Vancouver, BC; Toronto, Ontario.
Dunleavy Ave at Railroad St. Mission to Seafarers historic Heritage Home, with cargo cranes of Port of Vancouver in the background. Self-guided walking tour around Powell Street and Oppenheimer Park, discovering original Skid Row. Still a tough neighbourhood. On the periphery of Chinatown, and streets from DY’s childhood (Vancouver) 20120202 1655Fog On Burrard Inlet. Not a ghost ship, just a freighter off the Port of Vancouver, as seen from the Seabus. Heavy low fog has obscured the mountains earlier in the day. Bright sunshine cleared mist by later in the day. (Vancouver) 20120203 0936Bagel Samples, King at Bay. Free bagels at temporary hut in financial centre, for people leaving the office at 5 pm, from Dempster Bakery. Everyone loves a freebie, still lining up at temperature near freezing. Off camera to right, people were spreading toppings on their bagels (Toronto) 20120215 145906
Maple Leaf Lounge Toronto. Tokyo-bound, sons waiting for toast in the international departures Maple Leaf Lounge, Toronto. Last time I travelled with these two, they were about 6 and 4 years old. Service is too early for alcohol, bottle racks are locked off (Toronto) 20120216 105433
Toronto, Ontario; Vancouver, BC.
Prince Edward Viaduct at dusk. View west from Danforth, towards towers at Bloor and Yonge. Red sky at sunset suggests sunny day tomorrow. Temperature just above freezing means winter pants, park and cap for cycling. Approaching the shortest day of the year, getting dark (Toronto) 20111202 1636Vegan Raw Festival. Christmas Cannelloni, with zucchini was wrap, red pepper and arugula for festive colours, cheese of cashews, agave, lemon juice and beetroot. Delicious. Free samples courtesy of Jennifer Italiano and her chef, from Live Food Bar (Toronto) 20111203 1438Scrap Metal Gallery entry. “1. If this sign is on, the gallery is open. 2. If this sign if off, the gallery is closed but we forgot to turn the sign off. 3. If this sign is off, the gallery is closed. 4. If this sign is off, the gallery is open but we forgot to turn the sign on.” An installation titled “This Sign (For Scrap Metal), 2011, by Micah Lexier. Contemporary art at its finest, in a new private gallery in the back courtyard of 11 Dublin Street, in the Bloor Street West / Lansdowne Avenue neighbourhood (Toronto) 20111210 1505
Alpine Skis On Skytrain. Symbol of west coast living. Have seen riders with skis and snowboards on Skytrain as well as Seabus, because public transportation to North Vancouver slopes from home is so easy. (Vancouver, B.C.) 20111220 1554
Toronto, Ontario; Vancouver, BC.
Planters East York Civic Centre. With frost coming, does the city put cabbages into its planters? I’m not a gardener, so I don’t recognize flora well. (East York Civic Centre) 20111112 1549Pantages fixture. Bentwood hanging electrical light in the Rehearsal Hall of the Pantages Hotel. While the venue name suggests entertainment, the Canon Theatre is down the street. Today’s meeting is technical briefings with the usual PowerPoint. Long room, good sound reinforcement for presenters. (Toronto) 20111115 1540Red eggs for 100-day birthday party. Traditional Chinese symbol and celebration that baby will live. Our sons had one-month haircut parties, a little longer gives new mom an opportunity to catch up more on sleep. Ten course meal followed. (Markham) 20111119 2003Vancouver Chinatown gate on Pender Street. Dusk comes early in Vancouver, on walk from west to east Pender Street. Noticed more Chinese herbalists in 2 block radius than we have in Toronto. Encountered one of East Side Cultural Crawl sites, artist live/work space on third floor of Main Street building. (Vancouver) 20111120 16:36Container cranes, Port of Vancouver. Eastward view from Seabus headed south to Vancouver. Illustrates city as a working port on the Pacific Rim. Ferry route uses Port as landmark, then turns slightly west for Waterfront Station. Rainy morning had short respite before participation continued for rest of day. (Vancouver, BC) 20111121 1054Vancouver Art Gallery, 2nd floor landing. Collection leans towards the conceptual at Vancouver Art Gallery, lots of phenomenology in contemporary and last century works. Tuesday night admission by donation, visited with DY. Photographing art is not permitted, but some building features are scenic (Vancouver, BC) 20111122 1956Stainless steel text, Burrard St. and Cordova St. Public art installation on west face of Vancouver building tower at Canada Place. Liam Gillick (2009) “Lying on top of a building the clouds / looked no near than when / I was lying on the street”. With no spaces between the words, reading the text would be better on a non-rainy day to decipher the meaning. City of Vancouver Public Art Program, presumably in cooperation with the Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel, where it’s installed. (Vancouver, BC) 20111124 1258
YVR, mountains to north. A clear day in Vancouver, after a week of steady rain. There was snow on the ground when I arrived. (Vancouver, BC) 20111125 1208
Toronto, Ontario; Vancouver, BC.
