1.
Pedestrian zone
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Pedestrian zones are areas of a city or town reserved for pedestrian-only use and in which most or all automobile traffic may be prohibited. Converting a street or an area to use is called pedestrianisation. However, pedestrianisation can sometimes lead to reductions in business activity, property devaluation, in some cases traffic in surrounding areas may increase, due to displacement rather than substitution of car traffic. Pedestrian zones have a variety of approaches to human-powered vehicles such as bicycles, inline skates, skateboards. Some have a ban on anything with wheels, others ban certain categories, others segregate the human-powered wheels from foot traffic. Many Middle Eastern kasbahs have no wheeled traffic, but use donkey-driven or hand-driven carts for freight transport, the idea of separating pedestrians from wheeled traffic is an old one, dating back at least to the Renaissance. However, the earliest modern implementation of the idea in cities seems to date from about 1800, separated shopping arcades were constructed throughout Europe in the 19th century, precursors of modern shopping malls. The first pedestrianisation of an existing street seems to have taken place around 1929 in Essen and this was in a very narrow shopping street that could not accommodate both vehicular and pedestrian traffic. Two other German cities followed this model in the early 1930s, by 1955 twenty-one German cities had closed at least one street to traffic, although only four were true pedestrian streets, designed for the purpose. At this time pedestrianisation was not seen as a traffic restraint policy, pedestrianisation was also common in the United States during the 1950s and 60s as downtown businesses attempted to compete with new suburban shopping malls. However, most of these initiatives were not successful in the long term, a car-free zone is different from a typical pedestrian zone, in that it implies a development largely predicated on modes of transport other than the car. A pedestrian zone may be more limited in scope, for example a single square or street being for pedestrians. A number of towns and cities in Europe have never allowed motor vehicles, archetypal examples are, Venice, which occupies many islands in a lagoon, divided by and accessed from canals. The city has been car-free for more than three decades, motor traffic stops at the car park at the head of the viaduct from the mainland, and water transport or walking takes over from there. However, motor vehicles are allowed on the nearby Lido, mount Athos, an autonomous monastic state under the sovereignty of Greece, does not permit automobiles on its territory. Trucks and work-related vehicles only are in use there, the medieval city of Mdina in Malta does not allow automobiles past the city walls. It is known as the Silent City because of the absence of traffic in the city. Sark, an island in the English Channel, is a zone where only bicycles, carriages
2.
Art
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In their most general form these activities include the production of works of art, the criticism of art, the study of the history of art, and the aesthetic dissemination of art. The oldest documented forms of art are visual arts, which include creation of images or objects in fields including painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, and other visual media. Music, theatre, film, dance, and other performing arts, as well as literature, until the 17th century, art referred to any skill or mastery and was not differentiated from crafts or sciences. Art may be characterized in terms of mimesis, expression, communication of emotion, during the Romantic period, art came to be seen as a special faculty of the human mind to be classified with religion and science. Though the definition of what art is disputed and has changed over time, general descriptions mention an idea of imaginative or technical skill stemming from human agency. The nature of art, and related such as creativity. One early sense of the definition of art is related to the older Latin meaning. English words derived from this meaning include artifact, artificial, artifice, medical arts, however, there are many other colloquial uses of the word, all with some relation to its etymology. Several dialogues in Plato tackle questions about art, Socrates says that poetry is inspired by the muses, and is not rational. He speaks approvingly of this, and other forms of divine madness in the Phaedrus, and yet in the Republic wants to outlaw Homers great poetic art, in Ion, Socrates gives no hint of the disapproval of Homer that he expresses in the Republic. For example, music imitates with the media of rhythm and harmony, whereas dance imitates with rhythm alone, the forms also differ in their object of imitation. Comedy, for instance, is an imitation of men worse than average. Lastly, the forms differ in their manner of imitation—through narrative or character, through change or no change, Aristotle believed that imitation is natural to mankind and constitutes one of mankinds advantages over animals. The second, and more recent, sense of the art as an abbreviation for creative art or fine art emerged in the early 17th century. The creative arts are a collection of disciplines which produce artworks that are compelled by a drive and convey a message, mood. Art is something that stimulates an individuals thoughts, emotions, beliefs, works of art can be explicitly made for this purpose or interpreted on the basis of images or objects. Often, if the skill is being used in a common or practical way, likewise, if the skill is being used in a commercial or industrial way, it may be considered commercial art instead of fine art. On the other hand, crafts and design are considered applied art
3.
