Toronto's East Chinatown isn't as well known as it's downtown counter-part. Sitting as it does on the opposite side of the Don River forming the western edge of Riverdale, the only visitors (and locals) that discover it do so by happenstance. Or they are going out of their way to locate Chinese culture in the city of Toronto, which there is plenty of.
It's a shame really. The downtown - all of it, not just the Chinatown in the city core - presents that walled edifice sort of visual squalor one gets in any large metropolis built before car-culture. This year's boom of construction all over the core made sight-seeing a near impossibility. Condo-rage, expanding infrastucture, and businesses shifting a few blocks away from centre (but not out of it) all to save a few bucks is fueling the rising tide. So the only ones that really get a kick out of it are those that love downtowns and clogged traffic. The rest probably saw all the mayhem and quickly re-boarded whatever transport they came in on.
The Toronto Chinese Archway has stood complete for many years now. But at the time it was being built, I had the opportunity to snap off a healthy supply of photos with a camera that now rests in peace.
The only difference was that during it's construction, it wasn't causing any mayhem. The parking lot in which it was built operated normally for much of it's construction. Throughout it all, you could get right up close and bend the ear of the crew-members hard at work on it.
No spam-covered hoardings, pedestrians forced this way or that, clouds of dust, and so forth. Just an elevated ode a community wrote for itself as it's dressing, and in so doing, letting everyone know that the word Chinatown could apply to practically anywhere in this city, but that this one has it's own bit of home.
Here is what it was like soon after it was completed
I haven't posted any of the images, though my Photobucket page has over one hundred of them available for many years now. I was intending to take a final flurry of images and round out the collection with a fourth library set of the archway before doing anything at all with them. But with the camera gone, and none on the way this Christmas either, well... It's about time something was done with them.
