Giant Canada Postage Stamps

Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Address:  675 Commissioners St.
Date:  March 2024

  Canada Post has a Delivery Centre at the corner of Commissioners Street and Leslie Street in Toronto. It has nine giant stamps along its Leslie Street wall.  The stamps all contain Canadian birds. Many birders pass this building each day on their way to Tommy Thompson Park. The park is known for the large variety of birds that visit. Let's take a look at these stamps and the featured birds.

 

   This stamp features the Canada goose. The photo at the top of this blog is of Canada geese at Tommy Thompson Park. Canada geese are easily found all over Toronto near almost any water source.

 

 

Loon babies like to ride on the backs of their parents. This giant stamp features a male loon with a pair of babies.

     The loon above was spotted in Tadoussac, Quebec. It didn't have any babies on its back.

         This stamp is of a raven. Ravens are about twice as big as crows and have more rough feathers on their neck.

 

        This raven followed us around as we hiked in Algonquin Park. Ravens are about as smart as a 7 year old child and can remember faces for years. Perhaps we had met this raven before ?

    Toronto loves blue jays. After all it is the name of their baseball team. This blue jay was part of a group in High Park.

    This blue jay stamp shows a flying jay. Probably sliding into home plate for the winning run.

     This stamp is of a chickadee. It looks like it is doing a dance with its wings.

  This chickadee was seen fluttering around in the bushes at Humber Bay Park East.

 The remaining stamps are all of different raptors. This stamp is of a gyrfalcon. 

   Gyrfalcons are usually found up in the arctic. We have never seen a wild one. This gyrfalcon was at the Toronto Zoo.

  The other raptor stamps are all of owls. This one is a great grey owl. It is North America's tallest owl from head to tip of the tail.

 This is another species that does not make it down to Toronto. We saw this one in the Assiniboine Zoo in Winnipeg. The great grey owl is the provincial bird of Manitoba.

This stamp is another great owl. This is the great horned owl.

High Park in Toronto is known for breeding pairs of this owl. We have still not encountered any. We have heard them calling in the night. This owl is called Butters and works for the Toronto Zoo outreach program.

This last owl stamp is of a snowy owl. While they live and breed in the Arctic they do come down to Toronto during what is called an irruption. This is when there is an increase in the owl population and they have to travel further to find new territory.

 This snowy owl was spotted in Tommy Thompson Park. If you want the chance to see amazing creatures like this then check out the park. On the way there stop to admire the illustrated stamps that they inspired.

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Map of Our World
Canada Post - Giant Postage Stamps

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Post # 357

What We Do In The Shadows

Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Address: 65 Heward Avenue
Date: March 2025

  What We Do In The Shadows is a TV show that follows four vampires living together in a mansion on Staten Island, New York. They are Nandor The Relentless, Nadja, Laszlo and Colin Robinson. They also share the house with Nandor's human servant Gizmo, sorry Guillermo, and a doll with the spirit of deceased human Nadja inhabiting it. Through the six season run of the show, the mansion exterior has been played by three different locations.

  A house in South Pasadena, California was used in the pilot episode and for various establishing shots in the seasons that followed. After the pilot episode, production moved to Toronto, Ontario. The Cranfield House (photo at top of post) is featured in a few episodes. In Season One Episode Three, the vampires feud with werewolves in Laszlo's topiary garden. In Season One Episode Ten, Gregor loses his head, yet again, in a motorcycle accident on the lawn.

   Cranfield House soon became no longer available for use as a filming location. In Season Two, the show set up a facade of the mansion on Eastern Avenue near the studios. For a few years the mansion stood in the parking lot (above) at the corner of Eastern Ave. and Heward Ave.

   In Season Two Episode Six, Mark Hamill appeared on the show as Jim the Vampire. He confronts Laszlo. Laszlo runs away and goes into hiding as regular human bartender Jackie Dakota. For unknown reasons, the house across the street has stars on its side wall. There is no mistaking it when it appears on screen behind characters in the front yard.

