Land of 1000 Delights

Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Address: 176 Yonge Street.
Date: Dec 2016
Website: www.saksfifthavenue.com

  Saks Fifth Avenue has taken over part of the Hudson's Bay store on Queen Street in Toronto.  This is because Hudson's Bay now owns Saks.  It also means that besides the popular Christmas windows at The Bay, we get more decorated windows along Yonge Street.  We visited the Saks windows in 2016. Welcome to the Land of 1000 Delights.

  The first windows we encountered were not yet part of the Land of 1000 Delights.  The first window featured a polar bear who was running like the mechanism of a clock. The second contained a group of ermine.  An ermine is a stoat in its winter coat.  A stoat is a type of weasel.   The animals looked as if they had been hired to guard the purses in the displays.  It is not uncommon for there to be a $4000 price tag on a purse at Saks so the store could be testing out new security measures.

And now finally, the Land of 1000 Delights.

  The first lady we encountered was Lady Lollipop.  She was covered from head to toe in swirly lollipops.  Many children sport a similar look when eating lollipops.  A few licks of the lollipop and ...ooops!  Next thing you know you have a lollipop stuck to the edge of your Christmas dress.

  Up next was Baroness Lebkuchen.  Lebkuchen is a German baked good similar to gingerbread.  We have never knowingly tried lebkuchen, but now we will have to get our hands on some.  We were only at window number two and already getting hungry.

Countess De Limon was the next lady arriving with zest.  She had slices of lemons, oranges and limes.  We suspect it was candied fruit all covered in sugary syrup.

  A deep purple display contained the Duchess De Chocolate.  This was definitely our style.  We imagined we were unwrapping some gold and purple foil covered, dark chocolates.

  The Queen of The Christmas Crackers was ready to start things off with a bang.  We imagine her dress was entirely filled with bad jokes, paper crowns and if you were lucky, a fortune teller fish.  When she finally pulls her dress off expect to smell something burning and find little bits of paper and prizes everywhere.  Check the cranberry sauce just in case.

  Mademoiselle Macaron was making a sweet entrance.  She had some of the tasty meringue and almond based treats along the edge of her dress.  Those macarons wouldn't last long if there wasn't a glass window between us.  Excusez-moi!

  Little Princess Peppermint was twirling and swirling in her window.  She had a dress made of traditional  red and white candy canes.
 

The highest royal titles are those of Emperor and Empress.  This next window contains Empress Gingerbread.  She ranks much higher than the Baroness, Duchess and even the Princess and Queen in the other windows.  We do enjoy gingerbread during the holidays, but as we mentioned before we have yet to try lebkuchen.

  The final window featured the Marchioness of Confections cutting a candy rug.  A Marchioness is the equivalent of a Marquess.  She ranks lower than a Duchess, but higher than a Countess.  She was covered in all sorts of sweet treats.  We enjoyed our walk through the Land of 1000 Delights.  Now get out of our way as we are headed to the lower level of The Bay where they have their candy department.

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This location is near Queen subway. Visit other Toronto TTC stations.

Map of Our World
Saks Christmas Windows

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Post # 200

Heart's Content Cable Station

Location: Heart's Content, Newfoundland, Canada
Address:  NL-80
Date: June 2017
Website: www.seethesites.ca

  In these days of cellphones and unlimited internet access it is hard for some to imagine a time when communication was a luxury.  Transmitting a message from Canada to Europe used to be an impossibility.  A small town in Newfoundland played a big part in making the impossible a reality.  We visited Heart's Content to see where history was made.

  Across the road from the Heart's Content Cable Station are a few monuments which explain how it all came to be. 

  In 1858 there was an attempt to lay a cable for transmitting telegraph messages between Newfoundland and Ireland.  The photo above shows the two nations shaking hands.  Two steam boats, the Niagara and the Agamemnon met and joined the cable.  Messages were sent between Queen Victoria and President Buchanan, but the cable failed shortly afterwards.

