Dorothy must be getting a higher education because the yellow brick road seems to lead to the Yonge and Gould Street campus of Ryerson University. You don't get a heart or courage - you get a brain!

Tomorrow I look for the cowardly lion

School year is just around the corner and Ryerson University will soon begin Orientation and the Week of Welcome. "From Aug. 25 to Sept. 2, Orientation welcomes new students to campus and provides an opportunity to make new friends and learn about everything Ryerson has to offer. The Week of Welcome, Sept. 3-6, picks up from there, allowing returning students to ease into the school year and reacquaint themselves with classmates. Below are some highlights of what to expect those first two weeks and tips on how to make the school year a success. Visit http://studentlife.ryerson.ca for a full orientation schedule andwww.weekofwelcome.ca for further information about the Week of Welcome."

Zombies will soon walk again in #Toronto!

Bloody footprints mark the path of the 2013 @TOZombieWalk walk which takes place Saturday, October 26. The horrible creatures will begin to shuffle into Nathan Phillips Square at noon, enjoy some pre-march entertainment, watch the 3 pm tossing of the severed head and the hunt for brains during the 3-5 pm Zombie Walk and Halloween Parade. Enjoy blood and guts with more entertainment after the horde heads back to Nathan Phillips Square.

The undead will move from Toronto City Hall, north on Bay Street, east on Grenville (just north of College), south on Yonge past the Eaton Centre, a short shuffle west on Queen Street and back to Nathan Phillips Square. You can see the map here.

You are responsible for your own corpse leads off the walk's three code of conduct rules, second is respect other's personal space - no special mauling rights given to zombies and/or monsters. Finally, respect other people's property - eat brains but leave no marks behind.

Schedule for Scotiabank Nuit Blanche 2013

The all-night contemporary art event is returning to #Toronto on Saturday, October 5 with over 110 art projects spread throughout the city. Beginning at 6:51 pm and continuing in the night until sunrise on Sunday morning the event promises some unusual art and almost a million people wandering the city giddy with excitement and a sense of adventure. I will also keep an eye out for the anti-nuit blanche Les rues Des Refuses and hope that they return with more than just the Renegade Rave Parade which became part of the official Nuit Blanche schedule in 2012. Active participation by so many in the community really does transform the streets of Toronto for one night.

"Scotiabank Nuit Blanche is a collaboration of the City of Toronto, the art communities, corporate sponsors and hundreds of volunteers who believe in the success of the event year after year," said Councillor Gary Crawford (Ward 36 Scarborough Southwest). "By making contemporary art available to a mass audience, the city comes alive and we all benefit."

A number of projects will continue on display beyond the one night of Nuit Blanche this year. Also new this year are free, themed Nuit Talks which look at behind the scenes at some of the artists and their artwork and the 1inspired Night art installation featuring videos and photos projected onto a 50 foot canopy of screens displaying Nuit Blanche exhibits. Check out the project’s at the Scotiabank’s Nuit Blanche website (http://www.scotiabanknuitblanche.ca/2013-event/project-index.html). I will go through the list and check out some of my must see projects.

From Toronto’s news release: The City-produced component of the event will feature three curated exhibitions.

1. Off to a flying start
An exhibition curated by Ami Barak, an independent curator and lecturer at the Paris Sorbonne University, "Off to a flying start" celebrates the centenary of artist Marcel Duchamp's first ready-made art installation. This exhibition at Toronto City Hall/Nathan Phillips Square brings the ready-made art found in galleries and museums back to the streets.

Highlights:
- Nathan Phillips Square will feature artist Ai Weiwei's "Forever Bicycles" sculpture. This complex and abstract installation, consisting of 3,144 bicycles, is the largest edition of this work to date. This installation is the only version of the art work to be displayed in an open air, public space
- Melik Ohanian's "El Agua de Niebla" installation increases the scale of the traditional hammock exponentially, creating a strange collective territory suspended above city streets
- Alain DeClercq's "Crash Cars" performance piece takes two cars, representative of wealth and power, and sets them on a 12-hour trajectory without drivers.
- Faith LaRocque's “Air of Paris” is a scent installation that invites visitors to take an olfactory journey to Paris in 1919.
- The basement of City Hall is home to a live freeform performance by shopping bags in the installation "Hysteria Coordinating" by Sherry Hay.
- "VSVSVS" will answer the audience's question: Is this art? People will be invited to call "1-855-IS IT ART" for insights, answers and possibly more questions.

