Phototour: Times in Motion - Times in Touch

Twenty-five years ago, the world came to Vancouver, British Columbia. As the host city for the 1986 World Exposition - known universally as Expo 86 - fifty-four countries set up their pavilions and twenty-two million people visited between May 2 and October 13, 1986 to see the future of transportation and communication. Some of that future, in the form of the SkyTrain, is still with us today. Mostly, though, after Expo 86 ended little evidence of it remained; the Spirit Catcher was sent east to Barrie, the McBarge slowly rusted in Burrard Inlet, and the Plaza of Nations canopy was torn down for being unsafe.

Still, Expo 86 marked an important time in Vancouver's history. It was the city's centennial, and it was probably the highest-profile event that had taken place in the city at that point. It caught a city in transition from an industrial "end of the line," built on shipping and forestry, to the modern metropolis of 2011.

My grandfather, Les Parkinson, visited the Expo in June 1986 - and he brought his camera with him, very likely the same Hanimex 35SE that I carry around today. He didn't take many photos, but those that he did take reveal a city that is, to me, at once closely familiar and strangely different - and sometimes, just the same.

This past weekend, I took my digital camera and went to recreate the photos he took, to reveal the difference that a quarter of a century can make. The 1986 photos are on the left, and the 2011 photos are on the right, in case the differing image qualities don't tip you off.


Our first stop is the centre of the fair - maybe not geographically, but what we know today as Science World was originally Expo Centre, which housed a 500-seat OMNI/IMAX theatre, an interactive show in the Futures theatre, and the Design2000 future technology exhibit. Outwardly, it hasn't changed much in twenty-five years. The recreation of this photo is a best guess, based on the degree to which Science World's geodesic dome extends over the SkyTrain tracks; my modern photo was taken from Quebec and National.


Only a moment's walk brings us from the doors of Expo Centre to the shores of False Creek, but for a long while I wasn't able to identify the location of this photo as anything more than "somewhere along False Creek." The constant here is the glass building at the right of both photographs - in 1986 this was the British Columbia Pavilion, and today it's become the Edgewater Casino. To me, the most striking element of these photos is Yaletown: twenty-five years ago, that dense and booming neighborhood of shining towers existed as little more than factories and warehouses. If you're new to those streets in 2011, as I am, it's a bit hard to wrap your mind about how much the area has changed, and how rapidly.


Further along False Creek, my grandfather sought shelter from the rain beneath the Cambie Street Bridge - all I had to shelter from was the sun, so at least June weather has improved over that of twenty-five years ago - and took a photograph of some dragonboats on the water. From what I've read, those boats still exist, and are brought out for the annual races. Nor has the Fairview skyline changed radically since then.


Granville Island wasn't part of Expo 86 per se - the Expo lands didn't go any further west than the Granville Street Bridge - but even in 1986 it was a tourist attraction, and my grandfather seems to have spent at least a bit of time there. This first photo was taken near the Aquabus dock on the north side of the island, looking northeast toward the floating McDonald's restaurant and the Spirit Catcher. Today, if I hadn't had that support from the Granville Street Bridge as a constant, I would've had a far more difficult time identifying the spot; aside from the marina, it looks as if that part of the Expo lands has been entirely renewed over the intervening years.


These photos of the Granville Street Bridge were taken only a few steps away from the last ones, and it was this photo out of all of them that inspired me to take this project on; after I returned to Toronto from vacationing in Vancouver last year, I found when I was going through my archives that I'd recreated my grandfather's original photo without realizing it. The differences on the shore are stark - construction has hidden the Scotia Tower ramp to Howe Street from view, and none of the condo towers existed at all.


This is the last of the photos from Granville Island, and of all the photos I went to recreate in this project, this is my favorite - if only because it was the simplest to recreate. The presence of the Burrard Bridge and the Public Market took all of the uncertainty out of the equation; I'm fairly confident I was standing in the same spot my grandfather was twenty-five years ago. It was interesting to see the degree to which the West End, or at least the bit of it between the Burrard Bridge and Stanley Park, didn't change between these photos - or, for that matter, that lone green garbage can, which seems to have neither moved nor changed in all that time.


The relative stasis of the West End can be seen again in this photograph from Vanier Park in Kitsilano. Nevertheless, it does say a lot about the nature of West Vancouver's suburban growth up the mountain; it seems to my eyes that there's something like twice as much development now as there was then. The irritating thing about recreating this photo was that while I couldn't get to the exact spot where it had been taken from, it was perfectly obvious where that spot was - the big windows in the back of the Museum of Vancouver. That light pole is still there, but it's impossible to get that sort of perspective of it with your feet on the ground.


Vancouver has come a long way in twenty-five years. This view from the overlook in Queen Elizabeth Park reinforced this for me; amid the older, more traditional buildings like the Scotia Tower, Hotel Vancouver, and the Harbour Centre, a forest of new construction has shot up around them. This is likewise another photo I couldn't replicate precisely; from the angles, I suspect it was taken from the deck of Seasons in the Park, the restaurant next door.

Still, the last twenty-five years have not seen Vancouver change in every respect. There are still some things that are exactly as they were then, and which may well be just as they are today in 2036.

Things like giant enemy crabs.


Fun fact: that crab is more than just a sculpture. It is, in fact, a representation of the species that crewed the starship upon whose design the Museum of Vancouver was based - what, you think the building looks that way just because? The starship was, incidentally, shot down by the beam cannon in False Creek, which has since been disguised as the sculpture "Brush With Illumination" - because really, what better way to hide a titanically-powerful weapon capable of shooting down spaceships than as public art?

Second fun fact: I may have exaggerated the truth slightly.

A tad.