Fountain
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A fountain is a piece of architecture which pours water into a basin or jets it into the air to supply drinking water and/or for a decorative or dramatic effect. Fountains were originally purely functional, connected to springs or aqueducts and used to drinking water and water for bathing and washing to the residents of cities, towns. Until the late 19th century most fountains operated by gravity, and needed a source of higher than the fountain, such as a reservoir or aqueduct. In addition to providing drinking water, fountains were used for decoration, Roman fountains were decorated with bronze or stone masks of animals or heroes. In the Middle Ages, Moorish and Muslim garden designers used fountains to create versions of the gardens of paradise. King Louis XIV of France used fountains in the Gardens of Versailles to illustrate his power over nature, the baroque decorative fountains of Rome in the 17th and 18th centuries marked the arrival point of restored Roman aqueducts and glorified the Popes who built them. By the end of the 19th century, as indoor plumbing became the source of drinking water. Mechanical pumps replaced gravity and allowed fountains to recycle water and to force it high into the air, the Jet dEau in Lake Geneva, built in 1951, shoots water 140 metres in the air. The highest such fountain in the world is King Fahds Fountain in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, fountains are used today to decorate city parks and squares, to honor individuals or events, for recreation and for entertainment. A Splash pad or spray pool allows city residents to enter, get wet, the musical fountain combines moving jets of water, colored lights and recorded music, controlled by a computer, for dramatic effects. Drinking fountains provide clean drinking water in buildings, parks. Ancient civilizations built stone basins to capture and hold precious drinking water, a carved stone basin, dating to around 2000 BC, was discovered in the ruins of the ancient Sumerian city of Lagash in modern Iraq. The ancient Assyrians constructed a series of basins in the gorge of the Comel River, carved in rock, connected by small channels. The lowest basin was decorated with carved reliefs of two lions, the ancient Greeks were apparently the first to use aqueducts and gravity-powered fountains to distribute water. In the 6th century BC the Athenian ruler Peisistratos built the fountain of Athens. It had nine large cannons, or spouts, which supplied drinking water to local residents. Greek fountains were made of stone or marble, with water flowing through bronze pipes, most Greek fountains flowed by simple gravity, but they also discovered how to use principle of a siphon to make water spout, as seen in pictures on Greek vases. The Ancient Romans built a system of aqueducts from mountain rivers and lakes to provide water for the fountains
4.
Government of Canada
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The Government of Canada or more formally Her Majestys Government, is the federal government of Canada, a country in North America, composed of 10 provinces, Ottawa, and 3 territories. The head of government is Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whose party the Liberal Party of Canada won the majority of seats in the Canadian Parliament in the 2015 Canadian federal election, in Canadian English, the term can mean either the collective set of institutions or specifically the Queen-in-Council. Further elements of governance are outlined in the rest of the Canadian constitution, which includes written statutes, court rulings, in Canadian English, the word government is used to refer both to the whole set of institutions that govern the country, and to the current political leadership. In federal department press releases, the government has sometimes referred to by the phrase Government. The same cabinet earlier directed its press department to use the phrase Canadas New Government, as per the Constitution Acts of 1867 and 1982, Canada is a constitutional monarchy, wherein the role of the reigning sovereign is both legal and practical, but not political. The executive is formally called the Queen-in-Council, the legislature the Queen-in-Parliament. The government is defined by the constitution as the Queen acting on the advice of her privy council, however, the Privy Council—consisting mostly of former members of parliament, chief justices of the supreme court, and other elder statesmen—rarely meets in full. This body of ministers of the Crown is the Cabinet, one of the main duties of the Crown is to ensure that a democratic government is always in place, which means appointing a prime minister to thereafter head the Cabinet. The monarch and governor general typically follow the advice of their ministers. The royal and viceroyal figures may unilaterally use these powers in exceptional constitutional crisis situations, politicians can sometimes try to use to their favour the complexity of the relationship between the monarch, viceroy, ministers, and parliament, and the publics general unfamiliarity with it. Per democratic tradition, the House of Commons is the dominant branch of parliament, the Senate, thus, reviews legislation from a less partisan standpoint. The Constitution Act,1867, outlines that the general is responsible for summoning parliament in the Queens name. After a number of sessions, each parliament comes to an end via dissolution. As a general election typically follows, the timing of a dissolution is usually politically motivated, the sovereign is responsible for rendering justice for all her subjects, and is thus traditionally deemed the fount of justice. However, she does not personally rule in cases, instead the judicial functions of the Royal Prerogative are performed in trust. Below this is the Federal Court, which cases arising under certain areas of federal law. It works in conjunction with the Federal Court of Appeal and Tax Court of Canada, in some cases, however, the jurisdictions of the federal and provincial parliaments may be more vague. For instance, the federal parliament regulates marriage and divorce in general, other examples include the powers of both the federal and provincial parliaments to impose taxes, borrow money, punish crimes, and regulate agriculture
5.
