Intermittent productions
I'm looking at the official description of the boundary of my provincial riding (electoral district) just now, where I learn that it is "that part of the City of Windsor lying westerly and southerly of a line described as follows: commencing at the intersection of the international boundary between Canada and the United States of America with the northwesterly production of Langlois Avenue; thence southeasterly along said production and Langlois Avenue to Tecumseh Road East; thence easterly along said road to Pillette Road; thence southeasterly along Pillette Road and its intermittent productions to the southerly limit of said city."
I was curious about the use of the noun production and in particular the phrase intermittent productions. I wasn't familiar with this usage, so I presumed it must be some sort of legalese. When I Googled "intermittent productions" it seems to be the name of a film production company which drowns out a handful of results that lead to descriptions of Canadian electoral districts, including mine. You see it more clearly on the Image Search where five of the first-page results are electoral district maps. So what's going on?
The OED helps a little; it tells me that one of the senses of production is "6. Extension or lengthening in space or time" and one of the quotations seems relevant:
1984 Victoria Govt Gaz. 8 Aug. 2831/1 All that land bounded by the southern alignment of Arden Street, the western alignment of Laurens Street, the production of the southern alignment of Miller Street and a line 6 metres east of the Coburg railway line.
So from this, along with some basic knowledge of my city, I figured out that a production is what you get when you project a street along a straight line beyond its actual extent (in this case, into the Detroit River). This makes sense of 'the northwesterly production of Langlois Avenue', since that's exactly where the electoral boundary meets the international boundary (in the middle of the river right along the line followed by Langlois). And this, then, is the explanation for 'intermittent productions', because Pillette Road is not a single road (any longer) but is divided up into several segments separated by rail lines, a freeway, an airport, etc. The electoral boundary thus follows Pilette's various segments, and where there is no street, follows the intermittent productions that result from extending the street along an imaginary line. Mystery solved.