Welcome to the personal website of Andrew Turnbull. This outpost features tons of stupefying and trivial things pertaining to various and diverse interests of mine. Chances are, if there's something I know about or like that doesn't much other representation on the 'net...there's a bit of it here.

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October-December 2018 Archive

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31 December 2018

2018 was not a good year in the world, and there's no point in pretending otherwise.

But it wasn't bereft of redemption or hope, especially with regard to my personal situation. How shall I count the ways?

• 2018 was the year the Democratic Party gained control of the U.S. House of Representatives over Tr*mp's fascist enablers. This happened in the face of massive, systematic voter suppression and district gerrymandering waged to preserve white-supremacist political power, and it happened without any help from the two states (West Virginia and Wisconsin) that I once called home.
• 2018 was the year in which I successfully completed my graduate classes, and earned my master's degree in library and information science from the University of Western Ontario.
• 2018 was the first year in my life that I spent entirely outside the United States.
• 2018 was the year in which I applied for permanent residency here in Canada.

Four out of four? That's not a bad score.

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24 December 2018

Hmm...

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17 December 2018

On Identifying a Mangled Heap...

Way back in the spring of 2010, I had a week to spare, a desire to explore, and took myself on a road trip through the southwestern United States.

Somewhere on a hairpin curve around the Route 66 town of Oatman, Arizona (where burros run amok in the streets), I stumbled across this grisly scene: The mangled wreckage of a long-disabled automobile, dashed on the rocks some distance from the road. I had a lot of ground to cover that day, so I took a picture with my optical zoom and drove on into the sun.

Later when I was reviewing my pictures, two thoughts went through my mind. The first: "How did this happen?" It's possible that a driver sailed off a hairpin curve at high speed and ended up on the rocks...though how this hulk ended up wheelless and engineless in the process is something of a mystery.

The second thought: "What kind of car is this?" On this, my mind drew a blank. I'm usually very good at being able to identify vehicles...but this one was so disfigured that it was hard to match to anything. Making matters worse, the only picture I had was in low resolution, so there wasn't a lot of detail visible.

Fast-forward eight years. When digging through my archives one day, I decided to exhume the picture for another go-around...and a desire for closure on a small photo mystery. There were two clues to go on. The car was evidently an import: The size and styling didn't jibe with anything that Detroit was producing in the 1960s or 1970s, except possibly Rambler. The car was also definitely pre-1974, since the front bumper looked to be a flimsy blade not engineered with 5-mph impacts in mind.

I eliminated Volkswagen, Volvo, BMW, Mercedes, and British Leyland from the list since I was familiar enough with their cars to know that this wasn't one of them. On the other hand, less-familiar European makes were ripe with possibilities.

One such candidate was the Fiat 124 sedan of the late 1960s. Its size and styling were both a close match for the wreck. The windshield corners were too rounded, however, and there were enough details for it to seem "off."

But perhaps it wasn't a European car? 50 years ago, the Japanese export machine was still getting off the ground. One of the few common cars from that place and time was the Datsun 510 (aka 1600, aka Bluebird), renowned for its clean European looks and brisk performance.

Initially I was skeptical that this heap was a Datsun: The car still seemed "off," though it was hard for any mangled wreck not to be. But the more closely I looked at the wreck, the more my senses started to tingle. Could it be that I had found a match for the mystery at last? Take a look:

• Exhibit 1: Aluminum trim piece over vent on C-pillar.
• Exhibit 2: Chromed divider bar on rear door window
• Exhibit 3: Gap of several inches between C-pillar and top of chromed divider.
• Exhibit 4: Keyhole below and in line with left edge of door handle.

On all of these details, the 510 was a perfect match.

And there's more! Datsun 510s had an aluminum moulding under the doors, running from one wheel well to the other. This moulding was no longer intact on the wreck...but a white stripe indicating its presence was. The wheel wells, door edges, and radiator support were also painted white, indicating that this was the car's original colour under a cheapo rust-red paint job.

And still more! The single most damning details were the cutouts for headlights on the radiator support: On the Datsun 510, these flared out near the outboard edge to enable the installation of either large single or small dual units. As it turned out, the passenger-side headlight cutout was clearly visible on my photo of the wreck...and sure enough, it flared out in the same way!

