Toronto’s Camouflaged Electric Substations

More often than not, industrial infrastructures are an eyesore, especially when they are smack in the middle of a beautiful city like Toronto. So for the past hundred years, Canada’s second-largest municipal electricity distribution company, Toronto Hydro, has been disguising substations into quiet little houses that blend right in with the neighbourhood. Some appear like grand Georgian mansions or late-Victorian buildings, while others look like humble suburban homes. Even the most sharp-eyed resident couldn’t tell these faux homes apart. Some are not even aware they are living next door to a transformer.

This is not a house. Photo credit: City of Toronto Archives

Toronto was first electrified in the late 1880s. At that time a number of small private companies were supplying electrical demands. Then in 1908, Torontonians voted overwhelmingly for the formation of a municipal electricity company, and Toronto Hydro came into being in 1911.

From the very beginning, Toronto Hydro was keen not to have ugly conglomerations of metals, switches and wires robbing the city’s urban and suburban neighbourhood of its beauty. So each substation they built was wrapped around by a shell of masonry and woodwork carefully designed to resemble residential homes. A driveway and some low-maintenance shrubs in the garden helped complete the deception.

The earliest known substation, dating from 1910 and located at 29 Nelson St. in the John and Richmond area, looks like a four-storey Victorian-era warehouse or perhaps an office building with a grand entrance and raised horizontal brick banding. One of the grandest of these structures is the Glengrove Substation, built in 1931. This Gothic building with its large oak doors, leaded glass windows and long narrow windows reminiscent of Medieval times, it’s no wonder that Toronto Hydro employees call it the “Flagship” or the “Castle”.

As architectural styles evolved, so did the camouflage. From grandiose buildings of the pre-depression era to ranch style houses that became popular with the booming post-war middle class of the 1940s to 1970s, to progressively more modernist structures with flat roof and smooth white exterior. These substation homes were so authentic that they were sometimes broken into by burglars.

There used to be over 270 substation homes scattered across Toronto. According to Spacing Toronto, as of 2015, 79 of these substations are still active.

Photo credit: City of Toronto Archives

Photo credit: City of Toronto Archives

Glengrove Station. Photo credit: Toronto Hydro

Photo credit: Francis Mariani/Flickr

Photo credit: Richard/Flickr

Brimley Road and Seminole Avenue, Scarborough. Photo credit: Robin Collyer

169 Goulding Avenue, North York. Photo credit: Robin Collyer

555 Spadina Road, Toronto. Photo credit: Robin Collyer

85 Elmridge Drive, Toronto. Photo credit: Robin Collyer

Palmdale Drive and Sheppard Avenue East, Scarborough. Photo credit: Robin Collyer

Photo credit: Robin Collyer

520 Rustic Road, North York. Photo credit: Robin Collyer

Ethiopia’s Churches In The Sky

The ancient Kingdom of Axum, now a part of Ethiopia, was one of the first nations in the world to adopt Christianity. The religion took strong foothold in 330 AD when King Ezana the Great declared it the state religion and ordered the construction of the imposing basilica of St. Mary of Tsion. Legend has it, that it here that Menelik, son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, brought the Ark of the Covenant containing the Ten Commandments.

By the fifth century, nine saints from Syria, Constantinople and elsewhere had begun spreading the faith far beyond the caravan routes and deep into the mountainous countryside. These missionaries played a key role in the initial growth of Christianity in Ethiopia. The monks translated the Bible and other religious texts from Greek into Ethiopic allowing the locals who couldn’t read Greek to learn about Christianity. The religion’s mystical aspects found a curious draw among the young. As Christianity grew, a series of spectacular churches and monasteries were built high atop mountains or excavated out of solid rock, many of which are still in use today.

A priest is seen looking out of Abuna Yemata church’s only window. The church is located on aside of a cliff, 650 feet up from the floor of the valley. This image is from a recently published book “Ethiopia: The Living Churches of an Ancient Kingdom.”

