No home delivery

When I was a boy mail was delivered right to the home six days a week. The mail was left either in a mailbox beside the front door or the mail was slid through a slot in the front door to fall the the floor in the entry hall. Then, to save money, the delivery was cut to five days a week. Saturday delivery was eliminated.
 
Eventually some genius realized it would be cheaper cut out home delivery completely. The drop box was born. Today in many, possibly most, neightbourhoods in Canada, mail is not delivered right to the door but is left in a neighbourhood drop box for later retrieval by someone for each home.

There's been a lot of resistance to the drop boxes. I saw these in the first neighbourhood I lived in in London more than four decades ago. My present neighbourhood doesn't have these boxes. My mail is still delivered right to my door. How much longer this will continue is anyone's guess.

Water-blue panels in dynamic fan shapes once filled the arches

Looking carefully through my files, I found a photo of Museum London clad with the original deep-blue metal panels.

If you look carefully, you might notice the dynamic fan shapes filling the arches. These disappeared at the same time that the colour was changed.

It is too bad that the colour reproduction in the two images is so different. Different cameras, different chips and taken at different times. Ah, the weakness of photography. It has been ever thus. Film was just as bad. When I was studying photography I had to write a paper comparing skin tones when using Kodak film, Fuji film and Agfa film. Totally different looks.

Why is it a museum, not an art gallery?

Why is it Museum London? This question is so common that the museum has posted an answer online.

"Museum London is a multidisciplinary institution, housing and exhibiting works of historical art, contemporary art and historical artifacts. The term 'museum' provides a comprehensive description of what we do and references the artifacts we exhibit as well as both historical and contemporary art (i.e. Museum of Modern Art, New York). . . . The name was changed in 2001."

The museum likes to point out "the important historical aspect" of the organization. It presents itself as a guardian, if not "the" guardian, of great swaths of London history. Yet the history-oriented museum gets a lot of the history of its iconic building wrong—especially when it claims the original design of the building ignored its location at The Forks of the Thames.

Museum London brags that its current building, constructed in 1980, was designed by the renowned Canadian architect Raymond Moriyama. It was originally a deep, rich blue, a colour chosen to reflect its location at the historic forks location.

I attempted to get a photo showing the original appearance. I talked with a couple of people at the museum. When I mentioned the museum had originally been blue, they looked at me with complete surprise. Neither knew of any pictures showing a blue museum. It soon became clear that our guardian of local history knew very little about its own history, if a story going back less than four decades can be called history.

If Museum London wants to be an museum, it should act like one. It should address the changes made to Moriyama's creation and tell us why these changes, both big and small, were necessary.

Flood protection at The Forks of the Thames

Serious floods, ones inundating homes, are rare at The Forks of the Thames in London, Ontario, but they do happen. And when they do happen, they can be deadly.

Today there are measures in place to protect the low-lying area to the west of the North Branch of the river. One very important measure has been the increase in the height of the dike. When the water is not high, which is almost always, there is a well-used walking path along the waterway.

A perfect location for the seasonal newspaper staff reunion

The Marienbad Restaurant goes back some 45 years to March 8,1974. The historical building itself dates back to about 1854. It was the original home of Josiah Blackburn’s London Free Press. Later, it served as the Queen’s Hotel before being claimed by the Farmer’s Advocate from 1921 to 1965.

Saturday, it was the location for the annual holiday season reunion of The London Free Press retirees. A perfect spot for the meeting of the dwindling number of newspaper employees old timers. At one time, not that long ago, The local paper was a huge force in the city with hundreds of employees and work going on almost around the clock. The massive building plus its parking lots occupied a full block of downtown land.

Today the vast majority of the employees have been laid off, the giant Goss press silenced and the building closed and sold. The small, remaining editorial staff now works out of a collection of small offices in a building smack dab in the core of the city not all that far from the paper's original home in the Marienbad.

In many places brutalism needs protection

Brutalism was a global architectural movement exhibiting a formal quality both on the inside and on the exterior. Often built of poured concrete, hence the French name Béton Brut, or raw concrete, Brutalist buildings celebrated their constuction, presenting the building material boldly for all to see.

For three decades, 1950s through 1970s, Brutalism was the reigning style for institutional buildings such as Trent University in Peterborough, John P. Robarts Research Library at the U of T or the Ontario Court of Justice in London (shown).

At one time buildings lasted more than a century, often much more, before facing demolition. Today, 30-year-old buildings that are found to be completely out-of-fashion face the prospect of an early demise.

London's brutalist building is not threatened at the moment but, that said, the art in front of the building has been, to my eye, desecrated. Xabis, done 1974, was refurbished and during the redo the colour of the work was changed. It went from fleshtone to lifeless grey.

Beer here, beer there, today beer is everywhere

When I was a young man beer was only available from the Brewers Retail outlets. There stores were run by the major breweries in Ontario working together. They were relatively few and far between. To buy beer you had to go to the order desk, your order went to the back, filled and placed on an elevated line where it rolled to the front of the store, thanks to gravity. You picked up your order and left.

Back then beer came in stubbies, short, somewhat thick, dark brown glass bottle which boasted of a number of advantages. They were re-useable and because of their short, fat shape, a truck could carry more bottles of beer than when compared to today's tall, thin bottles.

Since every brewery used the same bottles, stubbies did not have to be sorted. If a store sold 45% Labatt beer, then 45% of the returned bottles were returned to Labatt. It was a slick system and many would appreciate it today. Sadly, the system was jettisoned.

Today beer comes in an assortment of bottles, different colours (green, brown, clear), different shapes and some carry their name in raised letters. A truck today cannot carry as many bottles of beer and sorting is a must. At least, the bottles are still returnable and most are returned as there's a deposit.

The Brewers Retail is now called the Beer Store and it no longer has a monopoly on selling beer, Some grocery stores also sell an assortment of beer. The grocery store shown is clearly proud to announce that it carries beer.