Description 67 - The PATH

From Toronto's oldest hotel to its oldest store, I go underground and show that not even a free breakfast can make me a morning person. With music from Modernboys Moderngirls, places where the water gurgles up, free radio consulting and a Correction From the Future.

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Associated links
City of Toronto: PATH
The PATH @Wikipedia
Erin Davis writes about getting the 2009 Rosalie Award
Rosalie Trombley and CKLW in The Walrus Magazine
Janik Media
Valerie Geller's Creating Powerful Radio
The Fairmont Royal York Hotel
The Royal York has a podcast?
Lisa Brandt isn't at 680 News anymore? Told you I'm not a morning person. (Congrats on the new job, btw!)
Royal Bank Plaza @Wikipedia (Yes, it's coated in gold.)
Toronto Dominion Centre
First Canadian Place
Atrium on Bay and the Toronto Coach (Bus) Terminal
BCE Place (It's called Brookfield Place now? Sheesh.)
Cerealicious
Montréal's Underground City @Wikipedia
Modernboys Moderngirls: official site, @myspace and @publicbroadcasting.ca
NxEW (not a typo)
Sheraton Centre
Hudson's Bay Company @Wikipedia
Eaton Centre

That thing I sent the boys at Canadian Podcast Buffet was an audio comment in response to a discussion they had about, oddly enough, CKLW in CPB-141 - an episode I listened to while starting to put together this show. I talked about listening to that station when I was very little and the notion that its heyday was brought to an end in part by the advent of FM radio (yes, kids, it was that long ago) and in part by the less graceful advent of Canadian Content regulations by the CRTC (though I'd say it was more FM than CRTC). I got to tell them all that stuff, so you are spared from it. :-)

You were not spared from my trying to figure out what the furthest points of the PATH are. Technically, the southernmost point is the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, I guess because they count Skywalk (which you had a taste of in Description 44, connecting Union Station to MTCC and the CN Tower/Rogers Centre area) as part of the PATH. The previously mentioned bus depot...er, "coach terminal", is the northernmost point. And that's the limit of my geography geekiness.

Since PATH is capitalized, you may think it's an acronym. Alas, it's not. The logo is supposed to help you remember the directions: the red P for south, the orange A for west, the blue T for north and the yellow H for east.

Well, that makes perfect sense, doesn't it?

For its part, the Montréal version is officially called RÉSO, which is just a play on the word "réseau," meaning "network". So not much different in that respect.

The idea of underground and/or linked malls/office complexes is fairly common in Canada, where many people in suits would like to be saved from having to go outside at least four months out of the year. In Calgary, for example, they're connected by covered walkways above ground: the skywalks of +15. I haven't been to Calgary yet, but I know about it because of a very cool movie I did description for once called waydowntown, about a group of office drones who live in the system, so they make a bet of one month's salary and compete to be the one who can go the longest without going outside. To the relief of Jane Jacobs, I would guess, they each slowly start to go a little squirrelly in bizarre ways. It's well worth a rental, and it will definitely get you to go outside afterward and get some fresh air - even if it's -30 or +30C.

Opening More Doors Again

Yes, it's another of those posts I write when there's a new episode coming within the week. It won't quite have the stuff I wanted for the next one, because the H2 recorder had some sort of SD card formatting craziness that has so far destroyed about an hour's worth of audio. SIGH. So a pretty great soundseeing tour I did in February will be moved up to the next episode - which I guess is just as well, because, c'mon...it was February.

But as usual, that's not why I'm here.

This weekend is the weekend for the highlight of the Description content-gathering year: Doors Open Toronto, or as I call it, NXNE For Architecture. Last year, I shared the event with my visiting parents, so there wasn't as much recording going on, but this year, I'm going to be all over the place. My overstuffed schedule is mostly taken up by sites that are new to Doors Open, including more parts of Artscape Wychwood Barns, the Don Jail, the first new building in the Regent Park "Revitalization", Shamrock Bowl and the Toronto Reference Library. Not all of those will become future episodes, and I still haven't even scratched the surface of all the amazing places to check out, so if you're in town this weekend, please go to the Doors Open website and look through all the 175 possibilities to explore.