 Nick Kroll guest stars in Season Two Episode Seven. He plays Simon the Devious. Simon and Laszlo fight over a witch's hat which may be cursed. Laszlo stands in the street in front of the wooden fence above and gets struck by several cars before turning into a bat and flying into the sewer after Simon.

  There are many locations around Toronto that get used in the show. Another favourite is the Vampiric Council building. Where would the Vampiric Council meet? Scarborough, of course. 300 Consilium Place is the exterior of the building where the vampires go on trial and ultimately in Season Four Episode Three, Nadja opens her night club. At the beginning of this episode, Nadja flies down and greets her guests outside. That is all for now as we have to end this blog.  Bat!!!

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Map of Our World
Cranfield House,  65 Heward Ave,  300 Consilium Place

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Post # 352

Canary Restaurant

 Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Address:  425 Cherry Street
Date:  July 2016

  From the Palace Street School, to the Cherry Street Hotel, to the Canary Restaurant. The corner of  Front & Cherry in Toronto has a long history.

   In 1859 the Palace Street School was built. The area around the school was residential at the time with lots of homes and children. The Gooderham & Worts Distillery had opened in 1837 and many people who lived in the area worked there. Industry continued to grow in the area and the school closed in the 1880s.  

      The building across from the school was the Canadian National Railway building. Over 200 homes were demolished and replaced with a huge rail yard. It is this building in Kick-Ass, where Red Mist takes Kick-Ass (Aaron Taylor Johnson) to meet Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) and then they get kidnapped. You can see the Canary Restaurant when the cars drive in and away. Sorry, we are getting ahead of ourselves. More on movies and restaurants later.

   The former Palace Street School building added some additional floors and became the Cherry Street Hotel.

    After the hotel closed the building was used as a warehouse for companies such as Thomas Davidson Manufacturing. The abbreviated writing on the wall has been fully restored.

   In 1965, the Canary Restaurant moved from University Avenue and occupied what was formerly the lobby of the Cherry Street Hotel. It remained in business until 2007. During this time it served many a meal and was also a popular filming location.

      In 1990, The Kids In The Hall aired a sketch that ended outside of the restaurant. It was called Hoopla and Bruce McCulloch steals some salt and gets away in a car driven by Dave Foley.

  In the movie Three To Tango, Matthew Perry (Friends) and Neve Campbell (Party Of Five) run across Cherry Street in the rain. You get to see the Canary Restaurant sign all lit up in yellow and blue. They sit just inside the first big window and enjoy what they are told is tuna melt. Afterwards, they both throw up on the sidewalk.

 Some other movie diners also eat at the Canary. In Maximum Risk, Jean Claude Van Damme and Natasha Henstridge have a coffee beside the window to the left of the photo above. They discuss their predicament and then exit the restaurant and head south down Cherry Street.

  In the movie Get Rich Or Die Tryin', rapper 50 Cent is trying to impress a girl over lunch. His crew comes in and joins them at a table in the center of the photo above. When asked what he does for a living he tells her he is a rapper, a gangster rapper.

 A lot has changed since 1996 when The Long Kiss Goodnight was filmed. The condo towers now rise high above everything. The area around the Canary Restaurant has been named the Canary District in its honour. The buildings all have a fresh coat of paint too. When Geena Davis throws Samuel L Jackson out of her car, it is on the west side of Cherry Street in front of buildings that no longer exist. In a bit of a continuity error, Geena dumps Samuel and drives around the corner in front of the restaurant. As he lies on the pavement, she drives past the Canary one more time before stopping to pick him up.

 I wouldn't get too comfortable lying near the corner of Front and Cherry streets. In the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead a whole bunch of zombies come running from Front Street and head north on Cherry Street. As the small group of human survivors makes their escape in fortified buses, they drive away from the Canary Restaurant and then drive away from the Canary Restaurant again. Who's driving that bus, Geena Davis?  No, this times it's Ving Rhames at the helm. He drives Sarah Polley and an ever decreasing cast of characters to safety.