Previously Booked Tours:

• Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour
  
• Expressing Spadina
  
• A Scott Pilgrim-age
  
• Climbing Mount Pleasant
  
• On the Waterfront: Oshawa to Toronto
  

Phototour: Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour

This is a follow-up to my earlier Scott Pilgrim-age, a phototour I did earlier this year visiting the locations that appeared in Volumes 1 to 5 of the Scott Pilgrim series. If you haven't seen it, you should totally check it out. You should also totally check out Mad5l5in5's Flickr tour, which visits the same places but has tons more photos and also panel comparisons. It is totally rad!

Yes! On the eve of the general release of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, I went out and assembled a tour of the Toronto locations featured in the sixth and final volume of the graphic novel series, Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour! That's just the kind of guy I am!

I'm of mixed feelings now that the final volume is out and the movie is about to hit theatres. It's almost over. No more anticipation of what's to come, no more epileptic trees being planted by the fan base, no more speculation on what side of Toronto Bryan Lee O'Malley will choose to shine his light on next - because I presume he draws with some sort of awesome laser pencil. Personally, I had to grumble a bit that it jossed my theory for the climax - I was hoping for the final battle between Scott and Gideon to be a swordfight on top of the CN Tower in the middle of a lightning storm - but what we got is still good.

One thing I did notice while going through Volume 6 is that there's not that much of Toronto in it that we haven't already seen. Gideon's Very Definitely Final Dungeon occupies much of the book, and it doesn't exist - except for the part that does, which was already covered in the previous phototour. But there are bits and hints of clues that I was able to track down. So here's another look at Toronto, through the lens of Scott Pilgrim.

Vol. 6: Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour

19. Cameron House

I've never been in here - I'm familiar with it because the Queen streetcar takes me right by it, and because of the distinctive design on its facade that was modified somewhat for its appearance in Volume 6 - I'm not sure if it was a copyright issue or what, but the woman's face on the front of the building doesn't quite look the same. The ant is real, though - there's a veritable army of large white ants clinging to the walls of the building, no doubt preparing to be welcomed as our new overlords.

The appearance of the building along the side street where Scott and Knives have their talk - Cameron Street, appropriately enough - reflects the fact that Scott Pilgrim appears to be set in 2005 and 2006, from what clues I've been able to pick up in the dialogue and art. At the time, I believe it read "PROPOSAL: TILT THIS BUILDING TEN DEGRESS TO THE RIGHT," but recently it's been repainted into a large, smiling, toothy mouth.

HOW TO GET THERE: The 501 Queen streetcar goes right past it, with stops at Spadina to the east and Augusta to the west. Additionally, the area is served by the 510 Spadina streetcar north from Union Station or south from Spadina Station, which may be the route Scott is depicted as using to get there.

20. Queen and Spadina

The coffee shop where Scott meets up with Envy Adams, and the area where he tags along with Wallace Wells to a going-out-of-business bookstore, is roughly thirty seconds' walk from Cameron House, being on the east side of the Queen Street West and Spadina Avenue intersection. I've never been inside a Lettieri franchise, but I presume they sell... coffee? And baked goods? I guess.

HOW TO GET THERE: The 501 Queen and 510 Spadina streetcars will take you right there.

21. The Royal Theatre and the Gideon Encounter


The first time I read this, I had no idea where it took place - I only had a vague notion that it might be on Queen Street West, because the buildings looked right for it and because Scott and Envy had been there only a few pages before. After more thought and careful research, I was able to pin it down: the spot where Gideon Gordon Graves emerges from the crowd and confronts Scott Pilgrim for the first time took place on College Street, just east of Grace in Toronto's Little Italy neighborhood. It was the distinctive facade of the Royal Theatre that let me pin it down. I couldn't replicate the exact perspective that the book had, though; from what I could tell while I was there, I'd have to be standing in the middle of College Street in order to replicate it perfectly. Now that I'm putting it together, I notice the version in the book omits the crown on the Royal Theatre's sign - I wonder why that was done.

The triangular add-ons to the streetlight visible in the scene, incidentally, are actually miniature Little Italy flags.

HOW TO GET THERE: The 506 Carlton streetcar stops right at College and Grace, for those who want to alight into the heart of the action.

22. The Great White North


The thing about Toronto is that it has a huge, huge hinterland. Population here is predominantly clustered around the shore of Lake Ontario, owing both to historical patterns of settlement and the inescapble nature of the Canadian climate. Sure, there's a dense band of suburbs north of the city, but after an hour's drive on the highway you hit Barrie, and beyond there the suburbs fade away into the countryside. The largest cities beyond that are Sudbury and North Bay, each of which are hours away. While it's not too hard to get there during the warmer months, during which traffic jams and Ontario Provincial Police drunk-driving spot checks are common, during winter it's an entirely different story. Scott's lucky that the series didn't end with another April blizzard.

I don't have a comparison photo because, really, it's a big place and I have no idea where O'Malley got his inspiration. I can't even begin to guess where Kim Pine lives in Volume 6 - the only clue I can find in the text puts it somewhere between Sudbury and Thunder Bay. Unless, of course, that was an exaggeration. Seems likely.

HOW TO GET THERE: Bus station, man.

Hey, I said that this would be a light update - it's only covering one volume, and it didn't hit many new places. But this is not the end! Stay tuned for a third and final installment of the Pilgrimage, where I will not only go back and fill it out with sites that I missed the first time around, but I will integrate what I can from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World - appearing in theatres very, very soon!

Phototour: Expressing Spadina

While the Gardiner brings the people to the heart of downtown and the DVP lets them idle in a sea of brake lights while they dream of going up north and away, they would never live up to their full potential without the Spadina Expressway.

By the middle 1950s, with the end of the Second World War and the growth of the suburban dream, Metropolitan Toronto had a problem. In North York, what had once been rolling agricultural land dotted with village clusters was being divided into new residential subdivisions with such a fury that the world might as well have been ending in 1970. While downtown North York today is dominated by skyscrapers and condo towers to such a degree that the resemblance to downtown Toronto is eerie - so long as you don't journey more than five hundred meters east or west of Yonge Street, at least - it wasn't so back then. Just as was the case in cities across the free world, there were plenty of people clamoring for a patch of land and a home to call their own, but the jobs remained in the old central core.

