More relaxed pandemic restrictions allowed extended family gatherings, and the beginning of international travel.
Toronto, Ontario; Montreal, Quebec; Brussels, Belgium
Ontario Place Marina: Placid lagoon with exhibition pods overhead, first opened in 1971 and now underused. North section of docks with boats still in the water, leaves haven’t yet turned to autumn colours. Exhibition Place beyond, with BMO Field a splash of colour amongst towers. (Ontario Place Martina, Lakeshore Boulevard West, Toronto, Ontario) 20211001Delicious Shawarma & Falafel: Unusually warm fall Saturday made outdoor dining on a covered patio feel like travelling to tropical climes. Fast food counter served takeout falafel wrap and beef shawarma with garlic sauce and fries in large quantity. We wore masks inside ordering, no vaccination passport required. (Delicious Shawarma & Falafel , Birchmount Avenue, Scarborough, Ontario) 20211002Collision Gallery: Popup @culture_to #ArtworxTO exhibition with #LauraGrier in Take Space for Self Care in Urban Centres. Wood panels smudged with ink in the performance of caring activities, staged by the windows overlooking Tembo, Mother of Elephants, and the Commerce Court Courtyard Fountain. Venue semi-hidden in the financial centre, received a personal briefing from the curator, with offers of tea and blanket for warmth. (Collision Gallery, Commerce Court Courtyard, Toronto, Ontario) 20211008Riverside neighbourhood: Thanksgiving dinner with Peking Duck, since the only family member who really liked turkey is now vegan. Yee family from Vancouver now represented with one cousin a Toronto resident, and the other visiting from university in Montreal. Celebration started by writing in small handmade gratitude books, circulated around the table. (Riverside neighbourhood, Toronto, Ontario) 20211011Regent Park Athletic Grounds: Semi-spontanous organization in a field large enough for at least three soccer games. Occasional runner around the outer track, then a couple putting down small orange cones to mark space at the sound end of the field. Dusk arriving within the hour, neighbourhood residents get a little exercise before it’s totally dark. (Regent Park Athlectic Grounds, Shuter Street, Toronto, Ontario) 20211012Riverside neighbourhood: Post-pandemic, it takes my sister and brother-in-law to come in from Houston, to bring my father down from Scarborough for a visit. It’s been years since our sons used to see their grandfather every month for dim sum. Entertaining at home with takeout food allows more time for conversation, when we’re all on workday schedules. (Riverside neighbourhood, Toronto, Ontario) 20211013Playter Estates: Salon hosted by @redesign + @playthink, in advance of systemic design conference in a few weeks that will be centered in Delft, across the Atlantic Ocean. More social than topical, amongst colleagues who haven’t met in person in many months. As with many parties, everyone ends up in the kitchen. (Playter Estates, Toronto, Ontario) 20211016Wellesley-Parliament Square: Street corner wall has water babbling from top over brick and slabs, fronted by green bush, and obscuring the parking lot behind. Minor decorative amenity at the south end of a complex of high rise towers, as the densest population district in the city. Proposals to redevelop the area since 2018 would probably repurpose the surface parking lot, and presumably remove this mundane feature. (Wellesley-Parliament Square, Rose Avenue, St. jamestown, Toronto, Ontario) 20211019Willison Square: Midweek evening in Spadina Chinatown, restaurants are open for business but few pedestrians. Weekly family dinner out for a change, checks at the door for double vaccination and identification. Noticed lighted art installations on the drive home, we would be more conscious tourists if this wasn’t our home town. (Willison Square, Spadina Chinatown, Toronto, Ontario) 20211020Playter Estates: Local preconference hosted by @redesign, in advance of @RSDSymposium. Last session @aupward on progress @FlourishingBiz with origin story, and challenges with publishing in academic journals. All-day meeting an opportunity to meet active researchers in person, I arrived late afternoon due to prior commitments. (Playter Estates, Toronto, Ontario) 20211023Centre for Social Innovation: First return to CSI building in almost 2 years, murals are brighter than i remember. We decided to scope out the readiness for a regular Systems Thinking Tea, in the Climate Ventures space, having continued core team meetings triweekly. Looks like community mostly hasn’t returned to shared offices, doors are locked by 5pm. (Centre for Social Innovation, Spadina Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20211028Maple Leaf Lounge, YUL:. Hot entrees under chrome warmers, but service to passengers seated in the lounge, quickly delivered by an app with an NFC locator. Sated, so that we might sleep on the 6.5 hour flight to Brussels. I miss the old days when the international lounge was more freewheeling. (Maple Leaf Lounge, Pierre Elliott Trudeau Airport, Montreal, Quebec) 20211130
Eglise Sainte Alix: Walked up a slow incline towards a quiet neighbourhood square for provisions, as we’re jet-lagged in suburban Brussels on the Sunday of a holiday weekend. Fruit stand, bakery and small grocery store offer the basics. Mother Alix Le Clerk (1576-1622) had a vision of education for for all girls, rich and poor, Catholic and Protestant, following the rules of St. Augustine. She was beatified by Pope Pius XII in 1947. (Église Sainte-Alix, Woluwe Saint-Pierre, Brussels, Belgium) 20211031
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
Walking through Vancouver West End, encountered creatively designed public space officially opened in 2022. First new park in 10 years, full of visual interest with skybridge, play areas, pavilions, coffee shop. High urban density, serves 30,000 residents within a 10-minute walk. (Rainbow Park, Richards Street, Vancouver, British Columbia) 20250504
Still a free thrill to carefully descend and ascend the arc of the bridge, holding handrails to moderate speed. Posted sign says closure in the fall, maybe time for resurfacing that happens every 10 years. Valley for the Lynn Creek is separate from the larger Capilano River, where we visited the fish hatchery. (Lynn Canyon […]
Dyadic waterfalls may follow Shinto style of complementary Odaki (masculine) and Medaki (feminine) forces of the natural world. Original small memorial garden with kasuga style lantern honouring diplomat Nitobe Inazō builtin 1935 did not survive vandalization when Japanese Canadians were sent to internment camps in the 1940s. Norman Mackenzie, president of UBC (1944-1962) recognized Nitobe […]
Overhead sculpture, light projection onto floor, + audio recording Yuan Wen (2025) Play in the Field, part of Impos(s)able Impositions: UBC Master of Fine Arts Graduate Exhibition. At end of hall, drawings on xuan rice paper. Noises were intruding from the installation just over the wall, with sounds set for the opening night reception two […]
Outstanding view of North Vancouver mountains, and West End city centre from second floor patio on south shore of English Bay. Club is private for sailors, but upstairs is open for public. Can't remember visiting this venue when I lived in Vancouver in the 1980s. (The Galley Patio and Grill, Jericho Sailing Centre, Discovery Street, […]
Hoist from 1930s industrial heritage was moved opposite Sea Village in 2022. Prior location was hidden by Emily Carr University site 1980-2017 at 1399 Johnston Street, a building still vacant. Tower has become a landmark near southeast end of street, visible from Public Market. (Historic Yellow Crane, Johnston Street, Granville Island, Vancouver, British Columbia) 20250503
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 […]
