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Old Posted Dec 9, 2018, 5:53 AM
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Thunder Bay | "Hors Espoir" or "How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Dump"

So I guess it's been a while. I didn't take many photos in 2018 but I didn't do a photothread at all for 2017's photos so hey I've actually gots lots to share I guess.

All the photos posted here are hosted on Flickr, and you can view them — and others! — here.



This is a door to a youth centre. I'm not joking here; it really is. The entire building is full of mould and sparsely supervised but you didn't hear that from me.



That red and white building is the local chapter of the Hells Angels. The buildings to the right of it (all of them) are a youth centre. An operating youth centre with a budget of over $100,000 a year. I am not making that up. On the other side of those boarded up windows on the white and blue building is a large TV and some video games.



Thunder Bay is home to world-class infrastructure.



This is in the back yard of a house that caught fire because a space heater being used by squatters ignited nearby materials. They were stealing electricity from the abandoned church to the left.

Fuck this is off to a depressing start. I have like 120 photos to go.



A late April ice storm shut down the city for nearly two days but it was very pretty. My vehicle was encased in ice, I had to take the bus to get groceries. It was slightly inconvenient.



Thunder Bay is where Terry Fox had to end his marathon of hope because he got cancer and died.



The foreground, land and water, is one of Canada's equivalents to a superfund site. It is heavily contaminated with mercury. A local real estate developer wants to build houses on it.



Warmly nestled in our little valley.

Click here to see a bigger version



I was taking a nap when the emergency alert system woke me up just before this storm hit. It triggered a tornado warning south of the city. A funnel cloud started to form, but never developed into anything serious. The city itself was entirely spared; it didn't even rain. Hundreds went to various lookout points to watch it continue over the lake, where it quickly fell apart.

Click here to see a bigger version





They don't allow you to smoke on these. Every year, prostitutes get taken away on the ships and disappear forever. It was talked about among the lower classes for a long time, since before I was born, but it was only recently that anyone in a position of power let it be said out loud in their presence.

I can literally come up with a negative thing for every photo I swear to god don't test me!



These cumulonimbus insulted my mother.



Oh look there's a wee city!



They grey building is as tall as it's allowed to under our zoning by-law, so that people who stand where I stood when I took this photo can see the light house which is visible just along the roofline of said building.

It was built in 1937 and has a creepy red light. The lighthouse, that is.



That cupola is part of the Finnish Labout Temple, one of two Finnish communist labour halls on that block.



More of that storm from a few photos ago. In this photo it's travelling towards Michigan.



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I wasn't going to even upload this photo because it is objectively crap but it somehow made it to Explore and got 160 favourites.



These are still from the same day as that big storm. Nunavut didn't exist when they made this and there is no where to fit it so it's left out.



Everyone's favourite biennial, the burdock!



We call this the Sleeping Giant. In 2007, CBC had a contest to determine the Seven Wonders of Canada and people in Thunder Bay voted so many times each that this landform ended up with the most votes. It didn't get picked in the final list, which was determined by a random group of people, but it did get a People's Choice award.



The hotel they're building in this photo is set to open in a few weeks.

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In this city it's more like "no woke" amirite?



I don't know what these are called but they're cute.







The Spirit Garden won an award from the Canadian Institute of Planners. It's decaying pretty fast though.





This isn't burdock, it's thistle. I had to check the above photo of burdock to make sure it was actually burdock and not thistle and I'm pretty sure it is burdock but there's another plant that looks like burdock and is neither burdock nor thistle and I can't recall it's name and it might be that plant I don't know.



This is moneycat. Like and reblog and good luck will find you!



I don't know what this is supposed to say. This is an operating auto repair business. It's a functioning business that operates and you can go there for service and this is it.



I like how its curved, like a curve or something that's curved.





Our ash trees became a wonderful canopy the same year we found Emerald Ash Borer and had to start cutting them down. Almost all of these were vaccinated, at the expense of some residential streets which had all of their trees removed. The entire Fraxinus genus has since been removed as an acceptable street tree in this city. It joins a growing list which includes prunus (due to black knot) and ulmus (due to dutch elm). We're down to mountain ash and lindens at this point so god forbid something starts killing them or we're well and truly fucked!