2. PARADE
Patrick Macaulay, head of Visual Arts at Harbourfront Centre, curates an exhibition called PARADE. The format is archetypal, the route is set, the floats are complete, but unlike a conventional parade, the audience becomes the procession. PARADE will be situated along University Avenue from Queen Street West extending north to Charles Street West.

Highlights:
- John Dickson's kinetic sound sculpture "Music Box" is an absurd mechanical contraption that creates frenetic musical noise in joyful response to the carnival-like atmosphere of the event.
- Idea Tank Design Collective's light installation "Parallax" uses light to articulate movement creating an optical illusion for the audience to experience.
- "Rumbling Drumlins" by AGATHOM Co. is an installation that poses questions about the haphazard nature of the built environment.
- "A Quack Cure" by Lisa Hirmer as DodoLab is a performance piece bringing to life a troupe of otherwise-extinct creatures for a night of revelry.
- In Margaux Williamson's "How to See in the Dark," experience why the darkness is so important and why it needs to be saved.

3. Romancing the Anthropocene
Curated by Ivan Jurakic, Director/Curator at the University of Waterloo Art Gallery, Waterloo, and Crystal Mowry, Curator of Collections and Exhibitions, Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, present Romancing the Anthropocene. This exhibition, on King Street from Yonge Street to John Street, acknowledges the triumph of science and human achievement but also suggests a cautionary message about the destruction of natural habitat.

Highlights
- "The Anthropocene" by Caledonia Dance Curry, also known as Swoon, is street art in the form of life-sized, cut-paper portraits inspired by both the physical space and the surrounding community.
- Charles Stankievech's "The Soniferous Æther of the Land Beyond the Land Beyond" is a 35-mm film that was shot in the northernmost settlement on earth. It looks at remote outpost architecture, military infrastructure and the embedded landscape.
- Brendan Fernandes' "Night Shift" is a durational performance inspired by Le Ballet de la Nuit, a 12-hour court ballet where Louis XIV performed the title role of the Sun King. The work has been re-contextualized into a contemporary dance performance.
- Kelly Richardson's "Mariner 9" presents a life-size, panoramic view of a Martian landscape set hundreds of years in the future, littered with the rusting remains from various missions to the planet.
- "Tanks" by Cal Lane juxtaposes industrial materials with domestic elements in sculpture by combining opposing extremes of lace and steel recycled into heraldic emblems of a lost industrial age.

Community-produced Independent Projects
The community-produced portion of Scotiabank Nuit Blanche 2013 will feature 67 projects created by cultural and educational institutions, neighbourhoods and individual artists. The projects expand the boundaries of the event and showcase the diversity of Toronto’s art community.

The BATA Shoe Museum, the Gardiner Museum and the AGO along with 401 Richmond , the Gladstone Hotel, TIFF Bell Lightbox, Artscape at Daniels Spectrum in Regent Park and Wychwood Barns and many more organizations are hosting important projects in their unique venues. Entire neighbourhoods including St Clair West, Queen West and the Distillery District will feature multiple installations by local artists.

Back at the Badlands

Cheltenham Badlands that is. A few trees have begun the change of colour as we come into the fall season. For now though most trees remain green, lush with leaves that will not feel the cold chill of autumn weather for at least a few more weeks. Until then the countryside around Belfountain and Caledon remains relatively under appreciated by tourists as they await the coming of bright splashes of orange, yellow and red.

Once upon a time the Olde Base Line Road, west of Hurontario Street, leading to the Badlands was a narrow, two-lane country road with little available parking, much like most of the area still surrounding the natural wonder - the countryside is beautiful, you just can't stop and visit most of it. Now the road has been widened, with large SLOW signs painted onto the road which is smart because the winding and hilly roadway adjacent to the bare slopes becomes full of cars and people heading over to the rolling hills.

The warm weather bakes the Queenstone Shale in the hot, dry sun cracking some of the exposed surfaces. Red shale is interspersed with grey, green streaks of shale whose colour has been changed due to the influence of groundwater. Small, rolling hills are cut into the slope by the effects of rain. Erosion changes the face of the Orange Hills of Caledon as time goes on, so that much like the Queen Street bridge over the Don River the Badlands I saw months ago is not the Badlands I see today.

