In an old strip mall being converted into offices and apartments, the Chinese Canadian Conservative Association gathers for its annual Christmas party. Trays of food are laid out, speeches are given, but all eyes are on the TVs above and mics in the corner of the room. The host announces that no one is leaving without at least one song. Couples dance to Teresa Teng’s Tian Mi Mi, a couple of guests tell the audience if they’re going to San Francisco, be sure to wear flowers in your hair. The biggest cheers of the night come out as turn of the 90s rock outfit Beyond’s Hoi Fut Tin Hung and Hei Fun Nei come on the system. The crowd, now long married with children who’ve grown up, belts out every Oh Yeah and Shoo Be Doo from the anthems of their youth. Hei Fun Nei ends the way one of Elvis’ greatest performances from the last months of his life begins – my love, my darling, I hunger for your touch. A polished baritone voice booms through the room – love me tender, love me long, take me to your...heart. A double take reveals the speakers are only playing the backing track – a 50 to 60-year old suited man with Hong Kong roots gives his vocal tribute to Elvis. The night winds down, the lights dim, a disco ball is brought out, and the couples still left dance in its rays.
--Meng Bao
Poem 9: Come downstairs...
Come
downstairs
blue pajama
rifleman
you hunt the stars
between my two eyes
downstairs
blue pajama
rifleman
you hunt the stars
between my two eyes
--David Stokes
Article 13: Going back to the pueblo
I live in Mexico City, where a beautiful chaos holds everyday. But it’s Christmas time which means holidays and for a lot of people it means “obligatory family time”, so even if I enjoy living in what we still call “DF”, blood reclaims me and I go back to the town where I was born.
After seven hours in the bus I finally arrive in Huejutla where my brother comes for me and takes me to Tempoal, where I’m from. One hour is the distance between each place and along the way you can see the mountains, the green of the trees and the thickness of the morning air. When I feel we’re starting to get close I roll down the window and as I inhale the air I recognize I'm home. There is just that feeling of your land that makes it so special, you see those streets that you have walked, driven, you know what you´ll see next, you know the colors, the shapes, you feel your land with all your senses and you know you were born there. You know you are part of it.
My brother parks the truck and we carry the suitcases through the garage that hides my house, and I pass my aunt´s house and in the last window I shout: “tía!” hoping she answers, she does and she waves at me smiling and saying hi, she´s on the phone. And I continue walking that path of wood and rocks that no one likes because when it rains it gets slippery and everyone is always falling. But it always reminds me how I used to play with my cousin, we would just wait until it rained enough so a waterfall could be made and we could play in the water. And from there I can see the old “horno de barro” - “wood stove” - where my mom and my aunt used to make zacahuil for the new year.
Three little steps continue to get to my house and I start to see my mom’s garden, and I know I’ll see the red playground where I used to balance and then jump to the green grass, but now there is no more grass and it looks sad. Beside it now is my brother´s coffee roasting machine and the air smells quite nice, everything else is green and I continue to my door, where I knock so my mom can receive me and hug me. And right away she leads us to the kitchen where already she has made breakfast for us. She has made us meat with enchiladas with tortillas from her own hands and she has just put them in a salsa with that fresh cheese that my mom probably just bought that morning from a person screaming at the door “queso fresco! queso fresco!”. This is the cheese that I have missed, because it has an unreplacable flavor, it tastes more fresh and real than any other, it tastes like nature and you enjoy every bite of it. Tempoal is known for its cheese and its meat, and as little as it is -- 38, 839 inhabitants, though thats what a sign has said even before I was born -- in Mexico people know meat or cheese is good quality when it's from Tempoal.
Those are the moments that I feel thankful to have been born there and I don’t care about the lady who took half of my seat and didn’t let me sleep the whole night on the bus, or the nausea I felt almost the whole way because of the mountain's curves. The rooster will sing and the cats will ask for food in a cute melody of hunger, love and patience, and we’ll all laugh at the moment mom talks to them and they just seem to understand her.
--Celeste Navarrete
After seven hours in the bus I finally arrive in Huejutla where my brother comes for me and takes me to Tempoal, where I’m from. One hour is the distance between each place and along the way you can see the mountains, the green of the trees and the thickness of the morning air. When I feel we’re starting to get close I roll down the window and as I inhale the air I recognize I'm home. There is just that feeling of your land that makes it so special, you see those streets that you have walked, driven, you know what you´ll see next, you know the colors, the shapes, you feel your land with all your senses and you know you were born there. You know you are part of it.
My brother parks the truck and we carry the suitcases through the garage that hides my house, and I pass my aunt´s house and in the last window I shout: “tía!” hoping she answers, she does and she waves at me smiling and saying hi, she´s on the phone. And I continue walking that path of wood and rocks that no one likes because when it rains it gets slippery and everyone is always falling. But it always reminds me how I used to play with my cousin, we would just wait until it rained enough so a waterfall could be made and we could play in the water. And from there I can see the old “horno de barro” - “wood stove” - where my mom and my aunt used to make zacahuil for the new year.
Three little steps continue to get to my house and I start to see my mom’s garden, and I know I’ll see the red playground where I used to balance and then jump to the green grass, but now there is no more grass and it looks sad. Beside it now is my brother´s coffee roasting machine and the air smells quite nice, everything else is green and I continue to my door, where I knock so my mom can receive me and hug me. And right away she leads us to the kitchen where already she has made breakfast for us. She has made us meat with enchiladas with tortillas from her own hands and she has just put them in a salsa with that fresh cheese that my mom probably just bought that morning from a person screaming at the door “queso fresco! queso fresco!”. This is the cheese that I have missed, because it has an unreplacable flavor, it tastes more fresh and real than any other, it tastes like nature and you enjoy every bite of it. Tempoal is known for its cheese and its meat, and as little as it is -- 38, 839 inhabitants, though thats what a sign has said even before I was born -- in Mexico people know meat or cheese is good quality when it's from Tempoal.
Those are the moments that I feel thankful to have been born there and I don’t care about the lady who took half of my seat and didn’t let me sleep the whole night on the bus, or the nausea I felt almost the whole way because of the mountain's curves. The rooster will sing and the cats will ask for food in a cute melody of hunger, love and patience, and we’ll all laugh at the moment mom talks to them and they just seem to understand her.
--Celeste Navarrete
Article 12: The Ravines
There is a secret country in Toronto—the ravines. From the street they are seen only as quiet, unassuming gates of green; but through them unfolds a wide polyrhythmic pulse, a descent into a quilt of gorges.
The extent of Toronto's ravine network is unusual and defines the city. In fact, it is the largest network of ravines of any city in the world. So, while Montreal has a hill that everyone can see, and NYC has a park in the centre, Toronto’s greatest green-space, the ravine network, lies out of view. And yet it is larger by a significant degree — 10 500 hectares of wild (the city’s parks are separate green space) — and not centralized in expensive neighborhoods but equitably distributed amongst all corners. No matter where you are in Toronto, a foray into wilderness is only a short walk away.
The ravines are prehistoric scars on the chest of the city. If you had the geological time-lapse footage for Toronto and fast-forwarded to the end of the last ice age, 12 000 years ago, you’d see a three- kilometre-thick continent¬sized glacier above you right now. You’d be beneath an ice sheet taller than five CN Towers stacked on top of each other. And that enormous ice sheet is moving, headed north, and as it moves it’s immense weight is carving out millions of long, deep gashes in the bedrock which meltwater flows through and further expands. Eventually the ice sheet retreated far to the north, but it left behind a changed landscape, a Toronto scratched and stretched apart by deep ravines that bisect the city like the lines on your hand.
Today these ancient ravine are like passageways “great sunken gardens”, “rooms of green sunlight”, to Toronto poet Anne Michaels - that reach through the city like fingers, weaving through virtually every neighbourhood. You can enter a ravine at Steeles and Leslie and emerge, hours later, in Cabbagetown. Toronto’s ravines are so distinct, their verdant tendrils forming the city’s unique green handprint from above, that it has been suggested that if the CN Tower is Toronto’s unavoidable phallic symbol, then the ravines are the feminine corollary.
Suddenly, far from being a flat place, inclusion of the ravines reveals Toronto to be a landscape of inverted hills and unpredictable drops. Some of the ravines are 300- 400 feet below the surrounding land, many with a steepness only 20° away from vertical. Toronto is, in the phrase of architect Larry Richards, a “San Francisco in reverse.” Though to miss this alter-ego of our city is unsurprising, almost the work of a deliberate conspiracy: much of the city was purposely built around the ravines, the road network bypassing or crossing bridges above them, making it easy to travel through the city totally unaware of the sharp variations in topography. But Toronto is not as flat and straight as its planners have made it seem. We all drive through, past, or over the ravines.
And then there are those who choose to go into them. Novelist Hugh Hood describes Toronto as “a city where sooner or later you find yourself going down into a dark place in the ground.” The majority of the ravines have city-built and often wheelchair accessible paved paths. Other paths are desire lines and are quite rough, more like a dare: Is this a path in the woods or am I just hoping it is? Regardless, just a few feet into any path, the city drops away, its buildings disappeared behind, the city’s noise and traffic gone. Trees, nature, peace and solitude. You can walk paths without even knowing where you are going. It truly feels like the wild countryside. It's no surprise that the ravines were a favourite haunt of Ernest Hemingway when he lived in Toronto.
