Like many people, my experience of Oshawa has been largely limited to passing through on the 401. When I headed to Oshawa for a meeting with people at the Ministry of Revenue in 2009, I was at least slightly intrigued to see the place that people dismiss as "the Shwa". I went an hour early with a camera, and took photos of the downtown on a fine morning. Later, in 2011-12, I worked with some people in Oshawa, and spent a number of days working these, so I did things like visit the art museum and stroll the city during my lunch hours. Downtown Oshawa, for an urban area that in 2015 was considered Canada's 14th largest area, is fairly unimpressive. The only significant buildings are related to government, such as City Hall or various provincial government buildings. There are a few remnants of grace from earlier eras, but not a whole lot. Even compared with much smaller cities, downtown Oshawa appears to have little to enliven it.
When I decided to try to photograph all Census Metropolitan Areas in 2015, I wanted to return to Oshawa to try and round out my 2009 photos with things like a waterfront park or historic properties, to round out the overall impression of the city.
Photo List (Total 146 Photos)
Click bolded headers below to view, or click "just the best" for quick tour
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Central Oshawa in 2009 (46 photos) - This gallery shows a walk around the central city, including the City Hall, Memorial Park, and commercial streets like King and Simcoe.
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Oshawa with Yvon in 2015 (83 photos) - Yvon and I took a day trip to Oshawa in 2015 expressly to create a gallery for the city. To that end, we started at the waterfront park, with its three heritage houses. We visited Autofest nearby, and then spent a short amount of time in the central city. There is some overlap between the photos in this gallery and the 2009 gallery, for the central city. We then went to the beautiful Valleyview Gardens Park, on to the astonishing grounds of the Parkwood Estate, and finally up to the campus of Durham College / University of Ontario Institute of Technology.
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Autofest (17 photos) - This gallery is mostly, well, old cars.
