Toronto, Ontario
Riverside neighbourhood: Snow outside our bedroom window onto the street for the first day of December strikes fear into morning commuters. South of Queen Street East, just east of the Don River, we have a microclimate, so precipitation melted to wetness by later in day. Three weeks to winter solstice, and then we hope for brighter days. (Riverside neighbourhood, Toronto, Ontario) 20201201Harry Gairey Rink: Parents giving children a feel of the ice with skate helper training aids, an improvement over pushing a chair around. Slower movement on the pleasure pad to the south, faster circuits on the hockey pad to the north. Artificial ice solidified with temperatures below freezing overnight, streets otherwise clear of snow. (Harry Gairey Rink, Alexandra Park, Bathurst Street, Toronto, Ontario) 20201205Fontbonne Ministries: New awnings over walkway are an adaptation for @FontbonneMin to continue services to commmunity who have to line up outside, with temperature dropping for winter. With #MustardSeed program, @CSJTO had changed from welcoming lunches inside on weekends, to providing lunches to go. On morning walk through neighbourhood, passed many multi-child strollers pushed by caregivers. (Fontbonne Ministries, Queen Street East, Riverside neighbourhood, Toronto, Ontario).Laneway, Leslieville: Who has the keys to these locks? Two posts and a chain across laneway raises questions as to whether it’s private property, or a public right-of-way that has been obstructed. Pedestrians can easily walk around, but vehicles will be deterred. (Laneway north of Queen Street East, from Carlaw Avenue eastbound to Boston Avenue, Leslieville, Toronto, Ontario) 20201208Jimmie Simpson Park: Snowfall is transitory; snowbanks are persistent. Young children play on a small white mound while parents observe, in a familiar Canadian moment. Shovelled our sidewalk and backyard this morning, the forecast is for slightly warmer temperatures that might or might not melt the accumulation. (Jimmie Simpson Park, Queen Street East, Toronto, Ontario) 20201209Former Union Station Bus Terminal: Decommissioning of terminus north of the @unionstationTO tracks, as boarding for regional @GOTransit buses move south of the tracks. The 2003 replacement for the Toronto Coach Terminal had passengers traverse outside in summer and winter, while the new gate areas promise better. No snow on ground, we have a weather reprieve for a few days. (Union Station Bus Terminal, 141 Bay Street, Toronto, Ontario) 20201210Riverdale Collegiate Institute: Dormant hallways momentarily spring to life with students changing classrooms in the link between #RiverdaleCollegiateInstitute wings, looking southward. Outside the front side of the building, the small number of socially-distanced masked students suggests staggered breaktimes. Playing fields and sport courts are closed due to pandemic, with playground equipment specifically reserved for toddlers in daycare. (Riverdale Collegiate Institute, Gerrard Street East, Toronto, Ontario) 20201211McCleary Playground: A second life for a tree, branches downward inverted from its natural history. In a garden designed for 5- to 12-year olds, children may not think the position so strange. Just east of the railway tracks by Queen Street East, this site might be altered by future transit expansions. (McCleary Playground, McGee Street, Riverside neighbourhood, Toronto, Ontario) 20201215Toronto Eaton Centre: On Saturday afternoon before Christmas, might have normally expected busy shoppers on Yonge Street. With Province of Ontario declaring a grey zone, retail stores can offer only curbside pickup, not the usual mode for an urban mall. Drizzling rain discourages the street performers often on the sidewalk. (Toronto Eaton Centre, Yonge Street, Toronto, Ontario) 20201219Ashbridges Bay: At the perimeter near the shore, patches of films of ice beginning to form in the shallows. Most boat owners seem to prefer covering their watercrafts with white, so dusk is almost monochromatic. Towards the park, parents walking with their children bundled up in snowsuits. (Ashbridges Bay, Lake Shore Boulevard East, Toronto, Ontario) 20201220Lower Don River: Looking downstream, there’s a beach on the west side with the river at a low level, that might otherwise be submerged in a flood. The Metrolinx-Go Train bridge will is to be replaced and widened with new arch bridges for the future Ontario Line. Cyclists and runners frequent the trail for exercise. (Lower Don River, Toronto, Ontario) 20201221Devonian Pond: Loose time sees skaters in tights, player with hockey stick, child with trainer, and mother using toddler using stroller to get around the rink. Construction through campus on Gould Street now seems complete, pavement replaced by interlocking stone for pedestrians and cyclists. Hadn’t appreciated that the square with the oval pond was opened in 1978 with funding from the Devonian Foundation of Calgary. (Devonian Pond, Ryerson University, Toronto, Ontario) 20201223High Park: Chose to walk around park on the west side, as our annual December 24 family day. Light rain in off-season, attractions shut down due to pandemic. A rare opportunity with all our sons in town, though no longer all under one roof. (High Park, West Road, Toronto, Ontario) 20201224Woodbine Park: Finishing up afternoon walk south through park, across Woodbine Beach boardwalk, then back north towards Queen Street East. First visit to NPI and CL in apartment, condominium building with finishing touches and people moving in. Parents dragging toddlers on sleds through the snow. (Woodbine Park, Coxwell Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20201227
