Daytimes full of new work assignment and training, evenings and weekends bicycling around downtown Toronto as it slowly reopens from pandemic.
Toronto, Ontario
Riverside neighbourhood: Working from home, new workplace arrangement, as office sent me a 27″ monitor for laptop. I already had a laptop and and monitor, plus computer tower under desk. Setup took 3 hours of company time, a slow day on a holiday weekend. More tweaks are expected, I spend many so many hours at the keyboard. (Riverside neighbourhood, Toronto, Ontario) 20200703Jack Layton Ferry Terminal: The William Inglis ferry returned to service over the past week, destined for the Ward’s Island dock towards the east. The ship was first put into service in 1935, built by the local company that produced marine engines during World War I. On a late Monday afternoon, saw people lounging on the benches by the boardwalk, consistent with social distancing guidelines. (Jack Layton Ferry Terminal, Queens Quay West, Toronto, Ontario) 20200706Yonge-Dundas Square: At @YDSquare, waterplay fountains installed by #DanEuser #Waterarchitecture circa 2002 have been turned back on. This signals progress in reopening of the city, after the pandemic shutdown. Filtration system keeps the sprays above pool-level quality. (Yonge-Dundas Square, Toronto, Ontario) 20200714West End YMCA: Stone sculpture “Little Champion, Le Petit Champion” installed in 2014, donated and created by Dr. Harry Rosen, a professor of dentistry from McGill University. By the entrance on the west side of the YMCA Building constructed in 1890, with The Great Hall becoming a separate venue in a 2016 restoration. (West End YMCA, College Street at Dovercourt Road, Toronto, Ontario) 20200714Queen’s Park: Privileged to live in a city where children can run free in a public park, and parents are trusting, without regard to their ethnicity or socio-economic status. The King Edward VII Equestrian Statue was installed in 1969 more for the horse, than for the monarch on horseback. Any traces of defacement by protesters are gone, a brief moment in the larger context of time. (Queen’s Park, Toronto, Ontario) 20200721Chinese Railroad Workers Memorial: In 1885, the last spike on the railroad joining Canada from east to west was driven in British Columbia, the same year that Canada imposed a head tax on Chinese immigrants. Location of memorial is on the south side of the tracks, facing north towards the most of the city, with Lake Ontario to its back, and the Rogers Centre currently not hosting baseball games. Pedestrians out on the small strip of parkland, enjoying summer weather. (Chinese Railroad Worker Memorial, Blue Jay Way, Toronto, Ontario) 20200727
18 Yonge: South of overhead rail tracks, @OtternessStudio 2007 “Immigrant Family” bronze in front of #Lanterra building reflects the hope for the future amongst new arrivals to the city. Migrants from Eastern Europe arrived after WWII by ship to Halifax, and by train to Toronto. In the block just north of the elevated Gardiner Expressway, the sculpture is well lit, but the site isn’t on the beaten path for pedestrians. (Immigrant Family sculpture, Yonge Street north of Lake Shore Boulevard, Toronto, Ontario) 20200728
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
Leisurely Saturday morning breakfast with scrumpet (crumpet variant) and crepe. Observing not only are visitors smiling and unstressed, but also the worker teams seem happy. Purchases from Muffin Granny, a food stall original in the market since its 1979 opening. (Muffin Granny Crepe & Bakery Cafe, Granville Island Public Market, Johnston Street, Vancouver, British Columbia) […]
Malaysian cuisine may not be found in Seattle, so sampled roti canal, beef rendang, carmellized ginger fish, and Assam curry tofu at steadfast Vancouver restaurant. Last time together may have been 16 years ago in Toronto. Catching up on years that have passed. (Banana Leaf, Davie Street, Vancouver, British Columbia) 20250502
SUCCESS Care Home: Entertaining mother with crafty folding of paper butterfly. Since last year's visit, we were advised against offering food and snacks. Pushed wheelchair around the circular hallway. (SUCCESS Care Home, Carrall Street, Vancouver, British Columbia) 20250502
Touring halls during preparation for The Show at ECU, 5 days before official opening. Background right painting Jesse Ward (2025) Mundane Presence. Installation on the floor yet unlabelled. (Emily Carr University of Art + Design, East 1st Avenue, Vancouver, British Columbia) 20250502
Mounted early for The Show, ECU graduate Katherine Langdon (2025) The Set-Up draws the eye upon entry into hall. Is the subject with the head in the closet avoiding the situation, or showing discretion. Curtains on the framing suggest a performance? (Emily Carr University, East 1st Avenue, Vancouver, British Columbia) 20250502
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 ›
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 […]
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 […]
