Ontario Science Center - Living Earth Exhibit

I visited the Ontario Science Centre in late November, with my primary goal being to look at exhibits focusing on technology for my anthropology of new technologies course. As I was there, however, I discovered an exhibit named ‘The Living Earth’ which was less focused on technology and more focused on demonstrating to the public, in an educational way, the interesting ecologies and environment that can be found around the world in a place where they are very foreign: a city. While it was not particularly relevant to my other class, it proved to be incredibly relevant to the discussion of nature and the city.

            The primary visitors at the museum at the time I went were school field trips made up of what I would assume to be elementary school kids up to middle schoolers. They were fairly large groups, and the Science Centre’s position as a popular educational tourist attraction in Toronto allows this to make a lot of sense.

            This exhibit in the Science Centre has such things as an artificially constructed cave (given that the cave was designed largely for children, and I am quite tall, I decided to forgo entering it) that one can go into in order to feel what they are actually like, displays explaining about different plant and animal life that exist around the world, but in particular in rainforests. This is because the Science Centre has built a simulated rainforest inside. When I entered it, I was immediately hit by the humidity, which is a staple of rainforests. It was immensely humid, and the room consists of a pathway with a small bridge going over a stream fed by a waterfall, with plants filling the room to make it appear as though you are in the middle of the rainforest. The sight, heat, and sounds all combine to create this immensely immersive experience of finding oneself out in nature that cannot be found in Toronto in a human-constructed environment. There were also a couple of lizards and other animals in cages that live in the rainforest environment, but they were there for educational and entertainment purposes and added little to the immersive feeling created by the rainforest. It was a strange but interesting experience that impacted me even as I left the living rainforest and moved back into the exhibit hall where much of what was inside the rainforest (plants, animals, etc.) are explained by displays.

            The Ontario Science Centre, according to its own website, is an iconic cultural attraction in the city of Toronto that seeks to foster and create experiences for all ages that educate and excite in regards to science and technology (Ontario Science Centre Website). Its stated goals are to delight, inform, and challenge the communities that it serves, through exhibits that make visitors think and interact to expand their knowledge bases in a very accessible way (Ontario Science Centre Website). It features several different exhibits focused around space, the human brain and body, etc. along with the Living Earth, which is the primary focus of this piece. The Science Centre also features and Imax Dome, which provides an incredibly immersive movie experience (I have gone to it in the past on school field trips and can confirm that the documentaries they display in this theatre are incredibly immersive, and often quite educational).

            The Ontario Science Centre was first opened in 1969, and was one of the world’s first interactive science museums (Ontario Science Centre Website). Since it opened, it has had over 48 million visitors, with most of the visitors coming from the Greater Toronto Area and Toronto as a whole, and a large percentage of these visitors are school groups (which was also confirmed by my experience there). It also changes some of its displays every so often, in order to try to constantly provide new and interesting experiences for visitors, though exhibits such as the Living Earth and the space section are staples of the museum that have been there for many years (I can in fact remember visiting the Science Centre in elementary school and going to the space exhibit’s planetarium). As a whole, then, the Ontario Science Centre is one of Toronto’s older and premiere museums, and is a staple of the city as a whole.

            The Living Earth exhibit at the Science Centre brings to mind quite a few thoughts that can be related to the nature-city dichotomy. The Living Earth museum most certainly makes connections to Aldo Leopold’s land ethic, which wants humans to treat the land as a part of the ‘community’ (see a more detailed explanation in the Christie Pits section). A lot of the educational information in the Living Earth exhibit, especially about the rainforests and exotic animals, centred on this notion. Since a large part of the exhibit is a recreated rainforest environment, much of the literature in the Science Centre discussed human impact on rainforests. Many parts of the world that have rainforests (the Amazon comes to mind) are suffering because of massive amounts of deforestation and a human lack of caring for the natural world, since deforestation projects in places like the Amazon rainforest are massively profitable. Thus, part of the Living Earth Exhibit’s goal is to try to educate the average visitor about this problem, to help them understand that there are beautiful, natural places in the world that are being damaged because of greed and lack of concern for the environment. Now, this discussion of the land ethic in regards to the rainforests at the Science Centre is not one that is particularly associated with the city, since there are no natural rainforests in Toronto to which this knowledge could be applied to, but the fact that the Science Centre is making a concerted effort to educate people about what is essentially a land ethic is a good thing.

            The land ethic does, however, apply as well to an outdoor exhibit the Science Centre has that only really runs in the warmer-weather months, and as a result I could not study closely. Outside, in an enclosed space, the Science Centre has a small area full of trees that is known to host a wide variety of birds over the spring and summer. Some of the educational displays about this section were also focused on notions such as conservation and respect for the land, much like Leopold’s land ethic. At the same time though, this was a man-made enclosure, but as far as I am aware the birds that visit it are not actually trapped there—they can come and go as they please, but quite commonly are attracted to the enclosure by bird feed put out by the museum staff.

