Toronto

Toronto

Toronto is a beautiful city in Ontario, Canada. By far the biggest and most populated city in the country, it could be described as a mix between New York and Moscow. Restaurants, hotels in all price ranges and amazing shopping malls abound; aside from all the other exciting things to do. But a picture is worth a thousand words:

I went to Toronto many times and it never ceases to amaze me. Toronto reminds of New York, with a downtown largely reminiscent of New York city’s famous Time Square. Every year, I religiously celebrate the countdown watching Anderson Cooper and the drop of the ball!

Toronto is marvelous for a tourist, since it has many facilities for the adventurous soul. For example, laundromats, dry cleaners and 24/7 Internet cafes are present throughout the metropolitan. Also, many stores are open well past “curfew”, even clothing stores, not to mention speciality or pawn shops.

Front street, Toronto, photo by Elena

Places to stay include hotels and motels, for all kinds of budgets, although all in all Toronto is a fairly expensive city, at least by the standards of this avid traveler. Attractions are countless, including the spectacular CN Tower, the adjacent Ripley’s Aquarium of Canada, museums, a gorgeous waterfront (Queens Quay – Harbourfront), magnificent and numerous shopping malls, including designer boutiques in the high end district, Yorkville.

Living in Toronto, as with most cities in the world, is quite different from vacationing. Rent is very pricy, as compared to other Canadian cities, such as Montreal, Quebec, and getting around may seem more difficult due to several factors. Nonetheless, the city is a vibrant and lively one, and present many challenges, but also opportunities, for those who can afford it.

Toronto harbor. Photo by Elena

Renting an Apartment in Toronto

Renting an apartment in Toronto can be quite challenging. Most landlords demand references from previous rentals, a letter of employment and a bank draft or proof of income. Additionally, first and last month rent are required. A credit report from a reputable agency such as Equifax can also be helpful.

A big concern in Toronto is cockroaches and bedbugs, the latter being much worse. Toronto is notorious for bedbugs infestations. However, there are Websites reporting buildings and other dwellings that have these nasty parasites. Bedbugs live on the mattress, below the sheets and suck blood while a person sleeps. Bedbug bites are painful, disrupt sleep, leave red bites and are very hard to get rid of. If you fall prey to these bugs, you must throw out your mattress and pillows, fumigate all your clothes, sheets and curtains. To check for bedbugs, lift the sheets on the mattress’ sides and look for black spots.

Cockroaches are less invasive, but obviously also very unpleasant. While management can exterminate cockroaches on request, unless they perform the procedure in all the apartments, these parasites will come back. For many reasons, Toronto is prone to parasites much more than other cities such as Montreal.

Toronto View from the heaven. Photo by Elena

Ok, so let’s say you jumped through all the hoops and got an apartment. The difficulties might not stop there. Landlords in Toronto are prone to send out eviction notices. The law outlays several timelines for different cases as to how soon a landlord can evict you. Regardless, a notice of eviction does not necessarily mean you have to move out. If you know your rights and go the tribunal of the Landloard and Tenant Board, the court may rule in your favour. The court is known to favour tenants and many evictions are illegal. The landloard cannot take your belongings without a court ruling and the sheriff presence or you can sue them.

In the case you have to move out before the end your lease, the landloard will owe you the last month rent deposit you made. In some instances, it may take up to three months. But the truth is, that deposit must be refunded within thirty days. Charges may be subtracted from the total, but whether that is illegal remains a question.

The following article does not constitute legal advice. Professional lawyers are far best suited for the full story. The Landloard and Tenant Board has addresses of walk-in legal clinics, much like in the medical field, where you can get information about the law without an appointment: Toronto Landloard and Tenant Board

Unknown Facts about Canadians

Trivia and Unknown Facts about Canadians

First Nations

Totem Poles are found on the North Pacific coast, among the Tsisian, the Haida and the Kwakiutl tribes. There are two types, Memorial Poles, used particularly by the Tsimshian, commemorated dead members of the family, and were set apart from houses. House poles (f.i. Haida Poles) were heraldic signs, symbolizing family ancestry and tribal traditions. These were erected in front of houses, the entrance to which was sometimes through a hole at the bottom.

The white man brought death: In 1781 nine of every ten members of the Chipewyans, at one time the largest Athapskan-speaking tribe of the Central Suarctic, died of smallpox – a white man disease.

 Coiled Baskets: Made by interior Salish Indians (British Columbia), were so tightly woven they were used as cooking vessels.

