[PHOTO] Sculptures inside the Dunes Studio Gallery (mostly lobsters)

The interior of The Dunes Studio Gallery and Cafe (3622 Brackley Point Road) is full of beautiful things. Last month, I shared a photo of some glass cats for Caturday. Today, I'm sharing some of my photos of sculptures inside the building. Curiously, most of the photos I took were of lobsters.

[PHOTO] The Caledonia for sale, Toronto Harbour

The barquentine Caledonia, a spacious tourist vessel profiled in the Toronto Star in 2008, is moored in Toronto harbour next to HTO Part and is up for sale for $C 3.5 million.

[BLOG] Some Wednesday links

• From last month, Charlie Stross imagined how the Laundry of his ongoing fiction series would have reacted to Boris Johnson as their superior.


• The Big Picture shares photos of winning Olympians.


• blogTO celebrates the Leslie Street Spit and south Etobicoke.


• Centauri Dreams notes a study of some of the smallest and most planet-like brown dwarfs.


• The Dragon's Tales considers the possibilities of relatively recent supernovas affecting Earth.


• Far Outliers looks at the fur trapper culture of the American west in the early 19th century.


• The Map Room Blog links to a study of the Brexit vote in maps.


• Marginal Revolution's Tyler Cowen links to two columns, one on the end of economic miracles and one on what Danish-Americans do better than Danes.


• The Planetary Society Blog notes Russia's plan to drop the number of its astronauts on the International Space Station.


• Peter Rukavina wonders who are the 25 subscribers to The New Yorker on the Island.


• Savage Minds has a couple of posts noting the way the skills of anthropology can be made to apply outside the discipline.


• Window on Eurasia looks at Russia's interest in non-citizens in the Baltic States.

[URBAN NOTE] The CBC on the 50th anniversary of the final Beatles concert, in Toronto

By chance I was at the Maple Leaf Gardens this afternoon, four hours after a scheduled event commemorating the 50th anniversary. CBC's Deana Sumanac-Johnson demonstrates why it was an event worth of commemoration.

They say that if you remember the 1960s, you weren't really there. A similar thing could be said of the Beatles' last concert in Canada, which took place at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto on Aug.17, 1966: if you remember hearing the music clearly, you probably weren't there.

Toronto Mayor John Tory was there: only 12 years old, younger sister in tow, tickets procured by their grandfather.

"The volume of the screaming was such that you could just barely hear the music," Tory said in an interview with CBC News, recalling his excitement.

"To be in that environment was quite an experience. But if you said you went for the clarity of music, to hear every song, that would be an untruth, because you could hardly hear anything."

Unbeknownst to Tory and other Beatles fans at the time, that very thing — the noise that drowned out the music — was one of the factors that led the Fab Four to stop touring and conclude that their musical mission was better carried out in the studio producing albums.

Their last major concert took place just 12 days after the Toronto stop. Several studio albums later, in 1970, they broke up.

And that's why this week's celebration of all things Beatles in Toronto is a bittersweet moment. It sheds light on the rarely explored importance of Canada and Toronto to the Beatles' career and also serves as a reminder that the concert-goers at Maple Leaf Gardens witnessed the beginning of the end of one of rock's greatest bands.