            The Living Earth exhibit also inspired a structure of feeling, as discussed by Raymond Williams (see the Toronto Island section for a more detailed explanation). As has been stated, the destruction of rainforests is a fairly serious concern that is covered at the Science Centre. This is quite directly a ‘loss’ as Williams would put it. At the same time, however, the Science Centre is essentially using this loss of natural wildlife plant life, and the recreation of this plant life in an enclosed, man-made establishment, for economic gain. While the Science Centre does have worthy goals of education and excitement in mind, at the end of the day it is a museum that visitors have to pay to enter, with subsequent gift shops and restaurants associate with it. In this way, therefore, notions of endangered wildlife and destruction of the natural world are being used to create a structure of feeling and invoke feelings of loss for the benefit of others.

            Does the educational value of teaching visitors about land ethics and treating the environment with respect outweigh the structure of feeling being created by the Science Centre? It is hard to say, but I personally would say yes. At the end of the day, one leaves the Science Centre feeling as though they have learned more about the world, and the Living Earth exhibit proves to be very interesting and educational, with the recreated rainforest being quite exceptional. The structure of feeling is absolutely there, but the educational value of the Science Centre seems to counter-balance it well.

Works Cited:

Ontario Science Centre Website, accessed at https://www.ontariosciencecentre.ca/.

Pages Cited in Particular:

https://www.ontariosciencecentre.ca/WhoWeAre/Backgrounder/

https://www.ontariosciencecentre.ca/WhoWeAre/

https://www.ontariosciencecentre.ca/WhoWeAre/QuickFacts/

Aldo Leopold, 1949. “The Land Ethic,” From A Sand County Almanac. In The Sustainable Urban Development Reader (2009, 2^nd edition). Stephen Wheeler and Timothy Beatley, Eds. Routledge. 

Raymond Williams, 1977. “Structures of Feeling,” Chapter 9 in Marxism and Literature, Oxford University Press.

Christie Pits Park and the Community Garden

I visited Christie Pits in mid-November, going there to look at particular at the community garden, though when I went there it looked rather barren (note that my photographs were taken in early December, so it looks even more barren). That is not to say, however, that I did not take the full park into account, since it is rather significant that this large park is situated in downtown Toronto, off of a very major street. It was very cloudy, and in afternoon, and so as a whole there were not many people in the park. It was a Wednesday and so I assume that children were still in school, which may have contributed in part to the lack of people in the park, along with the drab weather. There were a few people walking through the park while I was there, including some folks walking their dogs, and there was a couple of people playing basketball at the basketball court near the garden. I walked around the playground in the park, the ice-skating rink, and the garden, and probably spent about twenty minutes at the park, but during that time the number of people who actually spent time in the park, as opposed to just walking by it on the nearby streets, was rather low.

            I was immediately struck by just how immersed in the city the park is. On all sides there are streets, businesses, and residential apartments, and when I first exited the subway to go to the park it took me a few moments to realize that it was right in front of me because of how well Christie Pits Park fits into the city environment (though to be fair, the fact that the park is essentially a valley may have had something to do with my overlooking it). In a way, the entire time that I was in the park I did not at all feel as though I had left the city in any way, I was instead just immersed in a greener part. It did not feel like any sort of escape—instead, it was just a sort of slight detour off of the city streets. This stands in opposition to many other parks I have been to throughout my life, which always felt more divided, through the use of fences or other aesthetic designs. Christie Pits just felt quite different in this respect.

            Statistically, Christie Pits is an 8.9 hectare park located at the intersection of Bloor Street and Christie Street (City of Toronto Website). In total, the park contains a pool, three baseball diamonds, basketball and volleyball courts, a playground, an ice rink, a multi-sport field, a splash pad and wading pool, and a community garden. As a whole then, the park provides a wide range of activities for people of all ages to enjoy, though as previously stated, the weather and time of year were not conducive to seeing these activities while I personally was there. The park was named after the Christie Sand Pits that operated in the area until the early 1900s, and much of the material excavated from these sand pits were used in construction of Toronto’s early buildings and railways (Friends of Christie Pits Park). The area was then converted into a park. Notably, Christie Pits Park was the site of a riot (one of the largest ethnically-charged riots in the city’s history) between Toronto’s Jewish community and non-Jews who had displayed pro-Nazi sympathies during a local baseball game. Though no one was killed, it was an incredibly violent riot that is remembered on a plaque in the park to this day (Friends of Christie Pits Park).

            The community garden was established in 2009, through the group effort and cooperation of the Friends of Christie Pits Park organization, the Garden Committee, and neighbourhood volunteers (Friends of Christie Pits Park). The garden’s shed has all the tools necessary for gardening available for community use, and the garden’s focus is on growing organic food, but also produces flowers and pollinator plants (Gardens in Action). The garden’s goal, in part, is to provide a space for community members to grow food if they do not have the space to grow food at their own homes, which in a major metropolitan city such as Toronto is often very likely, where front lawns can be hard to come by and rather expensive. The garden also hosts educational sessions that are meant to try to teach people of all age’s knowledge about healthy gardening and creating sustainable organic environments. This is accentuated by the fact that non-organic fertilizers and the like are banned from the community garden.

            Christie Pits Park and the community garden held within draws parallels to ideas of the biotic community, which are discussed by Aldo Leopold. In his piece, discussing the notion of the land ethic, Leopold discusses how the idea of ethics, which are usually centred around the idea of someone trying to be a member of a community through cooperation, despite any drive to compete for a place in the community, can be extended to the biological or organic—soil, waters, plants, animals, etc. (Leopold 1949:24). The land ethic, therefore, seeks to protect the natural as a part of the community, making the human essentially a part of the land rather than someone who has conquered it and subjugated it, which is so often the case throughout modern human history (1949:25). In a nutshell, Leopold is trying to make an appeal to how humans use the land, and trying to raise the notion that perhaps humans should treat nature with some degree of respect, and not seek to constantly shape and re-shape it.