Despite the huge number of people who live around them, you can sometimes walk a ravine path and pass nobody for an hour or two. When you do pass a person going for a walk with the dog, or squeezing a 15-minute hike into a busy day, there is the usual awkward glance-and-nod system of uncertain human contact. The loneliness here can be a joyous intoxication. On weekends, though, the paths are usually well used and are a good time to go if you don’t want to feel as alone. Many people walk, run, or bike. Some families picnic off the path; the city has even installed metal barbeque-stands in a few locations. There are many people who fish in the ravines. I once met a woman who was collecting wild mushrooms, and I’ve seen people forage for wild (and valuable: $500 to $600 per pound) American Ginseng, neither of which the Toronto Conservation Agency wants you to do. They call this activity poaching.
You don’t need to drive three hours to Algonquin Park to see wildlife. The ravines are like a national park that has been tucked into a city. Our ravines are connected to the the wilderness north of the city, forming a nature corridor that animals and plants migrate and drift up and down through, like a feral highway. The ravines are home to more than 762 plant species (89 are wild edibles), hundreds of mushroom subspecies, over a hundred species of birds, and 19 species of amphibians and reptiles.
In the ravines you may come upon clouds of Red Admiral butterflies, beavers, pheasants, deer, coyote, salmon, dog-strangling vine, wild grape, eastern cottonwood, black cherry, red fox, red-tailed hawk, whitewater and white pine. But here these creatures are anything but a list. Life surrounds you and when you look at a plant or an animal there is no David Attenborough voice to tell you what they are.
The ravines are a being in whose flesh you are entangled. The smell of the woods is aromatherapy; you are breathing in wood oils and the perfume of microorganisms feasting (there’s a Japanese term for this: ‘'forest bathing"). Around you are trillions of spores, seeds, viruses and bacteria, many that have never been classified and never will.
Ravine life sees us and interacts with us. In the summer I saw a crayfish, a small freshwater lobster, sitting in a few inches of water in a stream. Trying to get it, it pinched me with its claws. The other night just after sunset, a saw-whet owl alighted on a branch above me and watched me as I wearied up a hill, almost as if it wanted to make sure I left.
In a city of 2.7 million, the ravines are the Wild and Uncolonized.
Margaret Atwood wrote that "to go down into them is to go down into sleep, away from the conscious electrified life of the houses. The ravines are darker, even in the day.” Rich people have their houses built right up against the ravines — but not in them. The city spends millions encasing ravines’ edges in metal cages trying to contain their movement and stop erosion or mudslides. The urban areas of the city depend on the ravines’ wild-nature to improve air quality and control flood waters. It was the destruction wrought by Hurricane Hazel on the suburbs that led to the ravines being protected against more suburban development. The ravines are used as a floodplain bulwark to protect Toronto during extreme weather events. Whenever it rains too much for the sewers, the ravines channel the excess into the lake, saving us at their expense. When the city was first built, residents just used the ravines as sewers themselves.
The ravines have long been the home for what society didn’t want, a shelter for the suppressed and the repressed. Some estimates say there’s about 100 people living in the Don Valley ravine. The ravines are a popular destination for recreational drug users looking for a safe and sedate place away from people and laws. If you spend enough time there a wiff of weed, or seeing a person hugging a tree while probably on acid, is bound to happen. During WWII, a prisoner of war camp was located in the ravines, the prisoners confined in tents and huts while mining clay at the Don Valley brick works and the Greenwood clay pits. The ravines have been a popular spot for gay cruising throughout Toronto’s history, especially when it was outlawed and stigmatized. During one attempted night time police crackdown in the ravine, a plain-clothes cop made contact with a guy who offered sex. When he identified himself to make an arrest, he got shoved and fell a considerable distance. The police backed off the entrapment tactics after that; the landscape was simply not conducive to easily enforcing hierarchy or law. There in the bush, "Orgies easily start and continue with changing personnel," one man recalled, "It is really quite civilized."
Though it was repression that led men into the ravines, once there it provided a pastoral setting for amour. Here is city librarian Rick Bebout, a gay liberationism AIDS activist, and with the ravines as backdrop, erotic photographer: “There was the sweet boy leaning on a tree just off the trail from the upper park, clearly very young and very nervous. ... There was the dark haired boy in black dress pants (a waiter, he said, here from Belgium) that he got muddy as we slid together down a hill. ... The funny little man who wanted us to take off all our clothes and have sex on a rock in the stream. We did, then sat naked on a log -- and got our bottoms bit by ants. And there was Ken Hutchinson. He was there to wander and sun, I to take pictures: of the stream, the viaduct, the piers, all wonderful. And of course I took pictures of him. Ken leaning back naked on a fallen limb. And with that — I ran out of film. We didn't have sex. But I did keep those pictures."
Perhaps the most under appreciated aspect of the ravines is their great gift to the city’s sensuality. There is an intense and lurid plant life: spikes intermingle with delicate flowers, shuddering beauty heighten by thorns. The ravine shape itself, V, pushes matter on top of each other, sliding life onto life. Walking down into the ravines brings blood to the cheeks. An Atwood protagonist reflects: “It seemed wrong to have this cavity in the city.” The ravines fill the city with poetry and stories, an awareness often beginning in childhood with the nourishment of contact and interchange it provides with other shapes of life, antlered and loop¬tailed and amber-eyed beings whose resplendent weirdness loosens our imaginations. I grew up thinking that in every city children descended into ravines; I knew them as the only place away from parents, society. Toronto poet Elana Wolff alludes to the ravine’s proto- sexual significance in the lives of young girls:
And in the soft mythology of memory, gully triumphant.
Intractably tied to the tail end of girlhood.
Damp gash where trilliums peeked like summer poutice fairies and were snatched.
Toronto resident Murray Seymour, author of a guidebook to the ravines, describes what he felt when discovering the ravines: “One day in desperation, tired beyond measure of walking the endless paved roads of suburbia, I cut across an overgrown field and almost fell into a green, riverine land. I remember even now how I felt I felt my chest expand, breathing in the oxygen from the trees. There was water down below, rushing over stones and darting through rapids. It sounded like water, looked like water, smelled like water. And though there was not a cloud in the sky, my cheek was wet." Jason Ramsay-Brown, author of the blog Walking with Abbey, travels the ravines with his 6 year old daughter. On Flickr there are thousands of photographers for whom the ravines have been their muse. And besides artistic potential there is literal buried treasure in the ravines: there’s a story that as the Americans looted our city in April 1813, British soldiers buried their money in Gates Gully.
Many new immigrants, coming from climates where danger lurks proudly in the forest, are wary of the ravines. ‘There’s no poisonous snakes here, no poisonous spiders?’ While there are none of those here, it does require a certain unearned confidence to wander the ravines. There is danger in them — rare flash floods, unleashed dogs, strangers. Anyone who extolls the virtues of the ravines must stress the importance of being careful; tell a friend, take a phone, bring a friend. You could sprain an ankle or slip on winter ice. Waterways are often deceptively fast moving and very cold, even in the height of summer, and can be deadly if you fall in. Even light rains can transform trickling streams into raging rivers, death traps that sound and move like fast-moving freight trains and overflow their banks. As one poet says, "The floor of the ravine where light lies broken.”
The most unfortunate ravine community are the people whose bodies are found there. Less unfortunate but still shaken are the people who find them. Bricklayer Charles Edwards was working near Bathurst and Lawrence and decided to take a few minutes' break to walk down into a wooded ravine at the bottom of the street. He hadn’t gone very far when he almost stumbled over what he first thought was a sleeping man. He said, "Pardon me." Then he saw the blood. The man had been shot three times, somewhere else, and dragged there. "I can still see his wide, glassy eyes staring at me.” And the ravines each year give up their share of suicides and unexplained deaths. A woman walking her dog on a Sunday morning stumbled upon skeletal remains in the area just east of Royal York Rd. The remains were wearing only one running shoe and a pill bottle was found on the ground nearby. Nature is beautiful but it is also ceaseless fornication and asphyxiation and choking and fighting for survival and growing and just rotting away.
The ravines remind you that you’re an animal, a fellow creature of earth; here we tune our animal senses to the sensible terrain, blend our skin with the rain-rippled surface of a creek, mingle our ears with the thunder, our eyes with the molten sky through gold and red in the fall, lush and cool green in spring and summer, solemn cold in the winter. This beauty has an effect: many studies have found increased brain activity in people after a walk in the woods, reduced stress, better memory. The ravines change how you relate to your body. Sliding down a gully, hopping over fallen trees, stepping over a creek and slipping but catching yourself at the last moment - the ground is a dance partner. It is never flat. But an immense puzzle: shoes always avoiding puddles. Matter is soft here, such a contrast to the clean edges of the city and its canyons of straight lines and non-living non-porous matter. Some metal stakes abandoned here feel horribly cold, colder than anything in the whole woods. Even the rock here is soft. I’m elated to discover an exposed creckbed with layers of clay that peel off and mould in my hand. This stuff supports all our houses.