 The most recent change in the neighbourhood is a new Indigenous Hub. It sits right beside the Canary Restaurant building. This metal wall artwork features an etched bear, wolf, turtle and more. No matter what happens around it the Canary Restaurant building will be there to witness it all.

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Map of Our World
Canary Restaurant

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Post # 350

Fire Hydrants

 

Location: Elm Creek, Manitoba, Canada
Address: Gladys Street Fire Department
Date: Oct 2014
Website: https://www.rmofgrey.ca

    You can't park in front of them. Dogs like to pee on them. In case of a fire you hope that one is nearby. We are talking about fire hydrants. Here are some of the most interesting hydrants that we have encountered.

 

    Now we could do a whole blog just on fire trucks (and maybe we will). When the fire department shows up to fight a fire, it is a hydrant they need to attach their hoses. Only then can they get the water they need to put out the flames.

USA HYDRANTS

 

    On Ditmars Blvd. in Queens, New York we found this hydrant next to Astoria Park. It was all painted like the American flag. It stood out amongst the other plain hydrants. We are uncertain if it was special for any other reasons.

 

 

  At the Irvine Spectrum Center in California we spotted this shiny, gold fire hydrant. This must be a special hydrant, but sadly it was not real gold.

 

   The New York State Museum is located in the state capital of Albany, New York. It includes an entire Fire Engine Hall. It also includes items collected from where the World Trade Center towers fell. These are two different types of hydrants (shown above) that survived the disaster.

GREECE HYDRANTS

 

 This hydrant was located near the Acropolis in Athens, Greece. It was pretty insignificant except for the tortoise right beside it. We know dogs like to pee on things to mark their territory. We don't know if this tortoise just finished marking the hydrant as his.

CANADA HYDRANTS

 

 

 On the highway towards Dildo, Newfoundland we spotted this Minion painted hydrant. In the movie Minions there is one scene where Stuart, the one eyed minion, actually hits on a fire hydrant.
 

   The world's largest fire hydrant sits next to the Elm Creek Fire Department in Manitoba. There used to be a bigger fire hydrant in South Carolina but it has since been taken down so we redeclare this the world's largest. It is about 29 feet tall and took six months to build. It was unveiled on Canada Day in 2001.

 A regular fire hydrant sits next to the giant one. You definitely would not want your fire department or your large fire hydrant to burn down.

 Dalmation dogs were used back when firefighters travelled in horse drawn fire wagons. Since then they have become beloved companions even to modern day fire fighters. At Fire Station 314 in Toronto, this hydrant dalmation keeps an eye on the street out front.

 

 

 In Scarborough, Ontario there is a sailor hydrant near the Highland Creek Royal Canadian Legion.

   In Scarborough, Ontario there is another hydrant located in Milliken Park. The only issue here is that the hydrant is all alone in the middle of a field. We are not sure when this hydrant may be called into service. Perhaps a picnic fire?

  Near Berczy Park in Toronto we saw this hydrant exposed while some construction work was taking place. You can see by this photo how big the pipes are. This helps keep a water pressure between 50 and 100 psi.

    The hydrant in the photo above was sheared off when a car drove over it and into a restaurant on Yonge Street in Toronto. A hydrant could send out as much as 5,500 litres a minute. Umbrellas are a good idea until the fire department can get the water shut off.

  Most places do not want your dog to relieve themselves against their walls etc. We have not noticed any signs near hydrants. It seems the fire fighters are fine sharing the hydrants with their four legged friends.

  In the Toronto Santa Claus Parade every dog carried its own hydrant with them. It seems marking your territory just wasn't enough.

  Our final hydrant on this list has a celebrity connection. Mr. T filmed his television show T And T in Toronto. In Season 3 Episode 12 he sits on the hydrant pictured above waiting for a limo to pull up to a hot dog stand. It is at the corner of Queen Street West and James Street. This episode was probably filmed in 1989 or 1990. Is it possible that this is still the same hydrant from 35 years ago? While hydrants can remain in service for up to 50 years, we have to report that the hydrant currently in that spot is a newer design.

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Map of Our World
World's Largest Fire Hydrant

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Post # 348