            These notions of the land ethic and biotic community can be seen in Christie Pits Park. On the one hand, the park is fully representative of how humans have re-shaped natural spaces. The natural Christie Sand Pits were used and re-shaped by people in order to build cities and expand Toronto in the nineteenth century. The park today, as a whole, is clearly quite man-made, with the sports fields, baseball diamonds, playgrounds, hockey rink, etc. all man-made uses of what was once a natural space. Walking around the park, there is in fact almost no part of it that is not in some way shaped or re-shaped by humans.

            While the community garden is, on the one hand, absolutely designed and shaped by man, it does seem to fit into a sort of land ethic. Leopold asks us to, rather than conquer the land, to work with it and make it part of our community in a natural way. In some ways, the community garden accomplishes this. It is a place where people are meant to come together and try to organically grow crops, without the use of pesticides or non-organic materials that could hurt the land in ways that humans have in the past, ways which Leopold denounces. Instead, the community garden seeks to incorporate the land into the community and treat it with respect. Anyone, in theory, can come to the community garden and grow crops (though all personal plots are currently occupied and there is a waiting-list, so in practice this is not entirely the case). Leopold also calls for education and rule/guideline setting in order for a land ethic to be able to function properly and with proper respect for the land (1949:26-27). The community garden most certainly seeks to accomplish this, with educational sessions to teach people about how to respectfully work the land without damaging it too much, and with many guidelines set in place in the garden to maintain this notion. Leopold states that “It is inconceivable to me that an ethical relation to the land can exist without love, respect, and admiration for the land…” which in turn can be seen with the community garden (1949:30). It is quite clear that the volunteers and communities putting in the effort to create this spot of natural respect in the city would most likely be in Leopold’s good books for what they are attempting to create and foster in Christie Pits Park.

            Of course, this is just one small part of the park, and one very small part of Toronto as a whole. If more places like the community garden were to arise in downtown Toronto, and more effort be put into respecting the land as a part of the community, then perhaps we could come closer to Leopold’s land ethic hopes. At the same time, in such a heavily urbanized city, this may not be a realistic goal. As a whole though, Toronto seems to have places that have taken good steps to try to create a land ethic within a city.

Works Cited:

City of Toronto Website, Christie Pits Park. Accessed at http://www1.toronto.ca/parks/prd/facilities/complex/196/.

Friends of Christie Pits Park Website. Accessed at http://www.christiepits.ca/about/aboutus.asp.

Pages cited in particular:

http://www.christiepits.ca/history/history.asp

http://www.christiepits.ca/history/riot.asp

http://www.christiepits.ca/garden/garden.asp

Gardens in Action. Accessed at https://gardensinaction.wordpress.com/about/.

Aldo Leopold, 1949. “The Land Ethic,” From A Sand County Almanac. In The Sustainable Urban Development Reader (2009, 2^nd edition). Stephen Wheeler and Timothy Beatley, Eds. Routledge.

Whole Foods Market, Yorkville

I visited Whole Foods located in Yorkville in November, on a Friday night shortly after the average person’s workday ends. As a result, the grocery store was quite busy, with a large number of people getting their evening shopping done. I noticed that the majority of people shopping appeared to be young professionals—no one that immediately stood out as a student or person of a lower economic class seemed to be shopping there, despite its close proximity to the University of Toronto.

            Structurally, Whole Foods seemed like most other grocery stores; there were aisles organized by food product type, a bakery, meat and seafood section, etc. Notably, unlike other grocery stores, there was a large section dedicated to ‘natural’ or ‘organic’ products such as hair colouring, soaps, clothing, beauty products, etc. While often grocery stores do have these sections, especially large ones, this was one of the first instances where I saw one dedicated to these products coming from an organic and all-natural standpoint outside of stores that are entirely marketed on their organic nature. There was also a focus on signage indicating towards products, be they health products or food products, which are ‘local’ to the area around Toronto. The whole grocery store, therefore, came across as a sort of pro-health, pro-local place, where people go to shop to get the highest quality goods for above-average prices. This makes sense given the store’s location in Yorkville, one of Toronto’s most ‘hip’ upper-class neighbourhoods, with the store being part of a complex that includes many high-end retail stores as well.

As a result I was struck by this feeling that the grocery store was at odds with itself—on the one hand, it was trying to be ‘pro-local’ and healthy and organic, etc., while still closely tying itself to a very commercial, high-end economic environment. The dichotomy was rather prevalent the entire time I was there. As well, given that as a student my funds are somewhat limited, I felt almost like an outsider while I was inside the Whole Foods. I did not feel like I was the market they were targeting, and as a result was almost overwhelmed by the environment. I felt distinctly out of place there, which has never happened to me in a grocery store.

            Whole Foods is a grocery store chain that bases itself entirely around the notion of selling products that meet their self-made standards (Whole Foods Website). Indeed, they market themselves on this notion that the stores will only sell products that meet their standards for animal welfare, seafood sustainability, etc. and also have a focus on trying to promote and sell products that are created locally in order to help out the ‘neighbourhoods’ that each store tries to become a part of (Whole Foods Website). As a result of all this, Whole Foods generally claims that all of their products are entirely organic and pro-consumer in nature (Whole Foods).

