Monthly Archives: October 2023

Hiking the GTA at 10

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October 29, 2023

As we approach our tenth anniversary we take the opportunity to step back and look at where we’ve been and where we’re headed.

Ducheseney Falls in North Bay

When I started my blog nearly ten years ago I wrote about places to hike and things to see in and around the GTA. Primarily it was about hiking. Initially we covered all the ravines along the Credit River, The Humber River and The Don River. We also covered the Waterfront Trail and all the local parks and conservation areas. This took up most of the first three years of the blog.

Bald Eagle near Iron Bridge

Over the years it has turned into more of a local history blog because this is my passion. The past two years I have had a job that takes me all over Ontario and so I share my experiences.

The East Block on Parliament Hill in Ottawa

If I was starting it over again I would probably choose another name. I could change it now, but going back and redoing the names and all the links in nearly 600 stories is an impossible task. So, I decided to leave it as Hiking the GTA and just keep sharing my photography and writing for those that care to come along for the journey. I hope you enjoy the stories or the photos even if they are sometimes outside of the GTA.

1896 Post Office in Arnprior, now a museum

Hiking the GTA by the numbers:

Our 600 posts averaged about 1,000 words each giving us a written content of about 600,000 words. A novel is about 100,000 words giving us the equivalent of six novels worth of text. Each post has an average of ten pictures which means that we’ve published about 6,000 photos. When added to the text it means that we’ve published about 12 books worth of material. We have over 42,000 followers of which about 15,000 reside in the GTA. So, about 60% of our readers are outside of the GTA and 13% are outside of Canada. WordPress lists 195 countries where our stories have been read which means that we’ve been read in almost every country in the world.

Thunder Bay

In the coming months and years we hope to be able to continue to bring you stories from around the GTA and beyond.

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Buttonville Airport

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October 21, 2023

It’s the end of an era for Buttonville Airport as the facility will be closing on November 30, 2023 after 70 years. It began in 1953 as a grass airstrip and eventually became an official airport in 1962. The airport was built on farmland well north of the city on property that used to belong to John Button, the founder of Buttonville. The image below shows the airport in 1960 with the community of Buttonville to the south east. Highway 404 wouldn’t be built until the 1970s and presently runs along the west side of the airport. The first construction of the Highway began in 1975 with it opening from Highway 401 to Steeles Avenue in 1977. The part running past the airport was completed in 1978. 16th Avenue is seen running along the top side of the airport. At this time it was a dirt road but now it is a major thoroughfare.

The airport was purchased by Michael Sifton in 1963 to add to their land holdings in the surrounding area. At that time, there was a metal hanger and a grass landing strip. The Sifton Family opened a new company called Toronto Airways Ltd and started to make improvements to the property. They built a terminal and in 1967 they added an air traffic control tower on the north end of the property near 16th Avenue.

Over the years several more buildings have been added to the airport to support the tenants. Aside from charter companies, the airport also is home to Toronto Police Services and they fly their helicopter out of here. Seneca College has a flight training school as does Toronto Airways. York Regional Police and Canadian Traffic Network also call the airport home and make their flights from here.

There are between 160,000 and 170,000 aircraft movements each year out of the facility.

In 2006 Nav Canada built a new air traffic control tower on the south end of the property to replace the aging facility on the opposite end of the runways. They built it in a modular format so that it could be taken apart and moved elsewhere at some time in the future.

The Buttonville Flying club owns 70 aircraft out of the 300 that are stationed at the airport. Some claim that before Tom Cruise starred in Top Gun he took flying lessons here. Michael Sifton died in 1995 and since then there have been rumours that the airport will close. In 2009 the Greater Toronto Airport Authority cancelled a $1.5 million per year subsidy and the fate of the airport was effectively sealed. In October 2010 Armadale and Cadillac Fairview announced a residential and commercial redevelopment for the site.

The closure date for the airport has been set for November 30, 2023 after which the current tenants will have to be relocated to other airports around the area. One source estimated that of the current airplane movements at the airport up to 70,000 wouldn’t be accommodated at other local airports. The most recent plan for the airport has the lands being used for industrial purposes. Eleven one story industrial buildings are planned to be built over the coming years. The image below was taken from Urban Toronto and shows the redevelopment proposal.

It is unclear where the current tenants will relocate and many of them may cease operations because other local airports can’t absorb all the airplane movements that will be lost.

Google Maps Link: Buttonville Airport

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The Big Apple

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Saturday, October 7, 2023

The Big Apple in Colborne lays claim to having the largest apple shaped structure in the world. However, there’s a lot more to this attraction than just the structure. The site was created by George Boycott who immigrated to Canada in 1976 from Australia. He had been a pizza shop owner before moving to Canada and sold all six of his shops to finance his new enterprise. Based on The Big Pineapple near Queensland, he devised The Big Apple. He chose Colborne to settle in because it was one of the biggest apple producing regions in Ontario. In fact, it is the fourth largest apple growing area with over 3,000 acres under cultivation. Construction began in 1983 and the site was ready to open in 1987.

There has been a great deal of effort made to ensure that visitors have plenty to do aside from just buying apples. They have a small pond with a fountain and there’s a short nature trail that you can walk that goes around it.

There are many attractions designed to entertain children and the mini-golf course is just one of them.

During the peak season in the summer there’s rides for the children to enjoy. This includes a train ride and access to the ping pong tables.

There’s also an old fire truck and an old police van to stir their active imaginations.

The Big Apple structure is affectionately known as Mr. Applehead. It is hollow inside and there’s a set of stairs that leads to an observation deck on the top. The apple is 40 feet tall and provides views across the surrounding countryside. Mr. Applehead weighs 42 tonnes and can hold 650,000 apples. In 2013 the cartoon face that can be seen in the cover photo was painted onto the highway side of the apple. It was covered with a facemask in 2020 as a show of support for front-line workers and hundreds of apple pies were donated to hospital workers.

There is an interesting gift shop where all kinds of collectibles can be purchased. Much of the goods in the store are geared toward making your garden unique. For the adults, there’s also a brewery which specializes in various ciders.

Other shops include a candy store, a sit down restaurant and a place to buy apples and pastries. They sell over 2,000 apple pies every week and you can watch them being made through a glass window. They do everything in house for the freshest, tastiest pies you can find anywhere. According to the sign on the side of the highway, they have sold over 6.2 million pies, and counting.

A petting zoo is included for the little ones to get an opportunity to see a selection of farm animals. You can buy little plastic containers full of animal food so that you can feed them a nutritional snack. It’s a lot of fun for the children and it lets the guests pay for the animal feeding which helps keep the costs of running the petting zoo under control.

One of the fun things is this sign post that show how The Big Apple is in the centre of everything. The distance in kilometres is given to 56 places around the world.

The Big Apple may be 14,750 kilometers from the South Pole but it’s only 130 kilometers from Midtown Toronto. It’s a great place to spend some time with the children or just a fun stop as you make your way along Highway 401. And, best of all, it’s free to enjoy (unless you start buying some of those yummy things that you’re going to see).

Associated Stories: Abandoned Farm Market

Google Maps Link: The Big Apple

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