photography | Mama Cormier

….thanks to Ludwig for hosting Monday Window https://mondaywindow.wordpress.com/2021/05/17/monday-window-may-17-2021/

South Etobicoke in Toronto where I live is divided into three areas along the waterfront. The area on the east side is Mimico, New Toronto is in the middle and Long Branch is on the west side. Last week I took a drive over to Long Branch to check out the waterfront.

Long Branch was originally owned by Col. Samuel Smith in the early 1800s. He had a large family and he tried his hand at farming after he left military service. He apparently wasn’t a very good farmer and five of his seven children never married and continued to live in their parents’ home after they died.

In 1861, James and Margaret Eastwood purchased the old house and 500 acres of lakefront property from the Smith Estate. They cleared the timber and farmed the land. In 1883, they sold 64 acres on the eastern edge of their property to a consortium which developed it into an exclusive summer resort area. The land was subdivided into 250 villa lots where the well-off could build summer cottages.(copied from the Etobicoke Historical Society). http://www.etobicokehistorical.com/long-branch.html

Many of these magnificent ‘cottages’ still stand today. It always amuses me to think that people who lived in Toronto travelled 10 to 20 kilometres in the summer to travel to their summer homes.

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….thanks to Susan Kelly from No Fixed Plans for hosting Saturday Sculpture https://nofixedplans5.wordpress.com/2021/05/15/sculpture-saturday-31/

I try to get out and walk every day and at least once a week I walk over to Col. Sam Smith Park where there are these wonderful rocky beaches where one can see the city skyline of Toronto off in the distance. Over the years people have played with the rocks and bricks and created interesting sculptures and installation art on these rocky shore. They stay up for awhile and then they usually disappear.

Yesterday I observed not one or two of these rock sculpture but literally dozens of them that were not there last week. Some were very tall and others shorter and some were decorated with coloured rice but each one was different.