            Whole Foods is also notably opposed to GMOs (genetically modified organisms), and looking through their website results in finding a page dedicated entirely to trying to inform and educate people about GMOs and transparency in regards to products that include GMOs. This does not mean, as the website sort of makes clear, mean that Whole Foods does not sell products that include GMOs, but instead that they are trying to be more transparent about what does and does not contain GMOs for the sake of the customer. Whole Foods also claims to be at the forefront of attempting to make vendors become accountable for properly labelling whether or not their food meets non-GMO standards, “…paving the way for those who follow” (Whole Foods Website).

            Whole Foods also claims to try to support local businesses and sell their products, with some regions having a dedicated ‘forager’ whose job is to go around to the local production areas around a Whole Foods location to try to find local products that meets the grocery store’s standards (Langois). However, each region is different (as apparently most Whole Foods regions are fairly autonomous in terms of how they run and product stock) and so some stores will not necessarily have as many local products as others, but the fact that some have a dedicated vested interest in bringing local business into their fold (again, assuming the local business can meet their product standards) shows that, at least on the surface, Whole Foods is attempting to be a grocery store that ties city and country together.

            This notion of a city-based grocery store (from examining the ‘Find a Store’ map on the Whole Foods website, it appears as though most Whole Foods locations are in major city centres) fits neatly into William Chronon’s narrative of commodity chains and cities creating hinterlands. Essentially, Chronon argues throughout his entire book that the development of large urban centres is not separate from the development of the surrounding ‘countryside,’ but instead symbiotic, with cities creating hinterlands as they develop (Chronon 1991:264). This is a sort of twin birth, where cities impose a new nature around the surrounding areas in order to continue to grow and prosper, and it is a very tangled, inter-connected system of commodity chains (where the livelihoods of both the city and the hinterlands are reliant on one another—one to create products and one to consume them) (1991:264).

            This seems to be what Whole Foods tries to encourage, to some extent, at each of its locations and certainly from what I observed in its Yorkville location. As I walked through the store I would consistently see signs advertising locally-produced products, such as health products (local bar soap is one such product that comes to mind) and food products beyond just fruits and vegetables but including baked goods as well (there was one display of locally-made cookies with a large “Local Treats” sign above it with a large arrow pointing down at the display). As well, much of Whole Foods’ advertising on its website is focused on tropes such as ‘helping out the little guy’ (small local businesses) and promoting healthy, local foods for the benefit of both the local producer and the city-based consumer. This is quite clearly a direct embodiment of Chronon’s theories of commodity chains, where one can draw parallels to the Yorkville (or Toronto as a whole) based buyer and local producers in the hinterlands surrounding Toronto and Chicago and its surrounding hinterlands, which allowed for the city to grow and prosper throughout the nineteenth century. However, the Toronto Whole Foods-local hinterlands example is also different, in that while the examples Cronon uses involve truly re-shaping the environment around Chicago for Chicago’s benefit, Whole Foods seems to just be using what is already available, rather than creating new hinterlands (1991:265).

            As well, Whole Foods has faced criticisms in the past in regards to how well it really supports local producers. One article by Stacy Mitchell from 2007 discusses how Whole Foods tries to aggressively promote its own house brands, which I absolutely noticed while I was at the Yorkville location (Mitchell 2007). Walking along the aisles, the products designed to stand out most (largely through signage) are clearly the Whole Foods brand, and though as I have stated there are many local displays, they were overshadowed by in-house brand displays. As a result, this article claims that local producers who create products that could compete with the Whole Foods brand products are almost destined to fail due to Whole Foods putting an emphasis on their own products at the expense of the ‘little guy’ (Mitchell 2007). As a whole, then, Whole Foods seems to be contradicting itself in terms of its advertising. It claims to support local commodity chains and bringing local products to prominence in large urban settings, which in and of itself seems to be a fine goal. However, in practice this is undermined by the fact that Whole Foods is also seeking to make as much money as possible through selling its own, non-local products. Is Whole Foods then truly helping foster Toronto’s hinterlands? It seems that this is not truly clear, even though some effort is apparent.

Works Cited:

Whole Foods Official Website, accessed at http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/values-matter.

Pages in particular Cited:

http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/about-our-products/quality-standards

http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/about-our-products/food-safety

http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/gmo-your-right-know

Cherie Langois. “Foraging for a Change.” Hobby Farms.com, accessed at http://www.hobbyfarms.com/food-and-kitchen/whole-foods-local-forager.aspx (no date is given for the article, though another website cited it as being accessed in 2008).

William Cronon, 1991. Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. W.W. Norton and Company.

Stacy Mitchell, 2007. “Whole Foods Markup,” The Bollard. Accessed at http://thebollard.com/2007/09/05/whole-foods-markup/.

Ripley's Aquarium

I visited Ripley’s Aquarium in downtown Toronto on a Wednesday in early November—one that was particularly cold—in the afternoon. As would be expected of this time on a weekday, the aquarium was not particularly crowded, though there were still quite a few people there, including parents with their young children, as well as people of all other ages. It becomes apparent that the aquarium holds an appeal for people of all ages, and is interesting enough that people will go there any day of the week. I have been told that on weekends and holidays—in other words, days when tourism is more popular—there can be huge lines of people trying to get into the aquarium, though this may have been a more likely occurrence while the aquarium was still new.

