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Washed Ashore Exhibit at the Toronto Zoo

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marlin

During a recent trip to the wonderful Toronto Zoo this past Month, one of the first things you see when walking into the gates is a larger than life-sized Marlin.  

Looking closer you could see it was made of recycled materials, reading the plaque by this huge fish was my first time learning about this travelling project called “Washed Ashore”, “Art to Save the Sea”. Here is the link about this project found on the Toronto Zoo, http://www.torontozoo.com/washedashore/.

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Walking around the Zoo in the warm sunny skies, I had an opportunity to explore all 10 of these amazing larger than life sculptures. 

Of course like many visitors, I too had snapped photos of the gang standing beside these friendly characters.

A travel friend commented on one of my social media posts.  She mentioned how much she had loved this artist.  She first saw these creatures at an exhibit in Palm Beach Florida several years ago. 

This lead me to do some more research and learn more about the artist and realized how lucky we and the visitors to the Zoo are to know this is the Canadian Debut of this thought-provoking exhibit.

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The lead artist and founder of this organization is Angela Haseltine Pozzi.  Each sculpture is designed and created by a team of people who love the Ocean and the mission of this amazing project. Pozzi said the first step is to let people know there is a problem with plastics and garbage in our Oceans.  

“The friendly characters are giving a voice to what needs to be done, better than what a statistical chart can do”, shares one of the artists on a YouTube video.

Here is the CEO of the Toronto Zoo sharing about the Canadian Debut of the project on the Zoo’s FB page, https://www.facebook.com/TheTorontoZoo/videos/716042262151443/

An interesting article on how a dog advisor learns from zoo’s on behaviours can be found here, https://yourdogadvisor.com/zoo-mental-exercise/.  

Help get the conversations started about our environment, share these great images which are taken from the Washed Ashore Website or better yet go see them yourself, they are only on display until November 17th, 2019.

 

Talk soon ~

 

 

Nancy

 

A Birds Eye View of Toronto

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Toronto a City of almost 3 million people, just 1 hour West of Wellington County is a great City to go day tripping.  We finally had the opportunity to take the amazing hop on hop off City SightSeeing Toronto bus tour the other day with a friend and our kids. 

My 12-year-old daughters dream of riding a double-decker bus had finally come true!  We hopped on the last ride of the day at the habourfront pick up point at 249 Queens Quay West.

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What a view, if you have never had the opportunity to go on an open air double-decker bus it is highly suggested from my daughter Meaghan!  Our travel friend Dawn always takes the bus tours when traveling, and knew the City of Toronto well.  It is always great to go with someone who can add their favorite comments about your travels.

The bus departed and we were off!  The tour of the City, took us about 2.5 – 3 hours (normally a 2 hour tour), to take the whole tour and it was well worth the ticket price. 

It also includes access for 48 hours and a boat tour.  The boat tour is so amazing, we set sail from the Toronto Harbourfront around the Toronto Islands.  The photos we took from the boat tour on the Serendipity Princess Cruise added to our wonderful memories of our day in the City!

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Having taken the tour, which included a commentary it allowed us to walk away with much more knowledge of this amazing City.  Here are my 5 things I learned on the tour.

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  • Toronto has 140 ethnic neighbourhoods in the City.
  • The St. Lawrence Market has been a culinary focal point since, 1803.
  • The Distillery district has no car access, looks like its own little Village.
  • John Graves Simcoe moved the capital of Upper Canada to Toronto, which he named York, not wanting an aboriginal name.
  • The R.O.M. Royal Ontario Museum, only has 5% of their collection on display, with the other 95% at a secret underground location.

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We got to see sights and sounds you wouldn’t normally be able to see driving on your own.  Such as when the bus stopped we all watched a band play in front of the Eaton’s Center. 

It was an amazing way to just sit back and relax and not worry about the crazy rush hour traffic.  It was a beautiful warm sunny day, however there was a lovely breeze to keep us cool as we drove along the scenic streets.

We got to see all of the major sites in the City which included a little history about each of the sites.  I loved all of the architecture and the different ethnic communities we traveled.  Here is the link to the tour, https://citysightseeingtoronto.com/

Talk soon ~

 

Nancy

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