After all of this mounting evidence, it almost seems trivial to note that the front bumper was also a perfect match.

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With the wreck now positively established as a Datsun 510, the obvious thing to do was to turn the question from "what is it?" over to "when is it?" The 510 was produced from 1968 to 1973...a six-year run for a single body style. Fortunately, the model underwent sporadic year-to-year changes that make visual dating possible.

1970-73 510s have a large rectangular side marker on the lower front fender to comply with North American lighting requirements. The wreck lacks a gaping cutout for this marker...so it's evidently an early (1968-69) model.

1968 510s have a spare rear appearance with license plate lights built into the bumper, while 1969 models replace these with a pair of lights mounted vertically on the rear sheetmetal panel. The rear of the car isn't visible in my picture. Fortunately, other Internet photographers have also passed through Oatman, Arizona...and one of them climbed the hill to take a photo of the rear end of the wreck. Traces of panel-mounted license plate lights are clearly visible, along with round rear side marker lights that were apparently exclusive to the 1969 model year. This means that this car could have been exactly one thing:

A 1969 Datsun 510 4-door sedan.

Mystery solved! (The mystery of how it rolled up on the rocks without wheels or an engine, however, will have to wait for another day.)

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10 December 2018

On Barcodes...

There's not much point in maintaining suspense in this space. What was the mysterious object that I pointed out a week ago?

The object was a deteriorated KarTrak identification barcode plate...an artifact of a fascinating and colourful effort at automating railcar classification operations half a century ago. This was actually the first widespread application of barcodes, predating grocery scanners by a number of years.

The KarTrak system was devised by GTE's Sylvania subsidiary in 1961, and consisted of barcode plates read by trackside scanners connected to computers. The plates consisted of a vertical strip of reflective red, blue, white, and black bars that encoded a start code, equipment code, owner code, car number, and check digit from bottom to top.

The bars were reflective to facilitate all-weather scanning, and became required on all railcars by the AAR in 1967. Unfortunately, the system unraveled soon after that: The barcode plates often became dirty or damaged, and roughly one car out of five went unread. By the end of the 1970s KarTrak was gone...but some faded barcode plates still cling to the flanks of older rolling stock to this day. Look for them: They're there!

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3 December 2018

If you a) recognize what the black object in the lower-right corner of this picture is, and b) are excited about it, there's a good chance that you might be someone I could chat with for hours.

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26 November 2018

Poulet du Passé

Ever wonder what happened to the world's unremodeled KFC restaurants? It turns out they all flew the coop and migrated north of the border...

From top to bottom: Paris, Ontario; Aylmer, Ontario; London, Ontario; Newmarket, Ontario; Bowmanville, Ontario; London, Ontario.

All of these locations are still in operation, and all are still decorated with signage no less than 20 years old. The bottommost store (on London's Hamilton Road strip) is the choicest relic of them all, basically being stopped in time since the Scott's Chicken Villa days of four or five decades past. What's more, this barely scratches the surface of what exists in Ontario.

Unfortunately, the Colonel's food will forever make my stomach churn.

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19 November 2018

Some of the strangest early memories I have are of watching the static slides and promotions that ran between programs on WSWP-TV, the low-budget PBS station in southern West Virginia, in the late 1980s. Then as now, I was fascinated by graphic design.

Thirteen years after YouTube and its clones got off the ground, you might assume that every video clip of historical ephemera in existence has surfaced on the Internet. Yet, absolutely no evidence of WSWP in the 1980s (or 1970s or 1990s) has emerged: It's as if it never was. So that's what makes these images so remarkable:

If more of this exists, I'd love to see it.

(I also regret the intrusion of William Buckley into the last screenshot. He was a racist asswipe who praised fascists, wanted to tattoo AIDS victims with warning labels, and laid the groundwork for Tr*mp. But it's the only footage I have.)

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12 November 2018

Much Ado About Ways Out

The "Exit" signs above doorways in North America are so ubiquitous that most people don't think twice about them.

Oh, there's a bit of variation (I'm particularly fond of 1960s incandescent box fixtures, and these tapered, dimly-lit contraptions of the 1970s), but the message itself seldom varies: It's always EXIT, in large red letters or sometimes green, inside a rectangular frame. Simple, clear, and unambiguous...if you know the local tongue.

