Canada – Page 35

Old wooden fences

February 23, 2008 by Tricia

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Photo Theme. Visit participants.

This weeks theme is Wooden

A few years ago when Chris and I were traveling back and forth from Toronto to Ottawa we stopped several times to take photos of the beautiful scenery. It was the middle of July and the fields were full of wild flowers and wild grasses and the air just smelled heavenly.

I love these old wooden fences. If I ever were to purchase a property in the country I think I’d try to build a fence that looked a bit like this. Obviously it wouldn’t have much purpose, but I’d enjoy the look of it. I’d plant wild flowers, heather and perhaps lavender around the fence.

Do you enjoy the look of old fences and maybe even old barns?

A great Toronto search engine

February 17, 2008 by Tricia

I’ve found a great site to search for all things Toronto for those of you who live or who are visiting this great city. The site is called Toronto Major League Search and it’s easy and handy to use.

Say you need a cab and can’t remember the number for the cab company that you normally use, just go to Toronto Major League search and type in taxi or the name of the cab company and a results page will come up. You’ll likely be able to find the cab company that you’re searching for with a simple search such as this.

When you do a search you can also specify a location. For example I live in a part of the Toronto known as The Danforth so I did a search for Restaurants and I wrote The Danforth in the location area. This brought up about 6 pages of restaurant results. The various restaurant locations were shown on a medium sized Google map with the restaurant listings to the right of the Google map.

I did find that I got better results with my searches when I was more specific. For example I decided to search for Greek restaurants on Danforth Ave and more of the restaurant results seems to be on Danforth.

I do like that the site is tied in with Google maps. It’s nice to be able to see where something that you’ve searched for its located. It will save a lot of time in deciding which location to give my business to if I can pick one out easily that’s close to where I am.

Just like most search engines you can search for pretty much anything. give it a try and see if you find Toronto Major League Search helpful too.

Oh and if you know of a great business that should be listed on the site you can submit it using the link at the bottom of each page.

Open up! It’s cold out here!

February 13, 2008 by Tricia

Wordless Wednesday

Aw … the deer want in!

If it keeps snowing here the way it has we’ll probably start to see deer wandering around! Honestly. We’re in the process of getting about 30 more centimeters of snow here in Toronto and those of us with small lawns literally have no place left to put the snow. We might also have an ice storm too. Oh goody.

I posted this photo of the snow almost as high as our car last week on one of my other blogs after last weeks snow storm and now the snow is piled higher than our car. I really can’t lift the snow much higher and when I do try it just starts to slide off. This is getting crazy! Apparently we’ve already reached or passed the February record for snow at our airport and we aren’t even half way through the month! This is certainly a snow year around here!

I wonder if any market research studies have been done about how this much snow affects people and their shopping habits! I’m sure a lot of shovels and snow blowers were purchased here in Toronto this month.

I’ll have to try to take a photo of our puppy trying to climb up the mound of snow on our lawn. She sinks into it right up to her neck. Still … she insists on climbing it so that she can do her business. It’s pretty funny.If you’ve been wondering where I’ve been the last couple of days I’ve either been hiding indoors since it’s been getting to -30 Celsius (-22 F) with the windchill – and when you’ve got a constant fever that’s really not much fun, or else I’ve been outside shoveling!

So did the Groundhog see it’s shadow this year?

February 2, 2008 by Tricia

Well, here in Ontario one of our most famous groundhogs, Wiarton Willie, failed to see his shadow.

Do you know what that means folks? It’s going to be an early spring. Well, if you believe this whole groundhog shadow thing I mean.

Nova Scotia’s Shubenacadie Sam also failed to see his shadow so it looks like a good portion of Canada will get an early spring. However, Pennsylvania’s Punxsutawney Phil did see his shadow. So which groundhog should we believe? I’m going with good ‘ol Wiarton Willie.

So what lies behind our February 2nd groundhog ritual?

It’s thought that when German settlers came to North America in the 1700’s they brought their tradition of Candelmas. February 2nd is the midpoint between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox and according to legend if the weather was good on that day the rest of the winter would be cold and stormy.

I guess this is kind of like our March legend eh? If March comes in like a Lamb it goes out like a Lion or vise versa. Of course that means if March begins with nice weather it will end with bad winter storms.

Of course, like quite a few other traditions or holidays Groundhog day became commercialized. It all started when the Punxsutawney Spirit newspaper editor, Clymer Freas – don’t you love that name? – came up with the idea in 1886. It became quite popular and that’s why Pennsylvania now has it’s famous Punxsutawney Phil.

The Ontario town of Wiarton came up with Wiarton Willie in 1956.

Yonge Street

February 2, 2008 by Tricia

Grab the Photo Hunt code.
Photo Theme. Visit participants.

This weeks theme is Narrow

I took this photo last year just as a street festival was winding down in downtown Toronto. That’s why there’s people standing around and walking on this normally very busy street.

I love how you can see the rows of stores and office buildings far off in the distance and how the street gradually narrows.

Did you know that Yonge Street is the longest street in the world? It begins near the Lake Ontario in downtown Toronto, Ontario and goes right through the city and then through Ontario to the border of Manitoba as highway 11. It’s over 1,896 kilometres (1 178.12 miles) long!

Old wooden fences

A great Toronto search engine

Open up! It’s cold out here!

So did the Groundhog see it’s shadow this year?

Yonge Street

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