These ancient churches were often built in the most impossible of places. A good example is the Abuna Yemata Guh in Tigray, in Northern Ethiopia. This 5th century church is perched 650 feet up in the sky, on the face of a vertical spire of rock. To reach it, one has to climb without any climbing ropes or harnesses, inching along narrow ledges and crossing a rickety makeshift bridge. The final leg of the journey involves scaling a sheer 19 feet-high wall of rock. The church was founded by Abuna Yemata, one of the nine saints, who chose the secluded spot as his hermitage.

This image puts things really into perspective. The entrance to the church can be seen on the right, about a third of the way up the pinnacle. Photo credit: Ethiopia—The Living Churches of an Ancient Kingdom

Photo credit: Owen Barder/Flickr

Beautiful frescoes cover the inside of the Abuna Yemata church. Photo credit: Matthew/Flickr

Photo credit: New Faces New Places

A priest holds open an ancient goat skin Bible decorated with vivid hand-drawn illustrations and ornate calligraphy. Photo credit: New Faces New Places

A 200 metre high “bridge” made of logs on the way to Abuna Yemata Guh. Photo credit: New Faces New Places

The church bell for Abuna Yemata Guh is actually two stones hanging halfway up the cliff. Photo credit: New Faces New Places

This 6th century monastery is located on top of the flat-topped mountain called Debre Damo. The only way to the monastery is up a sheer cliff 50-feet high. The monastery was founded by Abba Aragawi, one of the 'Nine Saints', and is known for its collection of manuscripts and for having the earliest existing church building in Ethiopia. Photo credit: Travel Aficionado/Flickr

This modern church is built in front of the grotto where Aragawi is said to have vanished or died. Photo credit: Ethiopia—The Living Churches of an Ancient Kingdom

The Debre Damo monastery is accessible only by rope up a sheer cliff. Photo credit: Achilli Family | Journeys/Flickr

A priest standing on the narrow ledge in front of the rarely used church of Daniel Korkor. Photo credit: Ethiopia—The Living Churches of an Ancient Kingdom

The hike up to the churches of Maryam Korkor and Daniel Korkor. Photo credit: Lonely Planet

The Petros and Paulos church is located, like many others, in the Gheralta range. The church isn’t truly rock-hewn because only the sanctuary is cut into the rock, the rest of the church is built out onto a ledge. Reaching the church originally involved climbing a steep cliff using only foot and handholds. Today, it is replaced by a rickety wooden ladder.

The Mikael Debre Selam church. Photo credit: Carsten ten Brink/Flickr

Photo credit: Andrea Moroni/Flickr

Don’t worry about coffee’s cancer risk — or its health benefits

A ruling from a Los Angeles judge last week now means that in California, coffee companies like Starbucks must warn customers of a potentially cancer-causing chemical found in coffee. Naturally, this gave jitters to coffee makers and coffee drinkers alike — and renewed a centuries-old debate: Is coffee bad for you?

A nonprofit group, the Council for Education and Research on Toxics, sued 91 coffee companies for not warning consumers about a particular chemical produced when coffee beans are roasted. The chemical, called acrylamide, can also be found in some foods and cigarette smoke. Though it’s been shown to up the risk of various types of cancer in rats and mice — at least when they’re exposed to high doses — no such link has been confirmed in humans, according to the American Cancer Society. 

The coffee companies, which included Starbucks, said there isn’t enough acrylamide in the coffee to harm consumers. But Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle ruled that the coffee companies didn’t show that acrylamide was present at safe levels; they also didn’t show that drinking coffee has benefits, according to the Associated Press. The case isn’t over: No one has yet determined how much money the coffee companies will pay. But it’s the latest example of a judge being called to weigh in on scientific matters; the same is happening with climate change and even researchers trying to take down their own critics.