The ravines have never been more important to a good life. Dutch media scholar Christoph Lindner argued recently that in an age of population density and near constant technological distraction where we’re becoming irradiated and sedentary beings, smart cities ought to create "slow-spots" -- pockets of silence and attention that could house ' creative sites of decelerated practice and experience." Well, Toronto already has these places. How lucky Toronto is. Here’s Toronto green entrepreneur Geoff Cape: Every smart city in the world is trying to figure out how to develop a green strategy and a sustainability strategy. Ours is embedded in our landscape. It's here. We just need to pay attention to it.’
Once there paying attention is easy. This is a landscape of continual interruptions of forms endless layered and shadowed against one another, terrifyingly rich, full of noticings and adventures, of the healthy kind. A painted place, fractal, as intense in each spot as all others, encourages a constant and promiscuous concentration. In the span of a few minutes: Two squirrels make impromptu shadow puppets. A swarm of dragon flies. A tiny blue butterfly. A tree that drops a fragrant fruit. A chipmunk that sounds like a snake rattling. A strange strange orange fruit with a barb. A graffiti tagged ‘fuck’ on the opening tunnel of a buried creek. The tunnel is big enough to enter and traverse underground in near total darkness for 50 meters, chanting to stave off fear. I follow the creek for the next 20 minutes until it entered a tunnel running beneath someones backyard. I find vines you can literally swing on, and I do. A natural ampitheatre and two chairs and someones script notes. A plum left in the middle of a stump like an offering to the woods. A fire pit with an abandoned paperback. I spend a few minutes staring into a clear pool watching the drops fractal. I feel high. I bend down and touch the closest piece of bark. Inside is a spider menacingly guarding her egg sac. I mouth an 'I’m sorry' and return the bark.
A study finds that looking at nature photos or taking a walk in the woods "makes people care more for the future" and "entices people to prefer greater, delayed rewards over smaller, immediate rewards". The more we know about the ravines the better we can protect and respect them and use them, even if their main use is to put aside all cares. For to forest bathe is actually to get dirty, you are truly being bathed, touched, immersed, nature gives the body a sort of reverse scrubbing, actually made dirtier but by things that are wild, and, hence, “cleansed” of civilization, perhaps dirtied but healed. The woods help keep the city sane. As one newspaper columnist put it, “After a long trip home on a crowded subway — where two jerks clogged the door, tripping everyone who came on and off — well, a trip to the woods is just the antidote to manslaughter.”
I come to a small clearing nestled near the riverbank. This used to be the home of Toronto’s Peace Lady, who appeared throughout the city in flowing white and waving peace signs on bridges. She lived in this spot for 25 years, her tarplin encampment covered with religious messages. No idea where she is now; it is strange to finally stand here. The ravines are full of other departed spirits. One time, bending a crooked trail just off this path, I stood less than 10 feet from a fully horned deer buck. 100 years ago, right here was a farming hamlet called Clark’s Settlement or Clarksville, one of the first communities in the area. The village had a smith, school and church. I can’t find any sign of its foundations here. Nothing will bring back the thousands of huge pines that grew here and were felled to make masts for the British navy. The original name for the Don River was Nechengquakekonk. I let that name possess my English tongue. In 2000, digging for a housing development beside an east-end ravine unearthed ceramic sherds. Eight months of archaeological excavation revealed a 600-year-old Huron village that supported a population of 800 to 1,000, with 16 or 17 longhouses plus sweat lodges and hearths. Over 19,000 artifacts, including stone tools and weapons, copper beads and pipes were found. That’s the most extensive proof of human life in the ravines, but it’s not the oldest, not by a long shot. Relics unearthed in Gates Gully ravine have been dated from the early archaic period (circa 8000 BC). That’s ten thousand years ago. At that time, the ravines were young. We are only just discovering the ravines. A partner to us for our lives while in this city. All its stories and beings. In the evening as transpiration exits the leaves, the mist rises like a crowd of ghosts.
--David Stokes
Article 11: Newspaper Story
At 3am in the suburban north of Toronto I walked towards a small strip mall near my house. Everything is completely still and quiet. At the strip mall every store is closed and black. But this parking lot has a secret life. Every morning out of quiet and darkness it suddenly becomes full of cars and people. I walk into the centre of the throng. From trucks filled with newspapers men are tossing bundles to the ground. Stacks of newspapers are everywhere and people are hurriedly carrying stacks to the overflowing trunks and seats of idling cars. 'Who's in charge of all this?' I asked a man dragging a skid of papers. 'Mohammed is in charge.' Mohammed has an command centre with a chair and folding table tucked into a dark alcove in front of a closed store. I wonder if the owner of the store knows that at night his doorway is another man's office. For within an hour all this will disappear and the night will be totally quiet again. On my way out I notice a car parked away from the others. There's a young boy staring through the back of the car. I see his father come back with a huge cart of newspapers. They will visit hundreds of homes tonight but no one will notice a boy working all night before school. There are stories that happen even getting the news to people's doors in the morning.
--David Stokes
Article 10: Three Scenes From Last Tuesday
A man goes into the Church of Saint Stephens carrying a Marilyn Monroe mannequin, sitting down listening to the sermon with Marilyn Monroe on the chair beside him. When the sermon ends he picks her up and they leave the church together.
On the street appear men carrying the long bodies of skinned animals over their shoulders. The animals, perhaps lambs, are stretched out like they were sprinting through the air. The meat men enter the butcher shop and go to the back. I follow them in. The building is a maze of hanging animals and staircases and workers resting on chairs. On the top floor, past twists and turns of stark hallways that feel like travelling through the guts of an animal, the boss sits in a beautiful wood-paneled office overlooking the street. I shake his hand.
Down in the ravine, well-hidden from the city's houses, a guy is playing a didgeridoo beside a stream. The musician is from Iran, working here in a cabinet factory. He has a bit of a fire going, and gets a cast iron teapot he keeps hidden there in a hollow log. Dipping it into the creek, he makes a pot of tea. "Now that you know where it is, use my teapot anytime you like."
--David Stokes
Poem 7: New Beginnings
Dead is just the beginning. Father always wanted to be the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral. When it was his funeral he out and out disappeared. We found him at the docks waiting for a boat. "O' when is there going to be a ship to bring my true love to me." He came with us without a word and according to the contractual agreement we buried him in his favourite boat where he first got married.
--Eli Fox
Article 9: The Traffic Poet
On a typical weekday morning, Michael Boughn, like millions of others across the GTA, is stuck in traffic.
As the congestion tightens its grip on his Volvo station wagon, it stirs his rage but - unlike you or me, content to just slam our hands on the steering wheel - the traffic also becomes his muse, for Boughn is a poet and in his poetry traffic has become a recurring theme. Here he gives eloquent voice on behalf of that massive mute throng of people screaming inside their cars across the city:
Various ramps announce
impassable blockades of jammed
up steel and rubber founding economies
of pain
He continues, expressing the absurdity of being alive in a time when we can sit inside machines that could take us faster than any humans ever before, but nobody's moving:
…sheer unlikeliness
of the sky caught up in rivers
of red lights, silent and still
stretching into fields of grief.
Boughn gets stuck in traffic while driving his daughter, a hockey goaltender who dreams of playing for Team Canada, to various hockey practices and games around the city and its far-flung exurbs. “My last 20 years have been all about children,” he says, as a motorcycle comes to the stoplight, rumbling. “I started writing poems sitting outside their tennis lessons.” The traffic poems are part of a three volume work of poems that Boughn is writing about the city. Carrying around a black notebook, he writes poems wherever he is, all over the city. Asked about a line from his first book --
fibrillations or analogical
eruptions into parking lots across
GTA, little gestures of love oozing
into front seats with hot pizza
-- Boughn recalls that it was written while he sat in his car across from Sports Village in Vaughan. “In the car in front of me there was a dad and his son eating pizza.”
So there is goodness and love in cars, though Boughn notices something off about cars and traffic, perhaps even a culture-wide but hitherto unacknowledged BDSM practice where we are:
sewn tight, imposed angular
bound vision into knotted
contortions leave limbs
wrenched, dislocated, cramped
Traffic, it's weird -- and getting worse. Statistics Canada reports the average time spent commuting to and from work nationwide increased from 54 minutes in 1992 to 63 minutes in 2005. In a year, that adds up to about 32 working days spent sitting in traffic (five more than in 1992). And that’s the average. In Toronto, it’s nearly 80 minutes a day, of what Boughn calls the “asphalt coffin” on the “flashing doom corridor.” One study found trips here in Toronto take three times longer than they should. Globally there are places worse off, so it’s good that someone has recognized the poetic potential of traffic. One hopes that knowing about the sheer unlikeliness of having a traffic poet in our midst makes it just a little tiny bit more interesting to be going nowhere.
--David Stokes
Poem 6: I have no title
Inevitably
I am getting closer to my destiny
even the slingshot
bayonet would ad
to my stick
These wolves
Bears
Year of mercy is over
Year of mercy is over
Francis closed the gate
I can't walk on my knees
it hurts me
as I kneel
I can take any other pain
So deserved
But devour not give
I have a bag on my shoulder
full of supposedly worthless
stones..
On my fairly broad
back..