North York's far enough removed from Toronto's core that walking's not really an option. Neither, at the time, was the subway - it wasn't until 1974 that it reached into North York proper, and the old Yonge streetcar had always looped right at the border between North York and Toronto. North York, like Etobicoke and Scarborough and Toronto's modern suburbs in York Region and Durham and Peel, owe more to the automobile than mass transit in terms of getting around. Highway 401, that great Windsor-to-Quebec motorway once thought of as the "Toronto Bypass," opened to traffic in Metropolitan Toronto in stages through the 1950s. The people who'd sought new lives in the suburbs were quick to take advantage - and Metro's planners were not slow to realize that there was work to be done to make sure all these people and their automobiles could get around.

The first projects were the Gardiner Expressway and the Don Valley Parkway. Picking up where the Queen Elizabeth Way - one of the first modern highways in Canada - left off, the Gardiner followed the shore of Lake Ontario into downtown Toronto, where today its elevated lanes remain as a psychological barrier between the core and the waterfront. East of the financial district's gleaming towers, it linked up with the Don Valley Parkway. The DVP, laid out next to the Don River in the largest of Toronto's many ravines, wound its way north to Highway 401 and would eventually be extended even further north, as Highway 404, to Newmarket in York Region.

These two expressways were only the beginning. Metro Council, led by Fred Gardiner - he for whom those elevated lanes were eventually named - believed that the automobile was the future, and sought to smooth out the city for it. Highway 400, which ran from the 401 north to Barrie, was to have been extended south to meet the Gardiner, linking along the way with the Crosstown Expressway, meant to connect to the Don Valley Parkway and thus encircle downtown Toronto with expressways. Personally, when I look at the maps, it reminds me more of a noose.

But the keystone to the whole project rested on one route - the Spadina Expressway. From Downsview it would plunge south through neighborhoods and parklands to Bloor Street. Construction began in 1963, and though it proceeded south as the years went on, popular opposition to the project mounted. Pro-urban activist Jane Jacobs, who was no stranger to standing in the paths of expressways, played a significant role in it. The great fear was not only that it would devastate the neighborhoods through which it passed, but that it would encourage the hollowing-out of inner Toronto, with the expressway providing a quick path to the outer suburbs.

It happened in many other cities across North America, but whether it would've happened to Toronto is a question for the alternate historians. On June 3, 1971, the Spadina Expressway was cancelled by the provincial government. None of the other planned expressways were ever more than lines on maps. The completed portion, which went no further south than Eglinton Avenue, is known today as Allen Road. For me, it was always the gateway to Toronto - my father would always turn off the 401 there, take it to the end, then navigate through a twisted skein of Forest Hill roads to the downtown core.

To some degree, the shadow of the Spadina Expressway still falls upon Toronto even today. Depending on who you talk to, it's either the great victory over encroaching car culture and one of Toronto's seminal moments in urban planning, or a great lost hope that has doomed the city to ever-increasing traffic congestion. It's become mythologized, something larger than life, bigger than it ever could have been in reality. So, given that this weekend brought the first breaths of summer to Toronto, I went to chart the expressway - both what had been built, and what never was.

Thanks go to TheCharioteer on the SkyscraperCity forums for providing scans of a planning document from 1961 for the route of the expressway. They were invaluable in figuring out just where the lanes would have gone.

Phase 1 - What's Done is Done

North of Downsview subway station, Dufferin Street forks, and one of the paths becomes William R. Allen Road. I checked up on it where it intersects with Sheppard Avenue, mostly because that point was conveniently accessible from Downsview station, and at that point there's nothing to distinguish it from any other wide suburban throughfare beginning to experience a boom in condo development. It's not until you go further south, to Wilson, that Allen Road really rises above the rest - seriously, since it's elevated by the point - and when it interchanges with the 401 at Yorkdale in a sweeping, swooping series of ramps and dips like bird's flight paths immortalized in concrete, it comes into its own.

If you've ever shopped at Yorkdale, by the way, you indirectly have the Spadina Expressway project to thank. It wasn't until the beginning phases of it were approved, funnelling motorists directly past its inviting signs, that construction on what was for a short time the world's largest shopping mall began.

This view, looking south from Viewmount Avenue at Glencairn station, is typical of Allen Road today, and had the Spadina Expressway been completed its surface sections likely would have resembled this. The subway right-of-way in the median echoes Chicago's Red and Blue Lines, and was really the prime beneficiary of the expressway project - even though the road was cancelled the subway continued on, and the route of the subway still parallels what the route of the road would have been. From what I understand, that's the reason why that particular line is called the University-Spadina Line. Being at the surface, not only was it inexpensive to construct compared to tunneling, but it also allows one to make faces at the motorists stuck in traffic on the other side of the barbed-wire fences.

At Eglinton Avenue, the lanes turn into off-ramps and Allen Road comes to an end, just as the subway enters Eglinton West station and from there the tunnels that continue uninterrupted to Finch, on the other end of the line. Traffic there is no surprise - after all, light cycles only last for so long. It's a brief journey, but it was intended to be much more. If the planners had had their way, there still would have been off-ramps but the lanes of the expressway would have kept on going.

Phase 2 - There But for Grace

Everden Road is a quiet, unremarkable residential street stretching south of Eglinton, and taking into consideration the layout of Allen Road as it was construction, it would have been obliterated had the expressway come through. It would, most likely, have been given over to the median, and this picture would then be looking right down the tracks - though the subway line may still have gone underground at Eglinton West. Still, Metro planners at the time didn't lose sleep over the expropriations and demolitions they had to conduct in the names of progress and traffic flow. A significant chunk of Parkdale, not to mention almost the entire Sunnyside Amusement Park, were demolished in order to build the Gardiner Expressway. For the most part, though, Everden was an outlier - the majority of demolition would have occured around the southern limits of the Expressway.

