At Home He's a Tourist: The U.S. Invasion of Canada
At home he feels like a tourist
He fills his head with culture
He gives himself an ulcer
- Gang of Four, "At Home He's a Tourist"
Much has been said about U.S. president Trump's open threats to annex Canada, calling it the "51st state", mockingly referring to the prime minister as "Governor Trudeau", applying pressure to Canada with tariffs, but something that has been less talked about is how much of Canada that the U.S. has already taken over. From our businesses, our products, our politics, how much of what we do and consume is dominated or influenced by the U.S.
At Home He's a Tourist 9Yonge-Dundas Square
There is no better example of the pervasive U.S. influence than Yonge Street in Toronto. This is the main street of Canada's largest city, the country's most famous and iconic street, so surely not only should it represent what Toronto is all about, it should also reinforce the Canadian identity. Someone walking down Yonge Street should get a taste of Toronto's culture, and by extension a taste of Canada's culture. Yonge Street should be a place that is special and unique to Toronto, showing people and reminding people, whether they are Canadian or not Canadian, what being a Torontonian and what being Canadian really means. And yet...
At Home He's a Tourist 7Outside the Eaton Centre
While this all may have been true in the past, you will find very little of what makes Toronto "Toronto" or Canada "Canada" remaining along Yonge Street in the downtown core. Many of those locally-owned, mom-and-pop shops have long been replaced multi-national retail and restaurant chains. The U.S. brands especially dominate the streetscape today. The American tourist visiting Toronto may as well have just stayed home. After all, they don't get a taste of Toronto or Canada by eating at another Popeyes. And the European tourist may as well have just gone to the U.S. instead to get a true taste of U.S. culture (assuming they are not concerned about being arrested, imprisoned, and deported by US border control).
At Home He's a Tourist 14Yonge north of Dundas
Of course, the real dilemma here is for Canadians, especially Torontonians. If even Yonge Street of all places has become "Americanized", robbed of all its identity, then what about the rest of the city? What about the rest of Canada? Where can we experience the true Toronto? What does it really mean to be Canadian nowadays? In response to Trump's tariffs, there has been a growing "Buy Canadian" movement, but it could be more difficult to follow than most Canadians realize.
But perhaps it will serve as a wake-up call and reminder of how important it is to support local, independent businesses. And when I say local and independent, I don't just mean Canadian. Because this is not really about Canada. In this particular example, it's really about Toronto. And this should be also be a wake-up call to people outside of Canada. Wherever you live, whether it be in Canada, the U.S.A., the U.K., France, Germany, etc., don't just think about your country, think about your city.
At Home He's a Tourist 16McDonald's at 356 Yonge St.
At Home He's a Tourist 21McDonald's at 470 Yonge St.
At Home He's a Tourist 25McDonald's at 552 Yonge St.
Madill Farm: Mississauga's Vanishing Past and Uncertain Future
Mississauga, Ontario, west of Toronto, is known in Canada for urban sprawl, its name almost synonymous with sprawl, and longtime mayor, Hazel McCallion, sometimes referred to as the "Queen of Sprawl". With Mississauga growing so outward so rapidly, building new subdivisions and paving over Canada's highest grade farmland with little hesitation, these developments were sometimes separated by farms.
One such farm lay on the south side of Eglinton Avenue at McLaughlin Road, belonging to Earl Madill (1912–2001). His younger brother, Ben Madill (1915–2013), also owned a farm down the road at McLaughlin Road and Highway 401, which lasted until 2006 before being burned down and eventually replaced by an industrial park. Although Earl Madill died twelve years earlier, his farm lasted longer, until 2008. Even passing by it almost every day, its appearance was always striking, not just because of the vibrant red paint of the barn house and silos, but also for being a kind of oasis in the midst of urban sprawl. I couldn't help but visit it with my new camera and capture it in what could be its final moments.
Another reason the farm was always striking was because the high-rise condominium and office towers always in the background. The land lay directly at the boundary of Mississauga's City Centre district, the city's burgeoning "downtown". If you had gone to the Square One Shopping Centre back then, there was a good chance you would have passed by this farm. Perhaps the sight of skyscrapers next to farmland shows some restraint and foresight on part of the City of Mississauga. However, Eglinton Avenue was originally designated by the City as a "Major Transit Corridor", alongside Hurontario Street and Dundas Street, and the city did not quite fulfill Eglinton's potential in that regard. Even in the midst of a condo boom, when the city extended Confederation Parkway through the property from what the city envisioned to be its future downtown, there was no high-density development built, only the typical detached and semi-detached houses.
As mayor, Hazel McCallion was extremely popular with voters for not raising taxes, developing a reputation for efficient spending. In truth, these property tax freezes (effectively tax cuts, if inflation is taken into account) were made possible due to the massive revenue from development fees as the result of Mississauga's extreme rapid growth. As Mississauga became built-out, and the development slowed, so too did the revenue from development charges, forcing the City of Mississauga to start increasing property taxes.
Perhaps Mississauga's growth was inefficient other ways, and there has been a greater cost that the city is paying for today. Younger generations looking to buy their first home are paying the price too, as Mississauga's population declined by 0.5 percent from 2016 to 2021, even in the face of a major housing shortage. The concern for this and other long-term consequences of sprawl, and the increasing recognition to build cities for the future, was the impetus for the establishment of the Toronto-area greenbelt with the Places to Grow Act in 2006. But for the younger generation looking to buy their first home in Mississauga, the Places to Grow Act came too late.