-- Piotr Manycz
-- Piotr Manycz
Aphorism 2: From a Dream
The insects she observed through the black orb
remind her only of love
-- Eli Fox
Aphorism 1: Fragment
After the spirit, what demise
counsels us to be wise
in the future diminishment of our kind
-- Eli Fox
Article 8: The Tale of the Story Stone and the Lost Library
Here’s a tale for you, a bridge to another story: On a Toronto street on a recent afternoon a lion was spotted dragging a heavy boat across a desert. The lion, very tired, came to an island in the desert where a monkey-monk lived. You look like you're lost, said the monkey-monk. Yes I am, said the Lion, I’m looking for the ocean. Hmmmmm, said the monkey monk, I have a friend, the sandfish, he swims in the sand, and he’ll help you. And the sandfish appeared, saying, Hey Lion your problem is you’re not actually lost, because you’re not meant to sail the ocean! You are indeed meant to sail the desert! But the poor Lion, confused, can only say: Well my boat won’t move on the desert, I’ve been dragging it. No, the sandfish responded, I have a special bell for you: when you hit it you won’t hear anything but you will always know where to go and the boat will move. So the lion hit the bell looked toward the west and disappeared.
Well all that happened just like that on a Toronto street, after a man wearing a multihued vest woven in the Himalayas opened a box he had been carrying and pulled out a large flat stone. He placed the stone on the sidewalk. Then he removed a variety of trinkets -- the lion, the bell, the fish, the monkey monk, and others -- from the box and sat them beside the stone. The man in the Himalayan vest is Norman Perrin, the founder of Toronto’s folktale library, and the stone is what he calls ‘the story stone’, which he uses to bring folktales to the streets. A few minutes after he had set up his stuff, a couple of teenagers breezed by on skateboards. Intrigued by the set up, they stopped in front of Norman. “Hey man what you doing?” one of them asked. “I’m about to make a story. Wanna join?” The above tale was what they came up with together, adding each plot twist after picking up a new trinket.
When the story was finished the teenagers gave each other high fives and went on their way. But something in the story has got to Norman. “I feel like that lion dragging the boat across the desert,” says Norman. What Norman is dragging around is the loss of his beloved library and performance space, the Four Winds Library. The library is currently in storage since he’s been kicked out of his place in the Junction due to redevelopment. The woman who gave him the eviction notice happened to be Albanian, and after she handed him the notice, asked -- and here Norman mimes a thick Albanian accent -- “Do you have any stories on Albania?” As luck would have it he was standing right in front of that section of his library, and he reached down and handed her Post Wheeler’s Albanian Folk Tales. Needless to say, Norman’s library is extensive, with over 6000 books, and Norman has made it open to the public since 1990. It may be the only library in the world that is geared to the specific needs of the working storyteller and folktale researcher.
“When I was a kid the nearest library was ten miles away and I used to hitchhike back and forth. But, when I had my library, instead of having to go ten miles to the library, I could walk across the room and go across the world, and people came there from all over.” The Four Winds has hosted such events as the entirety of the 36-hour Haft Peykar Iranian story cycle, and people who've met during performances have gotten married.
“When someone is truly listening to a story they’re co-creators.”, says Norman. “My friend Jean, when she was 10 she caught polio and was dying. She’d gone into a paralytic shock, and the next step was death. They had a death watch going. And one person decided to pass the time by reading her a story, even though she was more corpse than alive, she was so deep in the coma. But his shift ended before the story ended and he stopped reading. And suddenly Jean spoke, ‘You didn’t finish the story! I want to hear the rest of the story!’ She then made a full recovery.”
I hope Norman too can make a full recovery from the loss of his library. He just needs to meet his sandfish, whoever or whatever that may be for him. In the meantime he’ll keep looking and voyaging and telling stories. The last time I saw him he was standing beside the Humber River, playing his pennywhistle.
---David Stokes
Poem 5: Lemon Street
I would like to smash my memories with a hammer
but I forgot my tools
in the lemon shack
where men chew on lemons
and women go about with their work
How many times have I sat
and chewed on a lemon
and watched
the parade of sand in the street
All to make us think
how liberating it is to at last be a slave
---Eli Fox
Article 7: Wright Engine Rebuilding
In North York, on a street full of warehouses and vacant lots, there’s one lot crammed with cars. The cars don’t drive. They’re kept outside and collect rust and a few of them no longer have doors; their engines and batteries are missing.
I build them from scratch, said Bill, walking through the lot. Take them apart and put them back together. That’s what a car is, it’s just a bunch of pieces put together.
Such pieces are strewn across the lot: cylinder frames brown with rust, metal barrels, buckets of brown goo, boxes, license plates and unidentifiable parts.
Also in the lot is a metal machine standing in the corner, half covered in a white plastic tarp billowing in the wind.
That thing? That’s a drill presser, says Bill. I’m holding it for a friend. Mind giving me a hand? He’s speaking to two young men, two trespassers he found shooting a film in his lot. They were rehearsing a scene when he found them. Oh, hello, sir, one of them said.
Bill hobbles to the drill press, carrying his weight, watching where he steps. I’m diabetic, he says. In the summer the heat was so bad the insulin didn’t work. I had ulcers on my legs and on my foot. They’re healed now, more or less.
With the young men’s assistance, Bill pulls the tarp over the drill press, and picks up bricks and other objects to hold the tarp down. It’s a cold, nippy day.
You can take that, he says. He’s referring to a light stand that one of the young men has picked up and is inspecting. The young man puts it down.
A shutter clicks. For a brief moment, Bill looks into the camera. He’s a large man, and wears a dusty, navy blue windbreaker that hugs his round belly. White wiry strands of hair form a bush on his chin; the hair sprouting from his balding head is wispy and sere.
If you need anything, I can give you my phone number, Bill tells one of the young men.
The young man pulls out his phone and Bill tells him his phone number. You can visit or call any time if you have a question, says Bill. They shake hands.
As the young men are leaving, Bill smiles and asks a question: Did you get what you wanted? The one holding the camera answers: Yeah. I think so.
The backdoor that leads into the warehouse reads Wright Engine Rebuilding. The name is scratched in, as by a metal key. Bill opens the door and steps out of the cold. Shelves that touch the ceiling line the walls, full of cardboard boxes and torn packages and paper coffee cups. A rolling hill of tied grocery store bags and materials takes up the room, ceding only a narrow passage to cut across.
Shutting the door behind him, Bill reenters his hidden, private room.
---Daniel Glassman
---Daniel Glassman
Poem 4: today i carried the question...
today i carried the question
in crimson supercars
i looked at doormen
marijuana
felt ballet dancers swarm the streets
maidservants plot assassinations
saw a man have a fit
and heard a report on that streetcorner
that firemen removed his prostetic arm
in crimson supercars
i looked at doormen
marijuana
felt ballet dancers swarm the streets
maidservants plot assassinations
saw a man have a fit
and heard a report on that streetcorner
that firemen removed his prostetic arm
there's a skeleton inside me right now!
tell that to your girlfriends and boyfriends
have them buy you dinner and look in your eyes
oh Zibeline, my true love
you no longer look at me
you are afraid of me
badaba badaba badaba gorille!
ugh, today is my true enemy
- i confess all my sins ok
i sold everyone out to the highest bidder
tell that to your girlfriends and boyfriends
have them buy you dinner and look in your eyes
oh Zibeline, my true love
you no longer look at me
you are afraid of me
badaba badaba badaba gorille!
ugh, today is my true enemy
- i confess all my sins ok
i sold everyone out to the highest bidder
Poem 3: For as far as I can look back...
For as far as I can look back
I have always been tired.
It is hard to look down the
well if memory and see events
in sequence
as if falling up
through a tunn.
Can't I see outside of shapes?
Even outside the tunn
I am within a wall
of words
and paths entrenched
in my processes.
I have always been tired.
It is hard to look down the
well if memory and see events
in sequence
as if falling up
through a tunn.
Can't I see outside of shapes?
Even outside the tunn
I am within a wall
of words
and paths entrenched
in my processes.
A distraction.
I fail.
The bricks of the tunn
come apart
piece by piece.
It is a long job to
complete. I give up
every night. Try
again in the morning.
My arms are thin.
In my pursuit of the warren
I am trying to build
I atrophy. Nothing eats at me.
I eat air. When thirsy I
drink the blood of the beetles
down here (they are the only
visible creatures to accompany me)
I fail.
The bricks of the tunn
come apart
piece by piece.
It is a long job to
complete. I give up
every night. Try
again in the morning.
My arms are thin.
In my pursuit of the warren
I am trying to build
I atrophy. Nothing eats at me.
I eat air. When thirsy I
drink the blood of the beetles
down here (they are the only
visible creatures to accompany me)
What of the open world
that sprawls like the infinite
spokes of a spinning wheel?
People. Creatures. Surfaces.
The very flesh of the world
seems to be fine without me.
It wants nothing but perpetuity.
Which happens to be our opposite.
that sprawls like the infinite
spokes of a spinning wheel?
People. Creatures. Surfaces.
The very flesh of the world
seems to be fine without me.
It wants nothing but perpetuity.
Which happens to be our opposite.
Forget that. Stay in the tunnel.
Burrow. Pluck the bricks.
Sing unmade songs
tell stories once
make riddles
invent sounds
mold the crumbs of
brick and mortar
into into into...
Sigh. Surrender.
Burrow. Pluck the bricks.
Sing unmade songs
tell stories once
make riddles
invent sounds
mold the crumbs of
brick and mortar
into into into...