Demolition, but not destruction.

Everden ends at Ava Road, but the path beyond leads into Cedarvale Park. Occupying one of the city's many ravines carved in the wake of glacial action, it's a rolling, forested, wild expanse of greenspace left almost untouched. Aside from subway emergency exits and some tennis courts at the north end, very little has been built within it. Had the Spadina Expressway gone through, it would quite literally have gone through Cedarvale Park, the ravine transformed into asphalt and concrete. It's an understandable route - the scale of expropriation and demolition of existing properties elsewhere might have been politically unpalatable, and to say that nature was given short shrift back then would be putting it generously. The 1961 planning documents suggest that this area, photographed from the century-old Glencedar Bridge, might have been underground and roofed over - nevertheless, the construction would have changed the ravine, perhaps irreparably. The chirping birds, the wind rustling through trees, the buzz of bicycles passing fast on the path - none of it would be the same.



Cedarvale Park ends at Heath Street, as well as a convenient secondary entrance to St. Clair West station. The highway would have continued - likely to a degree underground, if only to prevent a rather expensive reconstruction that section of St. Clair Avenue - and into Nordheimer Ravine, smaller and more densely forested than Cedarvale. More importantly, Nordheimer marks where the route leaves York and enters Toronto, and the city of Toronto's strident opposition to the Spadina Expressway project was another significant factor in its cancellation. After briefly following the Nordheimer Ravine, the route turns south at Spadina Road, finally meeting its namesake and origin - the whole project, starting in the 1940s, was originally floated as a northward improvement of Spadina Road.

This area is a wealthy one, named after its most eye-catching residence - Casa Loma. Toronto's twentieth-century castle would have survived the coming of the Spadina Expressway, but only just, with artist's impressions I've seen perching it on the edge of an open-roofed, trenched highway. The Baldwin Steps, the pedestrian access from Davenport Road to Casa Loma up the edge of the Iroquois Shoreline, and which I commented on in my Scott Pilgrim phototour two weeks ago, would have have been destroyed.

This photo looks south along Spadina Road from the Baldwin Steps, and this perspective would have been utterly, absolutely transformed by the Spadina Expressway. If I read the maps correctly, Davenport Road would have been rebuilt to be carried over the Expressway here. Where the road is now would have been the northbound lanes, while the subway line would have been built in an open trench along the right side of the photo. The potential route of southbound lanes, crashing through the middle of existing construction, aren't visible. They would pass beneath the railway bridge you can see further down. Beyond that, approximately where the center line splits to form a peanut-like shape in the middle of the road, where some of the grand historic residences of the Annex still stand - it would have been entirely obliterated, because this is where the Spadina Expressway was to interchange with the Crosstown Expressway.

There's almost a grim beauty in the audacity of the plans, of the degree to which the planners wanted to smooth the ground for progress. Between the lanes themselves and the network of sweeping on-ramps and off-ramps necessary to guide motorists from the Spadina to the Crosstown, the Crosstown to the Spadina, or onto whatever residential roads survived the construction, it might be that no building photographed here would have still been standing had the projects all come to fruition.

After meeting the Crosstown the Spadina would split and separate out, in preparation for its planned Bloor Street terminus - while the southbound lanes would remain on Spadina, the northbound lanes would split to bury Madison Avenue. The number of heritage properties I passed in just a couple of blocks wasn't surprising - this is the Annex, after all, one of the historic residential centers of Toronto. It's a quiet street in terms of traffic, but considering how many of these houses are probably subdivided residences for students of the nearby University of Toronto, probably not as peaceful once exams are over. I doubt it ever gets even close to what it would've been like had the Spadina's northbound lanes come through here.

It was the residents of the Annex, Jane Jacobs among them, who were instrumental in pushing back against the suburban interests that sought to push the expressway through. Understandably, as in terms of the unbuilt portion, the neighborhood would have been bisected and possibly devastated - though the damage to Forest Hill and Cedarvale Park wouldn't have been small change either.

Here, at Bloor Street West, the Spadina Expressway would come to an end and the commuters would have to make the rest of their way downtown - an admittedly short way, mind you - on city streets. I can only imagine how clogged and congested this intersection would be if that had been the case. It would've transformed the area around it and beyond, that much is certain. It's safe to say that the Expressway would, among other things, mean that there would be no Spadina streetcar today - anyone trying to lock up two lanes in a right-of-way for transit vehicles along such a busy corridor, in the more car-centric Metro Toronto a completed expressway network would have fostered, probably would have been crucified. There are a number of possibilities for what could have happened beyond here - I've seen references to express lanes south, but I've also seen artist's impressions of the Spadina being taken south to meet the Gardiner, crashing through Chinatown and Kensington Market to get to the lakeshore.

I believe it's for the better that the Spadina Expressway was never built. It would have cut through established communities, reduced valuable greenspace to asphalt, and encouraged more and more people to quit Toronto for the suburbs and their siren song. Nor would have it solved any long-term congestion issues - congestion is never solved by just building more expressways. The phenomenon of induced demand is particularly noteworthy in terms of automobile infrastructure - new expressways would encourage more use of the system, ultimately to the extent that Metro's traffic troubles would just be larger and spread out over more of the city. The implementation of an auto-centric policy, such as the one behind the Spadina Expressway, would encourage people to use cars who might not have otherwise done so.

The Spadina Expressway was the keystone, and it's arguable that because of its absence, the Gardiner Expressway and the Don Valley Parkway never did live up to their potential. Today, every once in a while you can still hear people calling for a demolition of the Gardiner in downtown, nd the sheer weight of traffic it sees in rush hour should make it no surprise that the DVP's unofficial nickname is the "Don Valley Parking Lot."

There's always a cost to everything. Myself - I do believe that, in the end, it was one worth paying.

