Exploring Toronto’s Neighbourhoods II: Yonge & Eglinton and Sorel Etrog

July 23, 2013

The kids’ first Toronto Tuesdays outing with Papa took them uptown to Yonge & Eglinton. They headed up Yonge past the Yonge-Eglinton Centre to the Postal Station K at the corner of Broadway, a beautiful old building with carved lions and unicorns on the facade. A sign said that they’d find a Canada Post Kids Zone inside. Intrigued, they ventured in but found the place mainly empty–empty counters and desks. There were a few display cases of collectible stamps and postage supplies. One of the staff, a woman from Bogota, Columbia, explained that the building had been sold off by Canada Post and will no longer be a post office within the next six months. She kindly spent some time showing all the different stamps for sale to Bea and Tobes and made them a sheet with every kind of stamp and postal sticker (“Airmail”, “Priority Courier”). They picked up a tiny mailbox decorated with images from baby animal stamps and a pack of U.S. stamps with baby porcupines on them.

They stopped outside to take a picture at the monument to the William Lyon Mackenzie’s Upper Canada Rebellion which started at Montgomery Tavern on that site. Down Broadview, they stopped at St Monica’s school and church, and retraced papa’s old route home from school along Redpath. They passed by 264 Hillsdale Avenue East [where papa lived as a boy] and then had a nice long browse at Mable’s Fables, where once an episode of Littlest Hobo was filmed and papa’s friend Ralph’s apartment was located. They found a Horrible Histories book and a turtle puppet but generally enjoyed themselves.

Down Mount Pleasant, they marvelled at the tiny perfect things at the dollhouse store. They lunched at Subway since the people at Penrose Fish and Chips had gone fishing. They saw the old baseball diamond at Davisville Park and found their first Sorel Etrog sculpture at the corner of Yonge and Davisville. At the far end of Davisville (really Jane Rowland) Park, they found a farmer’s market, where they tried a cookie made entirely of nuts, got some honey that B taste tested, and enjoyed some delicious meat sticks. They also stopped to swing for a minute.

Continuing on, they found the Al Green Sculpture Garden at 77 Davisville. Plenty of Etrogs and other sculptures, nestled in some green space at the bottom of some well maintained, white highrises. As one feels in some other parts of uptown Toronto, they were walking through a Le Corbusier vision of the city living of the future. So, they talked about Le Corbusier’s knickname being “Le Corbu”, the crow.

They walked over to Yonge and turned down to the Kay Gardner Beltline Park, climbing up the steps to the old railway bridge to cross over Yonge Street. Leaving the forested walk, they found the entrance to the “Davisville Carhouse”, the railway yard at Davisville station. And beyond there, a wonderful little park with chimes to play, a flying saucer swing, a spinning, rope climb teepee, a whacky spinning spindle. Lots of spinning! Bea was pretty dizzy!

Finally, they walked up through the neighborhoods west of Yonge to Northern District library where they cooled off in the A/C and browsed before making their homeward journey: made a giant loop from Eglinton station, up to Broadway, over to Redpath, Hillsdale, Mount Pleasant, Davislle, the Beltline and back up to Yonge and Eglinton.

A great mix of some nostalgic sites and some amazing discoveries, especially all the public sculptures in the developments along Davisville and all the fun at Postal Station K, and a great taste of the heart of North Toronto!

P.S. Their stuffies do a lot of “posing” at the sites!