Victoria Park. Photo : Elena

Like many other Indian customs, the use of the basic bow and arrow is usually inaccurately portrayed. From the earliest sketches on down through many years of Hollywood extravaganzas Indians have been depicted shooting their bows in the classic stance of the European archers of the Middle Ages. For many years leading Indians like Chief Dan George of British Columbia have consistently pointed out that Indians held their bows horizontally – not vertically like Robin Hood.

If we did not as brother live, let us here as brothers lie – inscription over the entrance to the old graveyard for Indians and Europeans at La Ronge, Saskatchewan.

Varia

Bilingualism in Pugwash, Nova Scotia means Gaelic and English. Street name signs use both languages (sraid Nah-eaglaise and Church Street, by example).

At Yellowknife North-Western Territories from mid-June to mid-July sunset and sunrise blend so that it is possible to read a paper out of doors at midnight.

Kelowna is the only city in British Columbia that has a coat-of-arms that is authentic: i.e. issued by the College of Heralds and signed by the kings-at-arms. The left supporter, a bear, represents the origin of the name Kelowna, the Aborigines name for grizzly bear.

An old worm-eaten Goya sketchbook once auctioned in Victoria for $20,00. It was later valued at $465, 000, 00.

A glass house shaped like a castle is the home of George Plumb, near Cowichan, British Columbia. The outside walls consist of over 200,000 empty bottles encased in concrete.

The Domesday Book. An authentic copy of this famous book (compiled in 1087) is in Fredericton, New Brunswick.

The longest undersea cable in the world runs from Port Alberni, British Columbia to Auckland, New Zealand.

Poison d’avril – April fish is the term used by French speaking Canadians for April fool.

The world’s highest tides are found along the Bay of Fundy between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

Average rainfall at Ocean Falls, British Columbia averages 375 cm.

The death penalty was imposed for 11 crimes in Canada in 1859, arson being one of the crimes in question.

Alert weather station was established in 1950. At the top of Ellesmere Island it is only 800 km from the North Pole. Here meteorologists make observations in the Upper Air several times a day by sending up hydrogen balloons that carry radio transmitters that signal conditions of wind and temperature. It is the furthest North permanent Human habitation in the world.

Halloween High Jinks. When Canada was still largely an agrarian nation, youthful exuberance surfaced on all Hallow’s eve no less than that expressed by modern youth. A favorite prank of those by-gone days was to place a neighboring farmer’s wagon on top of his barn.

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Among the ten carved shields over the ornate entrance through the peace tower to the center block of the Parliament building in Ottawa there was, for may years, a blank one. The other nine shields bore the coats-of-arms of the provinces of Canada. Cléo Soucy, chief parliamentary stone carver, had persuaded the architects to include the 10th blank. Then after holding out for 82 years Newfoundland entered Confederation of Canada in 1949 and M. Soucy happily filled in the blank.

View on Montreal. Picture by Elena.

The Hudson's Bay Company

The Hudson's Bay Company

The Hudson's Bay Company (French: Compagnie de la Baie d'Hudson), abbreviated HBC, is the oldest commercial business in North America and is one of the oldest in the world. Founded by King Charles II, the Hudson’s Bay Company greatly contributed to building Canada as a nation.

Two resourceful Frenchmen, Radisson and des Groseilliers, discovered a wealth of fur in the north and west of the Great Lakes accessible only via Hudson Bay. The French Secretary of State, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, was promoting farming in the colony and was opposed to exploration and trapping.

So Radisson and des Groseilliers approached a group of businessmen in Boston, Massachusetts, to seek financing of their explorations. The Bostonian businessmen saw the plan’s potential and brought the two French explorers to England to seek financing. In 1670, Prince Rupert, cousin of King Charles II, used his connections to grant the lands of the Hudson Bay watershed to “the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson Bay.” Hbcs coat of arms shows the old Latin motto pro pelle cutem: a skin for a skin.

Hudson's Bay Company on Bloore street in Toronto. Photo by Elena

HBC established a few forts and posts around the shores of James and Hudson Bays where Natives brought furs to barter for manufactured. By the late 18th century, competition forced Hbc to expand into the interior and to build posts along the great river that would later become cities of Winnipeg, Calgary, and Edmonton. This region constitutes 3.9 million km² (1.5 mln mi²) in the drainage basin of Hudson Bay, one third the area of modern-day Canada stretching into the north central United States. Called “factories” (“factor”, a person acting as a mercantile agent, did business from there), those posts operated in the manner of the Dutch fur trading operations in New Netherland.