Previously Booked Tours:

• A Scott Pilgrim-age
  
• Climbing Mount Pleasant
  
• On the Waterfront: Oshawa to Toronto
  

Phototour: A Scott Pilgrim-age

Leia esta em Português, também!

Though most of the production companies have set up shop in Vancouver, it's not uncommon for Toronto to appear as a setting in film or television. What is uncommon is for Toronto to appear in film or television as itself, rather than New York or Chicago or the City With No Name. It's only recently that things have begun to change, that the Powers That Be have been willing to step out of the familiar, well-treaded surroundings of Manhattan or Los Angeles. Brian Lee O'Malley ("BLOM") has helped to change that with his Scott Pilgrim series - originally a series of action romance (yes, really) graphic novels, with the sixth and final due out this summer, and now a major motion picture (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World - I applied to be an extra, but didn't get in) set to be released on August 12, 2010. It is going to be totally rad.

Scott Pilgrim is one of the most unrepentantly Toronto-centered works I've encountered, and that level of familiarity is probably one of the reasons why I like it so much. It's full of small, accurate references and details that help make the setting come alive - like the OMG panels on the side of the garbage cans, the NOW Magazine boxes, and the frequency of Pizza Pizza places in the streetscape - not to mention side jokes that would soar right over the head of anyone who isn't familiar with Toronto, like how Scott's brother's name is Lawrence West. It's not just me, either. Mad5l5in5 from The Starry Fork was in the city last autumn, and given that I was the one with local knowledge I ended up becoming a Scott Pilgrim tour guide. Considering the sheer weight of photos I took during that day, there's no reason I shouldn't subject the rest of you to it as well.

So get your volumes and follow along! For best results, I recommend you listen to Plumtree's "Scott Pilgrim," namesake of the series, while you follow along. It will make things even more rad. And, yes, I realize that I am a total nerd. I also like showing off my city however I can.

And, yes, I realize I've missed some here and there. So check out Mad5l5in5's Scott Pilgrimage Flickr photostream for another perspective!

Vol. 1: Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life

1. Scott and Wallace's Apartment

The tour began here, at the house on Alberta Avenue, because I figured it was most appropriate to start from the beginning. I was only able to find it because BLOM was kind enough to add an almost entirely accurate address label to the CDs Scott orders off Amazon.ca midway through Volume 1, up to and including the postal code being correct - the only niggle is that it's Alberta Avenue, not "Albert Avenue." The place is a few houses north of Davenport Road, but depending on where you're coming from, taking the Ossington bus is one of the better ways to get there.

HOW TO GET THERE: The 63 Ossington bus from Ossington station or Eglinton West station and the 127 Davenport from Spadina station both pass close by the intersection of Davenport and Alberta.

2. Toronto Public Library - Wychwood Branch

The Toronto Public Library system is, with ninety-nine branches, the single largest public library system in North America, and it counts within those numbers more than a few members of Toronto's historical building inventory. The Wychwood branch, on Bathurst Street just south of St. Clair Avenue West, was built as a Carnegie library nearly a century ago and still retains the architectural charm of the period. The appearance of the Wychwood branch is the minor of the TPL's two substantial appearances in Scott Pilgrim - it's really significant only because this is the first place where Scott encounters Ramona Flowers outside of subspace. I have never been inside it myself - all the times I've been in that area were times it was closed - so I can't say if it would also remind me of grade school. Considering I attended grade school in 19th century buildings, though, I'd say there's a distinct possibility.

HOW TO GET THERE: From St. Clair West station, either walk or take the 512 St. Clair streetcar one stop west to Bathurst. Alternatively, the 7 Bathurst bus goes directly past the library.

3. The Rockit

This was, to be perfectly honest, the only spot on my list that I couldn't actually find. Google Maps told me that it was on Church Street around Richmond, which isn't an area I have an encyclopedic familiarity with, and so we spent ten or twenty minutes wandering in guttering sunlight with no real sucess. It sucked, too, as the Rockit is the site of Volume 1's climax. Later on I found out that the place doesn't, technically, exist anymore. In O'Malley's words, the place was "cramped, ugly and terrible" so I'm not sure if that's a bad thing or not.

It's also significant - sort of - in that the Rockit is one of the southernmost points of interest so far included in Scott Pilgrim. When I said that the series is Toronto-centric, I mean pre-amalgamation Toronto - as of the end of Volume 5, I don't think anything has taken place north of St. Clair, west of Lansdowne, or, apart from a spot in the Beaches, south of Queen. This may change slightly in Volume 6, depending what's on the plan - personally, I hope it will end in an epic swordfight on top of the CN Tower during a lightning storm. Because that would be TOTALLY AWESOME.

HOW TO GET THERE: Purchase a DeLorean DMC-12, install flux capacitor, and accelerate to 88 miles per hour.

Vol. 2: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

4. Bloor and Bathurst

The first volume of Scott Pilgrim came out in 2004, and thanks to six years of gradual development, construction, and rejiggering, it doesn't exactly reflect Toronto anymore. While total disappearances like the Rockit's are rare, slight differences can be just as jarring. The big sign above the second floor of Insomnia - "THE INTERNET IS A STRANGE PLACE - DON'T SURF ALONE" was removed only recently, and the original payphone booths have since been replaced with more modern, open models.

HOW TO GET THERE: Take the Bloor-Danforth subway line to Bathurst station.

5. Second Cup

Apparently this particular Second Cup franchise is in the books because it was conveniently close to O'Malley's apartment at the time he was putting things together - that's what I glean from his comments on the National Post's locations map, at least. It reinforced the series' narrow geographic focus to me - it's practically right around the corner from the Wychwood library branch, about a two minute walk, and is not particularly far from Alberta Avenue either. There wasn't really anything to distinguish it from any other Second Cup, though I don't think they sell totallyawesomechinos. I don't have any photographs of the inside, because really, that'd just be weird, taking photos like that. And I might have been asked to leave.

