Oversion’s Weblog

Nice to return to work and be festooned with dramatic weather. It can make the world seem meaningful. From the information society to the gorgeous earth and galaxy, real days, so helpful. And the sense of messages from the depths of being, cloudman, cloudwoman, cloud mystery. hurray! 

Of course this morning I was checking how is the water outflow gulley pond just under 4400 dufferin north bus stop today. It was spectac-

ular – I saw a muskrat way down there just as it saw me, then picked up lots of other movement, family of six drinking from the water that just last week had been so polluted. 

Who knows what it was, I hope they say. Such a glorious scene, such a glorious day, 

Having just a bit of trouble getting any kind of practical response to a basic issue of reporting what appears to be toxic spill up in Downsview near work, or gathering much information myself. Delay renders it moot, and essentially means that anyone can flush anything through the natural water system of greater Toronto. Why pay for toxic waste disposal if there’s no ramification at all to just dumping out back? Plastic bags are a problem, other visible handheld waste, but industrial pollutants have to matter as well. Perhaps unseen and without getting back to me, they are looking into it, immediately east and Down, across the street from 4400 Dufferin. But it sure feels like it’s on some long list of spills to look into, and by the time they do, the tests will amount to random tests of years of dumping and spills. Thats always a valid excercize. But I’ve been watching this waterbody for some years now as it is beautiful and to the immediate right of the 4400 Dufferin bus stop that I use most weekday mornings, and the beige oily scum which plunged into the water on or the night before June 11 2009 was not in evidence previous to that. As I noted then, the brook that winds through the ravinelands passes under Dufferin right there. Water levels seem to me to have been up the last few years, and quite a burst of wildlife now precedes the continued veering of that brook over to the Finch Reservoir. Ive watched animals walk down to sip the water right where the beige oily scum is presently pooling. Their lives aren’t easy, being hit by the mad screaming traffic up on Dufferin, facing extreme heat and cold, shortage of food at times, the threat of disease. But suddenly having their water source poisined is rather hopeless, and extends to everything. 

In the morning I’ll take a jar in my backpack and collect a sample, bag it and put it in the fridge and phone some labs. I’m sure spills and dumping are fairly common. There’s every evidence for instance that private contractors are paid to dispose of numerous forms of junk and then just take it in the pickup truck around at night or weekends looking for any unviewed place to heave it out and drive away. Very clever! But I also think many businesses see through this and simply dump it out back themselves. Seeing this spill occur seemingly over night June 10,11, then recur anew again this morning, almost a week later, makes one anticipate watching the spill disappear as it moves down stream and enters Finch Reservoir, and next week, another lively burst of beige oily scum reappear. This photo from last week probably shows it a more intense juncture.

Does it look worth looking into? Perhaps they’re just not telling me they’ve looked or are looking into it. Perhaps many have reported it. Here in rapid selected thumbnail form some of many photos I’ve taken of this same idyllic scene in recent years.  

thats where it comes in from, the other side of dufferin from that

What the tube cat saw, or, 

How many goslings had there really been to begin with? A Tube Cat Tale, or, 

Canada Geese Take Over Ravine Cats’ Shipyard, All Remediation Fails!, or, 

What are the cats doing to that guy? 

I was on my way to lunch today, still wondering whats become of the many cats that live under the truckbed behind the x and y and z, (behind just about everything up there), and seeing how these cats many human friends have gone to yet further proective measure on their behalf, with ever more reinforced shelter behind the suspended truckbed, when again, no cats, and, the Canada Goose I daydreamed my way right into last week is there instead 

I circled round the other way to suss out the situation whole. Surely the cats are busy plotting somewhere, how can they raise their own young with these nerve-wracking giant birds living in the shipyard with them. The geese of course, to support my friend Michael Tweed’s concerns, also’d have every reason to trouble over the presence of a bunch of cats living right where they try to advance their gosling charges.

The truckbed gang, tubecat's crew

I suppose it’s all vividly a matter of of your point of view. As the son of a birdwatcher I suppose perhaps there were times when affiliation with cats might have seemed thoughtless. Every cat I ever had killed birds. But I just don’t see how a person can try to make eating life not crisscross thousands of ways. It all starts with eating specs, the process of digestion being possible, at the start of evolution. Once on land lizards et al ate vegetables mostly. Etcetra Etcetra, until you could go into any Korean restaurant and consume the most splendidly whole range of possible food, presented quickly and beautifully, with steam rising therefrom that is like an airborne broth! But this isn’t to distract us with our appetites as we look into this desperate setting for crime! 

Ahahhh ahhhhhhh aaaawhwaaah  - Tube Cat! Puffy, oh my. 

all but the guard dad goose ignore my antic hissing and gwackgwacks

truckbed catland from afar

"What will we do about these Canada Geese that have settled here?"

the cats resume their territory

the eyes of dark visions, sterling thoughts, and important decision making

Feral Leader, awesome Cat

A week or two ago the Saturday of the rainbow after a storm, Denis Casun turned up in the lineup behind me at the beer store on Spadina so I waited for him outside in the photocopy shop doorwell, and got his picture coming out: 

Rather than hurry off in the sudden deluge it made sense to visit the historic Wickett and catch up on things with the first period of the hockey game.

According to him the so called Turkey Vultures I showed him on the camera’s little screen are new to Toronto. Denis always partly flummoxes with his certainties, and according to him there’d never been a turkey vulture sighted in Toronto until 2002. Triply hard to believe, he says there are just 3 turkey vultures in Toronto. As we normally do in mid intersection or passing by elsewhere we argued: I said that with birds you see them or not, the same one or another one, and if there’s any, there’s more than several, but he said no there’s three. He walks ten miles a day outdoors and talks to a ton of people, so I don’t discount what he knows. That strange though to have 3 turkey vultures fly over work this morning. 

It’s all lost terminology. They don’t resemble either turkeys or vultures. My father in the mid 1950s was station with the then royal Canadian Air Force in Ankara, working as liaisson between Turkish and American forces, and on his days off birdwatched, in the desert, mastering remaining still so that the vultures would come down to contemplate consuming him. At 3 feet he’d shoe them off. They were vultures, they lived in Turkey. We were sitting out in the yard in 1997 and one afternoon I saw this huge bird glide over the yard and we discussed at length, my impression it looked like a vulture, or a flying turkey, or stork even, and he said it must have been a turkey vulture. But it didn’t look like that, which I prefer calling Moose Hawks.

The skinny black cat by the way, the unwell looking one from last week, seems to have settled upon life in the Jehova Witness parking lot, neither truckbed dweller nor full ravine cat. He’s looking better, but it is still not an ideal situation.

The food I put all around the area last week
quickly put us back on the route of his uncle
the gem cat, whose shining coat and
bear-like size inspires hope:

you write the title up there, the text in here and then click 

the square within a square to the immediate right 

of the phrase Upload/Insert 

Once you’ve loaded the photo, such as this one of my screen, a screen appears with various options, such as providing a caption, a description, choosing the size you want it to be (thumbnail, medium, full size, are the three that work well, “large” really means too large and don’t choose it, 

but most importantly, toward the bottom of that options screen, click on the phrase “Insert into Post” – elsewise it goes into the unknown background

myself with the sizeable dog Oblio

That’s size “Medium” – not the dog but the blog photo. Here’s some thumbnail size: 

When you’ve loaded all you want and written what you want look over to the right and click Publish – perfectly easy to edit or delete after, as wished