The boss's partner has been in a great state of perplexitude of late. The powers that be at the agency where she works have been off at some teamwork training conference and are now back at work browbeating teamwork into everyone. Here's the thing. When you say the word "team" to the boss's partner, she immediately conjures up games with sharply hit or thrown small objects coming at her at the speed of light. Never mind that she has the reflexes of a bat flying through a subterranean cave full of stalactites, the whole idea of teamwork inspires nothing more than tactics of avoidance. Her teamwork ideas involved shopping trips or going to a foreign film with subtitles. No one could grasp the teamwork component of that kind of activity, so her team ended up going on a walking tour of the Ward's Island followed by lunch. Go team!
It struck me that some of the ideas for a post I was doing about the agency's adjacent neighbourhood might make an interesting walk. You can find a marked up map of the itinerary below.
The meeting-up place and first stop on the tour is one of Canada's oldest war memorials in what now seems to be known as Victoria Memorial Park. The statue of the Old Soldier commemorates the War of 1812 and was unveiled in 1903. It is of great interest because it is the work of Walter S. Allward, who would go on the design the Vimy Ridge Memorial. The next stop on the tour is one of Canada's newest war memorials. The two giant plastic toy soldiers at the south-west corner of Bathurst Steet and Lake Shore Boulevard are the work of Douglas Coupland, the novelist and visual artist. It represents his take on the War of 1812. (The triumphant golden soldier represents the British American side in the conflict; too bad Harpo couldn't have shown this to Obama and the rest of the world during the G20. Hmmm. Maybe avoiding it was the reason they chose the Convention Centre instead of Exhibition Place for the G20.) As you proceed south to the third stop on the tour, you’ll pass the Tip Top Building, now turned into lofts on the right. The final stop is Ireland Park further to the south and just across from Porter Airfield. The commemorates the tens of thousands who fled Ireland during the Great Famine. In 1847 over 38,000 Irish men, women and children landed on the shores of Toronto (the city’s population was 20,000 at the time--kind of puts a boatload of a few hundred Tamils into perspective doesn't it?), where Ireland Park now stands, fleeing famine and eager to start a new life. About 1,100 perished on arrival. Their names are commemorated on the memorial. There is a brief video tour that we put together when the park opened in 2007 below. Here the tour ends. One of the intriguing possibilities is the Porter shuttle bus that ferries people between the Porter Air Terminal and downtown. It might be possible to hitch a ride to the real downtown eating district for lunch.
There it is. Teamwork. That wasn't so bad was it?
No comments:
Post a Comment