Looks a lot like this in Guelph: http://www.pixagogo.com/Photos/Album...k2!3OMJcGcdGzO

Tsk, tsk.
One isn't supposed to refer to bog-trotters as "paddies" any more.

That is true. Mind you, most of Nova Scotia (and I'm guessing 'The Rock' ) consists of rock! Not a lot of digging going on around here. Blasting, yes

I was quite surprised when I found out the cable supply was run on the phone poles. It is just strange after they seemed to dig up every foot path in the UK to bury cable 'cables'.

It's coz it all freezes over in winter, innit. Difficult to dig a hole for a cable (even for our Hibernian friends with appropriate entrenching tools) when the ground's frozen solid. In cities they can be put in conduits and accessed through manholes [that's the cables, not the Irishmen, he adds quickly], but that's not cost-effective in the countryside when telegraph poles - well, they grow on trees, don't they.

It'd be a bugger to have to wait til April or May to repair a cable that broke in December without calling in the heavy digging equipment...

We have a client in the cabling business. They used to be a domestic oil company and, in the course of that, acquired rights of way through pipes (sewers, supply pipes, subway lines, all sorts) under several US cities. Cold cities; New York and Chicago among them. Now they sell the use of the right of way for TV cables, computer cables, all manner of cables. I would have thought something similar would be possible in Toronto but it doesn't seem to the case, there are wires dangling all over.

not right downtown, there aren't - I look out of my window at Wellington & York and the only cables I can see are the streetcar powerlines. I guess a little further out you start to see cables on poles. But then again, in my bland suburban bit of Oakville the phone, power and cable all come into the houses underground. There's a series of junction boxes up by the main intersection, it's all on poles along the main road, but not through the residential parts.

OK, the area immediately adjacent to that black TD building has few wires but you don't have to go far to see them:

Wires at Bloor and Sherbourne:

http://www.boldts.net/TorBu.shtml

Wires at Bay and College:

http://www.boldts.net/TorBc.shtml

Moss Park with wires:

http://www.boldts.net/TorMo.shtml

The Beach has lots of wires:

http://www.boldts.net/TorQk.shtml

John Street, CN tower seen above wires

http://www.boldts.net/TorU.shtml

Hillcrest Village (wherever that is) looks wirey

http://www.boldts.net/TorHv.shtml

Yes, the "Rock" is, well, pretty much Rock.* And what isn't rock is bog. Neither of which is much good for digging up to bury cables. So for example the view from outside my office window in centralish St. John's encompasses cables:
(It's a photo from last winter, we've not had a freak snowstorm, never fear.)


Cable tv comes to the house along with electricity from poles. In fact I have one pole at the end of the drive and another half way down it that my neighbour conveniently uses to hang one end of their washing line on.

* Rock is such a big thing here that there is a whole interactive museum type place devoted to it. http://www.geocentre.ca/ It's a lot less exciting than it seems.