Scenes Where Roads Meet

Toronto is a city of more than 2.5 million people – that doesn’t include the rest of the amalgamated city, just the original city. It is estimated that a million cars ‘live’ there and another million come in every day. One day not long ago, I had the joy of being a passenger in the car of a dear friend who understands my shutterbug tendencies as we drove down Bloor Street from Lansdowne in the west to Bay street at the centre of the upper downtown area.

This week, I’m sharing some of the intersections along that stretch of Bloor Street; places where streets, vehicles and people converge; where old styles meet new; where cultures come together in harmony. The Toronto Transit Commission boasts translation to some 73 different languages, by the way. It truly is a city where cultures converge and it has managed to do so with grace, each neighbourhood distinct to the nationality that lives there.

On Bloor Street eastbound in Toronto a lone vehicle crosses the traffic near Dufferin.

At Palmerston and Bloor, cultures converge.

Near Palmerston, on the north side of Bloor, the utilitarian nature of the garbage bins converges, and clashes, with the beauty of the planter and bottles in the window.

An icon in Toronto for decades, almost everyone who moves to the downtown area ends up at Bathurst and Bloor going to Honest Ed’s at some point or other

Coffee and brunch at Kilgour’s; books at Seekers downstairs. Looks like a bunch of rectangles, but the cycle of life goes on in the corner.

At Brunswick and Bloor, two friends meet for morning coffee on the patio.

Trinity St Paul’s Church, two churches that found common ground and met in the middle to become one – both built in the lat 1880s – meets modern Toronto at the corner of Robert and Bloor.

Varsity Stadium at Bloor and Bedford; further on the Royal Ontario Museum at Bloor and University; seen from Bloor and Devonshire. Both crystalline structures that create a new line of sight from the usual vertical.

Completed in 1879, the Church of the Redeemer sits at the crossroads of Avenue Road and Bloor. The boy’s shirt forms an equilateral triangle with the traffic signals. His focus is completely on jumping over the lines where black and white converge.

On the other side of the intersection, Avenue Road becomes University Avenue. Here, pedestrians, bikes and cars converge.

Just before Bloor meets Bay, Bellair comes in at a T-intersection. Across the road is the MAC store. I love the convergence of reflections from the street with displays in the shop.

For more takes on the theme go to: Converge