            You have to pay to enter the aquarium, and the price is fairly steep—students can get discounts to only pay around twenty-three dollars, but for regular adults it costs around thirty dollars to enter the aquarium. Once inside and past this paywall, however, Ripley’s Aquarium is a sight to behold. There are many huge tanks filled with fish from all over the world. Structurally, the aquarium begins by taking the visitor through tanks filled with fish and sea creatures native to Canada and its waters, and then through more tropical waters, where larger attractions such as sharks and sting rays are visible. There are tunnels in which the tank glass goes above you, creating the impression that you the viewer are in fact underwater with these sea creatures. It is quite impressive visually.

            Along the way are several small refreshment stands where visitors can buy coffee, soft drinks, and snacks. The aquarium also ends with the exit being located through the gift shop, forcing visitors to go through it and be tempted by the merchandise created for the aquarium. It is through things like these that it becomes apparent that while the aquarium is trying to immerse the visitor inside of it and make him or her feel like he or she is seeing these aquatic animals in their natural habitat, it is also trying to make money off of the visitor, and as a result frequently pulls him or her out of the illusion to try to sell something.

            Ripley’s Aquarium opened on October 16^th 2014, making it one of Toronto’s newest major tourist attractions in the downtown core (Ripley’s Aquarium Quick Fact Sheet). Its statistics are rather impressive—there are over sixteen thousand marine animals in the aquarium, living in five and a half million litres of water, and structurally there are fifty live exhibits. There are over one hundred interactive displays, which are designed to be educational in nature, with most describing interesting details about the aquatic animals the displays are situated next to.

            A media release for the aquarium claims that there are over twenty marine biologists and aquarists employed there, as the safety and well-being of their aquatic animals is of the highest importance (Ripley’s Aquarium Media Release). The release states that the aquarium makes sure to adhere to strict standards of animal welfare and is regulated by a major zoo and aquarium governing body: the Association of Zoos and Aquariums.

            Economically speaking, the aquarium cost one hundred and thirty million to build, funded by all three levels of Canadian government and by private investors (The Canadian Press and City.tv News Staff 2013). It is estimated to generate more than two hundred and twenty million dollars-worth in tax revenues over the next twenty years for the government, and it is in fact the largest aquarium in Canada and one of the largest in North America (Urban Toronto). From all of this, it is quite apparent that a lot of effort and money has gone into the development and construction of the aquarium as well as in maintaining it and meeting standards of operation for the well-being of the aquatic life held within. It is also quite clear that the aquarium is an investment—the city, and indeed the whole country expects to make a lot of money off of the aquarium.

            Visiting Ripley’s Aquarium brings to mind some of the concepts and ideas discussed in Vernon Kisling Jr.’s piece on the origin of American zoological parks in the nineteenth century, despite the time distance existing between the establishment of those parks and the modern day. On the one hand, Kisling Jr. notes that initially, menageries in the early to mid-1800s were established because of an emerging scientific knowledge and research base due to the creation of scientific societies and colleges (Kisling Jr. 1996:111). Thus, due to the emergence of various scientific disciplines, menageries displaying different animals were established in cultural centres—cities (Kisling Jr. 1996:112). These menageries, and later zoos, were also in turn representative of ‘America’s greatness’ in terms of educational advancement and academia (Kisling Jr. 1996:120).

            This is directly similar to part of the mentality of establishing Ripley’s Aquarium in Toronto. Throughout the aquarium, visitors are constantly met with signs giving information about the various fish on display, along with more interactive displays that allow for a more tactile, visceral learning about the animals in order to engage interest (I imagine these are mostly oriented towards children). The aquarium is not just a place meant for people to go and be entertained—it is also meant to be an educational experience, somewhat like these menageries of old. When one takes into account the number of marine biologists and aquarists that are also involved in the care and maintenance of the aquatic life in the aquarium, this becomes even more apparent. A desire to study the mysterious and then display this study publically for anyone to see is a mentality that began over a hundred years ago but clearly seems to persist to this day, embodied in zoos and aquariums rather than menageries. As well, Toronto seems to herald the aquarium as a triumph—with media releases focusing on how many animals and how much human effort, both scientific and technological, goes into running the aquarium, which seems in line with the nineteenth century thinking of zoos as symbols of greatness.

            However, Kisling Jr. also notes that education is not the only goal of the menageries and later zoological parks, but that their development and popularity came out of a post-colonial curiosity about exotic animals. People looked forward to being able to see and experience strange creatures that did not naturally exist in the cities that they were increasingly living in (Kisling Jr. 1996:112). It seems as though this mentality has also not dissipated since the nineteenth century, and Ripley’s Aquarium is almost certainly representative of it. Many, indeed if not most, of the aquatic animals on display on the aquarium are not naturally found around Toronto or even Canada as a whole, making them quite exotic. As well, underwater environments are the hardest for humans to explore on Earth, due to the fact that humans cannot naturally survive there. These two factors combine to make most of the aquatic life at the aquarium things that most average people living in Toronto would never get the opportunity to see in a natural environment, making them incredibly ‘exotic’ to a Torontonian.

