I read a blog post entitled "What if you had 72 Hours to Transform your City?" Does that inspire you? I began to get ideas about re-routing buses, moving bars out of the downtown area and putting in something to attract families to the beach (which is also downtown here).

If you could change your town or city in any way and in many ways, what would you do?

72 Hour Urban Action

A hundred designers, 10 urban challenges, very little money, and no sleep. That's the recipe for 72 Hour Urban Action, a three-day marathon for designers to improve their city. Founder Kerem Halbrecht first debuted the concept at the Bat-Yam Biennale of Landscape Urbanism in Israel in September, where 120 participants working in 10 teams got three days and three nights to solve problems in public spaces.

This is mainly a link farm while I work on putting the sites I have found into a web directory on this domain.

Canoe.ca: Haunted Ontario
The Toronto and Ontario Ghost and Hauntings Research Society
Terry Boyle: Haunted Ontario
The Haunted Walk: Kingston and Ottawa, Ontario.
Burlington Ghost Researchers
Haunted Hamilton
Whitby Ghost Walks
Ghost Tours of Niagara
Flickr: Ghosts of the Niagara Region
Haunted Ottawa
Canadian Haunters Association
Suite101 by Jason Gray: Tales of Haunted Ontario
Wikipedia: Ghost Towns in Ontario
Abandoned Ontario: Haunted Houses in Ontario
Facebook: Most Haunted Places in Ontario
St. Thomas Elgin Paranormal Society
Facebook: London Ontario Ghost Squad
Paranormal Knights of London
Spirit Matters for Durham Region
Paranormal Toronto

Canadian Links:

CBC Digital Archives: Halloween and Tales of Canadian Ghosts
Paranormal Studies and Investigations Canada
The Halloween Project: Celebrating all things Halloween in Canada.
Canadian Haunters Convention.
Ghost Towns Canada.ca
Ghost Town Pix.com
Haunted Sites in North America: Haunted Sites in Canada by Province

• Ontario Rural Ruins on Flickr\
• Creepy Ontario\
• Urban Exploration Ontario on Google Groups\
• Ontario Abandoned Places\
• Abandoned Houses of Ontario on Facebook\
• Northern Ontario Abandoned\
• Abandoned Ontario on Flickr

Noticed any great road signs lately? Not just any road signs but those big billboard displays you often see to welcome you when you enter a town or city. I especially like the ones that have the "Thanks for visiting" on the reverse side for people to see as they leave town, that's a nice touch. I found a group for signs like this on Flickr and will see what else I can find now that I've got it in mind to look.

To give it a creative writing slant... think of how you would design the welcome billboard display for your town (or a town of your own creation). Come up with a welcome message people could read in the flash of time it takes to see your sign and drive into town.

Flickr: Canadian Road Signs

I read The Zoo of Depressed Animals on the Crotchety Old Man Yells at Cars blog.

A site about elephants also has some background about the zoo - "Louise Terry was the owner of Terry-Lou Zoo in Scotch Plains. The 7-acre zoo was established more than 49 years ago. Most of the animals housed at the zoo were castoffs from other zoos. Some of the animals were too old to breed, were deformed or had been injured or maimed by hunters.

Mrs. Terry and her husband, Franklyn T. Terry, owned the zoo until they sold it in 1993. In 1997, the zoo was closed and the animals were relocated."

Jack English has a photo of Frazee Homestead on the zoo land. He wrote about the history of the place, before it became a zoo even.

So far I can't find photos of the abandoned zoo itself. I did find an abandoned petting zoo, Benson's Animal Farm, Hudson, NH.

What is the point of all this? Not much, mostly a personal interest in rural and urban exploration (abandoned places). But, think of those animals at the now abandoned zoo or petting zoo. What kind of life must they have had before winding up at the bottom of the barrel zoo?

Write a tribute to one of them, make up the name, the history and decide what kind of an end they came to. Will you write it in a sentimental, sad or practical point of view?

Reading Toronto - Looking at the city through the eyes of the many designers, architects, writers, and artists in the city.

Imagining Toronto - A local exploration of culture and place, a lived geography of the city and region.

Imagining Toronto, the blog. -
Amy Lavender Harris- A geographer and environmental phenomenologist. Occasional rabble rouser. Known to be fiercely independent, curious, principled, persistent.

Jennifer Burns: Local Ruins - Abandoned and reclaimed buildings in Toronto.

Toronto Psychogeography Society - A loose collection of relentless flâneurs, explorers and walkers. Participants step out of their daily routine and explore the city's overlooked corners to imagine the dynamics of a better future urban environment.

Murmur Toronto - An archival audio project that collects and curates stories set in specific Toronto locations, told by Torontonians themselves.

Canadian New Media Awards - To recognize and celebrate the accomplishments of individuals and companies in the Canadian new media industry.