Sigh. Surrender.
Wake. Work.
Pestle the crumbs with your fingers
read the walls and furrows
know your hand
know your touch.
Pestle the crumbs with your fingers
read the walls and furrows
know your hand
know your touch.
The beetles are so kind
and gentle. They live only
in the dark. They leave
kisses on your arms,
cuddle your knuckles.
They raise you
to enjoy blindness
down here.
Oh beetles
I love you.
I can scream it.
I can finally scream
below the Earth.
I can finally
swear off clothes
and all possessions
starting with 'my'.
and gentle. They live only
in the dark. They leave
kisses on your arms,
cuddle your knuckles.
They raise you
to enjoy blindness
down here.
Oh beetles
I love you.
I can scream it.
I can finally scream
below the Earth.
I can finally
swear off clothes
and all possessions
starting with 'my'.
Memories?
Is that what i came down here for?
Or was that an excuse?
I think so.
A reason to be a refugee.
Is that what i came down here for?
Or was that an excuse?
I think so.
A reason to be a refugee.
But i have learned to move bricks.
Water spits out the wall.
A small squirt.
Have i begun
to break the tunn's
shape?
Will i drown now?
There is water at my ankles.
Now my knees.
I look up.
The break in the dark sky
Is too far. It is a star.
Small.
Inside the star
is the open world.
It doesn't concern itself
with memories
or old bricks
or burrowing.
It is far away
and the water is at
my waist.
Water spits out the wall.
A small squirt.
Have i begun
to break the tunn's
shape?
Will i drown now?
There is water at my ankles.
Now my knees.
I look up.
The break in the dark sky
Is too far. It is a star.
Small.
Inside the star
is the open world.
It doesn't concern itself
with memories
or old bricks
or burrowing.
It is far away
and the water is at
my waist.
I float. I am eight years old again.
This is it. The bricks give way.
Memory unfurnished
and ugly and exactly
as it was in seconds
and minutes and in
shared time
and clock time
and my time.
I laugh and choke
and struggle
under the deluge
Which is mean
and pushes me
down further
the tunn.
I cease to protest
Find the water warm
and benevolent.
Like a reprisal
of my earliest dreams.
This is it. The bricks give way.
Memory unfurnished
and ugly and exactly
as it was in seconds
and minutes and in
shared time
and clock time
and my time.
I laugh and choke
and struggle
under the deluge
Which is mean
and pushes me
down further
the tunn.
I cease to protest
Find the water warm
and benevolent.
Like a reprisal
of my earliest dreams.
---Daniel Glassman
Article 5: Snake Story
Toronto Department
Tish Fannon put her snake into a pillowcase and got on the subway at Dupont station. Her snake, a 5-foot ball-python named Aphrodite, came out of the pillowcase once they arrived at work: a spot above a subway grate at Yonge Dundas Square.
A hundred-thousand people walk by here each day and Aphrodite, sitting around Tish’s shoulders and Iron Maiden t-shirt, fits right in to Yonge Dundas Square’s carnival continuum. On this afternoon people are thronging past a mime, paint can drummers, a clown, a juggler, various street preachers, beggars, police restraining a man, and honking cars -- all under the big top glow of competing three-story video screens, the biggest in Canada! Amidst the noise, confusion, and clamor, Aphrodite effortlessly gets the attention of passerby.
In fact the moment Tish took Aphrodite out a passerby screamed from instinctive fear when he noticed her. “I got it! I got my shrieker!” says Tish. “We have at least one shrieker a day. Usually more. My favourite shrieker of all time was a 350 pound biker.”
A few moments later a woman comes up and begins haranguing Tish. “You need Jesus in your life! He’ll save you from the devil creature on your shoulders.” She leaves, and Tish takes this hellish encounter in stride: “Street preachers and people like that will stop right in front of me all the time, kill my entire crowd, and start going crazy like that.”
“OMG a snake!,” says a passerby. This person stops; they don’t shriek and there’s no brimstone, just surprise and delight. When this happens Tish does the next part of her snake act: she offers to put Aphrodite around their neck. The young man eagerly agrees, hands his backpack to his girlfriend, and Tish gently places Aphrodite around his neck. Of course, the person takes a selfie. This scene is repeated with different variations for the next few hours: people young and old are happily bewitched by Aphrodite. Most people leave a tip for the experience. The routine gathers around $100 dollars in a few hours.
Tish, who also models, is writing an apocalyptic novel, and went to school be an executive office assistant, tells me, “I’ve been busking for almost ten years with a guitar, but I was terrified of snakes. I would've been a shrieker too.” Then a friend encouraged her to challenge that fear and took her to a reptile rescue. She fell in love and volunteered there. Aphrodite is a rescue. And the woman with the snake in the middle of the busiest spot in Canada was not only afraid of snakes, but Tish has occasional flashes of crippling anxiety in crowds, which Aphrodite helps her recover from. A few times I watch as she steps away from crowd and goes into a corner to calm down and relax, and spend a moment alone with just Aphrodite. Tish kisses her head the size of a toonie, and whispers to her, “You're such a cute little girl. You're gorgeous. You have a big fat butt.”
Back in the limelight of the street, a little kid loves the snake and shows it to his mom and his brother in a stroller. Aphrodite spends a few more minutes as a celebrity, and then it's back in the pillowcase to go home, where away from the crowds she lives in a tank, curled up in a ball.
--David Stokes
Tish Fannon put her snake into a pillowcase and got on the subway at Dupont station. Her snake, a 5-foot ball-python named Aphrodite, came out of the pillowcase once they arrived at work: a spot above a subway grate at Yonge Dundas Square.
A hundred-thousand people walk by here each day and Aphrodite, sitting around Tish’s shoulders and Iron Maiden t-shirt, fits right in to Yonge Dundas Square’s carnival continuum. On this afternoon people are thronging past a mime, paint can drummers, a clown, a juggler, various street preachers, beggars, police restraining a man, and honking cars -- all under the big top glow of competing three-story video screens, the biggest in Canada! Amidst the noise, confusion, and clamor, Aphrodite effortlessly gets the attention of passerby.
In fact the moment Tish took Aphrodite out a passerby screamed from instinctive fear when he noticed her. “I got it! I got my shrieker!” says Tish. “We have at least one shrieker a day. Usually more. My favourite shrieker of all time was a 350 pound biker.”
A few moments later a woman comes up and begins haranguing Tish. “You need Jesus in your life! He’ll save you from the devil creature on your shoulders.” She leaves, and Tish takes this hellish encounter in stride: “Street preachers and people like that will stop right in front of me all the time, kill my entire crowd, and start going crazy like that.”
“OMG a snake!,” says a passerby. This person stops; they don’t shriek and there’s no brimstone, just surprise and delight. When this happens Tish does the next part of her snake act: she offers to put Aphrodite around their neck. The young man eagerly agrees, hands his backpack to his girlfriend, and Tish gently places Aphrodite around his neck. Of course, the person takes a selfie. This scene is repeated with different variations for the next few hours: people young and old are happily bewitched by Aphrodite. Most people leave a tip for the experience. The routine gathers around $100 dollars in a few hours.
Tish, who also models, is writing an apocalyptic novel, and went to school be an executive office assistant, tells me, “I’ve been busking for almost ten years with a guitar, but I was terrified of snakes. I would've been a shrieker too.” Then a friend encouraged her to challenge that fear and took her to a reptile rescue. She fell in love and volunteered there. Aphrodite is a rescue. And the woman with the snake in the middle of the busiest spot in Canada was not only afraid of snakes, but Tish has occasional flashes of crippling anxiety in crowds, which Aphrodite helps her recover from. A few times I watch as she steps away from crowd and goes into a corner to calm down and relax, and spend a moment alone with just Aphrodite. Tish kisses her head the size of a toonie, and whispers to her, “You're such a cute little girl. You're gorgeous. You have a big fat butt.”
Back in the limelight of the street, a little kid loves the snake and shows it to his mom and his brother in a stroller. Aphrodite spends a few more minutes as a celebrity, and then it's back in the pillowcase to go home, where away from the crowds she lives in a tank, curled up in a ball.
--David Stokes
Article 4: A Storefront Mystery
Toronto Department
There’s a mysterious storefront at 1280 Queen Street West. Unlike every other along Queen, it has no name or identifying marks, and the windows are obscured, a blankness making it easy to pass-by without notice; and yet despite its hidden namelessness, the storefront is painted a bright orange. Only on a hot day, when the door is sometimes partially open, can inquisitive passersby gain any insight within, and steal in midstride a glimpse of a cozy and dimly lit room. As for who and what this storefront cipher serves is a mystery you might live with forever, and if you walk by here often stop reading now and preserve the mystery, since simply noticing something beautiful is what the inhabitant here loves most. But all was gently cleared up for me, after curiosity almost drove me to Texas, by nervously peaking my head inside and asking the somewhat surprised inhabitants, ‘What is this place?’
