Third time's the charm

After trying unsuccessfully to get in on a Bank of Canada tour two years in a row, I finally managed to wake up early enough on Doors Open Sunday to get one of the sought after tickets. In all honesty, it likely had more to do with the rain than my ability to drag myself out of bed before 10am.


While we weren't allowed to take any photos once inside, I dig snag a few pictures in the atrium. For 1970s office towers, the East and West blocks were pretty cool, but I was a little disappointed to see that renovations had robbed the old building of many of its art deco details. The fully restored boardroom was a beautiful exception.

I love these LED light bulbs!

I also saw the Fleet Street Pumping Station.


Built in 1874, it is still pumping 40% of the city's drinking water, all powered by the force of river water running through its aqueduct.


Comments

Just a little snarky said…
Interesting pumping station! It's called a "ram pump" and uses no power. I didn't know they made them this big. The force of the water is used to pump a small amount of water. 85% of the water does not make it uphill, but the other 15% does.
October 11, 2010 at 10:05 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Flash's Guardians of the Galaxy Birthday Party

Image
As Axel's birthday falls so close to Halloween, I was hoping to save a little sanity by working his Halloween costume into his party theme. He was really excited about his upcoming Rocket and Groot party, but, three-year-olds being the fickle creatures that they are, on the day of the party he insisted that he would be the Flash and nothing could convince him otherwise. Now that Axel is getting older he has strong opinions on things, like how his party should be, which can be a little challenging for me, but on the flip side he is able to help out with the preparations which is a lot of fun. This theme worked well for the skill levels of a preschooler since nebulas and starscapes don't need to be precise and actually look best a little messy. My little helper and I had a great time baking and decorating galaxy star sugar cookies and painting the photobooth backdrop. His pride in the projects was so heartwarming, I'm smiling just thinking of it.   We als...
Read more

Meet Bertha

Image
She's a beast. A 2000 Ford E-150, she's had a pretty rough life. She's been an airport shuttle bus and hauled countless lengths of hardwood for a flooring company. But life is about to get much better as she's now been tasked with taking us on an epic road trip. It'll be fun times like this and this
Read more

Superman Saga

Image
I previously posted that Chris and I were making Superman costumes for Burning Man. In honour of the Metropolis theme, a world record breaking gathering of people dressed as Superman was scheduled for noon on Burn Day and we didn't want to miss out on the fun. On top of our own costumes, I was making S shield patches to give out to anyone who may have forgotten their superhero outfits at home. Unfortunately, I didn't buy the iron-on interfacing for the patches (and read the instructions) until I had already traced and cut out a couple dozen red logos . Only afterwards did I realize that it would be much easier to iron the interfacing to the red fabric before cutting it all out. So I started over. Luckily I had plenty of free red t-shirts to use and many many hours of riding in Bertha to spend cutting. I ironed the red shields onto a $2 yellow sheet in our hotel room in Reno and then added another layer of interfacing so the patches could be ironed onto shirts. Since...
Read more