Logan Avenue, north of Dundas Street East: Stairs barricaded at bottom and top, alongside rail tracks for Metrolinx Lakeshore East and Stouffville corridor, pique curiosity. Walking around the block revealed large parking lots for industrial warehouses, with trees and fences barring pedestrians from danger. The planned Ontario Line will squeeze more tracks into almost the same width. (Logan Avenue, north of Dundas Street East) 20201229
In #GradEx110, Sohyn Yoon (2024-2025) Remnant Project has 7 channels of video on vintage monitors, with 2 audio tracks. Objects decayed or rusted that might be otherwise discarded, now fulfill a new purpose. Recognized as recipient of OCAD University Medal (2024-2025) in Integrated Media. (OCADU, McCaul Street, Toronto, Ontario) 20250509
In #GradEx110, Bita Ebnesheyki (2025) The Light of Hormuz installation brings together hand-dyed fabric and video projection in a memories of place. Soil brought back from Hormuz Island, Iran, were crushed, cooked and stained as reds into fabric. Moving images of the same soil are projected onto the dyed surface. (OCADU, McCaul Street, Toronto, Ontario) […]
In #GradEx110, Niki Sutherland (2025) Cartography: Mapping a Matriarch sculpture is carved offcut from a spalted (discoloured fungus) maple. Reductive process of chiselling, carving and sanding layers, to reveal black lines of decay. Living narrative of prior living organism that had activated surrounding land. (OCAD University, McCaul Street, Toronto, Ontario) 20250509
In #GradEx110, Cherie Leung (2025) Are You Warm Enough? stacks cotton quilts on top of mattress and bed frame. Concerns with 3 children, mothering turning into smothering. Recognized with OCADU University Medal 2024-2025 in Drawing and Painting. (OCAD University, McCaul Street, Toronto, Ontario) 20250509
In #GradEx110 , Adnan AlMouselli (2025) Perfect Storm of disconnected stools and sand. Installation represents journey from university in Syria that was bombed in 2011, to studies restarted in Canada. Part of the Play subtheme in Industrial Design. (OCAD University, McCaul Street, Toronto, Ontario) 20250509
In-person #SystemsThinking Ontario session on Wisdom Studies, led by @psywisdom Igor Grossman and @zaid___khan . First time post-pandemic that we've reverted to sitting in a a circle. Conversation flowed naturally amongst all participants, little need for moderation. (OCADU Graduate Programs, Richmond Street West, Toronto, Ontario) 20250508
Southbound Canada Line rises in height to cross over Fraser River via the North Arm Bridge, with a gradual turn west towards a shorter Middle Arm Bridge. Rafts of log booms see bundles of timber floated downstream on the way to processing. Scenic exit from the city on the way to YVR. (Canada Line Skytrain, […]
In morning shade, Kim Adams (2001) Squid Head is two rear ends of cargo load delivery vans. Without cabs or steering wheels, the lack of human driver foreshadowed vehicles 25 years later. Initially noticed the lack of license plates on the complementary blue GMC rear end, along our journey from city centre to YVR. (Vancouver […]
Photorealistic machine feel at centre of Ewan McNeil (2023) Roller Ball acrylic on canvas. Incongruous with floral patterns in background. Part of the Pattern Language exhibition also showing Dana Cromie. (Pendulum Gallery, RBC Place, West Georgia Street, Vancouver, British Columbia) 20250505
Leisurely lunch with @chris_wiesinger discussing Language Action Perspective, Heidegger and life histories. Previous connection via @chaunceybell, followed through on idea that we should meet when in town. Offshoot threads to others we haven't met in person. (Nuba in Gastown, West Hastings Street, Vancouver, British Columbia) 20250505
Two years after submitting an academic manuscript and responding to double-blind reviews, “Rethinking work, with the pandemic disruption” has now been published in the International Journal of Organization Theory and Behavior (IJOTB) as earlycite. The article has a DOI (Document Object Identifier), and should be streamed with an official volume and issue number soon. The […]
The 128th meeting of Systems Thinking Ontario was convened in person. The classroom was filled with current students, alumni, our regular participants, and a few curious newcomers. Moderated by Zaid Khan, the conversation was sparked by Stephen Davies and myself (David Ing) on the evolving styles in learning systems thinking. Stephen has been leading SFIN-6011 […]