HOW TO GET THERE: Walk or take the 512 St. Clair streetcar to Bathurst from St. Clair West station.

6. The Baldwin Steps

Thirteen thousand years ago, Toronto was underwater - or, at least, downtown Toronto was. Davenport Road deviates from the general street grid of the city because it follows the route of an old native trail, and that trail followed level ground along the ancient shoreline of Lake Iroquois, the Ice Age predecessor of Lake Ontario. Today, the Baldwin Steps link Davenport Road with the top of the ridge, a spot that might have been a most excellent Ice Age beach, but since you already used your time machine to check out Rockit I don't think you have the plutonium to spare. They're particularly fun to climb, particularly if you're carrying a bicycle up with you. I most absolutely do not recommend trying to skateboard down the handrails - it's impossible. I hear people still leave flowers for Lucas Lee there.

HOW TO GET THERE: The 127 Davenport bus from Spadina station goes right past them.

7. Casa Loma

Yes, Toronto has a castle. Kneel. This was never the residence of royalty, but was built in the early twentieth century by Sir Henry Pellatt as a house to beat all houses. After nearly being demolished in the 1930s when Pellatt couldn't afford to pay his taxes, it's now a museum and one of the grandest remnants of historic Toronto. It shows up frequently in film and television, the inside more than the outside. When I was there in October, parts of it were surrounded by scaffolding for maintenance, presumably to repair the damage from when Lucas Lee threw Scott Pilgrim into the side of it.

HOW TO GET THERE: Climb the Baldwin Steps.

8. The Toronto Reference Library

I cannot begin to count the number of times this place saved my ass during high school and university. From picking through old microfilms for an OAC Law class to making the best of the discovery that the University of Toronto does not allow non-U of T students into the stacks at Robarts Library (why yes, I am still bitter), what may be the largest publicly-accessible library in Toronto has a great deal going for it. With its transparent elevators, sprawling atrium and six floors of print-and-bound goodness, it almost seems like a cross between a government building and a spaceport terminal. "Total science fiction," indeed.

Credit goes to Mad5l5in5 for this photograph of the corporate art, which actually exists and probably would be good to use in a fight. The Toronto Reference Library requires photographers to sign authorization forms to take pictures within, and, well, she'd already filled one out.

HOW TO GET THERE: Take the Bloor-Danforth or Yonge-University-Spadina subway lines to Bloor-Yonge station.

9. The Gilded Palace of Flying Burritos

I never had a chance to visit this restaurant - no matter how much I would like to try that excellent nouveau Mexican cuisine, it was shut down while I was still at university in Peterborough. I can't even go back to where it was anymore - the building that housed it burned down in the Queen West fire two years ago. All that's left there now is an empty field of debris that will, it seems, soon be replaced by yet another condominium development.

HOW TO GET THERE: Take the 501 Queen streetcar to Bathurst Street or the 511 Bathurst streetcar to Queen Street West.

10. Lee's Palace

I am not a nightclub guy. I have, in fact, been to exactly one in my life - the Trasheteria in Peterborough, and even then I nearly fell asleep on my fleet. So I can't really tell you much about what Lee's Palace is like, except that I understand it is somewhat popular, and that Edgar Wright actually built a set of the interior for the filming of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. I mostly knew it because of its eye-catching exterior, a colorful and active mural that always looked like it was channeling an Aztec style to me. This is, regrettably, another one of those places where Toronto has moved on - while Lee's Palace still exists, the iconic mural has been removed so that a Big Fat Burrito can move in. There'll be a new mural soon enough, by the creator of the original - but it won't be the same.

HOW TO GET THERE: Take the Bloor-Danforth subway line to Bathurst station and walk east.

Vol. 3: Scott Pilgrim & the Infinite Sadness

11. Honest Ed's

This truly is a place of existential horror and incredible deals. Dominating the southwest corner of Bloor and Bathurst, Honest Ed's is the ultimate expression of the old-time department store, dominated by rows and rows of merchandise, filled with stuff unto eternity. From the incredibly ostentatious signage outside to the hand-painted signs inside, it's a callback to an entirely different era - before big-box stores came to prominence. I encountered the van covered with bugs at this same intersection, just after I took the picture above - I refuse to believe that it's a coincidence. The weirdness just dovetails so nicely.

And somehow, that creepy cuckoo clock with the deer head on top is even more creepy in reality.

HOW TO GET THERE: Walk west from Lee's Palace.

12. Dundas Square

Twenty years ago, it was a bunch of low-rent, slightly skeezy stores. Now it's supposed to be Toronto's answer to Times Square. A privately-managed public space under the shadows of the Eaton Centre and 10 Dundas East, this five-sided space provides people a place to eat lunch on warm days, rally against government excesses on cold days, and plenty of things in between. As far as I know the adjacent advertising tower isn't publicly accessible, but that didn't stop Knives Chau from getting to the top of it - or, for that matter, the climax of a first-season Flashpoint episode.

HOW TO GET THERE: Take the Yonge-University-Spadina subway line to Dundas station.

Vol. 4: Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together

13. The Beaches

Well east of downtown, towards the old border between Toronto and Scarborough, there's a neighborhood that could never agree on what to call itself - whether it was the Beach or the Beaches. A recent election on what to put on the new street signs gave a slim majority support to "The Beach," but both remain acceptable - and honestly, I prefer "Beaches," because there's more than one of them. As they're easily accessible, they become magnets for activity during the warm months. During one of my eastbound bike rides along the Martin Goodman Trail, it was certainly my experience that as soon as I started hitting the beaches past Ashbridges Bay, I could barely maintain a speed sufficient to keep the bike balanced because of the crowds of walking people on the bike lane. If you really want to realize the Pilgrim experience, demand the Lick's Burger at 1960 Queen Street East - the only location even close to the Beaches.