Word-based exit signs have a fatal flaw, though...and that flaw is the language barrier. "EXIT" may mean Exit in English, but how quickly could an English speaker find their bearings if the signs said "SORTIE," "AUSGANG," "USCITA," "SALIDA," or "出口" instead? How quickly could someone from abroad find their way around here? Add this to the fact that a person needs to be able to identify these signs at a moment's glance in emergencies...quite possibly in a thicket of smoke or a stampede of people...and you start to see the problem.

These long and ponderous "Exit-Sortie" signs sometimes appear in Canada, usually in government buildings. They solve the language problem for most of Canada's population...but they're a stopgap solution, and they're useless for anyone illiterate in English and French.

Wouldn't a symbol be simpler, clearer, and more universal? You'd think it would. But, what symbol do you use for a concept such as "Exit?"

In 1974, the U.S. Department of Transportation commissioned the American Institute of Graphic Arts to produce a study of symbols used at world transportation facilities and international events. The study and its resulting recommendations were later published in a 1981 book titled Symbol Signs (ISBN 0-8038-6777-8), and I heartily recommend a copy to anyone interested in graphic design.

For "Exit," 90% of the symbols gathered for the survey took on either one of two forms: An arrow pointing out of a box, or a figure walking away from a wall. The AIGA were well aware of the problems of both concepts, calling the stick-figure symbols "ambiguous" and finding multiple issues with the arrow drawings: "Groups 3 and 4 imply, to those who can read diagrams, exit from an enclosed space. But this is sometimes not the meaning intended. More importantly, the arrow implies a direction to the side, whereas in fact one usually must proceed ahead. Combining an arrow dominated symbol such as X'67 with a directional arrow pointing differently would cause considerable confusion."

There was one symbol that stood out from the pack, though: An icon of a circle bisected by a vertical line, as used by the British Airports Authority of the time. The AIGA was almost taken aback by the elegance of its symbolism ("The Exit symbol is a green ('go') disk with a vertical bar (raised barrier). To further imply the idea of passageway, the vertical bar completely bisects the green disk."), and heartily recommended that the sign be adopted for widespread use.

Four decades after the DOT/AIGA study, most of the "Symbol Signs" have been widely adopted in the U.S. and around the world. Yet, the Exit symbol languishes in obscurity...even though it's still part of the official Symbol Sign set, and its recommendation never was revoked as far as I know. As I discovered while flying into Gatwick in 2006, not even the BAA (or the post-Thatcher, privatised remains thereof) uses the symbol any more. What happened?

"Other symbols" is what happened. This photo hails from Edinburgh, Scotland, and represents another memory from my 2006 UK trip: An exit signed both with an improved version of the old "box and arrow" concept and the EU-standard exit sign, which consists of a man running to a door against a safety-green background. Both contain arrows, but both are aligned in the direction of travel...ameliorating the brunt of concerns with their 1970s visual graphic forbears.

An even better variation of the "running man" symbol was designed by Yukio Ota in Japan shortly after the timeframe of the AIGA's survey, combining the figure and doorway into a single, striking icon. The symbol is representational rather than abstract, so its meaning is immediately apparent without needing to be consciously "learned"...which is something that a bisected green circle can never hope to be.

These signs have made headway both in Europe and in Canada. And how: This symbol became compulsory in new buildings in Ontario in 2014, and seems destined to replace the American-style word-only signs (and their overly-long bilingual cousins) in the years ahead.

But what about the abstract circular symbol that the BAA and AIGA promoted in the 1970s? Is there a place left for it in a world where other symbols have leaped to the plate to fulfil the purpose it was once destined to serve?

As it turns out, the vaunted circular symbol does exist in at least one place: The public library of Madison, Wisconsin, following its 2013 renovation. Fire exits are marked with illuminated word-only signs in green, balancing international colour standards with domestic language conventions. And on the doors themselves is none other than the symbol itself...albeit presented in grey instead of green.

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5 November 2018

Rotational symmetry is a beautiful thing. (But why is "up" not further up than "dn?")

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Tomorrow is the first major U.S. election that I'll spend outside of the United States. My absentee ballot was dropped in the mail over a month ago.

You...the people of the United States, and Wisconsin in particular...had a responsibility in 2016 to stop the march to Republican Fascism in its tracks. Crush it. Eviscerate it. You blew it.

