Tagging Trash

Location: Promenade next to Sugar Beach

Date photo taken: 23 June 2021

How often do you think about trash? Perhaps more now than you used to, but I'm going to guess that the average Torontonian still doesn't spend much time thinking deeply about garbage. It's probably a good thing then that someone is thinking about it. One such group is the U of T Trash Team. Among their projects is Fighting Floatables, which aims to understand the problem of trash in Toronto harbour. They perform visual audits as a first step and then deploy trash capture devices in the water to trap floating debris. Collected material is then subjected to both a simple daily quantification and a deep dive analysis. This year they've added another layer to this by releasing plastic bottles containing GPS trackers into Lake Ontario. The bottles act like any other trash in the water, and the GPS trackers help the team understand how trash moves around the waterfront. They've made the movement maps available online so you can see for yourself how the move bottles around. It's one more way they're striving to create an "engaged waste-literate community where citizens are actively working to protect people, wildlife and the planet through the intersection of science, policy, community engagement and innovation that promote waste reduction."

Louis B. Stewart Observatory

Location: Hart House Circle

Date photo taken: 16 February 2017

The Louis B. Stewart Observatory, located in Hart House Circle and home to the University of Toronto's Students' Union, used to be something very different. It even used to be somewhere different. The Royal Magnetic and Meteorological Observatory, considered to be the birthplace of Canadian astronomy, was first built in 1840. Measurements taken there helped determine that sunspots caused fluctuations in the Earth's magnetic field. At the time, it was located to the west of its present spot, close to where Convocation Hall now stands. In 1855 the log building was replaced by this more solid structure, but as early as the 1890s, development around the site was rendering it unsuitable for its original purpose. The use of metal for streetcar tracks and in the construction of modern buildings was interfering with the magnetic instruments, and light pollution eventually posed separate challenges. In 1907 the telescope housed under the dome was moved and the building was donated to the university. It was subsequently torn down but thanks to the efforts of Louis B. Stewart, it was reconstructed in its present location. It would provide a home for a number of different functions over the next 45 years before becoming the home of the Students' Union. 

In this photo the dome is painted to resemble a Poke ball. It has become a tradition to re-paint the dome under cover of night. Other treatments include a rainbow, a mushroom from the Mario video games, and a storm trooper helmet. 

Enercare Centre Living Wall

Location: Enercare Centre, Canadian National Exhibition grounds

Date photo taken: 24 August 2015

This beautiful wall of greenery isn't your typical indoor display of carefully designed synthetic plants. All of the plants on this wall are real and together they work to clean the air inside the Enercare Centre. The Living Wall Biofilter is a system designed to increase indoor air quality and eliminate the need for pumping fresh air in from outside, which saves on heating and cooling costs. It's not the actual plants that clean the air, they just look nice. It's the microbes on and around their roots that do the actual work. Together they make for a wall that is both pretty and pretty cool. The system was designed at the University of Guelph's Controlled Environment System Research Facility and financed in part by the Canadian and European Space Agencies. 

Rock Garden

Location: Huron Street, north of Russell, University of Toronto

Date photo taken: 21 October 2015

Parked in the grass along Huron Street is an eclectic collection of boulders. Despite their size and proximity to the sidewalk it's easy to pass by them without a second glance. If you do look a little more carefully however you'll notice that the rocks have small plaques affixed to them, identifying just what type of rock you're looking at, where it came from and how old it is. In all, this urban rock garden contains 19 specimens from around Ontario.

Elevated Wetlands

Location: Between Don Mills Rd. and the Don Valley Pkwy
Date photo taken: 20 September 2015

This picture captures two of a total of six large plastic planters situated in the Don Valley. While many people seem to think they look like teeth, I've always thought of them more as elephants, perhaps due to their size and they way they cluster together. They're actually called Elevated Wetlands and that's basically what they are. Part public art project, part PR experiment, these planters were commissioned by the Canadian Plastics Industry to engage the public and show off the uses of recycled plastic. Made from, you guessed it, plastic, these large planters contain a mix of different recycled plastic products instead of soil. Plants found within the Don Valley wetlands were then planted in them and are fed water from the Don River by way of solar-powered pumps. By the time the water filters through the chain of planters it is much cleaner than when it went in. For more details on the concept, creation and science of this work, check out the slideshow on artist Noel Harding's own site.

Bird Banding

Location: Waterfront, near the base of Dan Leckie Way

Date photo taken: 30 April 2015

Toronto, with its waterfront and many naturalized park spaces, provides lots of great habitat for many species of birds. If you're the type to take notice of birds, you've probably also noticed that sometimes they can be seen sporting coloured and numbered bands on their legs, wings, or as in this picture, their necks. The North American Bird Banding Program has banded over 60 million birds since it started back in 1904. Information on banded birds helps scientists learn more about them, including their movement and behaviour. Did you realize that you can help with this work? Ordinary citizens are encouraged to record sightings of birds wearing tags and report them to the program. You'll be asked for information such as the colour and placement of the band, the number on the band, and where and when you saw the bird. In return, you will be sent a Certificate of Appreciation which will provide you with some information about the bird you saw. In this case, the banded goose is a female, about a year old, and it had been banded in the Toronto area just over a week before this picture was taken. Observing and reporting bird bands would make a great summer science project for kids of all ages, and it would help the Canadian Wildlife Service better understand the birds it tags.