Gil Meslin

Thinking about the fact that Toronto has two 70MM IMAX projectors - at Ontario Science Centre and at Ontario Place, the world's first IMAX theatre - that have been closed by Doug Ford for nonsensical reasons.

Attention single-stair/missing middle people: as part of OBC review, the Province has opened a consultation on the Building Code, seeking to “identify ways to reduce unnecessary costs, delays, complexity, and administrative burden”. Runs to August 14. ero.ontario.ca/notice/026-0744

Toronto Life. A Market Gone Mad. February 2003.

This guy almost certainly saw the streetcar signalling a turn into Bathurst Station and tried to beat it on the inside instead of waiting.

Aside from both being TPA, the Toronto Port Authority reminds me of the Toronto Parking Authority in that they are both self-funded arms-length agencies that completely lose sight of public interest and their host community in their single-minded pursuit of a business mandate.

Federal public consultations on Billy Bishop Airport have begun. You can fill out their survey (the questions in which seem to take a reverse onus approach, as though the expansion is a fait accompli, and you need to talk the Feds out of it) at the link below. tc.canada.ca/en/corporate...

Here is the link to participate in the federal public consultation on the future of Billy Bishop airport. There is an online survey, and an e-mail address for long-form comments. Consultation period runs to July 24th. tc.canada.ca/en/corporate...

I have so much appreciation for the generation of older appliances that one can open up and easily repair. In this case, an old dryer with a broken belt. Motor, belt, pulley, switch, timer. If there were a store that just sold ‘dumb’ appliances, I would 💯 shop there.

Rush hour traffic on the DVP this morning. 🚲

My question was already answered by Christopher Holcroft a few weeks ago in the Hill Times. Nieuport (staff + consultants) met with the PMO 8 (updated since pub) times since last summer. MP Chi Nguyen (airport MP) had 7 meetings with Nieuport inc four in March. www.hilltimes.com/2026/05/14/t...

So JP Morgan is behind the Billy Bishop expansion push, but the people it hired to lobby all levels of government didn’t disclose it in the lobbyist registries. From @rwarnica.bsky.social: www.thestar.com/opinion/star...

I see the same dynamic on the Islands as at Science Centre and Ontario Place: public destinations, products of a brief window of 1960s largesse, allowed to wither slowly rather than stewarded properly, creating the opportunity for a bad faith Premier to say ‘it’s broken’, and plunge the knife.

Ceiling details of a great room.

June 19, 1930. Toronto Daily Star reader, ticketed for doing 35 in a 20, complains that county of York speed trap is a cash grab.

Thematic Halloween decorations in progress.

The last time the Blue Jays were in the World Series, there was no CityPlace, no South Core, no Maple Leaf Square, no HTO Park, no WaveDecks, no Roundhouse Park, no aquarium, no Scotiabank Arena, no Well, and King West and the Entertainment District were still largely pre-condo.

L: Dodger Stadium and surrounding contiguous parking. R: Outline of above traced over Rogers Centre (SkyDome) and surrounding area.

If you’re in Etobicoke and looking for that final detail for your World Series viewing party, Sanremo has Blue Jays cakes.

I love the neighbourhood representations in these four ‘Where’s a Public Library?’ maps from the 1970s.

If you pass through Queen’s Park Station, take note of the fabrication dates on the exposed tunnel liners before they are tiled over. A cool detail that will soon be hidden once again. Below: 20•10•60 24•1•61 8•2•61

July 6, 1995. Time is a flat circle.

Shana Tova, from our cat to you.

As noticed by @andrewlewisfc.bsky.social, the first photo is not 2007. Based on the state of the Ritz-Carlton, it would appear to be 2009.

Two shots of Toronto’s central skyline, 18 years apart. Taken near the Centre Island ferry docks, 2007/2025.

Gradient flower.

Toronto Island bathroom/concession pavilions (I really love these).

Centreville intermodal transit hub (rail and swan boat).

Same as it ever was. I had the strangest dream that a Ferry Terminal design competition took place over a decade ago.

Order of Canada for the designer of the Ontario Provincial Parks’ fire pits.

I like the places where a street breaks the grid, and you have building frontages parallel with the angled street while property lines and building interiors run with the grid and nearby side streets.

Still such a beauty when it catches the full sun.

Hulchanski, 1982.

I was at an airport yesterday and some cruel, brilliant individual had put receptacle stickers on the walls and columns by the seats at the gates.

Interesting how ornamental metalwork hanging from the ceiling around the perimeter of the Bianca lobby is used to create texture through shadowplay.

A detail I enjoyed at the Waterworks Food Hall is the columns with brick corbels carrying the girders for a large gantry crane, that still rests overhead at the west end of the space.

A very Yellowbelt scene.

I’d rather see a sunshine list of the board appointments, advisory roles, and lobbyist positions that people like Mike Harris move on to after leaving politics.

Three of the four indoor gardens, designed by landscape architect George Tanaka, that were part of the original Sherway Gardens design. - desert garden - tropical garden - hanging garden (missing: the Japanese garden)

It’s kind of perfect that Figure 1 in the City’s updated Mid-Rise Building Design Guidelines is a perfectly lovely fabric building that the guidelines would not allow you to build today.

Yorkdale: original (1964) plan and present-day (showing the original layout roughly shaded).

Convinced that the great societal fumble of my lifetime was the failure of Western democracies to appreciate the corrosive threat of social media, and to act accordingly: make algorithms transparent, curtail inauthentic activity, and control foreign influence operations.