Under the management of the Bruce Trail Association and owned by the Ontario Heritage Federation since the year 2000 this site is doomed to feel both the gaze and the footsteps of the thousands of visitors that walk the site. The Association and the Federation may feel that they have no choice but to fence off the site.

Relaxing in Roundhouse Park

This urban oasis used to be surrounded by railway tracks that serviced all the locomotives that passed by #Toronto Union Station, now it is shaded by beautiful trees and is home to a tiny, little railway, a craft brewery and a furniture store. I was amused to see that even Steam Whistle Brewing lets out the occasional steam whistle.

The water tower is painted in the green and white colours of the brewery

Around the rail turntable are several locomotives and rail cars remembering the past and you can always catch a ride on the TR miniature railway.

"Roundhouse Park was created in 1997 on top of the southern expansion of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. The park features the original, fully restored and operational 120-foot long locomotive turntable and a carefully chosen collection of full-sized railway equipment. It is home to the Toronto Railway Historical Association live steam miniature railway and other outdoor exhibits illustrating Toronto's railway heritage. Exhibits include the original 60,000-gallon water tower, the 650-ton concrete locomotive coaling tower and a collection of historic buildings, including the Don Station and Cabin D."

Across the road the finishing touches are being put on the Ripley's Aquarium of Canada, slated to open later in September 2013, while across the road you have a nice vista of Rogers Centre and the CN Tower, towards the NE you can see the rising condos and office towers of the centre core.

Locomotive 6213 - ready for another run

#ReebokONE Fitness App and Instructor Network Canadian launch

@ReebokCanada introduced their innovative social app for fitness professionals at the #Toronto @canfitpro Consumer Fitness and Wellness Show 2013. Reebok Canada VP Michael Rossi joined with Canadian Fitness Ambassador Tommy Europe to show the computer app which they are positioning to become the premiere destination for fitness professionals 'Earn More. Learn More. Do More. Become More'.

Tommy Europe, Fredrica from Reebok Global and Michael Rossi at the lauch on Friday, August 16, 2013

Reebok's goal is simple; become the #1 fitness brand in the world and inspire people to join in and become active at least four times a week. Their growth will be based on three pillars - product, partnership and community. The products will also be developed with users in mind and with their input. The computer program Reebok ONE will allow education, inspiration and inspiration between professionals as well as an easy way for clients and fans to follow the pro's and visit and order from their online stores. Even now, early into the launch they have over 6,000 members online.

Tommy's page

Fitness Ambassador Tommy Europe has joined the network and notes that Reebok ONE is a seamless tool that helps people grow their business and brand. The former Canadian Football League player also likes the member discounts on merchandise.

Alicia Bell with Michael

Alicia Bell is another fitness professional I met at the show and she just started with the app and has already begun building her profile and highlighting her personal brand Train It Right on the new social networking program.

@CanFitPro Consumer Fitness & Wellness Show 2013

Fitness professionals celebrate 20 years of the canfitpro member-driven organization with the August 14-18, 2013 International Fitness and Club Business Conference and Trade Show along with the Consumer Fitness & Wellness Show. Sport competition, fitness training, exercise equipment and workout clothing are just some of the exhibits on right now in the south building of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.

Riding the waves without the fear of Shark Week with Surfset

Motivating the class during spin training

Jillian Michaels (BODYSHRED) was the show's keynote speaker providing insight into unlocking your unlimited potential and the weekend events include over 400 educational sessions, over 200 world class presenters and over 225,000 square feet on the trade show floor - you need a lot of room when your membership has almost 100,000 members. More than 225 companies joined to showcase their products and services to the attending fitness enthusiasts and professionals. 

Canfitpro is Canada's largest fitness certification organization and offers education to both the professional and the enthusiast. This exhibition is the world's largest combined fitness conference and trade show in the world. It was hard to keep track of how many types of exercises were represented at the show - yoga, pilates, kickboxing, zumba, cycling, etc along with all the equipment that you could purchase from stationary bikes to step machines, kettlebells and upside down Yoga rigs. Reebok ONE also took advantage of the exhibition for the Canadian launch of their new social app for Fitness Professionals.

People signed the big earth ball

Big blue Reebok exercise balls

Treadmill VW van

'Train not to suck at life' and an upside down 'This is my handstand shirt'

A giant hall was set up for the SWEAT RX Championships

Canadian 67 beer samples

Some well loved kettlebells

The closing ceremonies sponsored by Reebok are scheduled for Sunday, August 18 starting at 11:45 am.