First an earthquake in Ontario and Quebec, then a tornado touched down in Midland later in the week. I headed north to one of my favourite bike trails near Tiny Beaches and was happy to see very little damage along the trail.

One of my favourite buildings in the city of Toronto is the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM for short), and my favourite space in the ROM is the 1933 rotunda with the spectacular gold and blue venetian glass domed ceiling. On this page I've collected some history and description of the room, some photos, even an audio tour from the ROM. It is a wonderful space, especially now that it can be enjoyed in relative peace, rather than as the cramped, busy, and loud main entrance to the museum. No visit to the ROM is complete without stopping in to the rotund for a moment or two.

We managed to get out on the snowshoes for the first time this season in mid-December. There wasn't a ton of snow yet, maybe a foot, but enough to enjoy the Ontario forest. In some places there were branches sticking up through the snow, but not a lot. Here are some shots of the wonderful old lodge nearby, the afternoon sun in the forest itself, then down to Nottawasaga Bay which still has exposed sand. You can't see it in the photo, but the ski hills of Blue Mountain are directly across the bay, and look amazing all lit up for night skiing.

I passed through the south end of the Mount Pleasant Cemetery and noticed that the outside work on the new Mount Pleasant Visitation Centre is pretty much complete. The visitation centre ( don't call it a funeral home ) has a long, protracted history reaching back to initial plans in 2004. It looks like they've done a nice job of the building and landscaping, and the running/walking/biking path is now open. Here are some photos from the end of September, 2009.

Toronto has not one, but two fashion photography exhibits this fall. One at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) and one in the new crystal at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM).

• Edward Steichen: In High Fashion, the Condé Nast Years, 1923–1937
• Vanity Fair Portraits: Photographs 1913 - 2008

Both shows are worth checking out if you are a fan of classic fashion, modern fashion, or portrait photography.

Rannie Turingan is a prolific and influential blogger and photographer here in Toronto. For one of his latest projects (which won him a Nissan Cube) he set out taking panoramic photos with his iPhone. Here are three ways you can enjoy those photos. Whether you're just visiting Toronto on vacation, or if you live here, they are well worth a look!

We'll run through three choices:

• Standard web page and online map
• iPhone and Blackberry specific web page
• iPhone application (that also runs on an iPod touch)

There is a wonderful multi-use trail called the Tiny Beaches rail trail, running north just outside Elmvale up to Penetanguishene. It is a snowmobile trail in the winter, and a great biking, running, and hiking trail in the summer and fall (there are LOTS of bugs in the spring...).

Here's a short video of a few sections along the northern end of the trail from July, 2009.

We were in Ottawa last summer, and I've finally got around to adding some music to a time lapse video I made of one of the locks on the Rideau Canal, right downtown.

I used a Canon PowerShot SD870 IS and the built in time lapse function, trying to hold the camera as steady as possible against a railing.