‘You will become a new victim for our stew!’ was the reply I expected after my intrusion, but instead the response was that ‘This is the studio of interior designer William Anderson’. And I would learn this is where he has based his practice for the last thirty years. If you were invited inside, as your eyes adjust to the soft light you would see emerge three pairs of antlers hung on the walls (they are of deer, moose, and mountain goat); two Calder-esque mobiles turning slowly; a blacksmith's visor; a sculpture made of pine cones; a black and white photo of a young man naked but for the cast on his leg and the cane in his hand; a large photograph of barnyard animals posing together; a giant concrete sculpture of a seahorse; a sign that says “Support Your Local Prostitute - Parkdale Belongs To Us Too!”; a print of Diane Arbus’ “Backwards Man”; a profusion of rolled up blueprints, papers, diagrams, books, fabric, plans everywhere. All beneath a yellow, red, and blue tin ceiling. And there’s a dog, Hershey, a Basenji, who will, occasionally, yodel.
“I only bring my clients here when I want to scare them,” says Anderson from behind his desk, wearing a tank-top matching cooly slicked-back white hair. Anderson is a handsome man who resembles a cross between the handsome men Giorgio Armani, Lee Marvin, and Crocodile Dundee. The big project at the moment is a rental apartment building for Church and Isabella. “I’m in charge of all the public areas, all the corridors, the lobbies, the connecting spaces, all the amenities, the gym room, the games room, the laundry room, the gym room, the library, lounge, the party room, the dog wash, the yoga room, the gym room. I’m trying to make it look and feel like home for all these people.”
His studio is a good place to contemplate the meaning of home, for Anderson also lives here, commuting daily the 12 steps from the basement. Each morning he has a coffee, reads the paper, does the Sudoku and the ken-ken, and then has a very hot bath. The bath is so hot that the only way for him to cool down is to shirtlessly sweep the street outside the studio, steaming and kicking up dust. “All these people going to work and passing on the street this ridiculous 65 year old person without a shirt, sweeping madly, steaming profusely. I must look quite eccentric.”
He signs stuff that his assistant Kate hands him while he is telling stories to me. Just then he gets sad news over a phone call: a close friend is suddenly near death from cancer. Hanging up, Anderson goes downstairs and, after a brief absence, comes back with some beer and two glasses. “Mortality closes in on us all. I usually enjoy the whole concept of death, but I can get quite emotional from the existential element of it all.” He felt that this was as good a time as any for him to tell me how he got to where he is now. Grew up in Windsor, dropped out of architecture school at U of T, a year wandering Europe before getting in a van with some strangers and going through Africa, ending up on the island of Lamu. He eventually came back, went to Ryerson for interior design, got a job at Herman Miller, and then, 30 years ago, back when this neighborhood was an afterthought, started his own practice out of this space.
“I don’t document any of it. When its done, its over. People say, ‘oh do you have a portfolio?’ No, I don’t do portfolios. My work is all word of mouth. If you need to be convinced then it’s probably not worth it.” … “Either you’re in it to make money, or you're in it because you're kinda lost and you've got nothing else to do.” Anderson has nothing but scorn for the former. “When you drive through Rosedale or Forest Hill, you see how much bullshit is out there, 90% of the columns are wrong. They don’t have the right balance, none of the classical proportions. In this city there’s all these pretenders saying, ‘we’re world class!’ No, you’re not world class, you’re boring!”
“In every project we always push our clients. Right now, at the apartment project, I’m trying to get the painters to paint the way I want them to paint. I am somewhat of a colourist, and my approach to colour is quite different than most people's. I have to be on site, I have to test the colours, I have to see what the light is. Then I have to see how these colours interact. It’s never just one colour, I play with five or six colours, and then they all combine. It’s all about trying to achieve balance, to trick the eye and train the eye and delight the eye. I drive construction people crazy but they always want to take credit for the work in the end.”
It is nice to imagine what Toronto, our collective home, would be like if it was designed by Anderson, who lives almost perfectly the combination of art and life, work and home, daringness and humility, beauty and care for home and community. He gestures to the street a few feet away from his desk: “That’s my front yard. The other night some drunk assholes attacked some tree branches on the street. They couldn’t break them off completely, but they were in bad shape. I had some fabric samples kicking around so I wrapped the branches in fabric and took my twine and tied them all up, and they are doing fine. And now these poor branches are dressed in the finest fashion fabric from France, from Nom d’Um and Pierre Frey. No one will notice that, but I get a kick out of it.”
--David Stokes
There’s a mysterious storefront at 1280 Queen Street West. Unlike every other along Queen, it has no name or identifying marks, and the windows are obscured, a blankness making it easy to pass-by without notice; and yet despite its hidden namelessness, the storefront is painted a bright orange. Only on a hot day, when the door is sometimes partially open, can inquisitive passersby gain any insight within, and steal in midstride a glimpse of a cozy and dimly lit room. As for who and what this storefront cipher serves is a mystery you might live with forever, and if you walk by here often stop reading now and preserve the mystery, since simply noticing something beautiful is what the inhabitant here loves most. But all was gently cleared up for me, after curiosity almost drove me to Texas, by nervously peaking my head inside and asking the somewhat surprised inhabitants, ‘What is this place?’
‘You will become a new victim for our stew!’ was the reply I expected after my intrusion, but instead the response was that ‘This is the studio of interior designer William Anderson’. And I would learn this is where he has based his practice for the last thirty years. If you were invited inside, as your eyes adjust to the soft light you would see emerge three pairs of antlers hung on the walls (they are of deer, moose, and mountain goat); two Calder-esque mobiles turning slowly; a blacksmith's visor; a sculpture made of pine cones; a black and white photo of a young man naked but for the cast on his leg and the cane in his hand; a large photograph of barnyard animals posing together; a giant concrete sculpture of a seahorse; a sign that says “Support Your Local Prostitute - Parkdale Belongs To Us Too!”; a print of Diane Arbus’ “Backwards Man”; a profusion of rolled up blueprints, papers, diagrams, books, fabric, plans everywhere. All beneath a yellow, red, and blue tin ceiling. And there’s a dog, Hershey, a Basenji, who will, occasionally, yodel.
“I only bring my clients here when I want to scare them,” says Anderson from behind his desk, wearing a tank-top matching cooly slicked-back white hair. Anderson is a handsome man who resembles a cross between the handsome men Giorgio Armani, Lee Marvin, and Crocodile Dundee. The big project at the moment is a rental apartment building for Church and Isabella. “I’m in charge of all the public areas, all the corridors, the lobbies, the connecting spaces, all the amenities, the gym room, the games room, the laundry room, the gym room, the library, lounge, the party room, the dog wash, the yoga room, the gym room. I’m trying to make it look and feel like home for all these people.”
His studio is a good place to contemplate the meaning of home, for Anderson also lives here, commuting daily the 12 steps from the basement. Each morning he has a coffee, reads the paper, does the Sudoku and the ken-ken, and then has a very hot bath. The bath is so hot that the only way for him to cool down is to shirtlessly sweep the street outside the studio, steaming and kicking up dust. “All these people going to work and passing on the street this ridiculous 65 year old person without a shirt, sweeping madly, steaming profusely. I must look quite eccentric.”
He signs stuff that his assistant Kate hands him while he is telling stories to me. Just then he gets sad news over a phone call: a close friend is suddenly near death from cancer. Hanging up, Anderson goes downstairs and, after a brief absence, comes back with some beer and two glasses. “Mortality closes in on us all. I usually enjoy the whole concept of death, but I can get quite emotional from the existential element of it all.” He felt that this was as good a time as any for him to tell me how he got to where he is now. Grew up in Windsor, dropped out of architecture school at U of T, a year wandering Europe before getting in a van with some strangers and going through Africa, ending up on the island of Lamu. He eventually came back, went to Ryerson for interior design, got a job at Herman Miller, and then, 30 years ago, back when this neighborhood was an afterthought, started his own practice out of this space.
“I don’t document any of it. When its done, its over. People say, ‘oh do you have a portfolio?’ No, I don’t do portfolios. My work is all word of mouth. If you need to be convinced then it’s probably not worth it.” … “Either you’re in it to make money, or you're in it because you're kinda lost and you've got nothing else to do.” Anderson has nothing but scorn for the former. “When you drive through Rosedale or Forest Hill, you see how much bullshit is out there, 90% of the columns are wrong. They don’t have the right balance, none of the classical proportions. In this city there’s all these pretenders saying, ‘we’re world class!’ No, you’re not world class, you’re boring!”
“In every project we always push our clients. Right now, at the apartment project, I’m trying to get the painters to paint the way I want them to paint. I am somewhat of a colourist, and my approach to colour is quite different than most people's. I have to be on site, I have to test the colours, I have to see what the light is. Then I have to see how these colours interact. It’s never just one colour, I play with five or six colours, and then they all combine. It’s all about trying to achieve balance, to trick the eye and train the eye and delight the eye. I drive construction people crazy but they always want to take credit for the work in the end.”
It is nice to imagine what Toronto, our collective home, would be like if it was designed by Anderson, who lives almost perfectly the combination of art and life, work and home, daringness and humility, beauty and care for home and community. He gestures to the street a few feet away from his desk: “That’s my front yard. The other night some drunk assholes attacked some tree branches on the street. They couldn’t break them off completely, but they were in bad shape. I had some fabric samples kicking around so I wrapped the branches in fabric and took my twine and tied them all up, and they are doing fine. And now these poor branches are dressed in the finest fashion fabric from France, from Nom d’Um and Pierre Frey. No one will notice that, but I get a kick out of it.”