            Thus, Ripley’s Aquarium is an interesting example of a marrying of two cultural values that seem to be significant to cities: scientific knowledge and displays of greatness or power. People got to the aquarium to see natural life that they would never otherwise be able to see, living in the city where these creatures are not meant to exist naturally, which provides an entertaining spectacle. At the same time, a lot of effort is put into making sure that the aquarium serves an educational purpose as well as an entertaining one, linking ideas of advancement, modernity, and education to cities.

Works Cited:

“Ripley’s Aquarium Quick Fact Sheet,” accessed from https://www.ripleyaquariums.com/canada/files/2014/07/Quick-Fact-Sheet-Ripleys-Aquarium-of-Canada-June.pdf.

“Ripley’s Aquarium Media Release,” accessed from https://www.ripleyaquariums.com/canada/files/2013/04/Press-Release-Ripleys-Aquarium-of-Canada-Opens-Feb.pdf.

“Ripley’s Aquarium of Canada,” Urban Toronto, accessed from http://urbantoronto.ca/database/projects/ripleys-aquarium-canada.

The Canadian Press and City.tv News Staff. “Ripley’s Aquarium of Canada opens its doors,” 680 News (2013), accessed from http://www.680news.com/2013/10/16/ripleys-aquarium-of-canada-set-to-open-wednesday/.

Vernon N. Kisling, Jr., 1996. “The Origin and Development of American Zoological Parks to 1899,” in New Worlds, New Animals: From Menagerie to Zoological Park in the Nineteenth Century. R.J. Honage and William Deiss, eds. The Smithsonian Institution

Toronto Islands

            I visited Toronto Islands on a lovely September afternoon, while it was still warm enough for the Island to have many people visiting it (though to be fair, I have no knowledge of how popular the islands are as a tourist destination on what could be considered the off-season—fall and winter). Nonetheless, when I took the ferry over to the islands, the ferry was fairly packed with people of all ages—though there were perhaps more families (IE one or two parents with one or more children) heading to the island than any other group. There were also several people taking bikes over to the island, and many people had cameras with them as well to take photos.

            The interesting thing about going to the Toronto Islands is that while they are still a part of Toronto, one almost feels as though they are leaving the city to go over to them by crossing Lake Ontario in the ferry. Once you arrive on the islands, the Toronto skyline is still clearly visible and not that far away. There is this strange dichotomy here—the visitor both has and has not left Toronto in order to visit the islands, and so the presence of the city feels both close and far away at the same time, largely due to the nature of travelling from Toronto proper to the islands.

            On the island (it should be noted that I only went to Centre Island, and from here on ‘the island’ will refer to this one in particular)  I personally just walked around on the paths, passing through the small zoo and amusement park area, and then spent some time relaxing at one several beaches on the island. The island is quite large and it takes some time to get from place to place, though I observed people biking around, which makes the distances much smaller. It is possible to both bring one’s bike to the islands or rent them once on the island itself, and given the number of people I observed biking, this is apparently quite a popular activity on the island. Besides this, people can be observed relaxing and walking around, and some were swimming (though the water by this time was actually quite cold—I dipped my feet into the water briefly and that was enough for me). Overall, there was a feeling of relaxation and ‘getting away from it all’ that overcame me, and the friend I was with, when we were on the island.

            On other islands that I did not visit, there are small residential communities. Historically, the Toronto Islands were not so focused on tourism. Indeed, the islands were mostly marshland in the late eighteenth century, but by the mid-nineteenth century a hotel had been opened on one of the islands, and this resulted in the rapid development of the islands—including a theatre, dance halls, an amusement park, and a baseball stadium by 1897 (Higgens 1999). These attractions resulted in the development of cottages and residential communities on the islands, creating essentially a community of people all over the islands who went there during the summer as their second homes, with infrastructure in place (such as stores, pharmacies, etc.) to support them there (1999). However, in the 1950s the establishment of the Metro Toronto Council resulted in demolishing of homes on many of the islands and deconstruction of business established there (1999). By 1993, residents on the island had managed to procure the rights to maintain communities in much smaller areas, leaving the rest of the islands for commercial use more akin to what can be seen today (1999).

            It was near the end of the nineteenth century as well when developers decided to try to turn other parts of the island into large, beautiful gardens for the general enjoyment of the community. These initial parks were heralded as the ‘people’s park’ on the island and took considerable effort to make, as what had originally been sandbars were turned into parts of the islands in order to create areas where gardens could be built (1999). Notably, the creation of many of these gardens involved essentially commandeering or getting rid of previous patches of natural wildlife and plant life, and though these pockets still exist, the presentation as a whole of the Toronto islands is that of a manufactured garden environment, created by humans for consumption by humans (1999). This is largely how the islands have come to be the way that they are to this day—largely manufactured, and designed with consumption in mind.

