ThePlagueYears: Beginning of the end

Winter is over. We've had three weeks or more of lovely clear, cold weather, with at least some sun almost every day. Then this morning we woke to rain spattering the windows under dirty grey clouds. The wind had rattled the apartment all night. The polar vortex has apparently spun itself away.

I fear we're now in for a month or more of yo-yoing temperatures, snow, rain, slush. If I could command the climate, I'd call for three months of temperatures between -10 and -2, no more than 10 inches of snow and sun every day. Then on March 1, the temperature would shoot up to 15, the snow and ice would melt and flowers would start sprouting.

Alas, that is not the Canadian way.

Not much of a walk today - certainly from the photographic point of view. I was out for almost an hour, though. About the only remarkable thing to report is that I had an in-person interaction with another actual human being.

I had stopped to admire a house on Colborne St. near Dufferin, and took a picture. The owner, a guy who looked to be in his early 50s, was out shoveling his driveway. Whether he was suspicious at first - was I casing the joint? - or just friendly and proud of his house, or both, I don't know. He came out to the sidewalk where I was standing.

'Everybody has to stop and look,' he said.

'Well, it's a very pretty house,' I replied. I think he figured at that point that I wasn't a burglar.

'If you have any questions...'

So I asked him a few questions about the house. Italianate, built in 1879, he told me. He'd bought it 20 years before. I mentioned another small Italianate mansion I admire, on Pall Mall. He knew it. 'It's on Picadilly, though,' he said. 'I almost bought that house, over 20 years ago now.' (He was right, I immediately realized. I always get the two streets confused.)

I'd have loved to know more about who he was. He mentioned he'd moved to the suburbs when his daughter was four, but very quickly realized they really wanted to be back downtown. That's when they bought this house. 'Everything is happening downtown,' he said.

I figure if he is in his early 50s, he must be a professional of some kind, or come from a moneyed family. Who else could afford a house like this when they were in their early 30s?

It was otherwise photographically slim pickings. In those circumstances, when the creative juices aren't flowing, my motto is, take pictures of buildings. So that's what I did.

First St. Andrews United Church, Queens Ave.

St. Paul's Cathedral, Richmond St.

Dominion Building, Richmond St.

If you stopped watching NHL hockey years ago because a) there was too much fighting and general thuggery, b) the league let the fastest, most skilled players be held, hooked, slashed and tripped with impunity, slowing the game to a crawl, or c) there were just too damn many teams to keep track of anymore, this is the year to give it another try.

Thanks to rule changes and tighter enforcement in the league over the last ten years or so, as well as longer-term changes in the demographics and economics of the game and, thanks to Covid-19, border restrictions, all of those ills have been reversed this year in Canada.

The game has changed in many ways. For one, it has become very expensive to play. So the demographic has changed, especially among elite players. They're mostly nice middle-class boys from the suburbs now, whose parents can afford the best equipment, the best hockey programs and the best extracurricular training.

In the old days, the league was dominated by young men who were desperate to get out of whatever dreary futureless backwater they emerged from. They grew up tough and they were willing to do anything to succeed, to win. Including beat the crap out of each other.

Brutality was taken for granted, part of the game. Today, it's not. Not that there isn't body contact and toughness, both physical and mental, but thuggery, brutality is, for the most part, a thing of the past.

Meanwhile gradual improvements in equipment and training have made the game faster and its best players more skilled - immensely, magically skilled. Watch video of games from the supposed heyday of the NHL in the second half of the last century and you'll see what I mean. Today's good teams would trounce even the great teams of the past. Assuming the game was officiated to today's standards.

And this year, because of Covid precautions and border restrictions, all regular season play is intra-divisional, and all seven Canadian teams are in the same Northern division. So you really only need to keep track of six other teams besides the one you're rooting for.

As a bonus, some of the best young players in the league, some of the most dazzlingly skilled, play in the Northern division. Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl in Edmonton and Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner in Toronto are at the top of the scoring charts. They produce highlight-reel plays on a nightly basis.

And of course, if you're from these parts, it helps that the Leafs are winning. In fact, they're way out in front, not just in their division but in the league overall. (Well, I've said it before: the times are out of joint.)

So that's my ad for hockey.

Meanwhile, down the rabbit hole in Montpellier, France, I found a few more previously rejected shots worth taking a second look at.