The “Understanding Systems” SFIN-6011 course is a requirement in the master’s program in Strategic Foresight and Innovation at OCADU. For winter 2025, the class is now led by Stephen Davies, breaking the incremental evolving of content since 2008. While still on faculty at OCADU, the original course designer Peter H. Jones is now a Distinguished […]
In the 1970s, five ways of knowing were established by C. West Churchman in The Design of Inquiring Systtems. In the 1990s, his student Ian Mitroff carried on the tradition and extended that work in The Unbounded Mind. Now in the 2020s, the technology of Generative AI opens up opportunties to query or request responses […]
For readers with an interest deeper than the 15-minute presentation given in August, the Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Socio-Technical Perspectives in Information Systems (STPIS 2024) have now been formally publishied. The invited paper on “Reifying Socio-Technical and Socio-Ecological Perspectives for Systems Changes: From rearranging objects to repacing rhythms” was reviewed by the […]
The 125th meeting of Systems Thinking Ontario coincided with the closing day for the RSD13-RSDX online program. As a regular systems convening group, we’ve had monthly meetings since January 2013. Zaid Khan moderated a discussion including me (David Ing), Tim Lloyd, Allenna Leonard, and Kelly Okamura. We recollected starting as a spinoff from Design with […]
Rhythm and pitch are primordial to language. Susan Rogers, after a career becoming Prince's recording engineer, turned to complete a PhD in psychology focused on music cognition and psychoacoustics.Read more ›
David L. Hawk (American management theorist, architect, and systems scientist) has been hosting a weekly television show broadcast on Bold Brave Tv from the New York area on Wednesdays 6pm ET, remotely from his home in Iowa. Live, callers can join…Read more ›
Following the first day lecture on Philosophy of Chinese Medicine 1 for the Global University for Sustainability, Keekok Lee continued on a second day on some topics: * Anatomy as structure; physiology as function (and process); * Process ontology, and thing ontology; * Qi ju as qi-in-concentrating mode, and qi san as qi-in-dissipsating mode; and […]
The philosophy of science underlying Classical Chinese Medicine, in this lecture by Keekok Lee, provides insights into ways in which systems change may be approached, in a process ontology in contrast to the thing ontology underlying Western BioMedicine. Read more ›
In conversation, @zeynep with @ezraklein reveal authentic #SystemsThinking in (i) appreciating that “science” is constructed by human collectives, (ii) the west orients towards individual outcomes rather than population levels; and (iii) there’s an over-emphasis on problems of the moment, and…Read more ›
In the question-answer period after the lecture, #TimIngold proposes art as a discipline of inquiry, rather than ethnography. This refers to his thinking On Human Correspondence. — begin paste — [75m26s question] I am curious to know what art, or…Read more ›
Timothy F.H. Allen, president of International Society for the Systems Sciences 2008-2009, passed away peacefully in his home, surrounded by his family, on May 1, 2025. With his work on ecosystem ecology, I learned more about living systems than anyone else in the systems community. After his retirement, he was proud of putting together a […]
In 2024, WordPress Studio was released, making installation on a local computer simpler. The instructions were modified from MacOS to Ubuntu Linux, by Daniel Kossmann, “How to install WordPress Studio in Ubuntu Linux” | Jun 15, 2024 at https://www.danielkossmann.com/how-to-install-wordpress-studio-ubuntu-linux/ I already had NVM installed, but in Terminal, with the result “command not found”. In the […]
The appreciation of change is different in Western philosophy than in classical Chinese philosophy. JeeLoo Lin published a concise contrast on differences. Let me parse the Introduction to the journal article, that is so clearly written. The Chinese theory of time is built into a language that is tenseless. The Yijing (Book of Changes) there […]
In trying to place the World Hypotheses work of Stephen C. Pepper (with multiple root metaphors), Nicholas Rescher provides a helpful positioning. — begin paste — Philosophical perspectivism maintains that substantive philosophical positions can be maintained only from a “perspective” of some sort. But what sort? Clearly different sorts of perspectives can be conceived of, […]
Finding proper words to express system(s) change(s) can be a challenge. One alternative could be diachrony. The Oxford English dictionary provides two definitions for diachronic, the first one most generally related to time. (The second is linguistic method) diachronic ADJECTIVE Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “diachronic (adj.), sense 1,” July 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/3691792233. For completeness, prochronic relates “to […]