            The Toronto Islands, therefore, generally fall in line and have similarities to Raymond Williams’ ideas of the country-city dichotomy, as well as his theory of structures of feeling. When one goes to the Toronto Islands, it is almost as though one is escaping to the country, and getting away from the city and its associated meanings—the rushing, the noise, and its inherent pulse of activity (Williams 1973:5). The city has these associations with being chaotic but important—a demonstration of humanity’s ability to build and create wonders (1973:6). This stands in opposition to the country, which carries meanings more associated with hard work coupled with a slowness, using one’s hands, tending to the land, etc. (1973:3-4). This is embodied in the dichotomy between Toronto and the islands. The islands are still technically a part of Toronto, and yet they feel very separate, and inspire feelings more akin to those of the countryside. It is slower-paced, and there are attractions on the island meant to inspire a more country-esque feel, such as a small zoo that contains mostly animals that are raised on farms, such as chickens and cattle. There is even the Franklin Children’s Garden (which I personally must have missed, but is detailed on the City of Toronto’s website), where children can take part in interactive learning experiences about what it is like to grow plants. The islands the countryside—and a different way of life—that people from the city go to for tourist purposes, but also to escape the hustle and bustle that is so prominent in the city.

            This too, begins to play into Williams’ ideas about structures of feeling. His Marxist-inspired theory revolves around the notion that people in a society will create ‘structures of feeling’—that is, that a sort of articulated history that exists within culture allows for a political economy to be created that serves to benefit the few at the expense of the many (Williams 1977:132). It is a complicated idea because ‘structure’ and ‘feeling’ seem like such opposed concepts, but Williams marries them well. Essentially, people are using feelings of loss in specific ways in order to benefit.

            In the case of the Toronto Islands, there is a clear goal to create a structure of feeling and in turn create economic gain through a romanticized presentation of the country, which cultural narratives have turned into something that has been ‘lost.’ In the case of the islands, they were once free from human development and interaction, but were then heavily developed into housing projects, etc. A structure of feeling was later created to undo this and present the Toronto islands as a romanticized image of ‘country life,’ by having such things as pony rides, farms, etc., while also quite clearly creating a man-made experience. Essentially, the image of the countryside and ‘getting away from it all’ is being used as part of a capitalist system of gain. The Toronto islands are very much manufactured—while there are tons of green spaces, beaches, gardens, and these country life-focused attractions, they are still all in existence for the sake of economic gain. The islands do this quite well. They serve the purpose of creating somewhere that Torontonians and tourists can escape from the hustle and bustle of the city to reclaim what has been lost—the country atmosphere and lifestyle, even if it is for just a few hours. And at the end of the day, the people who run these attractions on the island benefit economically from it.

Sources:

Delwyn Higgens, 1999. “Toronto Island’s Homes and Gardens,” accessed at Toronto Island Community, http://torontoisland.org/briefhistory.

Raymond Williams, 1973. “The Country and the City,” Chapter 1 in The Country and the City, Oxford University Press.

Raymond Williams, 1977. “Structures of Feeling,” Chapter 9 in Marxism and Literature, Oxford University Press.

City of Toronto. “The Franklin Children’s Garden,” accessed at the City of Toronto Website, http://www1.toronto.ca/wps/portal/contentonly?vgnextoid=e9b8dada600f0410VgnVCM10000071d60f89RCRD.  

Robert Street

I could say that I visit Robert Street, as well as the streets surrounding it, on a fairly regular basis, due to the fact that I live on a street that immediately intersects with it (Russell St.). However, I specifically visited the street using a more analytical lens on a chilly mid-October day. It was while the leaves were still falling, and so many of the front lawns of the houses lining the street were covered under a thin canopy of red and brown leaves.

            Robert Street spans from College Street to Bloor Street, running immediately west of Spadina Road. It is a truly lovely tree-lined street, much like many of the others in this neighbourhood. It is lined entirely with houses, some of which appear as though they are subdivided into apartments for rentals, but most, largely due to the care that seems to go into their front lawns, appeared to be owned rather than rented out. Given the number of families that I saw and have seen entering or leaving houses, as well as the care that is put into some of these lawns, I think that the assumption that this street is largely residential and designed for adults/working men and women as opposed to students is not too far-fetched. These houses are all rather beautiful, most looking as though they were built years ago from quality materials—the street as a whole is incredibly aesthetically pleasing when compared to the ‘uglier,’ or rather, more urban and commercially-focused streets nearby.

As I was walking down the street, I would periodically see people walking dogs, or parents walking with their children, or individuals working on preparing their front lawns and gardens for the coming winter. These people, and the overall atmosphere of the street, give off a peaceful, residential feeling that is in stark contrast to some of the surrounding streets—which are usually bustling and full of traffic, rather than calm like Robert Street. Robert, and the streets surrounding it, all feel very detached from the city as a whole. This feeling of detachment is only really broken at College, Harbord, and Bloor, where there are restaurants and businesses that intersect with Robert.

            While walking Robert, I stopped and briefly talked to a man in his mid-thirties raking leaves to try to gain an understanding of the demographic of the street. He told me that as far as he knew, most his neighbours had lived on the street for many years, and any rentals were mostly basement apartments being rented out by people who had lived on the street for quite some time, had families, etc. I know from talking with some friends who live on nearby parallel streets that larger rental apartments do exist in the neighbourhood, but it seems that Robert Street in particular is rather devoid of them. This resident did note that most of the houses are divided into a couple of apartments, such as his, but they are large and largely owned rather than rented, like some other nearby neighbourhoods (and indeed, my own apartment only a few short steps away from Robert). As such, it appears to be a mostly residential street not designed for students.