Right now, you should hear the anguished cries of children in camps, the innocent people being gunned down in schools and synagogues by racist white men, and your queer neighbours, brothers, and sisters being written out of existence. This isn't hyperbole: It's become a daily reality for everyone less privileged than you.

This is your last chance.

If you're qualified to vote in the US and you don't vote straight-ticket Democratic...or you don't vote at all...you are garbage, and I don't want to know you.

If you blow it again, I don't see a way out of this that doesn't lead to war.

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29 October 2018

Success

Andrew Turnbull, UWO MLIS '18.

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15 October 2018

London's bygone Dundas Street markets

Dundas Street forms the heart of London, Ontario's downtown. It forms part of the historical course of Ontario Highway 2, connecting London to the like-named street in Toronto. It bisects the street grid for 11 kilometres, and forms the densest strip of commercial property in the city.

Anyone who's read my Supermartifacts pages will probably be aware that one of the best ways to get a sense of the history and development of a community is through its grocery stores. What tale does Dundas tell?

56 & 94

The westernmost chain grocer that ever opened up shop on Dundas Street was A. Hassan & Co., a local two-store outfit that operated in 1925 from an address a scant block from the river. Loblaws opened a store on the same block two decades later, and it proved to be long-lived...not closing until Loblaws' financial crisis of the early 1970s. This 1940s-era storefront was likely a living relic by this time. Unfortunately, neither it nor Hassan's store currently stand; modern high-rises now inhabit the block.

118

The predecessor of Loblaws' 94 Dundas store may have been the very first Loblaws store in the city, opening in the late 1920s and closing in the early 1940s. The building itself still stands in intact condition, and currently houses a Vietnamese restaurant on the lower level.

123

Just across the street lies 123 Dundas...the site of a Carroll's grocery store from 1935 to 1940. I'm unclear whether this was the actual building, though: The 1960s-mod façade is simply too modern for the era. It's possible that the original building was given a massive façadectomy along the way; or it could have been demolished and rebuilt, little as I like to admit that...

124

Dominion was the first large grocery chain to operate in London in the 1920s. This was not Dominion's first London store, however. This one opened by 1930, and operated through at least 1945 before replacement. The building itself likely predates 1930 by an order of magnitude, and houses a hair salon (among other things) today.

195

195 Dundas Street was home to a short-lived mid-1930s A&P store, completing the "big four" grocers that once competed in the area. Don't expect to see much of it, though: This location is now a vacant lot.

260

260 Dundas was another long-lived Loblaws location, opening by 1935 and not closing until after 1961. I have a suspicion that the black and pale yellow tiling on the upper facade was also added by Loblaws, as it matches the colour scheme of many of their freestanding mid-century stores. It houses a coffee shop today.

From the 1940s to the 1960s, Loblaws operated two Dundas Street stores in London's city centre. This density was typical in the bygone days of the "neighbourhood market," though it seems quaint today.

310 & 332

310 Dundas Street might have been the first Dominion store in the city, opening in the first half of the 1920s. It's difficult to say with any certainty that it was, however: Dominion had 8 local stores by 1925, and this wasn't even the location closest to the city's centre.

Roughly around the same time Dominion vacated their store in the early 1930s, A&P opened a veritable supermarket on the same block. This grocery edifice had a relatively long life, remaining open until the late 1950s. Don't expect to see a trace of either store now: The City Place high-rise apartments now stand on the block.

496

Here is another Dominion location...and a world apart from all the stores that preceded it on the street. Instead of being an occupant in a multistory building with no parking in sight, this was an example of the type of store that gripped the lower-density areas of cities in the early postwar years: A one-story building built expressly as a supermarket, and adjoined by a parking lot.

This store might have been the first "modern" supermarket in London, opening by 1950 and closing after 1975. The building was later reoccupied by a beauty school, but is currently vacant.

650

650 Dundas Street comes quite a few blocks after 496...and by this point, we're no longer close to the city centre. We're now in the Old East Village neighbourhood, smack dab in its own "downtown!"

The right half of this building was home to another very early Dominion location, opening by 1925 and closing after 1935. Currently it's home to Chapman's Pharmacy, which has subsumed no fewer than five adjacent storefronts on the block; this one included.