After war broke out in Europe between France and England in the 1680s, the two nations regularly sent expeditions to raid each other’s fur trading posts. In March 1686, the French sent a raiding party, with Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville in command, to capture the company’s posts along James Bay. On the way to the fort, he defeated three ships of the Royal Navy in the Battle of the Bay, the largest naval battle in the history of the North American Arctic. Pretending to be a much larger army, D’Iberville’s captured York Factory, which changed hands several times in the next decade. It was finally ceded permanently to the Kingdom of Great Britain in the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht. Later, the company rebuilt York Factory as a brick star fort at the mouth of the nearby Hayes River, in Manitoba.

In its trade with native peoples, the company offered wool blankets, called Hudson’s Bay point blankets, in exchange for the beaver pelts trapped by native hunters. An important part of the Hudson’s Bay Company, the Aboriginal women, who made and mended clothing much faster than Hbc employees, brought success to the Hudson’s Bay Company. They were often married to the Hbc employees, formally or informally. These marriages were known as a la facon du pays (after the custom of the country). These country wives played an active role in the fur trade and provided economic ties to the Aboriginal community. The natural alliance that came with marriage brought in much more revenue for the Hbc. Aboriginal women were also able to resolve many disputes between the Aboriginal communities and Europeans acting as mediators.

In 1821, Hbc merged with its most successful rival, the North West Company, based in Montreal. The resulting commercial enterprise operated across the continent. Its trade covered 7 770 000 km² (3,000,000 mi²) and it had 1,500 contract employees. Throughout the 1820s and 1830s, the company controlled nearly all trading operations in the Pacific Northwest from its headquarters at Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River. Between 1820 and 1870, Hbc issued its own paper money: the notes, denominated in pounds sterling, printed in London.

The Bay, photo by Elena

In 1849, Sayer, a Métis trapper and trader, was accused of the illegal trading of furs and brought to trial by Hbc officials. A crowd of armed Métis men led by Louis Riel Sr. gathered outside the courtroom to support their Métis brother with the cry “Le commerce est libre! Le commerce est libre!” (“Trade is free! Trade is free!”). Although Sayer was found guilty, the Hbc could no longer use the courts to enforce their monopoly on the settlers of Red River.

In 1870 the trade monopoly was abolished and trade in the region was opened to any entrepreneur. The company relinquished its ownership of Rupert’s Land under the Rupert’s Land Act of 1868 (the Deed of Surrender) enacted by the Parliament of the United Kingdom.

By the end of the 19th century the fur trade started losing importance. A new type of client came to Hbc: one that shopped with cash and not with skins. The Company’s began transforming trading posts into stores with a wide variety of goods. Today the company is best known for its department stores throughout Canada.

Today, the only part of the company operation remaining is the Hudson’s Bay Company Stores—trading posts that were established across northern Canada—in the form of department stores under the name The Bay. The first department store opened in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1881 (this building is considered the flagship store). In 1912, Hbc began an aggressive modernization program founding the “original six” Hudson’s Bay Company department stores in Victoria, Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Saskatoon, and Winnipeg. Retail expansion across the country was achieved by a series of strategic acquisitions: Cairns in Saskatoon (1921), Morgan’s in Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto (1960), and Freiman’s in Ottawa (1972).

In 1970, on the 300th birthday of the company, Queen Elizabeth granted a new charter to the company revoking most of the provisions of the original charter and formally transferring the company from the United Kingdom to Canada, where a new headquarters was established in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

As the company expanded into the east, head office functions were moved to Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Today there are currently four retail divisions: The Bay (an estimated 34.7% of its 2003 $7.4 billion revenues), Zellers(59.7%), Home Outfitters (reported figures for The Bay also include the Home Outfitters chain of stores), and financial services (4.5%).

The 99 Bay stores are the traditional and best-known face of Hbc aiming to offer a full range of goods and services of a department store. The company also operates 45 Home Outfitter stores, with the popular bed and bath segment. Zellers stores operate in the mass merchandise category and offers exclusive brands (about one-fifth of its 312 stores are former K-Mart Canada stores).

The company’s “HBC Foundation” was created in 2004 focusing on three areas: healthy families, wellness, and education.

Hudson's Bay siege. Photo by Elena

The HBC “History Foundation” shares the company’s long and rich history with the Canadian public and provides financial support to the Hbc Archives collection, the Hbc Artifact collection, and Canada’s National History Society, supporting history projects across Canada.

In 2007, the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives became part of the United Nations Memory of the World project, under UNESCO. The records covered HBC history from the founding of the company in 1670. The records contained business transactions, medical records, personal journals of officials, inventories, company reports, etc.

In 2005, the company was announced as the new clothing outfitter for the Canadian Olympic team. The $100 million deal was signed and The Bay has provided clothing for the 2006, 2008, 2010, and 2012 games.

