Harbour Square Park, 25 Queens Quay West
Monday, September 23rd – 1:25pm to 2:00pm

In order to give a more organized and thorough analysis, I’ve decided to divide the sounds in three categories as discussed in class: nature, human and technological sounds.

Nature Sounds
Much of the nature sounds heard near the Harbour Square Park were mostly repetitive high-pitched sounds of a variety of birds, including chirping of a small bird, seagulls squawking or the low-pitched Canadian geese honking. In addition, whenever the birds flew, you could hear the soft and low-pitched flutter of their wings. Whenever a breeze came by, it created a loud and high pitched rustle of the leaves in the trees, as well as hearing the sound of the leaves that fell to the ground blow across the sidewalk, creating a light scratching sound. I recognized that the length and loudness of the rustling of the leaves was highly dependent on the strength of the wind – the stronger the wind, the longer and louder the sound of the leaves were. All these sounds signified being in a nature environment, signaled by the sounds of birds and trees.

Human Sounds
The human sounds heard are typical of any outdoor environment: continuous conversation, and other human noises, that I only heard one time of each, outside of talking, included – sniffling, coughing and groaning. The sniffling and coughing noises were low as the people were further away from where I was, however the groaning sound came from a gentleman sitting a few feet away from me, thus attributing its loudness. Some conversations faded in and faded out as they walked by.

Technological Sounds
The technological sounds heard in this environment are both symbolic to the Harbourfront area and the downtown area as a whole. Sounds of construction vehicles – a deep, truck horn, banging loud thuds of construction tools (which I couldn’t see), high-pitched truck brakes heard from a distance, a crane squeaking loudly as it moved, visible from where I was sitting – are significant to downtown Toronto as a whole. The construction sounds weren’t long, but they were short, continuous bursts, almost like a constant conversation ongoing in the background. Sounds notable to the Harbourfront were the constant low, deep, 20 second hums of plane engines, thanks to the neighboring Toronto Island Airport. The sounds of airplanes flying over (fading in of the engine) and landing (fading out) were pertinent. There were other unique man-made, yet technical sounds, that I heard, which I wasn’t surprised to hear in such a beautiful and touristic environment. I could hear the quick sounds of two camera shutters – the first one being the distinctive loud and high shutter sound on the Blackberry and the second one was a low “click” camera sound on a phone – both significant with wanting to capture the serenity of being by the Harbour. The last group of sounds can all be thought of as man-made, minimal sounds – people either walking by or enjoying the view, such as the loud click of a pop can opening, the quick “woosh” of pages flipping, the high-pitched jingle of a passerby’s backpack zipper and earring, the low, soft creak of bicycle gears as a gentleman pedals by, and the loud and high-pitched click-clack of heels on the boardwalk.

The sounds heard are significant to any park by the lake, thus I didn’t expect to hear much different or much out of the sounds of birds, trees, boats, and planes. The planes are possible unique to the Toronto lakefront as an Island Airport is unique to a Canadian city, but otherwise, all sounds heard were significant to its environment.

The keynote and soundmark of this area are easily identifiable; the keynote being the plane flying by every few minutes and the soundmark being the boat. Because the Island Airport is so close, the sound of the engines of the planes are continuously heard to residents of Harbourfront, thus making that sound the keynote. The soundmark of Harbour Square Park is in its title. A harbour is where boats dock, thus seeing boats in that area is as if it’s a landmark and the sound of the boats floating by or sloshing in the water is its distinctive soundmark.