This place also sells payday loans, so it's single-handedly making America great again.



Háu.



The fall colours are really beautiful here.



I believe this is the Mayan word for "vandalism".





In front of that store on the left (which is now abandoned) the local newspaper piles fliers for someone living in the apartment upstairs to deliver but they never do so they end up as wet piles of paper and the city comes by a couple days later to pick them all up and throw them out. This has been going on for nearly a year and no one cares.



An empty lot in the neighbourhood was levelled with random dirt from somewhere and hundreds of these little flowers appeared.







I wonder how much luggage was left behind at Pearson. Probably at least two pieces of luggage.



Everyone had these mugs in the 1970s don't lie



It took us nearly a decade but with the help of some community groups, a clinic, and the provincial government changing some laws, we finally got a pedestrian crossover in the neighbourhood! But what I really want to draw your attention to is that paint job down the centre-line. It's almost as straight as I am.





Estate sales are mostly populated by people who knew the person who died and want to leaf through their shit.





No. 1 Unit in a power outage ever feels responsible.



OK so this means 2017 is done and 2018 is about to begin.





This photo made explore too which was pretty cool.









After the race finished I got a 1/2 pound flamethrower grillburger from Dairy Queen to distract me from how out of shape I am. This guy is #1 because he won last year; he also won this year.



There were a lot more of these when I was a kid, I don't know where they went. You never see them anymore.



A herring gull, locally known as a "shithawk".















This is my current Facespace cover photo.





Canada's oldest continually operating tourist information building. The Port Arthur Tourist Pagoda is now 109 years old.





The "chemin Red River" implies that I can write a letter to somewhere in Quebec and address it "East Des Peupliers Street" but you never see addresses written that way. Only English street names can be expressed in the other official language.





Repulsive display of heteronormativity. Rightfully so that the shithawks have decorated the building with the bird equivalent of urine.



It says "Thai kitchen".

(If you're ever hungry and in Thunder Bay this is one of the best restaurants in town btw)







Those are hot dog carts tucked in there.



Bold of them to assume I earn it.



This is an intersection in the middle of downtown.



This was the Eatons Store for Thunder Bay until it closed. We even had our own Eatons Centre back then. All gone now.



art.



I don't know if you have noticed but I really like playing with sliders.



El Tres is one of two (as far as I know) Mexican restaurants in the city these days. Not including Taco Time, which is an Oregonian interpretation of Mexican food based on one guy's vague recollection of a burrito he saw only one time.



Wanting to not exist is also a form of suicidal thoughts.





Kiikenomaga Kikenjigewen. Say that ten times fast.



The kite is to scare the gulls away from the roof.





This city, I tell you.



So now let's jump from rainbow flags to:







































Oh look a rainbow flag, u know what that means right?





























I hope I didn't bore you. If you have three hours to spare and want to learn a terrible story about my home town, click here.

I'll take more photos next year I promise.
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  #2  
Old Posted Dec 9, 2018, 12:52 PM
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Very good, your commentary made me laugh you must have some Scottish blood in you to be that dour
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  #3  
Old Posted Dec 9, 2018, 4:07 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by fern View Post
Very good, your commentary made me laugh you must have some Scottish blood in you to be that dour
No Scottish blood (Bit of English but I'm mostly Scandinavian and native Canadian) but this city was founded by Scots. My street is named after a man from Dingwall, Scotland, almost every intersecting street is named for a Scot, and the neighbourhood is named after a family from Scotland. The neighbourhood was developed originally as housing for employees of Canadian Pacific, which was founded by Scots and run by Scots for its early history.

And the geography of the region in general is very similar to Scotland.
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Old Posted Dec 9, 2018, 6:49 PM
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Yass slay my life Thunder Bay.

I think there's great potential and it's a great location for a city, although it may take some decades to realize it.