The U.S. firm NRDC Equity Partners, LLC, parent company of American department store chains Lord and Taylor and Fortunoff, announced its purchase of the company on July 16, 2008. The new Hudson’s Bay Trading Company became a multinational corporation.

Bolton Shop

Bolton Shop

Welcome to the Bolton Shop Photography Studio

Maple Avenue, Black Creek Pioneer Village

S. J. Dixon, photographer. The most desirable location for this business across from the busy town Hall Green. Come take your portraits.

The Bolton Shop has been rented by a photographer who has just come to Black Creek Pioneer Village. Two studio sets have been created where villagers and visitors can pose and take their own portraits. Dagerreotypes, abrotypes, tintytypes, cartes de visite, stereographs and more on display. Develop your artistic skills and learn more about this great discovery. Compare your pictures with your friends!

Dixon Photographer. Photo by Elena

In the early years of photography, people had to patiently sit anywhere between 2-20 minutes to have their portraits taken. Often, in order to prevent the person from moving, supports for the head and limbs were incorporated in the studio set. By the 1860s, exposure times had been reduced to seconds and portraits photography became more appealing.

Photographers established permanent and temporary studios in cities and towns offering various sets for family and group portraits. Sets were simple, and the photographer added furnishings and décor to suit individual clients. Props such as flowers, toys, dolls and books were also used.

Bolton Studio. Photo by Elena

Photographer S. J. Dixon is now the proud tenant of the Bolton Shop. As one of many itinerant photographers, Mr. Dixon travels from village to village setting up a tent or renting a room for his business. Although he is currently on a photography expedition in unexplored regions of our country, he has left the studio open for you to enjoy.

Step into a 19th century style photographer`s studio set and take your portraits with your own camera! Smile, say Black Creek!

Coast Guard of Ficheries and Oceans Canada

Coast Guard of Ficheries and Oceans Canada

Quebec base: Costal aids at a glance

Some of the services provided by Fisheries and Oceans Canada have been in existence for two centuries at the Port of Quebec. Trinity House of Quebec was founded in 1805 mainly to improve navigation between Quebec City and Montreal, This was the genesis of the Canadian Coast Guard, so named in 1962.

Prior to Confederation, fisheries management in Canada fell to the Department of Crown Lands. The Department of Marine and Fisheries was born in 1867. For a long time, its offices were in the Customs Building of Quebec City.

Between 1884 and 1930, various reorganizations split, recombined and again separated Marine and Fisheries services. In 1936, Marine was assigned to the new Department of Transport, while Fisheries came successively under the departments of Fisheries and Forests (1968), then Environment (1971).

Anchor in face of the building of Coast Gard: This wrought-iron anchor bears an inscription that appears to read Peelingagile, doubtless the name of the vessel to which is belonged. Its date and origin remain unknown however. Photo : Elena

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans was formed in 1979 from the Fisheries and Marine Science Branch of the Department of the Environment. It was based at Champlain Harbour Station of Quebec City until 1996, the year after its merger with the Coast Guard.

Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s main programs are Fisheries Management; the Canadian Coast Guard ; Science ; Oceans and Environment. The latter two are now housed at the Maurice Lamontagne Institute in Mont-Joli.

Commercial lateral buoy. This buoy dating from early in the 20th century was used mainly to mark the shipping channel of the St. Lawrence for merchant vessels. It could hold a cast-iron bell acting as an audible warning signal. Height: 6m; diameter: 2.9 m; weight: 4,900 kg. Photo by Elena

Jean-Paul Godin

Jean-Paul Godin was born in Quebec City, wher he earned his degree in civil engineering from Laval University in 1949. He joined the Department of Transport in 1951, eventually becoming District Engineer en 1962. Mr. Godin was particularly instrumental in bringing about improvements to essential navigational aids in the St. Lawrence River and Hudson Strait, developing the Arctic Sealift Program and organizing escorts for merchant ships travelling through icecovered waters. He co-ordinated and supervised engineering projects that ensured safe navigation.

Mr. Godin served as Regional Director, Marine Services, Laurentian Region (today called the Quebec Region) from the day it was created, April 4, 1972, until he retired on July 1, 1985. His leadership, initiative, ingenuity and enthusiasm were the basis for and the driving force behind the establishment of the Canadian Coast Guard in Quebec City.

(Fisheries and Oceans Canada)

Anchor: 1) Shank 2) Eye 3) Ring 4) Iron chain 5) Stock 6) Palms 7) Fluke 8) Inscription: Peelingagile. Photo: Elena