St. Michaels Cemetery from 95 St. Clair Avenue West. Landlocked Catholic cemetery from 1854, near Deer Park. Gates from Yonge Street locked, land is visible from the north side via parking lot off 95 St. Clair West. West and south sides are bordered by residential homes, children and dogs playing in the southwest corner, behind sign that prohibits recreation. Should graves be forgotten by locking visitors out? (Toronto) 20110901 1848Ryerson U Quad. Quadrangle facing southwest inside Kerr Hall at Ryerson University. A quiet spot before Labour Day, surely to be overrun by undergrads next week. Banking towers in the background (Toronto) 20110903 1655Driftwood Drive downhill. Biked up steep hill after following Don River north on the west bank. Route past the Police Department canine unit. Definitely bicycling as exercise, could choose other routes that don’t require huffing and puffing. Driftwood Drive put me back on the east side of town. (Toronto) 20110906 1849Orchard View Blvd market. Touring bike to Northern District Library on Orchard View Blvd., missed on first pass with street blocked for market. Temporary public space with farmers market on Thursdays until October. Looked at book in library, but didn’t check it out. Market was just packing up at 7 p.m. (Toronto) 20110908 1910Cabbagetown Festival. Neighbourhood crowd scene looking south on Parliament Street, north of Winchester Street in the annual Cabbagetown Festival. Unlike summer festivals, didn’t seem like out-of-town tourists. Local businesses, small tents with community organizations, side street lawns selling odds and ends. www.cabbagetownfestival.org/ (Toronto) 20110910 1828YVR Flying Traveller. Fiberglass artwork of passenger with luggage running through airport terminals by Patrick Amiot and Brigitte Laurent doesn’t reflect reality in Vancouver International Airport domestic terminal. Landing here, the west coast laid back style was evident as soon as we touched down. (Vancouver) 20110912 1600Approaching Vancouver via Seabus. Business travel luxury to return from North Vancouver via Seabus. Much faster than riding in car north over Lions Gate Bridge, and then west through construction on Marine Drive. (Vancouver, BC) 20110913 1525Pacific Cod, Sole, Halibut. Full sized fresh fish on ice at the Lonsdale Quay Market, North Vancouver. Seafood envy for tourists from inland homes. 20110914 1611Dundas Square fountains. Dancing fountains at plaza on a sunny fall afternoon when no formal events have been scheduled. Tourists stop to have their photos taken. Busker hawks his skills to draw a crowd. A chance for bicycling without coat, forecast is rain over next few days. (Toronto) 20110922 1826St. Matthews Church, Riverdale. Toured St. Matthews Anglican Church. Built in 1890, original church first one east of Don River in 1876. Congregation peaked at 400, now 75. On tree-lined First Ave., west of Broadview Ave. Riverdale Historical Society guide said long history of poor funding means building almost the same as when constructed, bricks donated by 11 local companies, laid with red bricks facade over rubble brick walls. Could be a good downtown location for a wedding. www.stmatthews-riverdale.com/ (Toronto) 20110924 1250St James Cemetery Ross marker. Durable grave marker from 1871, John Ross, Canadian senator. Inscription clearly legible. At St. James Cemetery, the oldest cemetery in Toronto still in operation, opened in 1844 for people in Upper Canada of the Anglican faith (Toronto) 20110925 18:01 See photo of inscription.Outer Harbour Marina. Poorly maintained lighthouse at mouth of Outer Harbour Marina. This peninsula is shorter than for Tommy Thompson Park (Leslie Street Spit) just beyond, practically swimming distance across. Marina is for small pleasure craft, so larger investment in infrastructure probably isn’t justified. Peninsula is available for film shoots. (Toronto) 20110926 1733
Flemish Beauty Pears. Local Ontario Flemish Beauty Pears in season. Mislabelled as Barletts, I recognized them on sight. Sentimental fall ritual for me. (Foodland on Danforth, Toronto) 20110928 1836
Toronto, Ontario; Vancouver, BC; Las Vegas, Nevada.