In this case, the ruling was probably an overreaction, says John Ioannidis, a professor of medicine, health research, and policy at Stanford University. “I’m not the least concerned about coffee being a problem for causing cancer,” Ioannidis says in an interview. The amounts of acrylamide people are exposed to in their coffee are so low that it’s hard to say it’d cause cancer, he says. “Among the zillions of things that surround us,” Ioannidis says, coffee is “among the most safe in terms of cancer risk.”

Joseph Galati, medical director for the Center of Liver Disease and Transplantation at The Methodist Hospital in Houston, agrees. “I really do not believe that there’s any validity to this,” he says. People tend to gravitate towards stories about coffee causing cancer since drinking coffee is part of so many people’s routines. “We make a big hoopla about it,” Galati says, but “at the end of the day, it is really meaningless.” 

In fact, many studies have shown that drinking coffee might actually protect people from developing prostate and liver cancer, melanoma, and a type of cancer in the lining of the uterus, according to a huge review of the scientific literature published last year in The British Medical Journal. For certain types of cancer, like colon cancer, the evidence is a little less clear, says Syed Kazmi, assistant professor at UT Southwestern Medical Center and colon cancer expert. Some studies show that drinking coffee might protect people from getting colon cancer, while others don’t see that association. But research suggests that coffee drinkers who are diagnosed with colon cancer live longer than cancer patients who don’t drink coffee, Kazmi says.

It’s not just cancer, either. Drinking three to four cups of joe a day might lower your risk of dying of heart diseases, such as coronary heart disease, congestive heart failure, and stroke, says Donna Arnett, dean of the University of Kentucky College of Public Health and former president of the American Heart Association. There also seems to be no link between coffee intake and high blood pressure or irregular heart rhythm, she says. Some studies have even found that drinking coffee may reduce your risk of dying of an early death fromany disease, by as much as 64 percent. How exactly coffee helps us out is unclear: It could be that coffee has anti-inflammatory properties, Galati says, or that it is a good source of antioxidants, which protect cells from damage.

As good as these findings sound, you’d be wise to be skeptical of them, says Ioannidis. Many of these studies are observational; they rely on participants to accurately report their own eating, drinking, and lifestyle habits over a long period of time. That leaves a lot of room for error. People may not remember how much coffee they drink, or they may not report some behavior, like smoking, because they’re ashamed of it. Plus, there are so many factors that affect your health, and whether or not you develop cancer, and observational studies can’t really account for all of them. “It’s a complete mess and to be honest, I think these studies are getting nowhere and we should just quit doing them,” Ioannidis says. 

To really find out if coffee is beneficial, researchers should conduct randomized trials where thousands of participants are either assigned to a coffee-drinking group or a no-coffee group, and followed for at least five years, Ioannidis says. But Arnett says that in our society, where coffee is so prevalent, it’d be really hard to conduct such a study. If a coffee drinker is randomly assigned to the no-coffee group, will that participant really give up coffee for five years? “I’m not sure that a randomized controlled trial would be feasible,” Arnett says.

Even without those kinds of rigorous studies, drinking coffee is definitely not something you should worry about, Ioannidis says. (The US dietary guidelines say it’s totally fine to guzzle up to five cups of joe a day.) Maybe just don’t drown it with sugar and cream, Kazmi says. Plus, know your limits: If you’re very sensitive to caffeine and downing an espresso at 4 PM will keep you up all night, don’t do that. For people who have migraines, a little coffee can help stave off headaches, but too much caffeine can actually trigger them.

Ioannidis says that we may never know how coffee really affects our health. “I wouldn’t be surprised, actually, if there’s just no major benefit like there’s no major harm,” he says. So if you’re a coffee lover, there’s no need to change your habits. But don’t drink coffee because it may help you live longer. Do it because you enjoy it.

Foods That You Should Never Touch If You’re Over 50

We get it — adjusting your eating habits as you get older can be really hard. But when it comes to losing weight and keeping your body as healthy as possible, there’s really no other choice than to starting cutting foods out of your daily diet. Not entirely sure which foods you should start avoiding or limiting in order to keep yourself fit and healthy? That’s where we come in. Some of these foods may even surprise you! (Bet you never knew you’d have to avoid the food on Page 10.)

