Walk 3; Or, Missing the Walking Guru

Apparently I missed the walking guru, Dan Burden, who walked through town last week and led a Pedestrian Workshop and some neighbourhood walks. Or maybe I saw him walking around while I was walking around. Maybe he was just one of people who was walking around. He was quoted twice in the paper as saying that "walking is the absolute essence of life". I wonder what he means by that -- whether it's tied into the idea of upright man or whether he's really tapped into the spiritual dimension of walking, a zen of walking. Whatever he thinks he's made a career of it. I looked at his website for Walkable Communities Inc. I thought it was interesting that he does walkable audits of neighbourhoods to "review walking conditions"

So I walked from my house to the Hamilton Conservatory for the Arts and back last night at approximately 7:45 pm. It was dark but I'll do an audit according to Burden's check list:

Sidewalk width and condition: well it obviously wasn't wide enough in front of the seniors building at Jackson and Hess because I waited for two women to get up onto the sidewalk from the road over the curb (no ramp) with their walkers. They were heading into the building so I ended up walking around them on the road because they weren't able to walk as quickly as I can and with two walkers on the sidewalk, there just wasn't enough space.

street crossings: I jay-walk often on this route both of necessity and just because. Most of the streets are pretty busy so you have to be careful. As it's much darker earlier now, I've been noticing that it's hard to see pedestrians because a lot of them wear dark clothing. I was wearing a black & white plaid jacket so mine wasn't as bad as it could be...I don't think.

connectivity to parking: not really an issue for me in this context but I did walk through the HCA parking lot at one point.

on-street and off-street parking: yes

screening: I don't understand this one so can't comment.

tree canopy: Could be many more trees. It's an older neighbourhood but Jackson Street and Hunter Street and Bay Street have been highrised and this has compromised the number of trees. I've always liked the stand of willows behind City Hall (near Hunter) but only from a distance. My one close-up experience taught me that this is lap-dog-poo haven - obviously very convenient for apartment dwellers with dogs.

building placement: Don't know what I should be looking for here. As I said there are lots of apartments but then there's a school and a cool curve in the road to take you alongside the railway tracks and some very old buildings along McNab and the McNab Street church and the HCA/GO parking lot and the HCA itself which is a lovely heritage building...

restorations: I guess the HCA and McNab church and Central School would be successes. St. Mark's Church is a failure. It's all boarded up. It's apparently in heritage limbo. Will it be saved? Will it become just another highrise? Will highrises built in the 70s ever be heritage buildings?

housing type and mix: my route was mostly apartments and "rental units". I could change the route and get into more of the single family homes but this one is more efficient. I definitely favour the stretch between Bay & James. It's dark and there are lots of trees in front of Central School. I like the little dip down Park and the curve around into McNab and I like cutting through the parking lot.

Walk 2 (in Toronto)

Yesterday I was cold. I forgot to wear my hat. In Toronto, I walked from the St. Patrick’s subway along Dundas to McCaul and then I stood in line, in a huge line of at least 1000 people to get into OCAD for their National Portfolio Day. I was an official stander-in-liner, not there to show my portfolio but to stand in line, to hold a place in line. At first, once the line started to move and they let us into the building, we strategized -- choosing the stairs over the elevator figuring that we’d get to the fifth floor line up faster if we climbed than if we waited for the elevator. But the architecture thwarted us: we climbed logically to the fourth floor but then the stairs seemed to continue forever without landing after landing without a landing. Was there really a fifth floor? Was there really any stairway access to the fifth floor?

Later, outside, looking at the building we figured out that we’d been in the gap between the old building and the new black & white addition. It was kind of scary to contemplate it. Suspended way up there.

We had though made it to the fifth floor eventually by another route. We stood in line and achieved the objective. It took (in total) about 2 ½ hours to see two people but we met a lot of other people in the line up and chatted and I read D&G with a red pen in hand and learned a few things about content and expression, strata and deterritorialization. I learned that I go with the flow.

Despite my being cold for the whole day, we walked from Dundas and McCaul to Kensington Market and browsed for a while along Kensington in the new and used clothing shops that seem to have an inordinate obsession with video security. Is shoplifting so rampant? Do the crowds warrant it?

Then we retraced the steps. I always find this part interesting. We didn’t do it exactly. We tried the other side of the street for a while. Both times (there and back) I found it hard to cross at the intersection of Dundas and Spadina because people walk so slowly and serpentinely (?). I don’t really get it. It seems to me that it’s such a wide street with so much traffic and the streetcar that it matters that you get to the other side fairly quickly but there’s a leisureliness to the intersection that makes it feel like its own little world, like nothing might happen there ever…and yet I’m sure that if I stopped, someone would honk their horn or yell at me or maybe even run me down…

Walk 1

Let's see if I can remember...

On Monday night at about 7 pm, I walked from my house to the local school so that I could vote in the municipal election. There used to be two good routes but recently the pedestrian bridge on Ray St. was closed. Now there is only one logical route from my house to the school. The bridge (one of three bridges) that spans a railway track and ravine is the second of the three to close. There is only one bridge left open for walking and it may be only a matter of time before that bridge closes. All three bridges were originally open to cars as well as pedestrians but it's been a long time since they were considered safe to drive over. The Ray St. bridge was closed to traffic around 1984 or 1985. I know this because I used to live in the house right beside the bridge and I remember the clattering sound that the cars made as they drove over the bridge. All three bridges are made of wood. All three bridges are very interesting. As far as I understand it, the bridges are owned by the railway company who does not want to maintain them. I think this is a municipal election issue and I think about it as I walk down a three lane one way street with my back to the traffic. My world is remapped by the closing of this bridge. Some would say that it's no big deal.

Because wandering is a becoming...

I've decided to document just slightly more than 50 walks...and walking as a practice. Already today, I've walked to the bus stop and from the bus stop. The woman I was talking to on the bus forgot to ring the bell for her stop and ended up having to get off at my stop and walk back. What did she experience? What am I experiencing? I'm wandering from My Year of Reading and wandering with la lectrice errante. I got off at the closest bus stop today. Let's see what happens...