Parliament of Canada
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The Parliament of Canada is the federal legislative branch of Canada, seated at Parliament Hill in the national capital, Ottawa, Ontario. The body consists of the Canadian monarch, represented by a viceroy, the general, an upper house, the Senate, and a lower house. Each element has its own officers and organization, by constitutional convention, the House of Commons is the dominant branch of parliament, the Senate and Crown rarely opposing its will. The Senate reviews legislation from a less partisan standpoint and the monarch or viceroy provides the necessary Royal Assent to make bills into law. The governor general also summons parliament, while either the viceroy or monarch can prorogue or dissolve parliament, either will read the Throne Speech. The most recent parliament, summoned by Governor General David Johnston in 2015, is the 42nd since Confederation in 1867, the Parliament of Canada is composed of three parts, the monarch, the Senate, and the House of Commons. Each has a role, but work in conjunction within the legislative process. Only those who sit in the House of Commons are called members of parliament, though legislatively less powerful, senators take higher positions in the national order of precedence. No individual may serve in more than one chamber of parliament at the same time, the sovereigns place in the legislature, formally called the Queen-in-Parliament, is defined by the Constitution Act,1867, and various conventions. All federal bills begin with the phrase Now, therefore, Her Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate and House of Commons of Canada. And, as such, the Crown is immune from acts of parliament unless expressed otherwise in the act itself. As both the monarch and his or her representatives are traditionally barred from the House of Commons, any parliamentary ceremonies in which they are involved take place in the Senate chamber. The upper and lower houses do, however, each contain a mace, which indicate the authority of the Queen-in-Parliament, following the burning of the Centre Block on 3 February 1916, the City of London, England, donated a replacement, which is still used today. The temporary mace, made of wood, and used until the new one arrived from the United Kingdom in 1917, is carried into the Senate each 3 February. The Senates 1. 6-metre-long mace comprises brass and gold, senators served for life until 1965, when a constitutional amendment imposed a mandatory retirement age of 75. Senators may, however, resign their seats prior to that mark, the Senate is divided equally amongst four geographic regions,24 for Ontario,24 for Quebec,24 for the Maritimes, and 24 for the Western provinces. Newfoundland and Labrador, which became a Canadian province in 1949, is represented by six senators, further, Canadas three territories—the Northwest Territories, Yukon, and Nunavut—are allocated one senator each. The elected component of the Canadian parliament is the House of Commons, with each member chosen by a plurality of voters in each of the countrys federal electoral districts
6.
Thomas D'Arcy McGee
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Thomas DArcy Etienne Hughes McGee, was an Irish-Canadian politician, Catholic spokesman, journalist, poet, and a Father of Canadian Confederation. The young McGee was a Catholic Irishman who hated the British rule of Ireland and he escaped arrest and fled to the United States in 1848, where he reversed his political beliefs. He became disgusted with American republicanism and democracy, and became intensely conservative in his politics and his fervor for Confederation garnered him the title, Canadas first nationalist. He fought the Fenians in Canada, who were Irish Catholics who hated the British, McGee succeeded in helping create the Canadian Confederation in 1867, but was assassinated by Fenian Elements in 1868. Widely known as DArcy McGee, he was born on 13 April 1825 in Carlingford, Ireland, from his mother, the daughter of a Dublin bookseller, he learned the history of Ireland, which later influenced his writing and political activity. When he was eight years old, his family moved to Wexford, where his father, James McGee, was employed by the coast guard. In 1842 at age 17, McGee left Ireland with his sister due to a relationship with their stepmother, Margaret Dea. In 1842 he sailed from Wexford harbour aboard the brig Leo, on the Leo he wrote many of his early poems, mostly about Ireland. He soon found work as assistant editor of Patrick Donahoes Boston Pilot and he specialized in articles expounding the movement for Irish self-determination led by