Pickles 

This may come as a surprise — how can a vegetable like delicious dills be bad for you? As Today’s Joy Bauer explains, one pickle is loaded with over 1,000 milligrams of sodium. With high blood pressure being a health concern as we get older, cutting down on foods that can raise your blood pressure is key. (This isn’t the only salt-filled food on our list, either.) 

Potatoes 

This is one food you surely need to cut down on, especially if it’s cut into fries or sprinkled with bacon bits. (More on bacon a little later.) “Potatoes really are starchy,” TIME explains, “and they land high on the glycemic index—right up there with rice cakes and pretzels.” And when you add all the extras to it, you get a dish that expands your waistline and raises your insulin levels. If you absolutely must have a potato — they do contain vitamins — eat them as bare as possible. 

Breakfast pastries 

We will not tell you to cut out sweets all together. (Who would ever listen to advice like that anyways?) But you should definitely limit your sugar intake if you want to keep your weight down — and definitely avoid pastries at breakfast. Bauer tells Today that the late morning sugar crash caused by breakfast pastries affects your blood sugar levels and causes you to crave unhealthier foods throughout the rest of your day. 

Butter 

Let’s be honest — butter isn’t good for you in large quantities no matter what age you are. But it’s more imperative to cut back on it as you age. In fact, cutting back on saturated fats in general — like whole milk and cheese — can greatly lower your cholesterol and your risk of heart disease. While a little butter won’t kill you, swapping it out for healthier fats like olive oil or nuts is a much better option. 

Too much wine 

But red wine is good for you, right? Well, that only counts if you drink it in moderation as prescribed by the Mediterranean diet. As Bauer tells Today, having multiple glasses in one sitting can undo its positive properties because it inundates your organs. Plus, the sugar in wine can interrupt sleep patterns as you get older, leaving you tossing and turning at all hours because you had just one more glass. 

Deli meats 

Time to rethink that weekend sandwich run. Or, at least what you are putting into the sandwich. Your favorite go-to deli meats are pumped with sodium and fat, WebMD explains, plus chemical preservative that raise your risk for certain cancers. Go for a lean meat option in your sandwiches — like skinless chicken — and pack on the veggies. 

Steam bag frozen vegetables 

This may be your go-to, quick-and-easy fix for getting vegetables into your diet. But this option isn’t as healthy as you think. As Livestrong tells us, pre-packaged veggie options contain added ingredients like creams, sauces, and salt, which take away some of the health benefits. Being mindful of what’s in your frozen vegetables can go a long way to keeping you fit, and healthier. 

Deep dish pizza 

Pizza is one of those unhealthy foods that we haven’t been able to get enough of since we were kids. Even though we know all the dough, cheese, and salty toppings are terrible for us. And as we get older, of course, those components ruin our waistlines and can contribute to long-term fight with obesity. To keep your body in check without giving up a slice of pie, steer of deep dish options. (All that bread is doing you no favors.) Opt for thin crust, less cheese, and load up on veggie toppings. 

Bacon 

This is kind of a no-brainer. You shouldn’t be eating bacon on a regular basis no matter what age you are. But of course, all that bad fats and salt packed into those strips are even worse once you reach a certain age because it greatly raises your risk of heart disease and stroke. While a nibble on a rare occasion probably won’t kill you, it’s better to just stay away from bacon all together. 

Cherries 

That’s right — those delectable little fruits should be limited in your diet as you get into your 50s and beyond. Despite their anti-inflammatory properties and loads of antioxidants, cherries are also packed with sugar. (And if your blood sugar is an issue, these are a big no-no.) Plus, eating too many cherries can cause upset stomach, nausea, and bloating. You can enjoy a few cherries here and there, but it’s best not to go overboard. 

