Good day one and all, this has been a wild week in Canada politically. It all started in the House of Commons up in Ottawa last week. The Conservative government presented a financial statement to the house for their review and hopefully a subsequent vote. This was to hold us until the actual yearly budget was written and presented on the 27^th of January. There were a few things in there that the Liberals and NDP didn't like. For instance reducing the amount of public funds they would receive for campaigning and elections. This was a reduction for all parties by the way, not for the opposition. Well Stephane Dion and Jack Layton sat down and decided to create a Coalition to wrest power from the Conservative party. They then told the government that they would vote en mass against the statement and call it a vote of no confidence and form a new government.

Well today is October the 5^th, and before I went to work on the night shift I thought I would take some time and go see a cultural festival that was going on. "Nuit Blanche" is an art festival that’s been going on in the city for the past three years. So I grabbed my trusty camera, headed to work to drop off my uniforms, and prepared to be shocked and amazed at what was out there. Boy was I right in that summation. Shocked and amazed at what some people call art. Mind you there were a few good pieces, but some of it was pure dreck and trash. I am not kidding about the trash part at all. It seemed to be a common theme in several pieces I saw.

Well, I haven't been posting too much here on my live journal account. It doesn't mean that I haven't been busy. Between my J-O-B, my work at starting a new career, and a whole slew of other things I haven't had time to write anything down. Scratch that, I have been focusing on all of the above and letting this slide. Now those of you who have been reading and checking out my pictures, thank you for your comments. I know some of you might not have read this but, I am saying it here in the hopes that eventually you will stumble across it. So what have I been doing? Well I have continued to take pictures of public sculpture, and I will still continue to do that. There are a lot of things like that out there. I have started to expand my portfolio of late though, all because I started to look up. What's that mean for the future? Well read on good friends, read on.

I started to run out of public sculptures to document in the downtown area of Toronto, Canada. At least I had exhausted my known locations. This means that I will have to be doing a little bit more exploration of the downtown core. I did this last night on my way to work and found about three more locations to shoot. I will just have to do some more walking around. At least this will give me some much needed exercise. I did stray abit from the downtown theme, but the piece I photographed was well worth the effort. It's located up in North York by the Centre for the Arts off Yonge street just south of North York Civic Centre. Here is one photo.

Well, I have been working off and on doing my pictures of outdoor sculpture.  It's going to be a work in progress I feel.   On the way home from work I discovered four more pieces in the neighbourhood that I missed the first go round.  The nice part is that I am doing some exploring of areas I have never gone before.  I have also came up with some other ideas of things to do.  It's going to take awhile but in the end I think it's going to be worth it.

So as it stands I have to come up with an even better plan of attack.  I will be limiting myself, for now, with downtown Toronto.  The boundaries are west side Bathurst street, north to Bloor, and east to Parliment.  There is no real south boundary because of the lake.  I know that's a very large area to do, but I think this is going to be a long term project.  Hey, all hobbies should consist of long periods of time.  My next two areas I am going to tackle will be the University of Toronto Campus, and Queens Park.  There should be enough works of art in there to kill a weekend walkabout.  This time of year the U of T campus should be more peaceful as well.

Another thing  I am going to do as well is include cenotaphs and memorials.  Why limit the definition?  These things are pieces of art as well and do follow under the definition of outdoor sculptures.  There are quite a few in the downtown core and scattered all through the city as well.  Some are typical of the standard used during the post WW1 era and just updated for WW2, and Korean War.  But there are sometimes exceptions to the standard and some modern styles as well.  

So that's what I plan on doing.  My cheap camera may not be upto the task and I should get a more appropiate one.  But my finances don't have that in the future for the moment.  I will definitely put a budget together to do that.  I hope all my readers(if you are out there) keep stopping by from time to time to check on my progress here.  Or just check my archive on the net.  Updated daily to weekly depending on what I find and how much time I have.    See you all on the intertubes.


and here's some more pictures that I have taken recently.