662

The biggest architectural treasure of the Old East Village neighbourhood might be this Victorian structure, clad in attactive multicolour tiles, sporting contrasting brick, and spanning eight storefronts. The building has been the focus of cultural heritage studies, and recently had its 1912-era façade restored.

The storefront in the left half of this photo is tied with 118 Dundas as being home to the first Loblaws store in the city, opening in the 1920s and closing after 1940. Currently, it is home to a furniture store.

674

In around 1940, Dominion replaced its initial Old East Village store with a new store housed in the same attractive eight-storefront Victorian structure as Loblaws. (At one point, a local grocer named W.A. Bailey & Son also operated a store in this structure.) Here is Dominion's space, somewhat obscured by trees; a tattoo shop now calls it home.

684 & 688

This address has several layers of chronology and numerology to untangle. A&P was the first grocer to set up shop on this site, operating a store at 684 between 1935 and 1940. By 1945, A&P had moved out and Loblaws had moved in...incrementing the number to "684-688," and quite possibly building a new single-story supermarket on the premises in the process. Loblaws remained until closing during the chain's financial crisis of the early 1970s. Today the building houses a convenience store...and groceries are still being sold from this spot after more than 80 years.

754

This imposing 3-story building occupies the corner of Dundas and English streets, and currently houses a coffeehouse within. Back in the 1930s and early 1940s, however, it was home to a Carroll's grocery store.

The Carroll's firm was based in Hamilton, and had a major presence in Ontario until selling itself to the American Grand Union firm in 1953. This kicked off a domino effect of acquisitions, divestitures, and name changes that still hasn't let up: Grand Union eventually sold its Canadian stores to Steinberg of Quebec, who eventually rebranded them under the Miracle Food Mart name. Miracle Food Mart was eventually sold to A&P, who eventually sold their Canadian division to Metro, who eventually rebranded many stores as Food Basics.

831

A&P opened a store on this site by 1955, and closed it after 1975. As with all of A&P's bygone Dundas Street stores, however, the original building no longer stands.

1002

Before exiting London's Old East Village, the last grocery relic we see is this one-story specimen, which briefly housed a Dominion store around 1940. Dominion didn't last long, but the site remained open as John's Market through the early postwar years.

Dominion's store only occupied the left third of the storefront you see here. The space was later consolidated with an adjacent building, and hidden behind a new unified façade.

1014

1014 Dundas was the predecessor of Dominion's 1002 Dundas store. It was also another first-wave location, opening by 1925 and closing after 1935. I'm unclear, however, whether or not the original building still exists.

1500

Two kilometres east, we find ourselves far away from the spaces where "neighbourhood markets" once thrived. This is a newer part of the city...less walkability, more cul-de-sacs, more concrete sprawl.

This store is also the newest of any we've seen on Dundas so far: This was a Dominion supermarket, opening by 1960 and remaining open until A&P bought the chain in 1985. The location was spun off and housed a local Knechtel supermarket in 1990, but it didn't last long. Today, it's a front for a used car lot. I'm also almost sure that labelscar from the old Dominion sign is still visible if you squint a bit in the right light...

1920

The crossroads of Dundas Street and Clarke Road on London's east side has long been a magnet for development. It's also been a magnet for Loblaws stores: The big Ontario grocer opened its first on the site in October 1953. The resulting supermarket was thoroughly modern, and featured a yellow porcelain enamel front characteristic of Loblaws supermarkets of this era. Its operational life was cut short, however: A fire broke out on 3 January 1954, consuming and destroying the structure.

Loblaws pulled out the stops to rebuild on the site, and a replacement store opened the following July. This store managed to survive the next two decades without burning down. It couldn't survive the 1970s push for larger and more modern stores, however...and 1920 Dundas gave way to 1925 (below). The old store was eventually demolished, and a small shopping centre was constructed on the site.

(Photos credit London Free Press/Western Archives; reproduced under fair dealing provisions for non-commercial research.)

1925

The easternmost store on our Dundas Street tour is also the newest...and it's one of only two still selling groceries today. This store is located at the Argyle Mall, originally anchored by Woolco. Loblaws moved to this site by 1975, replacing its earlier store just across the street. The store was converted to Loblaws' No Frills discount concept in the late 1980s. Several decades and store owners later, it's still in business.

The road goes on, but our tour ends here.

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1 October 2018

Somewhere in London, Ontario.

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