On a walk, backlit, low-hanging leaves a highlight

For many people around the world, the maple leaf symbolizes Canada. When I was young, many young Canadian travelers identified themselves as Canadian by displaying a Canadian flag stitched to a jacket or possibly a backpack. The Canadian flag sports a stylized red maple leaf on a white background bordered by wide red bars.

Taking an evening stroll in my London neighbourhood, the backlit, screaming bright, red leaves are the highlight of the walk. The tree in front of my home, planted a few years ago by the city, may be a red maple. I say "may be" as there are a number of different maples and telling them apart is not my specialty. I'm Canadian but that doesn't make me a maple leaf expert.

Red maples have green leaves for the majority of the year and then they turn a bright red in the fall. My tree certainly checks that box. But whatever it is, it's beautiful.

Red Light, Green Light: Not a Game

According to a City of London web page, there are almost 280 traffic accidents annually in the city related to running a red light. In an effort to reduce this number, the city has installed red light cameras (RLC) at ten intersections.

Not every car is photographed. Only those cars entering the intersection after the light has turned red. Enter on a red and trigger the RLC system. Some drivers erroneously believe they exempt if they are part of a funeral  procession. Not true.

When a car approaches a monitored intersection, two pictures are taken. The first photo shows the car in question immediately before entering the intersection and the second photo shows the car in the intersection.

According to the city, "Both photographs show a red traffic signal, when the photograph was taken, the length of the amber signal, how long the signal has been red and the speed of the vehicle."


The penalty for being photographed running a red light is similar to the penalty when given a ticket directly. The amount of the fine is the same $325 but being stopped by a police officer results in demerit points as well. There are no demerit points associated with a red light camera ticket. This may be because the red light ticket is issued to the owner of the car. It is not assumed the owner and the driver are the same person.

London: The Forest City

London certainly looks like a Forest City when viewed from the highlands of Byron in the city's south west.

London, Ontario, is called the Forest City. Why? Nitpicking history buffs like to point out it is not because present day London is blanketed with trees. The canopy can be a bit thin in places. No, the nickname has much deeper roots that reach well back into the past.

London arose at the Forks of the Thames surrounded by a dense, virgin forest. It was a city deep in an untouched forest. Whether this is completely true or not is open to argument. Some say there were always open fields and the like in the area and as the city grew the forest shrunk. It is quite possible that some of the forest was chopped down and milled for city housing. The only constant was the name: The Forest City.

Today it  is said, according to the CBC, "For every 1,500 trees that are chopped down annually due to poor health, the city replants 5,000."

An NPO ski hill needs community support

Boler Mountain, the ski hill in London, Ontario, is run as a not-for-profit organization. It qualifies  as an NPO because it was organized for, and it is operated solely for, recreation. Earning shareholders a return on their investment is not one of its goal. Improving the city by providing pleasure for residents is what Boler does and does well.

Years ago I sailed on Lake Huron and a fellow with a large yacht docked near mine was one of the original creator of Boler Mountain. Irish Ferguson was a very successful businessman and he and his friends used their business acumen to successfully create a ski hill for the city. Irish was a man who lived life fully and well. Boler Mountain with its downhill skiing is not the only recreational pursuit that bears his mark in the London area. Irish is one of my personal heroes.

As can be seen by the family name adorning the chairlift, there are lots of folk working to keep the dream of Irish Ferguson and his friends going. When I take my granddaughters to the hill to ski, I see signs everywhere that make it abundantly clear it takes a lot of community-minded folk to keep the Boler Mountain NPO going. I doff my hat, uh, my toque, to these generous people.

Boler Mountain: a not-for-profit ski hill

The chair lifts are still and the open slopes are quiet but thoughts of skiing are in the air at Boler Mountain, London, Ontario. How do I know? Two of my granddaughters ski at Boler. To ensure they are in the classes they wanted, I signed them up and paid all fees weeks ago. It is now mid-October and if you are just starting to think about skiing, you may already be too late for some classes.

If the hill looks small, it's because it is. The vertical  drop at Boler is greater than I thought but it is still only 207-feet at its highest. It seems as if no sooner are you up than you are down. For this reason, Boler has excellent chair lifts to keep lift lines as short as possible. People come to ski, not to line-up. And Boler does its best to deliver.

The best thing about Boler is its location. It is smack dab in the city's west end suburb: Byron. Boler is but minutes from my home. To take my grandkids to a ski hill of any size, I'd have to drive three hours to Blue Mountain. That's a long time for a little kid to patiently sit in the back seat of a small car. We've discussed Blue Mountain but at their age instant gratification wins.

Come to think about, when I consider the ages of the skiiers I see using the little hill, it is pretty clear instant gratification is a strong pull for lots of us.

A dream home embarking on a new adventure

It's an elegant home and a few days after taking this picture a for sale sign went up. It's the end of an era for this home. The couple who had lived here, raised a family here and grew old together here have both departed. It must be time to tie up lose ends for the family and to hand the home over to new owners with new dreams.

On a court overlooking the west end of the city, this home stands proudly in a dream location. The perfect home in the perfect location for nurturing fresh, new, perfect dreams.

Do I live on a woonerf?

This London cul-de-sac is a perfect living yard: woonerf.

After yesterday's post and the comments, I decided to rewrite and re-post the following which looked at suburban street design in London, Ontario, in particular and North American suburbia in general.

It was almost a decade ago that one of the coolest words in urban planning circles was woonerf. According to the local London paper, a woonerf was Dutch for naked street. I preferred an alternate translation: living street.

Woonerfs were streets designed, or redesigned, to force drivers to slow down as they shared the road with cyclists, pedestrians and children. There was no clear division between traffic and pedestrian rights of way in properly designed woonerfs.

Reading this gave me a crazy thought. Maybe I was living on a woonerf. Have North American suburbanites been enjoying their own form of woonerfs for years: Courts, crescents, places and culs-de-sac?

Traffic and kids share my suburban court.

Search the web today and you'll find examples of Dutch woonerfs with gardens and pedestrian seating nestled in among the shrubs and flowers.

These remind me of the court directly above mine and linked to my court by a well-used walkway. (I featured it earlier in the month.)

The first woonerf was in the City of Delft, Netherlands, back in the '60s. In the following decade, the Dutch government set design standards and passed traffic laws regulating woonerfs.

I feel some suburban courts come quite close to meeting the Dutch goals.