--David Stokes
Article 2: I’ve Known Rivers
Toronto Department
When you look at the job boards you hope for something unexpected, something creaturely, alive. As far as I know there is still no job where you walk out totally naked in the morning with the birds. But Matt and Leland’s job comes close to that freedom in our city. They are two handsome guys with masters degrees whose job, for the Toronto Region Conservation Authority, is to put on wading boots and walk into the creeks and rivers of Toronto. And when these waters are moving too fast to walk into, their job requires throwing ropes and weights across them like cowboys wrangling rivers.
“Sometimes you’ll be in the river and there will be large fish swimming around you. I had one run into my shins. It hurt actually,” says Matt. Leland: “I was at Don East once where salmon jump up the weir. There were 30 or 40. I guess they were taking a breather from getting ready to jump up the 3 foot weir. You’re standing there metering and they come in behind your boots and just sit there, because there is a bit of an eddie, and they just relax back in there. When you move they all scatter.”
After visiting 800 unique sites, Matt and Leland have stood in pretty much every waterway between Mississauga and Agax, in all nine watersheds of the TRCA jurisdiction, from the smallest creeks -- “we’ve gauged something a foot by a foot” -- to the widest points of Toronto rivers.
I’ve seen their office and it's a watchtower control room above a dam at the G Lord Ross Reservoir. The reservoir collects water behind the dam during storms, which keeps the river system below at a safe volume; otherwise, low-lying land near the West Don could flood, like the neighborhood of Hogg’s Hollow, destroying property and endangering people. So they are serious about watching over the dam; one guy in the control room stopped me from taking a picture of the dam’s ancient-looking computer panel, due to terrorism worries.
But today, as Matt and Leland are out on the road preparing for a river rope-toss, they are joshing each other like sports bros. “The other day one guy couldn’t get it across the river,” says Matt, referring to the rope and five-pound weight they have to throw across rivers. How many times did it not go over? “I lost count. He was chirping me, I was chirping him, but it was probably like 15 to 20 times. He was getting weaker and weaker with each throw.” Leland is going to try the throw today, and assures Matt it’ll be no sweat. “There’s a lot of pressure now,” says Matt.
They arrive at today's site, their pickup truck hops the curb behind the Miller Tavern at York Mills and Yonge and drives through the grass to the West Don river. This spot is parkland now, and this river, like all of Toronto’s water, has become on one hand a backup stormwater sewer but also a picaresque water feature, a boon to real estate values. But before its waters were narrowed, there was a saw mill at this site where the river supplied the economic heart of the area. Later on, a group of eight “Serbian gypsy” families lived here offering fortune telling to passing motorists on Yonge Street. According to an article in the Globe from June 1st, 1920, the camp’s river-side location provided access to the river for cooking, bathing, and drinking water. The reporter observed children, apparently “too numerous to count” swimming in the Don. They swim with their clothes on, he noted, “jumping into the water and then waiting for the sun to dry them.”
Nobody swims this river anymore, and today not even Leland and Matt are going in despite being ready with hipwaders. It’s a dry, sunny day, yet the river is stormwater muddy and running high on its banks, moving much too swift to stand in. This is what they expected: their office at the reservoir six km upstream is in full control of the river today. “There was a big rain a few days ago, and the reservoir went up 3 metres,” Leland says, “Now we’ve opened the dam to let out some water.” They are here to make sure that they are aren’t letting out too much. Even though they aren’t going in, Leland and Matt still put on lifejackets, they are aware of the danger of just standing beside the rivers. “I’ve been in a few spots where I’ve been like, shit, this isn’t safe, let’s do this later,” says Leland. They’ve done swift-water rescue training, thrown day in and out of raging water. “They’d throw Matt in and he’d be tearing down the river. I’d have to go in and get him.” That would be dicey today; I see a concrete weir with a big drop just a few metres downstream.
It’s time to wrangle this river. They need to get their thick rope over it so they can then attach a depth-probe-boat to the rope and pull the probe back and forth across the river. Matt finds a bridge to the other and shows up 15 metres across. Leland warms up his arm for the first throw. He heaves the weight with rope attached. But the throw is a miss, a couple metres short. The weight is slowly pulled out of the river. Throw two is aloft...a miss, close. “I’m feeling good. Next one will be better.” Things are regathered, he steadies his aim and throw three arcs across the river, until the rope catches something and stops halfway, splashing in. Attempt four is close, Matt reaches, dives, and yells No! as it slips from him into the river. Matt gathers a bundle of green plants to snag the rope and at attempt five he goes down reaching with it, but the throw is too far. The rope has been repeatedly pulled out of the water and recoiled. Leland looks sheepishly over at Matt. Matt looks skeptically over at Leland. “You’ve got no faith eh?” Leland says. Matt is a hero and buoys him up: “No you’ve got it now.” And Leland finds his groove, for attempt 6 arcs beautifully high over the river, and Matt flings his ragged bundle into the water and victoriously grabs it. Maybe river-rope toss will catch on.
In goes the three-foot long yellow plastic probe with a saucer-shaped radio. They tie another set of ropes on each end of the probe and pull it back and forth across the river. The scene is sweet: a brown river, a warm sun, green plants, orange rope, a yellow probe, a really great job. The probe’s radio waves bounce along the riverbed and measure it. A laptop on the ground in the weeds picks up data in colored bands, getting the precise shape of the river. Since a rivers’ shape changes all the time, monitoring is an ongoing process. If a river should change too much, flood risks need to be reassessed. Matt and Leland have to continuously know the rivers to keep track of these infinitely wild and changing things. “Downstream there’s houses, and a playground, in a floodplain. One big rain and...” Lelands voice trails off, and at that moment a pink pool noodle floats by on the river, a vision of the backyard apocalypses that river monitoring continues to prevent, and evidence of suburban gypsy kids still playing by the river.
-- David Stokes
When you look at the job boards you hope for something unexpected, something creaturely, alive. As far as I know there is still no job where you walk out totally naked in the morning with the birds. But Matt and Leland’s job comes close to that freedom in our city. They are two handsome guys with masters degrees whose job, for the Toronto Region Conservation Authority, is to put on wading boots and walk into the creeks and rivers of Toronto. And when these waters are moving too fast to walk into, their job requires throwing ropes and weights across them like cowboys wrangling rivers.
“Sometimes you’ll be in the river and there will be large fish swimming around you. I had one run into my shins. It hurt actually,” says Matt. Leland: “I was at Don East once where salmon jump up the weir. There were 30 or 40. I guess they were taking a breather from getting ready to jump up the 3 foot weir. You’re standing there metering and they come in behind your boots and just sit there, because there is a bit of an eddie, and they just relax back in there. When you move they all scatter.”
After visiting 800 unique sites, Matt and Leland have stood in pretty much every waterway between Mississauga and Agax, in all nine watersheds of the TRCA jurisdiction, from the smallest creeks -- “we’ve gauged something a foot by a foot” -- to the widest points of Toronto rivers.
I’ve seen their office and it's a watchtower control room above a dam at the G Lord Ross Reservoir. The reservoir collects water behind the dam during storms, which keeps the river system below at a safe volume; otherwise, low-lying land near the West Don could flood, like the neighborhood of Hogg’s Hollow, destroying property and endangering people. So they are serious about watching over the dam; one guy in the control room stopped me from taking a picture of the dam’s ancient-looking computer panel, due to terrorism worries.
But today, as Matt and Leland are out on the road preparing for a river rope-toss, they are joshing each other like sports bros. “The other day one guy couldn’t get it across the river,” says Matt, referring to the rope and five-pound weight they have to throw across rivers. How many times did it not go over? “I lost count. He was chirping me, I was chirping him, but it was probably like 15 to 20 times. He was getting weaker and weaker with each throw.” Leland is going to try the throw today, and assures Matt it’ll be no sweat. “There’s a lot of pressure now,” says Matt.
They arrive at today's site, their pickup truck hops the curb behind the Miller Tavern at York Mills and Yonge and drives through the grass to the West Don river. This spot is parkland now, and this river, like all of Toronto’s water, has become on one hand a backup stormwater sewer but also a picaresque water feature, a boon to real estate values. But before its waters were narrowed, there was a saw mill at this site where the river supplied the economic heart of the area. Later on, a group of eight “Serbian gypsy” families lived here offering fortune telling to passing motorists on Yonge Street. According to an article in the Globe from June 1st, 1920, the camp’s river-side location provided access to the river for cooking, bathing, and drinking water. The reporter observed children, apparently “too numerous to count” swimming in the Don. They swim with their clothes on, he noted, “jumping into the water and then waiting for the sun to dry them.”
Nobody swims this river anymore, and today not even Leland and Matt are going in despite being ready with hipwaders. It’s a dry, sunny day, yet the river is stormwater muddy and running high on its banks, moving much too swift to stand in. This is what they expected: their office at the reservoir six km upstream is in full control of the river today. “There was a big rain a few days ago, and the reservoir went up 3 metres,” Leland says, “Now we’ve opened the dam to let out some water.” They are here to make sure that they are aren’t letting out too much. Even though they aren’t going in, Leland and Matt still put on lifejackets, they are aware of the danger of just standing beside the rivers. “I’ve been in a few spots where I’ve been like, shit, this isn’t safe, let’s do this later,” says Leland. They’ve done swift-water rescue training, thrown day in and out of raging water. “They’d throw Matt in and he’d be tearing down the river. I’d have to go in and get him.” That would be dicey today; I see a concrete weir with a big drop just a few metres downstream.
