My thanks to everyone for stopping by today and taking a look at this latest creation of mine. Please feel free to leave a comment if you would like, I always enjoy your remarks. And I hope you all are starting out your long weekend (well, here in Canada anyways) in fine form. It's a glorious day here in Southern Ontario today. It's a shame I still have to work for two more hours. It's a warm Sunday afternoon in early July and Toronto's Red Rocket 4007 quietly trundles eastbound along Harbord Street on the Wellesley Line (Route 518). I've talked about this streetcar line before in 'TTC CLRV 4161 On Harbord Street', a tram route created from an amalgamation of several now defunct pre-subway era lines. Like so much of TTC's surface rail, Wellesley is a mixed traffic route sharing the road with other vehicles save for an underground segment built in the late 1960's in conjunction with the the University Subway. Heading east, the tunnel segways from Harbord beneath the eastern half of the U of T campus and Queen's Park, returning to a surface two blocks south on Wellesley Street through a portal west of Bay Street. Back then, and in recent years, there was talk of building a dedicated ROW on Harbord and Wellesley to extend and enhance the benefit of the tunneled section. It never happened as political will or the money has always evaporated. Right now people are just happy the streetcars can survive in Toronto under the shadow of a car (read gas guzzling SUV) happy, texting and driving (yup, he got caught again) mayor. But today at least, car 4007 still glides, emission free, past a fading reminder of Toronto's once proud Soviet diaspora. A lot weathered and neglected, the wall advertisement comes from an earlier time when a very eclectic mix of television burst onto the Toronto airwaves. Channel 47 (cable 4), Canada's first TV station dedicated to multicultural programming - what 'MTV' meant in the 70's. And 'MTV' is what Channel 47 insisted on calling themselves for the first ten years of their existence. In spite of the fact that their legal broadcasting call letters were actually 'CFMT'. These days, continuing the tradition of ignoring their call letters, the station refers to itself as 'OMNI.1' - a cut above those low lifes over on 'OMNI.2'. It was interesting, and bewildering, the things CFMT would televise back in the day. With little budget, they acquired programmes and films that, looking back, were obviously the victims of repeated and rather unprofessional copying, dubbing, re-dubbing, splicing and subtitling upon subtitles. Re-translations accumulated like layers of old paint as the media slowly drifted (often illegally) across several international borders and one iron curtain. It was not uncommon for at least one scene to be missing or edited out. In particular, titles got lost in numerous translations with one "movie" being officially listed in the TV guide as 'Stamp Of The Dirty Russian'. The description, if memory serves, stated, 'A serious ethnic drama centred in a Eurasian town'. I didn't tune in but one never forgets a title like that. And speaking of 'Eurasia', some old Soviet knock off shows did manage to pop up now and again as well as some really good art house animation such as 'Lenin and the Cat' - at least that's what they called it. Notes: TTC - Toronto Transit Commission CLRV - Canadian Light Rail Vehicle U of T - University of Toronto ROW - Right of Way SUV - Menace to All of Creation