  A huge ship called the SS Great Eastern was built.  It was designed to be a cruise ship and could hold 4000 passengers.  It proved to be too expensive and too big to keep operating as an ocean liner.  It found new life as a cable layer since it could hold the 4300 km of cable needed to make the cross-Atlantic attempt once more.

  This time the attempt was a success.  There was now a cable between Heart's Content and Valencia Ireland.  With the telegraphic cable in place, Heart's Content became a busy communications hub and life was very good there.

    Inside the station we visited the cable operating room.  It was filled with equipment used for transmitting and receiving messages.  At the peak of its operations, it also would have been filled with staff handling the equipment.

  There would have been operators switching cables to make connections as well as groups transmitting or re-transmitting messages.

 

  They would have transmitted these messages using morse code.  Above is an original morse code sheet as well as a re-typed one to make it easier for visitors to read.  See if you can use the information above to decipher this message.

-... . - - . .-.   --- -.   ...- .- -.-. .- - .. --- -.

  In order to get the messages across the Atlantic Ocean, there are submerged repeaters which do just what their name implies.  They take a message received and repeat it.  This keeps the signal strong and allows it to be more easily interpreted at the opposite end.

  More and more cables were added to the network and the Heart's Content cable station ran until 1965 when newer technologies made it obsolete.  The station now stands as a reminder of how it changed the world.

   The box above is where the cables entered the station.

    From there they ran towards the water where a morse code plaque reads "Between England and the continent".

 

  On the beach across the road some of the cables still remain.

  From there the cables headed across the ocean floor past the Heart's Content candy striped lighthouse and into the open ocean.  Somewhere thousands of miles away the message was received.  An amazing feat for its time.

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Map of Our World
Heart's Content Cable Station

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Post # 199

Gentlemen's Expo

Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Address:  222 Bremner Blvd.
Date: November, 2016
Website: www.gentlemensexpo.com

  The Gentlemen's Expo 2017 is coming to Toronto this November 24th to 25th weekend.  We won some tickets and attended the event in 2016.  It focuses on clothes, grooming, drinking, eating and sports.  Despite being the Gentlemen's Expo it was fun for both genders.

  As we entered the Expo we were treated to the drumming skills of a Sasquatch.

  There were many booths offering grooming.  Many men stopped in for a haircut or a beard trim.

  There was a booth run by Tenfed where you could jump from a tower into an air matress.  Tenfed is a company which sells clothing and for every item sold they feed ten hungry children.  They were running a similar program for every jumper.

  Rick Mercer was filming an episode of his show, The Rick Mercer Report, from the Expo.  He was playing a ball game at a booth selling specially designed underwear for men called MyPakage.  It reminded us of a commercial spoof he did on his show called "Knee in my Package".

  There were a few booths from OLG (The Ontario Gaming & Lottery Corporation) where they were warning about gambling and giving out free scratch cards.  They also had a vending machine where you selected a number in hopes of getting the candy you wanted, but it didn't always give you what you selected.  Just like the lottery.  You could choose A5 in front of a bag of chips and instead a bag of skittles would drop from another row in the machine.

 

  The Hockey Hall of Fame had a section set up featuring hockey memorabilia and trophies.  One of the jerseys on display had a 93 on the back and read Gilmour.

  Former Toronto Maple Leaf hockey players Doug Gilmour and Wendel Clark were on stage for a live interview.  They are best known for their time with the Maple Leafs in the 1990s.  They shared some stories and took questions from the audience.

  This year at the Gentlemen's Expo, former Toronto Blue Jays Roberto Alomar and Joe Carter will be on stage.

  During the 2016 Expo we watched an interview with then current Blue Jay pitcher, Jason Grilli.

  We also saw an interview with Big Wreck singer, Ian Thornley.  Big Wreck is best known for their songs "That Song" and "Blown Wide Open".
  All of the above as well as using drink tickets to sample various alcoholic beverages and repeat visits to the Dr Oetker pizza truck for pizza slices made for a fun night for all.  As we left the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, even a moose statue (top of post) was dressed up in his suit looking like a perfect gentlemoose.

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Map of Our World
Metro Toronto Convention Centre (South Building)

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Post # 198