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02/04/2006: "Little Liberty Walk"
There were just three of us in the end, and we never really got beyond Liberty Village - too many curious things to explore just in that little space between the tracks.
We started off exploring the new Liberty Village development, which is actually quite nice on the inside - all little pedestrian paths and tiny squares, with all the parking underneath. It's not a bad model for a neighbourhood, but it does feel a little Truman-Show-ish. It could also get rather claustrophobic if some of the neighbours turned nasty. We enjoyed trying to work out the complicated mix of condo units squeezed into the four-storey townhouses.
We then walked over past the under-construction Liberty Tower towards the old Liberty neighbourhood. I was incensed at the way that this obvious walking route, from the village to the supermarket and retail mall only 5 minutes walk away, was going to be a dull wide road with unpleasant sidewalks aimed primarily at the car. It is the kind of pedestrian route that should obviously be designed to be an attractive walking environment.
It's clear that, while the village itself is designed with the idea that people like walking around, no-one thought about how residents might walk OUT of the village or made sure those routes were equally pleasant. The city is starting development of a pedestrian plan, and this is something I want to push for - that in all developments, walking routes out of the new buildings to nearby destinations should be mapped and made attractive.
Walking into the old neighbourhood, we passed a building called the Toy Factory (we debated whether it had actually once been a toy factory, or if that was just marketing). They had taken the roof off, and so it was topped with a series of brick pillars, like teeth sticking into the air, each one capped by a little protective wrapping of plastic at the top. A very weird site.
Then we got to the cafe, and noticed this delightful sign directing pedestrians and cyclists southwards. I love the fact that it is like a highway sign, but for pedestrians. We could not resist, obviously, and promptly headed south.
Our first encounter was with a parking lot with two cool cars - a tiny english racing car, and a VW jeep that looked to me like it was made from a kit. Further exploration took us too a charming little cobblestone back patio tucked behind old buildings, like something out of France, glimpsed through an open door in a wooden fence.
Continuing south, we found at the end of the road an underpass at the Exhibition GO train station that took pedestrians from Liberty Village under the GO train tracks to Exhibition Place. It included excellent echo effects. Coming out on the other side, we quickly made our way to the Dufferin Gate. We travelled along a curious path - a pretty brick path for walkers, but planted with scratchy brambles on one side, and creepy white berries that we were certain were poisonous on the other. The path lay between the Gardiner and the loading docks of Ex buildings - not the most pleasing environment for a walk. If only they put that kind of effort into making walking paths in the rest of the Ex.
As we walked, we debated whether it was raining lightly or snowing, and at the Dufferin Gate we found a light which answered the problem, illuminating the snow as it fell and making it look like streaks of meteorites. Only Jason's camera was good enough to capture it - he will hopefully post them on flikr.
We walked up Dufferin, and experimented with centrifugal forces in the playground of weird apparatuses just before King. Then we wandered back into Liberty, exploring the fabulous back alleys behind the amazing Carpet Factory building - so long, tall, narrow and imposing. We agreed that it was like the Distillery District in its re-invention of old industrial buildings, only better and less publicized.
We came back out at the tunnel under the tracks at King, but didn't want to actually walk under. Instead, we found a gap in the fence at the construction site nearby (which is practically right on the tracks), and walked onto the wide set of tracks, wandering along and crossing over, enjoying the transgressive freedom, until we went back to King on the other side through a gap in the fence.
Our final stop was a new grocery store, full of new-store-smell, where we found birch-based sodas - containing genuine birch, and really good in a kind of root beer sort of way - and a jar of nuts soaking in honey, which sounded much better than it turned out to be. And, with a walk up to Queen and a discussion of early Canadian punk bands (one of the houses prompted memories for Jason), the walk wrapped up.