            Robert Street falls into the University Neighbourhood (also known as Harbord Village), according to City of Toronto demographics. From these demographics (according to the 2011 census), the majority population of this neighbourhood are couples with or without children, with couples without children being the larger group, at 51% (82.2% of the population of this neighbourhood is made up of couples). Age wise, those of working age (defined as 25-64) make up 57% of Harbord Village’s population. It becomes quite clear then that the area Robert Street is a part of is made up largely of working families, many of whom have obtained post-secondary degrees and do not have children, and are therefore able to afford to live quite comfortably as a result in this beautiful neighbourhood. The resident I spoke to fell into this category—he and his wife had lived there for a few years, did not have children, and both worked full time.

The fact that Robert Street is part of a neighbourhood of working families who live rather comfortably is apparent in their front lawns. When I visited the street it was fall and many of the flowers had ceased blooming, I have been to Robert Street during the summer time and can guarantee that at that time, most front lawns on the street have beautiful, elaborate gardens. This facet of the street allows for it to fit rather comfortably into the framework of urban political ecologies. In particular, the front lawns of Robert Street appear to be a natural breeding ground for turf-grass subjects, as discussed by Paul Robbins and Julie Sharp. Robert Street as a site where there are plenty of front lawns is also quite interesting because of how centrally Robert Street is located—almost right next to a very busy urban intersection: College and Spadina.

            Robbins and Sharp discuss how, in terms of environmental impact, lawns and lawn owners are rarely discussed and often overlooked (Robbins and Sharp 2006:112). They talk about how all of the factors involved in caring for lawns, such as chemical use, the multi-million dollar economy of planting and maintaining plants, etc. are all essentially ignored or in hiding because people who take care of lawns tend to enjoy doing so, and therefore just overlook all of the factors involved in the effort necessary to maintain them (2006:112). Watching people on Robert Street caring for their lawns, using products to protect the roots of their flowers for the winter, etc. make it clear that these people are deeply involved in taking care of their lawns and use products involved in lawn care with little concern for the larger processes surrounding them because they enjoy having good-looking lawns. The only potential concern the people taking care of Robert Street lawns could have is pesticide use, which has been a controversial subject for years. Pesticide use was hard to look at on Robert Street due to the time of year I visited. I have seen a couple of signs on lawns stating pesticides were used on the grass in the summer, but that’s about as much as I could observe. The person I talked to when I visited said he did not use pesticides, but personally did not care whether or not neighbours did. The lawn creates these turf-grass subject who is “…interpellated by the purified lawn, and whose identity and life is disciplined by the material demands of the landscapes they inherit,” (2006:113). In the struggle for a beautiful, well-maintain lawn, the lawn comes to in a sense control the lawn-owner, and given how beautiful and well-kept some of the lawns on Robert Street are during the summer, this seems to be the case.

            The power of the community in creating turf-grass subjects, as discussed by Robbins and Sharp, also seems to apply quite distinctly to the lawn situation on Robert Street. They discuss the notion of an obligation to manage one’s private lawn intensively in order to create a sense of neighbourhood cohesion, as well as to protect the property values of neighbours by not having a badly-kept lawn (2006:120). As well, working hard on the lawn and investing a lot of time into it can help the turf-grass subject feel as though he or she is contributing to community values and cohesion (2006:120).

            The effort that people on Robert Street put into their lawns to create a beautiful community seems to coincide quite well with this. The property values of apartments on the street, given how expensive some of the apartments and homes can be, is no doubt in part due to the quality and aesthetics of the lawns and tree cover on the street. Given how beautiful some of the lawns look in the summer, and how uniform this seems to be along most of the street, it seems as though there is absolutely a focus on creating a sort of communal lawn and tighter community through lawn work.

Sources:

Paul Robbins and Julie Sharp, 2006, “Turf Grass Subjects: The Political Economy            of Urban Monoculture,”         in The Nature of Cities: Urban Political Ecology and the Politics of Urban Metabolism. Nik Heynen, Maria Kaika and Erik Swyngedouw, eds. Routledge.

Demographic Data on the University Neighbourhood, 2011.

NHS Languages, Immigration, Income: http://www1.toronto.ca/City%20Of%20Toronto/Social%20Development,%20Finance%20&%20Administration/Neighbourhood%20Profiles/pdf/2011/pdf4/cpa79.pdf

Age and Gender:

http://www1.toronto.ca/City%20Of%20Toronto/Social%20Development,%20Finance%20&%20Administration/Neighbourhood%20Profiles/pdf/2011/pdf1/cpa79.pdf

Families and Dwellings:

http://www1.toronto.ca/City%20Of%20Toronto/Social%20Development,%20Finance%20&%20Administration/Neighbourhood%20Profiles/pdf/2011/pdf3/cpa79.pdf

A Note on Photographs

Unfortunately, I lost the memory card for the digital camera I used to take pictures of the various locations that I visited for this ethnographic sites project. While I was able to return to some of them at a later date to retake pictures using my cell phone camera (such as Christie Pits, Robert Street, and Whole Foods) I was unable to return to the Ontario Science Centre to take pictures of it. As a result, photographs of the Ontario Science Centre have been pulled from the Science Centre's website and Google Images, and the images of some of the locations will be inaccurate representations of when I visited them (Robert Street, for example, looked a lot more cheerful in my original photos--the day I took replacement ones it was grey outside and most of the leaves had already fallen).