Mowed into this field in Canada is a large equilateral cross with its arms bent at right angles, of a design that has been shown to arise independently in any basket-weaving society. In other words, a 30 metre-wide Swastika.

Despite the very innocent Swastika symbol having been around longer than civilisation itself, these days the symbol has been almost exclusively associated with the Nazi Party, ever since they adopted it as their logo in the 1920s. Given that the symbol in this field is contained within a circle (the actual Nazi symbol is in a circle and set at a 45° angle), the likelihood is that this was indeed created by some nasty Neo-Nazis hoping to promote their evil cause.

Unfortunately for our inept villains, they’ve drawn it with the arms of the symbol left-facing, which despite having plenty of historical precedent is incorrect, as the Nazi swastika had right-facing arms, even on the rear side of their flag.

Previously on Google Sightseeing we’ve seen an unintentional Swastika building, a Swastika fountain and some Dutch neo-nazis who were equally incapable of getting simple shapes the right way round.

Thanks to S.Patrick.

Tucked away on the lakefront of Canada’s largest city is the Toronto Music Garden.

The park, which opened in 1999, was designed to represent the different elements of Bach’s Suites for Unaccompanied Cello and was a partnership between landscape designer Julie Moir Messervy and cellist Yo-Yo Ma.

Six distinct areas represent the dance movements of the Suite and are intended to give visitors a sense of flowing rivers, forest trails, wildflower meadows, a quiet conifer grove, a formal flower garden and an amphitheatre of large grass steps.

Microsoft’s Live Maps has a bird’s eye view, showing the park with it’s more lush summer greenery, which mirrors the view no doubt enjoyed by many people living in the condo towers along Queens Quay.

More information (history, pictures and an excerpt of the music) at the City of Toronto website.

Thanks to Kenway and Chris.

(It’s the last day of Island Week 2 here at GSS, which means we’re almost done with posting about islands. And it’s lasted about a week.)

Manitoulin Island in Ontario, Canada is officially the world’s largest island that is located within a lake.

That’s pretty simple, but within the island there are an additional 180 lakes…

Within one of those lakes, Mindemoya Lake (to be precise), is the largest island, in a lake, on an island, in a lake (in the world). Still with me?

But we’ve missed out a step! On the island of Sumatra in Indonesia we find Lake Toba, and its principal island of Samosir – which at 630 square km is easily the largest island, in a lake, on a island.

After Samosir, the second largest island within a lake is Glover Island, which is in the Grand Lake on the island of Newfoundland.

However, Glover Island’s largest lake also has many islands, of which the largest is about 2 acres. This tiny, unnamed island is therefore the largest island, in a lake, on an island, in a lake, on an island!

Unfortunately, it has no lakes in which we might find further islands.

Seeing as it’s island week, we’ve left out many additional facts about the largest lakes found on islands (some of which are larger that the lakes containing islands we’ve mentioned here) but I think this post has been confusing enough!

Wikipedia: Manitoulin Island, Samosir & Glover Island

Thanks to Dee, kejoad, Daryl, Chris W, Boing boing, Elbruz.org and World Island Info.

There’s a nice story on Vanity Fair about how the author, Nick Tosches, spent more than a year attempting to track down the shot location of a desktop picture called Autumn that came with his copy of WIndows.

Eventually Nick managed to track the image back to the Corbis library, and in turn to the photographer, Peter Burian. With a little coaxing, Peter eventually remembered that he took the photo in the village of Kilbride, near his home in Milton, Ontario.

Of course once we had the address, we managed to find the exact tree-lined path and barn in a couple of minutes – thanks to Google Maps

And although these particular trees are still green, there’s thousands in this area that have started to turn a fantastic shade of orange!

Via Kottke.org.

Cockburn Island is a ‘ghost’ island in Ontario, which despite the apparent signs of life (there’s a small town and marina) has an official population of zero. The 1996 census listed a population of just two, but both people had left by 2001, making this the least populated incorporated municipality in Canada.

Some of these abandoned houses are supposedly still used as holiday homes, but what interests me if the makeshift airport to be found deep in the forest. It’s evidently still in use but I’ve found no mention of the airport around the internet. Most websites say that the marina is the “only way of getting on the island”, but it’s clearly not. If you asked me, an abandoned island would be the perfect place for an evil empire to keep its headquarters…

Thanks: Matt Blum & Taylor