Another Guelph Heritage Streetscape Photo

The heritage streetscape in downtown Guelph, Onatrio, is both sad and oh-so-very hopeful. The buildings have aged a lot over the years and not always gracefully. Note the application of a thin coat of concrete to the first floor stone of the building on the right. The maintenance of these old structures has not always been in keeping with the architecture. In fact, the repairs have often been downright destructive.

But, and it is a big but, the buildings are intact to the point that these places can be restored with far less effort than is often necessary. It does seem clear that there is more interest in saving these buildings than in demolishing them. It is not hard to envision a day when the magic wand of restoration will have touched many of these buildings, leaving the downtown with many sparkling, architectural jewels.

Guelph City Hall

With just moments to spend in the downtown core of Guelph, one might think it would be difficult taking more than one quick shot for my blog. It wasn't. I didn't have to leave the intersection where I parked my car. Each corner contained a delightful hertitage building.

Shown is the 1856 Guelph City Hall constructed of Guelph stone like so many of the heritage structures in town. For the first hundred years the city hall had a clock tower but it was removed in 1961. But the remainder of the front portion of the building is true to its original look.

In 2009 its use as the city hall ended and it became the Provincial Offences Courthouse handling small legal violation such as traffic tickets.

Heritage buildings in Guelph, east of London

Yesterday my wife and I had to drive to Guelph, a small city about an hour east of London. I haven't been in Guelph in years and was pleasantly surprised to find the core of the city featured many well maintained heritage buildings.

The friend that we met in Guelph knew very little about the plethora of heritage structures and so I hit Google on getting home. The first think I learned was if you think downtown Guelph is striking today, you should have seen it a hundred years ago. To think such a wonderful place, constructed with such love, an urban core that once showcased beautiful, heritage architecture, to think such a site wasn't cherished leaves me numb.

Shown today is the Kelly Building at the corner of Wyndham and Macdonnell Streets in Guelph. The building to the left of the Kelly Building is Petrie Building which still boasts its original stamped galvanized full sheet-metal facade—one of only three such buildings remaining in Canada. The fact that these two structures are standing today is the result of the concerted effort by many area residents willing to fight hard to save the area's heritage.

For more info on these two buildings please click the links:
Petrie and Kelly Buildings.
Downtown Guelph

New suburbs are the place to find rows of similar looking homes: a myth

There's a myth that new subdivisions are the place to find rows of similar looking homes. Not true. Building like-looking homes, sometimes identical, either side by side or here and there throughout a region, has a long and honourable record.

London's Oldest Movie Theatre

I've mentioned the Hyland before. This is London's oldest movie theatre still showing films. Opened in the '30s, the single screen, neighbourhood cinema seats a little more than four hundred. At one time its small size was a drawback. Not today. A film like Fantastic Fungi showing at two thirty in the afternoon on a Thursday hasn't got a chance of filling even four hundred seats.

That said, the little theatre was possibly a third filled with folk eager to see the quirky little film. Why anyone would applaud a movie is beyond me but when Fantastic Fungi ended there was a lot of appreciative clapping. On the plus side, it did not get a standing ovation from anyone.

The Hyland Cinema reminds me of what we called a second run theatre back in the '60s and '70s. Like those old theatres from a bygone time, if one has a membership one gets a discount on the ticket price. Non-GMO popcorn with real butter is available, if you ask.

Lately, the local owners have even been experimenting with midnight shows on weekends but I doubt Rocky Horror will be ever be shown. The oh-so-animated audiance at a Rocky Horror showing can be very hard on a movie theatre. But I wouldn't be surprised if Harold and Maude made a midnight appearance. I might even go.  ;-)

London neighbourhoods still sport some Christmas sparkle

It is the second week of January and most of the holiday decorations have been taken down. Naked Christmas trees litter the street awaiting pickup by the city. Yet a few homes retain their Christmas sparkle, like this place with its front yard tree festooned with a garland of the colourful glass balls often associated with the season.

Note the white ears on this grey squirrel

It's not the best angle but I wanted to show the white ears on this eastern grey squirrel. The other day I posted a shot of a black squirrel saying it was a colour variation of the eastern grey squirrel. It was a black-furred grey squirrel, so to speak.

North of London, there's a small town, Exeter, famous for its white squirrels. These are a white-furred variety of the eastern grey squirrel, not albinos.

If one googles eastern grey squirrel, one learns grey appearing fur is actually composed of a number of fur colours. Among those colours are white, black and tan. It is not unknown for an eastern grey squirrel to look black for the most part but have a white tail. And clearly, it is possible to have a grey squirrel with white and tan ears.