You are surrounded by some wonders of geography, Lake Nipigon is one of the most beautiful places on earth and Isle Royal is just beyond the water (albeit belonging to another country )

I enjoyed the photos.
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Old Posted Dec 10, 2018, 10:37 AM
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I never get tired of seeing the stunning natural setting of the town; definitely underrated for its vistas. Kind of reminds me of a more spread-out Duluth.

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Old Posted Dec 10, 2018, 2:07 PM
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Great thread, that was worth the wait for sure. As much as I like the photos that highlight the city's natural beauty, it's the narrative that really makes it:

Quote:
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Thunder Bay is where Terry Fox had to end his marathon of hope because he got cancer and died.
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Old Posted Dec 10, 2018, 3:31 PM
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Thoroughly enjoyed this. Thank you.
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Old Posted Dec 10, 2018, 4:09 PM
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The burdock is not my favorite biennial. Mine is aletris, just because it is commonly known as colicweed. What's not to like about colicweed? I suppose it is no rapeseed, but still.

Thanks vid.
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Old Posted Dec 10, 2018, 4:42 PM
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Very cool and interesting! Thank you for sharing.
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  #10  
Old Posted Dec 11, 2018, 4:17 AM
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Colicweed is pretty, it looks like squids. There is a lot of rape in my neighbourhood, it falls off the grain trains and starts growing along tracks. Sometimes there are large piles of rape and the pigeons eat the rape.
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Old Posted Dec 11, 2018, 6:14 AM
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Vid - spectacular. As we've discussed previously, I grew up there in a different time and almost all your photos look so different from then. 126 Dease ... hard to believe what it is now
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Old Posted Dec 11, 2018, 4:28 PM
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Great thread...enjoyed the photos and comments.

Quick question...in the 13th photo from the end (small brick building, lawn mowers, atv) is that a beaver on the roof?
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Old Posted Dec 12, 2018, 1:37 AM
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Quote:
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Vid - spectacular. As we've discussed previously, I grew up there in a different time and almost all your photos look so different from then. 126 Dease ... hard to believe what it is now
I know who lives there!

Fun fact about Dease Street: the 300 block is across the street from the 400 block. Because, you know, fuck logic.

Quote:
Originally Posted by (four 0 four) View Post
Great thread...enjoyed the photos and comments.

Quick question...in the 13th photo from the end (small brick building, lawn mowers, atv) is that a beaver on the roof?
It's a plastic owl, meant to scare away birds.

The guy who lives in that building has a large collection of lawn mowers, dirt bikes, snowmobiles, ATVs, etc., and runs a small engine rebuilding business in the building next door to it. His collection of vehicles is absurd, there are over 100 different things on the property now. It takes all sorts.
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Old Posted Dec 13, 2018, 3:04 AM
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Good post Videoman........austere.....in a nice way.
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  #15  
Old Posted Dec 14, 2018, 10:56 AM
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very nice to see — i regret not going there when we went to duluth. i wanted to, but there was just no time.
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Old Posted Dec 14, 2018, 8:47 PM
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Ontario's Cape Town.
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Old Posted Dec 15, 2018, 1:13 AM
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very nice to see — i regret not going there when we went to duluth. i wanted to, but there was just no time.
If you're going to pick one or the other, though, Duluth is far better. Two and a half times as many people, much more stuff to do. And they even have the restaurants Thunder Bayer's pine for the most: Olive Garden and Red Lobster.
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Old Posted Dec 15, 2018, 2:15 AM
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Interesting thread, but for some reason I want to jump off the nearest bridge now.

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Old Posted Dec 15, 2018, 2:51 AM
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Cool grit thread and you gave our buddies in St Louis a run for there money om that one! Those pics of those stack trains brings memories of Stobie the Hobo who would ride freight trains across Canada and the US-check out his videos on youtube (RIP Stobe was killed in an accident near Baltimore in November 2017).

Last edited by CastleScott; Dec 15, 2018 at 4:03 AM.
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Old Posted Dec 15, 2018, 3:11 AM
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Nice grit! Enjoying the pessimism as well.
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