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Fresh and Wild 69 Spadina Ave Toronto

Toronto has the second-largest collection of high-rise buildings in North America. New York City is in first place, but Toronto's 2000-or-so towers put us in second. As you may be aware, buildings shape urban wind patterns, creating shelter in some spots, and unpleasant turbulence in others. The urban canyons have their canyon winds. The lower end of Spadina Avenue, seen here, is emerging as a new high rise canyon. We have lots of tower construction here. The sign suggests that the canyon winds are also becoming a problem.

This is not just inconvenient, it is also deadly. To kill a pedestrian, all you need to do is to knock them over onto a hard urban surface. Measured in this way, Toronto's downtown core reached the basic threshold of deadliness around 1906. The number of intersections with potentially deadly wind conditions at ground level has increased significantly over the past century. Planners, politicians, and academics, have ignored the problem. There is a high price to pay for such ignorance.

I put together a video about this problem: www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMwkRhXWhp8

Elkstar, over on Fotolg wanted to hear the sound of a red rocket. Here it is. Shot hand-held on a Sony Cybershot HX9V, and then edited in Sony Vegas.

The evening grand entry at the 2011 Grand River powwow in Ontario. Filmed on the evening of 23 July 2011. Filmed with a Canon 2Ti DSLR with auxiliary microphone. Original imaging at 1920 x 1080, with 16 bit stereo sound. Edited in Sony Vegas and rendered out as a 3 Mbps 640 x 480 video with stereo sound.