HOW TO GET THERE: Take the 501 Queen streetcar to Woodbine Avenue.

14. Dufferin Mall

I'll agree that this was not a particularly exciting mall - at least, not until the Giant Inflatable Colon came to town. Despite that, aside from containing one of the few Wal-Marts in central Toronto, it got my attention because it's one of those places I'm particularly familiar with; it's easy to get to via the Dufferin bus. Plus, it means that if I want to pick up something from a mall-type store, I don't have to truck my ass all the way downtown. Four lousy kilometers...

HOW TO GET THERE: From Dufferin station on the Bloor-Danforth subway line, walk or take the 29 Dufferin bus south.

15. Sneaky Dee's

Sure, the Gilded Palace of Flying Burritos and its excellent nouveau Mexican cuisine may be gone, but we still have Sneaky Dee's and its awesome tex-mexy stylings to help sate Toronto's appetites. The first time I was there, I had the king nachos, and they were awesome nachos. More than good enough to go back for. The graffiti that absolutely covered the walls of the men's bathroom only improved its standing in my book. Its depiction in the series is almost entirely true to life - the only points I take away are on the pixel art of it on the back of Volume 4, and that only because the artist missed the streetcar tracks on Bathurst.

HOW TO GET THERE: Take the 506 Carlton streetcar to Bathurst Street, or the 511 Bathurst streetcar to College Street.

16. CLRV 4185

This is not, technically speaking, a location. It is in fact a Toronto Transit Commission streetcar, one of one hundred and ninety-five Canadian Light Rail Vehicles in service, and is the sort of thing I ride to work and back every Monday to Friday. Considering that it is a mobile thing, and that its position is unpredictable by those who lack privileged access to Transit Control, #4185 wasn't something I could just track down. It wasn't until two months after the rest of the tour that I encountered it - Christmas Eve, to be specific.

Its place in the series is minor, and perhaps not even significant, but awesome - #4185 is the streetcar that Knives' dad slices in half. With a katana.

HOW TO GET THERE: Wander along the streetcar lines. Maybe, eventually, if you're lucky, you'll find it.

Vol. 5: Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe

17. Construction Site, Queen and Bathurst

A few steps away from the former site of the Gilded Palace of Flying Burritos, in reality this is one of the locations of St. Christopher House, a local community center and meeting place. Things are usually pretty busy around it - totally in opposition, it seems, to the way it's portrayed in Vol. 5. Based on the hints left in there, I wouldn't be surprised to see this location reappear in Vol. 6. I see it fairly frequently, if only because it's on the same block as Bakka-Phoenix.

HOW TO GET THERE: Take the 511 Bathurst streetcar to Queen Street West, or the 501 Queen streetcar to Bathurst Street.

18. The Toronto Coach Terminal

If life was really like a video game, the Toronto Coach Terminal wouldn't exist for me, per se. Instead, whenever I entered it, a brief cinematic would play to cover the loading screen, and I would respawn in Peterborough thirteen dollars poorer. Buses leave from here and go all over, to places as nearby as Cambridge to those as distant as New York or Vancouver - if you're not going to fly or ride the rails and don't have wheels of your own, this is the best way you have to get out of the city. It was opened in 1931, and thankfully the architectural stylings of the time haven't been covered up. It's also the northernmost extent of the underground PATH walkway system - from here, with about ten meters' worth of exceptions, you can walk to the CN Tower without going outside at all.

HOW TO GET THERE: Take the Yonge-University-Spadina subway line to Dundas station or St. Patrick station, or take the 505 Dundas streetcar to Bay Street.

Vol. 6: Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour

The wait is over!

So that's it. Your Scott Pilgrim phototour. It took me five hours to put this post together, so I blasted well hope you think it's rad.

Previously Booked Tours:

• Climbing Mount Pleasant
  
• On the Waterfront: Oshawa to Toronto
  

Phototour: Climbing Mount Pleasant

Spring began to make its presence known in Toronto yesterday, step by tentative step. It was the first time in months I've been able to go outside wearing a light jacket and be comfortable, and the cloudless sky made conditions ideal for photography and wandering. Days like that, when everything seems clear and free, are ideal for exploration.

Depending on where you live, Toronto's Mount Pleasant Road is one of those streets that can easily fall off your mental map if you're not careful. For much of its length it's the first major road east of Yonge Street, and between Bloor Street in the south and its northern extent in Hoggs Hollow it runs through some of the most established and affluent neighborhoods in the city. It runs through places that are calm, quiet, and comforting. Nevertheless, or perhaps because of this, it is subtly out of the way. While it's not far removed from Toronto's rapid transit network, there are no stations in the system that serve Mount Pleasant Road directly. In my estimation it is, like downtown's Esplanade, easy to forget about. That's one of the reasons why I went there.

The other reason is that I wanted to retrace the route of the Mount Pleasant streetcar, which stopped running in 1976 after a brief sixteen months of service and was the last actual streetcar line to be removed from the system - while the 507 Long Branch route was removed in 1995, the local tracks still exist and 501 Queen cars still provide service there. From St. Clair station on the Yonge subway, it ran east along St. Clair Avenue East and north along Mount Pleasant Road to Eglinton, and that's the route I followed for this phototour. You can thank the Metro Roads Department for the line no longer existing; it overruled the Toronto Transit Commission's desire to continue running the route, according to Transit Toronto, "in response to complaints from car drivers about streetcars 'obstructing' their progress." I could make a comment here that similar complaints from drivers played a significant role in the abandonment of streetcar systems in other North American cities, as a 1952 TTC report made available by Steve Munro lucidly argues - that such actions mean that "[transit agencies] have tailored their service in accordance with the demands of their bitter competitors rather than in accordance with the needs of their patrons."

Still - it was a good journey regardless. If you're interested, follow along!

