Seeing an establishment that you passed daily for years suddenly change overnight can be a blessing sometimes. In this case, an industrial building that I had seen daily suddenly show signs of active demolition got the gears turning.

And it paid off - a new location in Toronto which has seen slim pickings of anything outside the old abandonments. It wasn't the greatest explore I've been on, but at least it was something new and that made it worthwhile in the end.

So thanks Kawneer Canada for providing me entertainment for an afternoon.

I spent last weekend down in New York, around the Rochester area again. It's not a bad area so long as you stay in the good parts of town, and there are a good number of exploring opportunities around.

That said, I found myself drawn to a favourite from my last trip - MacFaddens. Parts of it have collapsed in the last year, and the building itself looks like it doesn't have long now. It's a shame, but not unexpected when it's been abandoned since the 70's.

So after failing three times to get into the Mountain Juggernaut drain, I tried yet again - this time from the outfall. And I got in, convinced I had finally beat the drain.

Alas, Murphy and his damn law struck again... it was not to be. I'm now 0-4 at this drain... but there will be a fifth attempt, mark my words.

Doors Open Toronto has once again come and gone, and like I always do, I attended, camera in hand. The big highlight this year was the limited reopening of the R.C. Harris Water Treatment Plant to the general public, and I was there to document this architectural beauty.

It wasn't the only place I visited, but the only one that's really worth sharing on AUE. I couldn't really get quality snaps at the TTC's Roncesvalles Yard, and the Necropolis is open daily anyways.

I don't think the security at the Greenwich Mohawk Brownfield in Brantford (formerly the home of Massey Ferguson) quite understand the term "open house", at least how they advertised it. Having the event organizers tell us we can enter the property, only to have security constantly kicking us back out, is not an open house.

But that's okay. Security can't be everywhere at once, after all...

A little slow on this update, but I've been busy working on optimizing the engine powering the site. Trying to speed things up a little, so to speak. No word yet on the ongoing email problems, though.

That said, I did get out with the Toronto Meet again this month, and a group of us went our own way to a factory out is Mississauga that Boffo had sourced out a while back. With a little determination, we got in, and had the run of the half-demolished place.

I love virgin locations.

Not happy with the original gallery I took at the Regal Constellation (old P&S camera, combined with the night, did that gallery in), I had been making plans to return since I acquired the dSLR.

This past weekend, I made good on those plans... and in daylight, to boot.

So I spent the past long weekend out along the Rideau River, taking in the small towns and generally poking around.

And I was not disappointed with the haven of Smiths Falls. While the closed Hershey factory was a foregone conclusion from the security present, and the Rideau Regional Centre was very much active with the OPP, the old hospital in the town proved to be worthwhile.

Perhaps I shall find myself making a return trip later this year to re-evaluate the other two properties...

So my main email is down again... thankfully, I have my backup in here so I can still respond to problems.

The user account activation system has been broken for weeks, I just discovered, thanks to a new member pointing it out. It has now been fixed... anyone who has registered but hasn't activated yet, your activations keys should now respond and you can finally log in.

So it would seem that any email that has been sent to me since about May 2010 has been sent to my spambox (which I don't regularly check) by an aggressive spam filter. Sorry if I didn't get back to your email - I didn't see it!

I plan to start going through the backlog tonight. As a failsafe, though... I have it set up now that any email you send through the contact form not only send to my main account for this site, but one of my personal accounts as well so I'll see it from now on.