Daniel O’Connell. He became the editor in 1844, While writing widely as well on Irish literature. He advocated the union of Canada into the United States, saying, Either by purchase, conquest, or stipulation, in 1845 he returned to Ireland where he became politically active and edited the The Nation, the voice of the Young Ireland movement. In 1847 he married Mary Theresa Caffrey, they had six children and his involvement in the Irish Confederation and Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848 resulted in a warrant for his arrest. McGee escaped disguised as a priest and returned to the United States, in the United States, he achieved prominence in Irish American circles and founded and edited the New York Nation and the American Celt. He wrote a number of history books and he grew disillusioned with democracy, republicanism and the United States. Historian David Gerber traces a dramatic transformation from the Young Ireland revolutionary who sought a peasant insurrection to expel the British from Ireland, Gerber writes, After 1851, however, he veered increasingly toward the opposite pole, espousing an ultramontane conservatism. Catholic dogma and triumphalism, anti-Protestantism, cultural nationalism, and social conservatism were the framework of McGees thought during the 1850s, McGee emigrated to Montreal in 1857, believing Canada was far more hospitable to the Catholic Irish than was the United States. He downplayed the importance of the Orange Order in Canada and he remained a persistent critic of American institutions, and of the American way of life. He accused the Americans of hostile and expansionist motives toward Canada, McGee worked energetically for continued Canadian devotion to the British Empire seeing in imperialism the protection Canada needed from all American ills
7.
Lumber
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Lumber, or timber is wood that has been processed into beams and planks, a stage in the process of wood production. Lumber may also refer to currently un-needed furniture, as in Lumber room, or an awkward gait, ultimately derived from the look of unfashionable, Lumber may be supplied either rough-sawn, or surfaced on one or more of its faces. Besides pulpwood, rough lumber is the raw material for furniture-making and it is available in many species, usually hardwoods, but it is also readily available in softwoods, such as white pine and red pine, because of their low cost. Lumber is mainly used for structural purposes but has other uses as well. It is classified more commonly as a softwood than as a hardwood, in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand and Britain, the term timber describes sawn wood products, such as floor boards. In the United States and Canada, generally timber describes standing or felled trees, before they are milled into boards, Timber there also describes sawn lumber not less than 5 inches in its smallest dimension. The latter includes the often partly finished lumber used in timber-frame construction, remanufactured lumber is the result of secondary or tertiary processing/cutting of previously milled lumber. Specifically, it is cut for industrial or wood-packaging use. Lumber is cut by ripsaw or resaw to create dimensions that are not usually processed by a primary sawmill, resawing is the splitting of 1-inch through 12-inch hardwood or softwood lumber into two or more thinner pieces of full-length boards. For example, splitting a ten-foot 2×4 into two ten-foot 1×4s is considered resawing, structural lumber may also be produced from recycled plastic and new plastic stock. Its introduction has been opposed by the forestry industry. Blending fiberglass in plastic lumber enhances its strength, durability, logs are converted into timber by being sawn, hewn, or split. Sawing with a rip saw is the most common method, because sawing allows logs of lower quality, with grain and large knots. There are various types of sawing, Plain sawn —A log sawn through without adjusting the position of the log, quarter sawn and rift sawn—These terms have been confused in history but generally mean lumber sawn so the annual rings are reasonably perpendicular to the sides of the lumber. Boxed heart—The pith remains within the piece with some allowance for exposure, heart center—the center core of a log. Free of heart center —A side-cut timber without any pith, free of knots —No knots are present. Dimensional lumber is lumber that is cut to standardized width and depth, carpenters extensively use dimensional lumber in framing wooden buildings. Common sizes include 2×4, 2×6, and 4×4, the length of a board is usually specified separately from the width and depth
8.