In the Westside Eclipse Part 2, or: Why a Default White Balance of "5500K" Doesn't Work
White balance is a difficult aspect of post-processing photos, something I am still struggling with and learning about to this day. This problem was especially acute when I tried to edit the photos I took of the solar eclipse just west of Toronto in April. It was an exceptional situation, not quite day, not quite night, something I had never experienced before, and likely will never experience again, so I had no reference point. That's why it bothers me when certain "influencers" try to portray white balance as something very simple, such as a default of "5500K".
First of all, it is important to discuss what exactly is colour. In terms of light (additive colour), you have red, green, and blue as the three primaries. In printing and painting (subtractive colour), you have cyan, magenta, and yellow as the three primaries. These six primaries together form the colour wheel, where red is opposite to cyan, green is opposite to magenta, and blue is opposite to yellow. Red is in-between magenta and yellow, so it is combination of both in the subtractive colour model, or a component of both in the additive colour model.
Secondly, it is important to think about what exactly "5500K" means in-camera or in a raw-editing software. This is actually more specifically a colour temperature, which defines the white balance in terms of red vs. blue. Changing the colour temperature of a photo has little to no effect on the green channel. To adjust the amount of green, we must set the tint, which defines the white balance in terms of green vs. magenta. As magenta is a combination of blue and red, changing the tint will also affect the amount of blue and red in a photo. So colour temperature is but one component of white balance, along with the tint. The importance of tint became obvious to me when I was editing this particular photograph:
Here is what this photograph would have looked like if I had simply set the OM-D E-M1 Mark II to a "Custom WB" of 5400K and left the "G" (Green) parameter at the default of 0:
If you look closely, you might be able to spot a major problem: the lights of the gas station are green! This can be confirmed by hovering the mouse cursor over the pixels in question and looking the RGB values in Capture One; the G values are higher than the R and B values. There is some greenness on the shipping containers in the foreground as well. This greenness can only be corrected by using the Tint slider. This will shift the white balance away from green towards magenta, which in turn will increase the reds, which in turn must be compensated for with a reduction in colour temperature. In-camera with my OM-D E-M1 Mark II, this means setting "Custom WB" to 4600K and "G" to -6 to make what I see in the viewfinder match what I see with my naked eye.
So do our eyes really see everything at 5500K by default? Not mine at least. In fact, the way my eyes see constantly changes. When I am in bed at night and I suddenly turn on the lights, or I am in bright room at night and I suddenly turn off the lights, it takes some time for my eyes to adjust. Of course, mentally, as a photographer, I am often making a concerted effort to look at things in a different way. But even just physically, my eyes are constantly adjusting, and therefore my camera should also be constantly adjusting along with them.
In the Westside Eclipse: Afternoon Turns to Dusk in the Greater Toronto Area
Even leaving home before 2:00 PM (EDT), which was said to be the beginning of the eclipse, I thought was I already too late, but to my relief the sky still remained bright. Arriving at Danville Park 15 minutes later and seeing the amount of cars in parking lot and people walking about the tall hill there, I thought again that I was too late, but to my relief there was still space. Being located in an industrial area in the north part of Mississauga, immediately west of Toronto, the park and the hill is still kind of a hidden secret.
They said that the full eclipse would occur at 3:19 PM so I had plenty of time to set up my Olympus E-M1 II and 12-100mm f/4 on the the tripod. But even from that point on, I could see the shutter speed of my camera gradually declining, from 1/400 sec. to 1/3 sec. The darkness lasted until 3:22 PM during which the clouds immediately surrounding the sun did part a little bit to the delight of everyone. Of course, I was more concerned about the landscape, as I usually am.
People lament the cloud cover, but they made for some dramatic skies, and almost made me feel like real landscape photographer. Being 70km northwest of the Path of Totality, the brightness of the sky was uneven as I looked southwest, the left side becoming very dark, the right side remaining bright, which only further added to the drama.
2:52:51 PM
3:09:01 PM
3:19:42 PM
3:20:09 PM
3:21:00 PM
3:21:50 PM
3:26:43 PM
3:29:02 PM
19 Years Ago, at 19 Years Old: The Beginning of Toronto's Condo Boom
As a teenager, I bought my first camera, the 5-megapixel Olympus C-5060 Wide Zoom, in September 2004 (back when 27mm EFL was considered "wide"). I was inspired to buy a camera to document the high-rise condominium construction boom in Mississauga and the rest of the Greater Toronto Area, which began around this time.
Of course, high-rise buildings have always been a major part of the urban landscape of Mississauga, particular along Hurontario. Not surprisingly, Hurontario Street happens to be the busiest bus corridor in the outer suburbs of Toronto, carrying approximately 25,000 riders per weekday on MiWay buses alone. Before the ongoing conversion to light rail, MiWay's "Local" bus, the 19 Hurontario, operated at 6-minute frequency while the "Express" bus, the 103 Hurontario Express, ran at at 10-minute frequency, for a combined 4-minute frequency all day.
The photo below is one of the first photos I took with my new camera, in December of 2004, 19 years ago when I was 19 years old. It is as much a portrait of Hurontario Street as it is of my childhood. It is the neighbourhood I grew up in from junior kindergarten to grade 12, and even the apartment building where I lived from 9 years to 18 years old can be seen the distance. With the light rail construction combined with the high-rise construction, you can probably imagine how much this street has changed since 2004, as much as how much I have changed as a photographer during that time. It was not just the beginning of a condo boom, but also the beginning of my journey into photography.