Atrium of the North York Central Library, from the fourth floor (North York, Monday) 20110404 1515Aircraft labelled as TCA Trans-Canada Airlines, hopefully for nostalgia and not a recommissioning of 1960s-era equipment (YVR Vancouver) 20110409 1445Opening #ibmimpact playing Classical Gas, first guitar with string trio, then guitar rock band, then deejay scratching, finally with band playing on tablets. Venetian Resort, Las Vegas 20110411 0815Live demo on #ibmcloud responding to Twitter at #ibmimpact, so I got my tweet on the big screen. (Las Vegas Venetian Resort) 20110412 1200Trio playing at St. Mark’s Square at the Grand Canal at the Palazzo Resort. Lighting is all artificial, probably darker than outside right now (Las Vegas) 20110412 1845Last chance for gambling before leaving Nevada by air: slot machines at airport international terminal 2, attended by a cashier offering change. Presumably few people leave with bags of coins. (Las Vegas McCarran Airport) 20110416 1015Heavy Weather, a group of heavyweight Toronto musicians coming together for fun to play Weather Report jazz (The Rex, Toronto) 20110421 2200Sherbourne Commons, south of Queens Quay East, is still under construction in late April 2009. The ditch doesn’t have water flowing, and the sign for No Wading in the pool is superfluous (Toronto, Sunday) 20110424 1700Scarborough Beach boardwalk, April sunset. Boardwalk at Scarborough Beach, unseasonably warm evening, eye between two rain alerts. Walkers and cyclists out, light at 8:15 pm (Toronto, Wednesday) 20110427 2015
When was that building demolished? Front Street East at Church Street. Building demolished at one of the oldest intersections in Toronto. Front Street at Church Street would have been near the waterfront of the town of York, before landfill moved the shoreline blocks south (Toronto) 20110428 1815
On the way back from the Sydney adventure, our family stopped over in Vancouver for five days to visit the west coast branch of the family.
Since Vancouver is on the air route from Sydney to Toronto, our family planned a five-day stopover to visit the west coast family, and partially adjust to the cross-Pacific time zone change. One of the first sightseeing activities was a drive up to UBC — considered a family jinx, with two parents both dropouts from the university! Our sons didn’t show much jet lag on the view over Spanish Banks.
Back towards the city centre, we returned to a favorite haunt from our past: Granville Island. We negotiated the usual traffic jams to park on the dock, facing the Burrard Bridge to the northwest. The place essentially hasn’t changed much in 25 years.
Looking to the east, it’s possible that all of the towers in the West End weren’t there in the 1980s.
Beyond city-building as urban planning is the idea of a Music City. This sees development of cultural life across a wide variety of arts, alongside economic benefits brought to the region. At the 119th meeting of Systems Thinking Ontario in March 2024, socio-cultural designer Adam Hogan and musician-designer Ziyan Hossain joined moderator Zaid Khan in conversation. […]
Having reached year 6 of an espoused 10-year journey, the Systems Changes Learning Circle is (again) convening monthly Dialogues on Social Innovation at the Centre for Social Innovation in Toronto. Starting up in 2019, the Circle was convening regularly in the Climate Ventures space at 192 Spadina Avenue. The pandemic interrupted in-person meetings, and the […]
EQ Lab runs Dialogic Drinks, “the kind of philosophical discussion you have in a coffee shop or bar”, twice per week. Wtih this group interested loosely in questions on leadership, I was invited to host an online session on March 12 (evening in Hong Kong and Singapore, really early in Toronto) and on March 14-15 […]
At the 118th meeting of Systems Thinking Ontario in February 2024, behavioral scientist Cameron D. Norman and design strategist Tara Campbell were invitied for a conversation guided by Zaid Khan. The panelists are both alumni of the Strategic Foresight and Innovation program at OCADU. Some time ago, they had conducted a research project on evaluation […]
An article on “sciencing and philosophizing”, coauthored by Gary S. Metcalf and myself, has been published in the Journal of the International Society for the Systems Sciences, following the ISSS 2023 Kruger Park conference in South Africa, last July. There’s a version cacned on the Coevolving Commons. This article started in a series of conversations […]
For the January 2024 Systems Thinking Ontario session, educational game designer Scott DeJong and innovation designer Geoff Evamy Hill joined a conversation moderated by Zaid Khan. Mutual interests in the new field of educational design and games were at the core of the discussion. This was an opportunity for systems thinkers to expand their knowledge on […]
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 ›
How might our society show value for the long term, over the short term? Could we think about taxation over time, asks @carlotaprzperez in an interview: 92% for 1 day; 80% within 1 month; 50%-60% tax for 1 year; zero tax for 10 years.Read more ›
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 […]
The selection of readings in the “Introduction” to Systems Thinking: Selected Readings, volume 2, Penguin (1981), edited by Fred E. Emery, reflects a turn from 1969 when a general systems theory was more fully entertained, towards an urgency towards changes in the world that were present in 1981. Systems thinking was again emphasized in contrast […]
In reviewing the original introduction for Systems Thinking: Selected Readings in the 1969 Penguin paperback, there’s a few threads that I only recognize, many years later. The tables of contents (disambiguating various editions) were previously listed as 1969, 1981 Emery, System Thinking: Selected Readings. — begin paste — Introduction In the selection of papers for this […]
In a recording of the debate between Michael Quinn Patton and Michael C. Jackson on “Systems Concepts in Evaluation”, Patton referenced four concepts published in the “Principles for effective use of systems thinking in evaluation” (2018) by the Systems in Evaluation Topical Interest Group (SETIG) of the American Evaluation Society. The four concepts are: (i) […]
How might the quality of an action research initiative be evaluated? — begin paste — We have linked our five validity criteria (outcome, process, democratic, catalytic, and dialogic) to the goals of action research. Most traditions of action research agree on the following goals: (a) the generation of new knowledge, (b) the achievement of action-oriented […]
