A Decade of GAS | CCR’s 10th Anniversary Brewery Tour & Photo Walk

While most TFS walks start with coffee and end with beer, this walk started and contained beer from start to finish. With the help of fellow co-host Bill, I selected a series of breweries across the eastern part of Toronto, starting with the Great Lakes Brewpub on Lower Jarvis and ending at Godspeed, located at Coxwell and Gerrard. Sadly, since I started planning this walk, one of the breweries closed at the end of June (Saulter Street). Bill Smith suggested Radical Road as a replacement. The bonus is that Radical is right along the route, so there was no need to make any changes. The idea was to stop and have a sample or a half at each brewery along the way, taking photos during the walks (some long, some short) between each. Gear-wise, I decided to go pretty light on the gear, opting for my Canon EOS Elan 7 with the 40mm f/2.8 lens, loaded with Kentmere 200 film (rated at ASA-160) and developed in Perceptol. I also took along my D750 with the 28mm f/2.8 lens for video interviews and shot some POV video on my phone from the Elan 7. The audio from the interviews will be featured in Episode 204 of the Classic Camera Revival, and the video of the entire event will be released on 20 August.

By the time I reached Oakville Station to catch a train into the city I knew it was going to be a hot day. I had already made the choice to drop two stops from the route, the ones that would require the group to drop down from the Queen Street corridor, not by much, but enough to give me pause. The idea was that if someone needed to move faster or get to safety having access to the 501 Street Car with air conditioning was more important. I got into the city with about an hour and a half before having to get to the meetup spot so I took the chance to do some photography in the downtown taking things slow and keeping to the shade as much as possible. I shot with my Pentax Zoom 280-P and my D750 with a new lens, the Nikkor 20mm f/2.8D.

I did make a point to get into the area where we were meeting early enough to get a coffee (Iced in this case) and something to eat because I didn’t want to keep the group at Great Lakes too long and risk it getting even hotter. But that was already in the rearview because it was already that hot and was only going to increase. We invaded the brew pub right when the doors opened, the group was already large. Sadly with any best laid plains, it started going sideways right away. Things took a lot longer to arrive (in some cases didn’t arrive at all) before we had to get moving. After gathering the troops, we headed off towards the Distillery District, but instead of going deeper into Old Town Toronto we went along Front Street which isn’t as exciting in the photography realm, but offered a lot more shade. The district was busy with lots of people out and at this point a bunch of people got lost or didn’t listen. But we mostly made it up to Old Flame Brewing for the next stop. By this point I was already hurting, the temps were already into the 40°C territory. And we had already had a bunch of people drop out or simply never made it to that stop. I had to make the hard choice to stop the walk at Eastbound, there was no other way.

In theory it was only a short distance between the Distillery District and Riverside, but it felt like it took forever to move along the route. Several folks dropped out at the Distillery District, but I had to at least make it to the third stop. We moved through the Corktown Commons and got to see a lot of the new construction through the area, then along the narrow section of King Street which ducked up to meet Queen. The group was drifting further apart at this point as everyone made their own pace. Even I was starting to slow down, but kept at the head of the pack to move things along. But we eventually mostly made it to Eastbound where James Lee had secured a section for the group, which was still larger than I expected. But there was no way I could stay, I was so done and rather than risk something bad happening, I decided to part ways and head back to Union Station and get home.

Jumping on the next 501 Street car heading west I took out the Pentax MZ-S with the 77mm lens that had been loaned out from John Roberts and shot part of the roll from the street car. The trouble is that with all the construction for the new Ontario Line the car diverted a bit south off Queen Street. I had enjoyed the ride and got off east of Yonge before heading out again on foot to finish off the roll. I did make it with enough time to catch a 3:20 train out of Union for home and finished off the roll at the same time.

While the event was not anywhere close to what I had planned there was one important thing. No one got hurt or ended up getting any major health issues due to the heat. And the showing at the event was much larger than I expected. At the start there was probably close to twenty people and we had about fifteen by the time it ended. Despite the heat I did have a good time and certainly want to revisit the rest of the route in one of the cooler months. Starting near Eastbound before hitting up all the stops east of it to end at Godspeed. But I do have to be back in the city in a couple of weeks, so I might do some poking around that neighbourhood. Of course you can always check out all the images over on the Flickr Album!