At Ferndale Avenue, where the streetcar tracks loop back out of St. Clair station for the journey west to Keele, you're not far from a shift in the cityscape. A 1920s bridge, its guardrails low and made of stone, carries St. Clair East over David A. Balfour Park, filling one of the city's many ravines. As I crossed the bridge, I felt almost as if I was walking back in time - while office towers, apartment building, and modern-looking condo complexes rise on the west side, the east is mostly hidden beneath tree cover.

Like I've said before, it's quiet and residential, comprised substantially of what seems to be late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century housing stock. Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church, at the corner of St. Clair and Clifton, is the most architecturally imposing part of the neighborhood that I saw, and likely the only part that would be visible above the trees in summer. It's a brief walk from St. Clair station, only nine hundred meters, but by the time you arrive the city's been left behind. There's not much evidence suggesting that streetcars ever ran here, but for a slight seam between the inner and outer lanes of the roadway that implies the two inner lanes, where the streetcar tracks were, had been resurfaced more recently.

Forty years ago you would have found Moore Park Loop at the northeast corner of St. Clair East and Mount Pleasant, which was the sole short-turn loop on the entire route. Today it's Loring-Wyle Parkette - commemorating Frances Loring and Florence Wyle, American-born sculptors who have left their artistic heritage throughout Toronto and Ontario - the Queen Elizabeth Way Monument, which I wrote about last year, may be one of their most outstanding works. Exhibited in the parkette are busts Loring and Wyle sculpted of each other in 1914, Loring by Wyle and Wyle by Loring, as well as Wyle's 1938 Young Girl sculpture - Wikipedia refers to a fourth, Harvester, which I was apparently too oblivious to notice. With only four pieces I wouldn't exactly call it an outdoor art museum, but the parkette is obviously well cared for - aside, that is, from the old-style payphone with its handset and keys slathered in red and an anarchy symbol slapdashed on the glass - and I think it's one of the better uses an abandoned streetcar loop could be put to.

North of St. Clair, Mount Pleasant resembles an affluent suburb, which I suppose the area was when it first came to prominence. There are a handful of the old metal poles still along it which formerly supported the overhead electrical infrastructure, which are frequently the only remaining indications that streetcars ever ran along a particular street. It doesn't last for long, though - four hundred meters north of Loring-Wyle Parkette and 1.3 kilometers from St. Clair station, the tenor of the community changes again upon entering the grounds of Mount Pleasant Cemetery.

Mount Pleasant Cemetery dates back to 1876, opened as a place where the bones of all Torontonians could rest without regard to religious affiliation, and today is one of the more well-known burial grounds in central Toronto. Among the more than 168,000 people buried there are two Victoria Cross recipients, six mayors of Toronto, and William Lyon Mackenzie King, Canada's longest-serving Prime Minister and grandson of William Lyon Mackenzie, who was interred in Cabbagetown's Necropolis until he returned to throw his hat into the 2010 Toronto municipal election. Mount Pleasant Road actually cuts the cemetery in half, and is the only option for through traffic in the area between Yonge Street to the west and Bayview Avenue to the east. Things are even more calm and stilled here, except for the ubiquitous traffic. Particularly considering the way the cemetery interrupts the street grid, it's no surprise that so much traffic ends up being funnelled onto Mount Pleasant Road.

North of the cemetery, a second, smaller bridge carries the road over Mud Creek, one of the Don River's many tributaries. At this point, I realized I'd entered familiar ground - this was part of the route my father and I covered by car, from downtown Toronto to Allen Road. What I recall as having been vaguely industrial buildings fifteen years ago are now new and shining retirement residences. The office building at Mount Pleasant and Davisville still exists, but the UNICEF logo is no longer there, and the train hobby shop that used to occupy the first storefront north of June Rowlands Park is now a hair studio.

This is the point where the character of Mount Pleasant changes for a third time. At Millwood Road, a kilometer north of Mount Pleasant Cemetery's southern fringe and 2.2 kilometers out from St. Clair station, the "affluent suburb" vibe disappears and is replaced by one of the "main streets" that are commonplace throughout the city, in places like Queen Street West, Roncesvalles, King Street East, St. Clair West, Harbord Street, and Rogers Road - places that at one time had, or continued to have, streetcar service.

It's places like these, in my opinion, that really make Toronto - that cement the idea that this is "a city of neighbourhoods." Aside from a handful of outliers north of the cemetery, this was the first time I'd encountered commercial properties along the route since before I'd crossed the bridge on St. Clair. I passed two independent bookstores here, two old-style theatres - the Regent and, further north, the Mount Pleasant, the latter retaining a sign that looks as if it's seen many days - and saw the re-emergence of pedestrian culture that didn't seem to exist through the residential section of my route. It was only when I approached Eglinton that the architecture really began to diverge from the early twentieth-century style that predominated further south - the Mount Pleasant branch of the Toronto Public Library, even though built in 1991, is architecturally well-integrated with its surroundings.

This "Main Street Mount Pleasant" lasts for another seven hundred meters until it reaches Eglinton, historically one of the major dividing lines between the city of Toronto and "the suburbs," three kilometers out from St. Clair station.

That green-roofed structure is St. Peter's Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church of Toronto, and as churches in Toronto go it's got a rather distinct architectural design going for it. It was relevant to me because it marked out the end of the route - I've seen it in photos from the 1970s that depicted the end of the Mount Pleasant line. Here, just north of Eglinton, the streetcars turned around for their southbound runs at Eglinton Loop. It still exists today, though the Moore Place development has risen around and above it, as the northern terminus of the 74 Mt Pleasant bus route. Aside from one minor diversion, this bus route exactly parallels the route of the old streetcar.

I've never been on Mount Pleasant Road north of Eglinton Loop. I'm not sure what sort of neighborhoods may or may not thrive there - whether there's another "Main Street" along its length, or if it returns to the same sort of residential tranquility that predominated in Moore Park.

Still, though, it left me wondering: why's it called Mount Pleasant? Hell if I know. It seemed perfectly level to me.