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One of the few things that I managed to retrieve out of the storage locker before it was closed and locked was my bicycle. I'm staying with my brother, and since he lives about ten blocks from the nearest subway station, a bike is nice to have. The weather has for the most part co-operated, providing me with beautiful, sunny, only slightly warm days. Today I rode down to the lake shore and along the bike path to the Leslie Street Spit. The Spit is one of Toronto's many parks, and probably ranks up there as one of its weirdest. Someone got the bright idea of building a breakwater into the lake starting around 1960, using fill from Toronto's many excavations. The fill is supposed to be "clean" - most of it appears to be brick, stone, dirt, and concrete (including an awful lot of rebar). Over the years, the Spit has expanded until it's now about 5 km (3 miles) long and has quite a few lumps growing out of it. Along the way, plants started growing on the fill and birds (a lot of them, some of them rare) started nesting on it. In the mid-1970s the city started opening it up to the public on weekends as a park, and that's the status it has now: landfill during the week, recreational area during the weekend. I used to ride out there about once a year, and had the opportunity to do so again today. It's always been popular with cyclists. It hasn't changed much, but out at the point a bizarre form of co-operative sculpture has appeared. Someone has started to put the driftbrick onto the rebar, like beads. There are several besides the one shown above.

Image ../2006.asiablog/20051002-rebarBrickSailboat.web.jpg, size 75476 b
Image #20051002-rebarBrickSailboat
Photo © 2008, Giles Orr

https://gilesorr.org/photography/gallery/PhotoGalleryAsia.20051002-rebarBrickSailboat.html 
Last modified: 2008-05-20 by giles