Toronto, Ontario (including Panamania Arts and Culture Celebration, PanAm and ParaPan Games)
Basketball court mural: Solo player shoots hoops in front of @JamiiEsplanade mural led by Elisa (Shalak Attack) Monreal and Julian Periquet, supported by StreetARToronto. Project was unveiled last month before PanAmGames, colours enduring even on a rainy day. Jamii is Swahili for “community”; the Esplanade was a product of the urban reform movement of the early 1970s, with influences by Jane Jacobs. (David Crombie Park, St. Lawrence neighbourhood, Toronto) 20150804Astro Stage: Greek dancing by @LevendiaX Hellenic Folklore Assoc @Taste_Danforth, near Jones Ave. Pedestrian traffic seems denser at the east end of the street festival, with kiddie rides and more community tents. Since we live within biking distance, the neighbourhood, we can visit when the crowds aren’t there. (Taste of the Danforth, Greektown, Toronto) 20150808Landlocked green space: Discovered Cairns Avenue Parkette, a filled-in ravine where Cairns Creek used to flow south into Small’s Pond before 1935. Surrounded by back yards of houses, it’s a ditch with higher grassy areas enjoyed by dogs and their walkers. Entrance on the west side, no exit any other direction. Historical research explains the strange routing of roads in east end Toronto. (Highcroft Road, Upper Beaches, East Toronto) 20150809. “A brief history of Small’s Pond, used then abused” | Chris Bateman | April 21, 2014 | BlogTO at http://www.blogto.com/city/2012/04/a_brief_history_of_smalls_pond_used_then_abused/Summer at 10pm: Thousands hear @jannarden claim @allisoncornell playing with her favourite musician @npstoronto on stage at #panamania. Relaxing songs and good humour have audience enjoying the time together on a cool August evening. Big screen on main stage has fans across the pond spacing out the crowd. (Nathan Phillips Square, Toronto) 20150811Electronic music: Synthpop @AustraTalks@npsToronto@to2015#panamania pumping bass feels like inside a club, yet the band started on the plaza before the sunset. Haven’t heard so much sequencing live since my university days. Entertaining to watch for times when none of three keyboards had hands on keys. Even most drums were electronic. My greying hair was not representative of the audience. Austra is Ryan Wonsiak (keyboards), Maya Potestski (drums), Katie Stelmanis (vocals and keys), Dorian Wolf (bass and keys). (Nathan Phillips Square, Toronto) 20150812Escorted transport: Ontario Provincial Police motorcycle brigade clears way for buses with ParaPan athletes. Must be on their way to closing ceremonies. Uniformed police at Front Street intersections holding back pedestrians. Buses looked empty, so spectators probably went downtown early to get good seats. (Front Street, east of Jarvis Avenue, Toronto). 20150815
Carnival and vendors alley: Sunday late afternoon sees Waterfront Night Market already in action, from the supermarket directly south. Biked through heavy traffic in Portlands for supermarket shopping, finding lots of pedestrians looking for entertainment. Free sample booths inside store were fully manned. When the parking lot gets taken over for an event, where does T&T expect their customers to load their groceries into cars? (T&T Supermarket, Cherry Street, Toronto Portlands) 20150816 MOCCA Courtyard: Dean Baldwin (2015) “Queen Street Memorial Fountain”, one of three parts of the “Queen West Yacht Club” installation. Running water trickles, steps away from Queen Street West and the streetcar. Picnic tables outside give the opportunity to hang out in a convivial scenario, in the final weekend before the MOCCA closes doors at this location, and moves farther west. (Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto) 20150822 Edward Gardens: Annual visit to renew vows for the 30th time, with three sons still in town. Cool summer day encouraged more leisurely walk. We watched the ducks in the stream, and had a woodchuck cross our path, that our city-raised sons hadn’t seen live, before. Fewer visitors to the park on a Monday afternoon. (Edward Gardens, Don Mills, Toronto) 20150824Island airport ferry: A new path not taken, as the tunnel to the Island Airport is an option for pedestrians. Drivers who want to park on the Island can still wait for the ferry. The ship sailed just as we approached the water. (Toronto Island Ferry) 20150825HarbourfrontCentre TaiwanFest: Neo-psychedelic indie rock @EchoBand Echo announced songs in Mandarin, and had audience dancing in their seats. Detailed instructions of directions for hands, up, down, left, right. Much of the audience wouldn’t understand the lyrics, but music plus demonstrations are a universal language. Taiwan Fest also had The Art of Seating, Pan-Asian Culinary Competition, and the Holy Sheep from LunarFest. (Harbourfront Centre, Toronto) 20150829Harbourfront Centre: As part of Taiwan Fest, the Holy Sheep exhibit encouraged visitors to take their photos as a celebration of the Year of the Sheep. The plastic white sheep (and one black sheep) last appeared at the Vancouver Art Gallery in February for Lunar New Year. (Harbourfront Centre, Toronto) 20150829
TheRex: Last night of @RexHotelToronto @TaraKannangara @Colin_Story @MackLongpre #ChrisPruden #JulianAB Sundays residency of August. Two sets, new CD on sneak preview in advance of official release. Tara Kannangara (vocals, trumpet), Colin Story (guitar), Chris Pruden (piano), Julian Anderson-Bowes (bass), Mackenzie Longpre (drums) (Rex Hotel, Toronto) 20150830
Blossoms of kanzan cherry trees attracting many visitors for selfies or portraits. One of many sites of the Sakura Project donations started in 2005 by the Consultate General of Japan. Nature tells us winter is over. (Trinity College, Hoskin Avenue, University of Toronto, Ontario) 20250511
South of Hart House is a gathering place with 13 columns symbolizing 13 moons of the year, with a hole in the roof where smoke from ceremonial fires can rise. Beyond is clearing space at a lower level, with new trees planted. Part of the Landmark Project officially completed in November 2024, based on an […]
Diasporic memory Aysia Tse (2025) Bean Curd Soup ft. Ye-Ye resonates as we use this vegan ingredient at home frequently. Familiar style of bowl not usual for our family. Part of the Talking Walls exhibition on Interwoven Identities. (Hart House, University of Toronto, Ontario) 20250511
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, […]
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 […]
