2023-02-07 43 -79

Location

In an alley by a bakery in Vaughan.

Participants

Frogman

Expedition

The last time I had been up to Vaughan Metropolitan Station, the terminal station of the most recent subway extension in Toronto, was on opening day when they opened the stations for transit nerds to come take pictures. It's a pretty station, but at the time I thought it was a bit overbuilt for the surroundings (surface parking). I was curious to see what had become of the area, and this was a good excuse to go.

I took the bus to Eglinton West station and then Line 1 all the way up to Vaughan. I left the station through the YRT bus terminal and surveyed the surroundings. Surprise surprise: still mostly surface parking. There were a couple of condos being constructed to join the four or so towers that were already there, so hopefully this area will become a lot nicer in the near future. As it was, though, it was not a particularly pleasant walk to the hashpoint, with spotty sidewalk coverage and busy roads.

The hashpoint itself is on the north side of a Wonderbrands bakery (you may have heard of one of their products, "Wonderbread") in an industrial park about half a kilometer from the subway station. Normally in these sorts of areas I feel comfortable with walking up to the side of a building or around a parking lot, but this bakery building had very prominent "No Trespassing" signs and many security cameras. I didn't feel like interacting with security guards today, so I called this one a failure and headed home.

Despite the failed expedition, I'm glad I went! It was a nice train journey, and there were a couple of interesting things near the hashpoint. There was what appeared to be an old hardware store that was covered in a gorgeous mural. Near the subway station there was a large Christmas tree, lights off but still standing, in a public plaza. The plaza itself was empty in kind of a sad, abandoned-mall sort of way, and I found it apropos that no one had bothered to take down decorations from over a month ago in an area that the planners had clearly envisioned as a lively place for public gatherings. There were loudspeakers blasting some chill music, which Shazam identified as "Ocean" by Brijean, to an audience of one.