Worn bricks

I showed you these bricks the other day. We like them because they are kind of odd, and they sit outside looking arty and not cluttering up our house.

They were collected on Leslie Spit, a piece of land that juts out into the lake. It's mainly made up of the fill they had after digging the subway tunnels decades ago. Since then, all sorts of rubble has been added.

You can find marble countertops and concrete chunks and bits of old road. It's not a very "nice" place, but it's very popular amongst migrating birds and, therefore, birders. It's also a place to get away from the city. Green stuff does sprout up between the bricks!

And you can find cool worn bricks there. Someone found lots of bricks and made this.

Once we played tourist in our own city and went on a bus tour. We saw all the places where things used to be. "This is the site of the first fire house. This is the site of the first town hall. This is the site of a school." But all those first things were built of wood and burned down! There were a couple of big fires, the second in 1904. The brickworks had opened in 1889 and they were ready and able to supply material for building a bit more permanent city after that. Now it is a park/market/space, quite a nice place.

Coming from woody Vancouver, I was shocked at the bricks of Toronto when I got here, but I have got used to all these brick houses.

picture stolen from here

Even modern, tall buildings here are covered in bricks, which does still strike me as crazy.

And that is the story of the bricks!