Spark of a New Year

This year, Sparks Street is planning a big New Year's Eve bash, which it has been hyping on its Twitter Account for the last few weeks. They've also been busy decorating:

Here's hoping their 2013 celebrations go off without a hitch!

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3D Thursday: Victoria Island #idlenomore

The Idle No More movement has been embodied by Chief Theresa Spence's hunger strike.

I took some 3D photos of the island back in October, including this one with the Peace Tower in the background.

Source photos for the 3D images:
Left, Right

Spence is Chief of the Attawapiskat First Nation. She's been hunger striking since December 10 to meet with Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Governor General David Johnston. So far, she's still striking. There is plenty of mainstream and alternative media coverage for the latest updates, as well as, of course, the #idlenomore Twitter hashtag.

[Tune in on Thursdays at noon for a new 3D image. View the 3D label for other posts with 3D images]

[Look for more one-photo posts under the label Singles]

Merry Christmas

Most of the construction sites downtown (or at least the ones near Elgin) have installed decorative lights on their tower cranes. The first to do so was Morguard at the 150 Elgin office tower behind the former Friday's roast beef house:

On top of the building is a mock Christmas tree in lights. They also had a hallowe'en themed banner on their building back in October. Some festive folks there!

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No more trading at the Athlone

The Athlone Apartments, 225 MacLaren Street. Unfortunately, I can't find any information online about the building's history, date built, etc. Just some apartment listings with scant information. That's unfortunate, since I go by it often on my way home from Bridgehead just up the street at Elgin.

There aren't even many good pictures of the building online (though this one has some indoor views of a bachelor apartment). Which means this post is probably going to get a lot of hits for people searching for it. This one shows nicely the bands of deocrative brickwork on a warm mid-September day in 2009:

3D Thursday: 3D through the aqueduct, part 2 of 2

Today's 3D blog post continues our journey through LeBreton Flats' aqueduct, which began with part 1 last Thursday.

We left off last time on the outcropping over the bridges spanning Lloyd Street and Lett Street, just north of where the Transitway turns toward Albert Street. The Claridge condos are visible in the background for reference. In the foreground is the top of the second, newer aqueduct ("newer" being 1908) under what used to be Ottawa Street:

To further get our bearings, here's a winter shot from atop the cliff at the North end of Bronson Avenue, taken in March 2011 (I had a 3D photo of a similar angle at the top of Part 1). Here we can see the Lloyd-Lett bridge at the upper-left, the grassy area past the stone building. J.R. Booth's trains ran diagonally over this bridge, then through the 20' wide curved alignment along the aqueduct's far embankment, just behind the stone building. Beyond the bridge, we can see the aqueduct, following roughly along the Transitway, before the two split, with the aqueduct heading underground toward the river on the right, and the Transitway heading left toward Bayview. In the foreground we can see Pooley's Bridge, which was narrowed significantly during its restoration in 2001. More on that below.

Bronson's Back

Bronson is reopening to motorized traffic for the winter at 9am this morning, ending the short period where pedestrians had the whole road to walk over.

Construction will resume next year.

On the bright side, businesses will have their passing customers back, and residents on detour routes (formal and informal) will have less traffic in front of them.

[Look for more one-photo posts under the label Singles]

3D Thursday: 3D through the aqueduct, part 1 of 2

Today's 3D Thursday blog post is one I've been working on for a while. It's a two-part series—with lots of 3D content—on the aqueduct that runs through LeBreton Flats. URBSite did a great (2D) post on the history of the Fleet Street pumping station, which is the subject of part 2, coming next Thursday. Reminder: 3D photos are best viewed full screen with a dark backdrop.

The first image that comes to my mind at the thought of the word "aqueduct" is a high stone-arch wall dating from the Roman empire. But really, it's just any conduit that carries water, usually by gravity. In fact, as this Discovery Channel special shows, most of the Roman aqueducts were on, or under, the ground level.

Ottawa's aqueduct is in a channel and partially buried under what are technically considered bridges. In the 3D photo above, taken from atop the escarpment, you can see the bottom end of the aqueduct, where it leads to the historic Fleet Street water pumping station and Pooley's Bridge in the foreground, and you can sort of follow it backwards along the line of trees through LeBreton Flats, curving back to the Ottawa River behind the condos of 250 Lett Street on the right. I don't expect you to see all that from the vantage point of the photo above, though if you zoom in close (zoom gradually if you can so your eyes can adjust along the way) you can make out the parkway bridge over the aqueduct inlet.

Here's where it comes off the Ottawa River, first passing under a prefabricated steel bridge that carries the Ottawa River Pathway. Nepean Bay in the Ottawa River is at the left, and the water headed to the aqueduct flows toward the right.

3D Thursday: Bronson Avenue artwork chosen

The artwork for the Bronson Avenue reconstruction project has been selected. Instead of having a series of smaller artpieces along the sidewalk, like Bank (Centretown), Bank (Glebe), Preston, Somerset, King Edward, and perhaps most (in)famously, Wellington Steet West, Bronson Avenue's art budget was pooled to create two larger installations.

There was an open house earlier in November where members of the public could provide feedback to the review panel, and around that time Lana blogged about the locations: on top of the entrance at the Bronson Centre, and along the fence at McNabb.

Tim desClouds' wonderful piece, Sit for a While, In the Garden, and Watch the Parade, will run along Bronson Avenue near Gladstone where the Lawn Bowling club is now. It includes a giant layered tree on a fence with cutout figurines. The fence pickets will be bent to create seating inside the fence itself.

Tim is the person who did the chairs along Bank Street in the Glebe, and he actually submitted a piece for the other Bronson artpiece location along similar lines.

I actually did a second version of the 3D photo with different adjustments. It's difficult at such close range to get everything in 'focus'. If you like, you can download the source photos and try yourself (search YouTube for tutorials to make 3D pictures)

Source photos for the 3D images: Left, Right

For reference, the fence would replace the old one on the right here, a bit further back from the curb (this photo was taken on Sunday):

For the other artpiece location, Andrew O'Malley's piece, Community Channel, was selected. It involves a number of aluminium and acrylic figures on top of the Bronson Centre's entrance which, for the first few months at least, will be illuminated in changing colours.

I say "for the first few months" because light-based artwork doesn't last long and there is never any money for its maintenance—the sound-based piece at City Hall's Laurier entrance has been broken for a decade and won't be fixed anytime soon.


The other submissions—all moot now—were summarized at the time by Eric Darwin on West Side Action and by the Ottawa Citizen.
[Tune in on Thursdays at noon for a new 3D image. View the 3D label for other posts with 3D images]