It’s time to wrangle this river. They need to get their thick rope over it so they can then attach a depth-probe-boat to the rope and pull the probe back and forth across the river. Matt finds a bridge to the other and shows up 15 metres across. Leland warms up his arm for the first throw. He heaves the weight with rope attached. But the throw is a miss, a couple metres short. The weight is slowly pulled out of the river. Throw two is aloft...a miss, close. “I’m feeling good. Next one will be better.” Things are regathered, he steadies his aim and throw three arcs across the river, until the rope catches something and stops halfway, splashing in. Attempt four is close, Matt reaches, dives, and yells No! as it slips from him into the river. Matt gathers a bundle of green plants to snag the rope and at attempt five he goes down reaching with it, but the throw is too far. The rope has been repeatedly pulled out of the water and recoiled. Leland looks sheepishly over at Matt. Matt looks skeptically over at Leland. “You’ve got no faith eh?” Leland says. Matt is a hero and buoys him up: “No you’ve got it now.” And Leland finds his groove, for attempt 6 arcs beautifully high over the river, and Matt flings his ragged bundle into the water and victoriously grabs it. Maybe river-rope toss will catch on.
In goes the three-foot long yellow plastic probe with a saucer-shaped radio. They tie another set of ropes on each end of the probe and pull it back and forth across the river. The scene is sweet: a brown river, a warm sun, green plants, orange rope, a yellow probe, a really great job. The probe’s radio waves bounce along the riverbed and measure it. A laptop on the ground in the weeds picks up data in colored bands, getting the precise shape of the river. Since a rivers’ shape changes all the time, monitoring is an ongoing process. If a river should change too much, flood risks need to be reassessed. Matt and Leland have to continuously know the rivers to keep track of these infinitely wild and changing things. “Downstream there’s houses, and a playground, in a floodplain. One big rain and...” Lelands voice trails off, and at that moment a pink pool noodle floats by on the river, a vision of the backyard apocalypses that river monitoring continues to prevent, and evidence of suburban gypsy kids still playing by the river.
-- David Stokes
Article 1: Hogg's Hollow
Toronto Department
It’s midnight, and from Yonge Street Hogg’s Hollow is hidden from view.
The neighbourhood sits at the bottom of the Don River Valley. At this hour it is empty and silent, and its bending roads are perplexing in the dark.
Standing on a short bridge we hear the sputter of the river. Its waters are the loudest thing we’ve come across in this village of towering mansions—the homes of some of Toronto’s most affluent residents—and the trees that loom above them.
There’s a park in Hog’s Hollow where we stop for pull-ups. David unbuttons his shirt and does ten on the monkey bars, followed by ten more. A fondling couple sits on a bench nearby. Soon after our arrival they stand up and walk up the path, where they wobble and grope one another. They’re gone. A group of three young men are also in the park, but they make no noise, and disappear over a hill.
Stuck in the ground at the base of each of the young trees scattered in the park are rocky plaque stones. Each stone bears a name and a good wish engraved onto a metal plate. There is little point in squatting in the dark to read them: Park tree stones are not known for the quality of their sentimental inscriptions, and I haven’t stopped to read things like this for a long time. As a child I used to think that these people were buried under the trees.
But one of Hogg’s Hollow’s greatest secrets is its stone garden of lonely well-written epitaphs. These pithy statements glow in the dark.
“Entrepreneur. Philanthropist. Rooted by family. EMPOWERED BY GOD,” reads one. Another, “To The Summer of Love, 1999”
One stone bears the name Patrick Deagle, a man born in X and lost in Y. No fond words have been written on the stone for Patrick. In a fit of rage at this poverty of sentiment, David stomps on its face, desecrating it with a smudge of poo stuck to the edge of his shoe.
The settlement of poo is located just beside Patrick Deagle’s headstone. In the dark it is impossible to see, but its smell reveals its presence. To make amends for his disrespect, David agrees to a blood offering to appease Deagle’s spirit. He kneels on the grass. I hand him my pocketknife.
The blood does not flow. Some time goes by, and David searches for another tool with which to make the incision. He finds a sharp twig in the grass. He bares his teeth and sets to work on his gums. The blood comes, and a smear appears on the Patrick Deagle’s stone. The deed is done.
PART TWO: THE RAVINE
We carry our bikes down the flat concrete slopes straddling the river. Ahead is a weir, where the water comes to a sudden drop and spins and foams. The water wants us to fall in.
A crayfish appears as if from nowhere. It crawls on the concrete ground at a slow and listless pace. Its body is large, like a tarantula, and delicate with moisture, and its lanky limbs carry its round body towards the weir several metres away. We do not know why the crayfish is here, and wonder if there are others nearby. If the crayfish is supposed to be here or not, we do not know. David thinks the concrete weir has forced it into some wickedness.
David shines a light on the creature. Its shell and limbs appear grey and it looks like it is becoming fatally dry; but its eyes are wet pea-sized melancholic balls of tapioca. They were filled with sadness.
“God bless you,” says David.
The crayfish follows the light with zeal. David turns off the light, and the crayfish comes to a rest. As it sits in the dark we wait to see what it will do.
The crayfish lifts itself and moves closer to the edge of the concrete. We ask ourselves if we should intervene, if we should prevent the crayfish from falling into the roiling water. The crayfish comes closer to the edge.
It reaches the edge and stumbles onto the incline. For a moment it gains traction. But the incline is too steep and it loses its hold. And in a moment of sad comedy, it slides down the smooth concrete and plops into the sloshing water. We do not see the crayfish anymore.
-- Daniel Glassman
It’s midnight, and from Yonge Street Hogg’s Hollow is hidden from view.
The neighbourhood sits at the bottom of the Don River Valley. At this hour it is empty and silent, and its bending roads are perplexing in the dark.
Standing on a short bridge we hear the sputter of the river. Its waters are the loudest thing we’ve come across in this village of towering mansions—the homes of some of Toronto’s most affluent residents—and the trees that loom above them.
There’s a park in Hog’s Hollow where we stop for pull-ups. David unbuttons his shirt and does ten on the monkey bars, followed by ten more. A fondling couple sits on a bench nearby. Soon after our arrival they stand up and walk up the path, where they wobble and grope one another. They’re gone. A group of three young men are also in the park, but they make no noise, and disappear over a hill.
Stuck in the ground at the base of each of the young trees scattered in the park are rocky plaque stones. Each stone bears a name and a good wish engraved onto a metal plate. There is little point in squatting in the dark to read them: Park tree stones are not known for the quality of their sentimental inscriptions, and I haven’t stopped to read things like this for a long time. As a child I used to think that these people were buried under the trees.
But one of Hogg’s Hollow’s greatest secrets is its stone garden of lonely well-written epitaphs. These pithy statements glow in the dark.
“Entrepreneur. Philanthropist. Rooted by family. EMPOWERED BY GOD,” reads one. Another, “To The Summer of Love, 1999”
One stone bears the name Patrick Deagle, a man born in X and lost in Y. No fond words have been written on the stone for Patrick. In a fit of rage at this poverty of sentiment, David stomps on its face, desecrating it with a smudge of poo stuck to the edge of his shoe.
The settlement of poo is located just beside Patrick Deagle’s headstone. In the dark it is impossible to see, but its smell reveals its presence. To make amends for his disrespect, David agrees to a blood offering to appease Deagle’s spirit. He kneels on the grass. I hand him my pocketknife.
The blood does not flow. Some time goes by, and David searches for another tool with which to make the incision. He finds a sharp twig in the grass. He bares his teeth and sets to work on his gums. The blood comes, and a smear appears on the Patrick Deagle’s stone. The deed is done.
PART TWO: THE RAVINE
We carry our bikes down the flat concrete slopes straddling the river. Ahead is a weir, where the water comes to a sudden drop and spins and foams. The water wants us to fall in.
A crayfish appears as if from nowhere. It crawls on the concrete ground at a slow and listless pace. Its body is large, like a tarantula, and delicate with moisture, and its lanky limbs carry its round body towards the weir several metres away. We do not know why the crayfish is here, and wonder if there are others nearby. If the crayfish is supposed to be here or not, we do not know. David thinks the concrete weir has forced it into some wickedness.
David shines a light on the creature. Its shell and limbs appear grey and it looks like it is becoming fatally dry; but its eyes are wet pea-sized melancholic balls of tapioca. They were filled with sadness.
“God bless you,” says David.
The crayfish follows the light with zeal. David turns off the light, and the crayfish comes to a rest. As it sits in the dark we wait to see what it will do.
The crayfish lifts itself and moves closer to the edge of the concrete. We ask ourselves if we should intervene, if we should prevent the crayfish from falling into the roiling water. The crayfish comes closer to the edge.
It reaches the edge and stumbles onto the incline. For a moment it gains traction. But the incline is too steep and it loses its hold. And in a moment of sad comedy, it slides down the smooth concrete and plops into the sloshing water. We do not see the crayfish anymore.
-- Daniel Glassman
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