It's amazing what framing can do. I've been to Montreal 11 times and I have of course walked Yonge countless times and my last two workplaces are at York and Adelaide (past 8 years). Walking along these places so many times I wouldn't get the feeling of an "urban canyon". Just didn't think about it that way. But frame these locations like above and it transforms your perspective.
Now that this cluster of buildings is framed like this, I just realized all the connections I have to them. The power of a single photo!
- I visit Scotia Plaza weekly for business deposits and my aunt worked there for several years.
- Two distant relatives work in First Canadian Place. Also got a job there at BMO but declined.
- My sister interned at Trump Tower when it was still called that.
- British friend on a work visa worked in that Thomson Reuters building across the street.
- I worked in that building being re-cladded. Also a scene from the movie Enemy was filmed there. That is a top 3 Canadian movie IMO.
- My current workplace has the mortgage on one of these buildings.
- A few years ago I was walking by that Northbridge building, which I think is a cool design, and there was a delivery truck stuck at the parking garage entrance. The refrigeration unit on top of the truck did not clear the garage and smashed into the panelling above. I was talking to the security and he said it was like some custom marble they imported from Italy and it was going to be a very expensive fix.
- Just behind this shot is The Merchant, which used to be Fionn Macool's. Three years ago there was a body on the patio just above the sidewalk tarped and roped off but with guy's arm sticking out and a pool of blood. It was there first in the morning. We all discovered it as we streamed into the office and could see out our windows.
It was an interesting study in human nature for the next three hours as at least a dozen people would walk by and quickly but casually snapped a photo. One even did a selfie.
Coroner came in took the body and then a cleaning crew came out and power washed everything. The patio opened just in time for lunch and people were dining right on the spot that not even an hour ago had a dead body.
We kept checking the news to see if the guy was murdered. Not a single piece of news about this, which lead us to believe it was death by misadventure. But the guy was on the left side of this patio:
https://www.google.ca/maps/@43.64904.../data=!3m1!1e3
If he were on the right side he could have jumped from a 10 foot platform. But being on the left side, he would have had to jump from the top of the building if it were suicide. But if that were the case, there would have been splatter I'd imagine. Not a small, concentrated pool of blood.
It remains a total mystery.