Chicken skin 

Remember when we suggested swapping out your deli meats for skinless chicken? Really, you should be trying your best to always eat your chicken without the skin. While it makes the meat juicier, the skin is also loaded with a ton of fat, which can throw your cholesterol out of whack and add to your midsection. 

Dinner rolls 

It may seem like a meal isn’t complete without a side of bread. But having those rolls on the side are only going to add rolls to your waistline, especially as you get older. Plus, like with breakfast pastries, the carbohydrates in dinner rolls will make your blood pressure spike and then abruptly crash — leaving you hungry again, even after a large meal. (Especially if the rolls are made from white bread.) 

Soda 

Breaking a soda habit can be tough. But it’s crucial to your health the older you get, especially if you’re a diabetic. “This sugar rush,” Bauer says,” sends your blood sugar into a tailspin, and then you get an insulin surge and that promotes inflammation.” Unlike some foods on this list that can at least be eaten on a rare occasion, soda should be avoided at all costs. 

Grapes 

Here we have another fruit that you may think is too healthy to ever be bad for you. So what makes grapes a food to eat less of once you’re in your 50s? Like with cherries, the carbohydrate and sugar content is high and can make weight loss difficult. Take a cue from Livestrong and limit this fruit. 

Potato chips 

Once a potato becomes a potato chip, any and all nutritional value basically vanishes. You’re left with an empty, processed starch covered in blood pressure raising salt, which you’re no doubt going to over eat and gain weight from. Even if you’re at a social event and don’t snack very often, you’re better off skipping this snack and heading right for the veggie platter.

The Right Way to Drink Lemon Water (For Maximum Benefits), According to a Nutritionist

Many of us know that when life gives you lemons, you should add them to your water. Along with soothing a sore throat, aiding in digestion, and flushing out toxins, drinking lemon water yields a number of health benefits . . . right? To find out whether adding a few slices is actually doing your body any good, we consulted Autumn Bates, a certified clinical nutritionist and personal trainer. Spoiler: the perks of lemon water are not a myth, but there are best practices when it comes to getting the most out of each squeeze.

How much lemon should you be using for results?

According to Bates, you can still reap the benefits of lemon water as long as you incorporate the whole lemon, including the peel. One study published in the Journal of Clinical Biochemistry and Nutrition showed that certain polyphenols found in a lemon peel aided weight loss in rats with a high-fat diet. In addition to potentially helping you shed pounds, the fruit is packed with vitamin C. "One lemon contains a high amount of vitamin C that is needed to produce collagen in your body, boost your immune system, and regenerate glutathione (your body's powerful antioxidant used in daily detoxification)," Bates told POPSUGAR.

Bates recommends adding at least half a lemon (sliced) to eight to 10 ounces of water.

Is it best to add lemon to cold, warm, or hot water?

Warm water all the way. This temperature helps extract vitamin C and polyphenols from both the lemon and its peel. According to Bates, although vitamin C isn't heat stable — meaning it can degrade once it reaches a certain temperature — even a boiling temperature isn't hot enough to negate the fruit's benefits. However, warm water is ideal as its easier to drink in large quantities, while hot liquids have been linked to cancer by the World Health Organization.

What's the best time of day to drink lemon water?

Our body is extremely dehydrated by the time we wake up, so Bates says to grab a glass first thing in the morning. "While we sleep, we lose a lot of water through breathing," she said. "Hydrating with a warm glass of lemon water is best right when you wake up to help replenish what was lost overnight and start your day off on the right foot."

In addition to adding flavor to your water (and helping up your intake as a result), lemon can boost your immune system and form collagen in your body (which promotes skin and joint health), thanks to its high levels of vitamin C. But be warned: you may also be running the risk of thinning out your teeth's enamel by drinking lemon water all day, every day. Bates also shared that those with high levels of iron in their blood should limit their intake, as lemon can increase your body's ability to absorb iron.