Simpsons (department store)
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The Robert Simpson Company, or Simpsons, was a Canadian department store chain, founded by Robert Simpson in 1858. The Hudsons Bay Company purchased the chain in 1978, and it ceased operation in the 1990s, the dry goods store that later became the Robert Simpson Company opened in 1858 in Newmarket, Ontario. A fire destroyed the store in 1870 and reopened two years later, in Toronto, Robert Simpson House at 384 Botsford Street was his home Newmarket from 1861 to 1876. The company was renamed the Robert Simpson Company Limited in May 1896 shortly before Robert Simpsons sudden death on 14 December 1897, at the age of 63. In 1912, Charles Luther Burton became assistant general manager at the Robert Simpson Company, then under the directorship of his old friend, by 1929, Burton was president of Simpson’s, becoming chairman of the board in 1948 when his son Edgar assumed the presidency. Throughout its history Simpsons was the carriage trade department store in Toronto. The motto Youll enjoy shopping at Simpsons was conceived by Robert Simpson, until 1972, the operating name of the company was Simpsons. During a time of increased pressure and sensitivity towards French language issues in Quebec, although not yet law, companies began dropping the English possessive s from their names. However, management did not want the company known as Simpson, so it dropped the apostrophe, after the Hudsons Bay Company acquired the company, it changed the name of the chain to Simpson for the stores in Quebec while retaining the Simpsons name in other provinces. The deal to create Simpsons-Sears Limited, a Canadian catalogue and department store chain separate from the Simpsons chain, was signed on September 18,1952, each company put up $20 million and had equal representation on the new companys Board of Directors. The new company was to have two main objectives, the first was to expand Simpsons existing mail order business, which was sold to the new company. The second goal was to build a string of stores modelled on Sears, the agreement also contained a provision that would prove to be a major bone of contention in the coming years. Under its terms, Simpsons-Sears could not open a store within 25 miles of Simpsons existing stores in Toronto, Montreal, Halifax, Regina. In return, Simpsons promised not to build any stores outside of those five cities, Simpsons-Sears mail order business, however, was free to operate anywhere in Canada and so was the new Simpsons-Sears Acceptance Company, the credit arm of the operation. On Thursday, September 17,1953, the first Simpsons-Sears retail store opened in Stratford, the second Simpsons-Sears store opened in Kamloops, B. C. in December of that year. Enormous rooms with special ventilation were built to house IBM punch card main frame machines in two locations. In 1972, Simpsons and Simpsons-Sears agreed to end the 25-mile restriction and permit Simpsons and it was a very successful campaign that lasted two years. In 1978, the Hudsons Bay Company acquired Simpsons and federal law required the partnership to terminate, thus Simpsons
9.
Beaux-Arts architecture
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Beaux-Arts architecture expresses the academic neoclassical architectural style taught at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. The style of instruction that produced Beaux-Arts architecture continued without interruption until 1968. The Beaux-Arts style heavily influenced the architecture of the United States in the period from 1880 to 1920, in contrast, many European architects of the period 1860–1914 outside France gravitated away from Beaux-Arts and towards their own national academic centers. American architects of the Beaux-Arts generation often returned to Greek models, for the first time, repertories of photographs supplemented meticulous scale drawings and on-site renderings of details. Beaux-Arts training emphasized the production of quick conceptual sketches, highly finished perspective presentation drawings, close attention to the program, site considerations tended toward social and urbane contexts. In the façade shown to the right, Diana grasps the cornice she sits on in an action typical of Beaux-Arts integration of sculpture with architecture. A sense of appropriate idiom at the craftsman level supported the teams of the first truly modern architectural offices. The prestige of the École gave the style Beaux-Arts a second wind in combining the new manner with the traditional training and they were followed by an entire generation. Henry Hobson Richardson absorbed Beaux-Arts lessons in massing and spatial planning and his Beaux-Arts training taught him to transcend slavish copying and recreate in the essential fully digested and idiomatic manner of his models. Richardson evolved a personal style freed of historicism that was influential in early Modernism. The White City of the Worlds Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago was a triumph of the movement, the Beaux-Arts curriculum was subsequently begun at Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, and elsewhere. From 1916, the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design in New York City schooled architects, painters, bosworth, Carnegie Mellon University, designed by Henry Hornbostel, and the University of Texas, designed by Paul Philippe Cret. Beaux-Arts architecture also brought a civic face to the railroad, two of the best American examples of the Beaux-Arts tradition stand within a few blocks of each other, Grand Central Terminal and the New York Public Library. Another prominent U. S. example of the style is the largest academic dormitory in the world, in the late 1800s, during the years when Beaux-Arts architecture was at a peak in France, Americans were one of the largest groups of foreigners in Paris. Many of them were architects and students of architecture who brought this back to America. Beaux-Arts was very prominent in public buildings in Canada in the early 20th century, notably all three prairie provinces legislative buildings are in this style. Buenos Aires is a center of Beaux-Arts architecture which continued to be built as late as the 1950s, national Theatre, Melbourne General Post Office building, Forrest Place, Perth Argus Building. Beaux-Arts Architecture in New York, A Photographic Guide United States, sixteenth Street Architecture – profiles of Beaux-Arts architecture in Washington D. C
