Leaves changing

It seemed to me the leaves took a particularly long time to change this fall.  They have only slowly been changing in Toronto itself.  I decided to speed things along by renting a car and driving up to Kleinburg and viewing the McMichael.  It wasn't the best of days -- it had gotten quite chilly and it was grey and overcast most of the day, but on the whole I think the trip was a success.

Probably the best view of all was coming up the Don Valley Parkway.  Unfortunately, as I was driving I was not able to take any photos.  My daughter was feeling kind of car sick, so I had to stop a bit earlier than planned in Richmond Hill.  After a bit of walking around, we continued on to Party City and got them costumes.  (I really have not seen any pop-up costume places in downtown Toronto this year nor were they in Chicago.  Thus, the drive to the suburbs.)  We ate lunch at a giant T & T Supermarket nearby.  I had no idea that they had stores in metro Toronto.  And it turns out there is one sort of down the street from us at Commissioners St.  I should be able to get there on the 72 bus, though I am not entirely sure it is worth it just to get their sushi...

So we set off for Kleinburg.  The trip there was fairly uneventful.  It was bizarre seeing so many candidate signs everywhere, so it looks like there are some hard fought races even out in the burbs this election.

Here are a few shots of the trees outside (and from the inside) of the McMichael Collection.

 

While in general, my favourite single painting in the collection is Varley's Night Ferry, Vancouver, it didn't "pop" the way it sometimes does, and that may have been because the outside light was so grey and dim and the inside lights also seemed dimmed.

I think my son's favourite was one of the Tom Thomson's -- Woodland Waterfall.  (But he thought the poster wasn't big enough given the price.)

I had to pick my daughter up to see most of the paintings, which got to be a little much.  I am starting to rethink this whole idea of taking her to see the museums in New York.  It might have to wait until she is another six inches or a foot taller.

I thought the exhibit Morrice & Lyman in the Company of Matisse was ok, but I was expecting a lot more Matisse.  I think in the end there were only 5 oils by Matisse and maybe another 4 pencil sketches.  I really did like one of the images at the end of the exhibit (Rainy Day, Paris by Morrice) but not enough to get the catalog.  I'm still holding out to see if it gets picked up by the library, but so far there are only reference copies that do not circulate, which is not helpful at all (to me at least).

I somehow missed the turn to get onto Highway 427, so we went down Islington the whole way to the Gardiner.  The Gardiner was pretty bad all the way to Spadina when it finally opened up.  My daughter was feeling woozy and I was sure she was going to throw up on the way back, but somehow she kept it together until we got home.  So I think we are just going to have to be really cautious and not plan on a lot of car trips for another year or so.  Maybe it is just as well that we didn't buy a car as one of the first things we did after moving to Toronto!