Christmastime is here: Toronto 4

It cannot have been lost on anyone, even in faraway countries, that Christmas is coming up. 

We launched Advent season at an event called Illuminite (T’s choice). This was at Yonge and Dundas Square, which aspires to be but has never quite become a vibrant town centre. Anyway, they lit it up, had elves on stilts, dorky renditions of dorkier seasonal songs, that sort of thing. I guess the early snow put people in the mood. We even found lattes flavoured with pumpkin spice or egg nog for sale in the Eaton Centre, that temple to mammon next to which the Church of the Holy Trinity nestles, hosting its Christmas pageant and memorials to homeless people. Best of all, we could walk down Dundas to Spadina, the heart of Chinatown, for supper.

Spadina brings me to the quirky pronunciation of some Canadian place names. The main intersection of Toronto, Yonge and Bloor, contains two street names neither of which I’ve encountered anywhere else in the world. Yonge is pronounced “Young” and Bloor,  I finally learned from passing a sign on this visit, is named for this guy.

As for Spadina: climbing the Baldwin Steps to Casa Loma, Toronto’s “castle,” was something I’d also never done. You climb the steps from a main road called Spadina, from an Ojibwe word ishaspadena meaning “hill.” Now Spadina Avenue is pronounced with a long I, SpadIna, but the house at the top—now Spadina Museum—is pronounced with a long E. Something similar happens in the name of the capital of Saskatchewan, RegIna, not to be confused with RegEEna (the Queen). Which gives rise to that well-known Gershwin tune: 

“SpadEEna, SpadIna

RegEEna, RegIna—

Let’s call the whole thing off!”

There are two things to visit at the top of the ishaspadena: Spadina Museum and Casa Loma. The former is both cheaper and more interesting, though if you visit Casa Loma first you can get a discount on the museum. On this day I had the guided tour to myself. It was fascinating to see the house all decked out as it would have been in the 1920s, although most of the decor would have been antique even by then.

This easy chair has a built-in desk, drink holder, recliner, and a little side door so you can get out of the chair without messing everything up. All I want for Christmas!

Casa Loma was designed as a grand residence ready to receive royalty (the Windsor Room). But I’m not sure it ever really did. Bizarrely, on the third floor (servants’ quarters), you’ll find the museum of the Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada, who served from World War I to Afghanistan.

The rest of the “castle” was decorated for the holidays in a Nutcracker theme. With the gently flurrying snow we’d been having, it was very Christmasy.

Yep, that's an acrobat.

Another thing you may have noticed, wherever you are living, is the up and down weather patterns. We’ve had snow and well below freezing temperatures in Toronto even before the winter solstice, but then we’ve also had surprisingly mild days, most of those gray if not damp. One day that turned out to be both mild and sunny was the day Marie-Josée led about 25 of us on a Bruce Trail hike. The Bruce Trail extends 890 km to Tobermory, Ontario, but we only did one of the first bits, along the Niagara Escarpment from Queenston. It was a very muddy day.

Our leader next to a Cold War-era radio tower--to warn of incoming Soviet attack

I always think of Marie-Josée as an exceptionally snappy dresser so this was the most casual I’d ever seen her. For my part, I didn’t need my rain pants for rain or cold wind, but it was great to be able to peel off that mud at the end of the day!

We were introduced to the rest of her group as “from the U.K.” When someone asked me about that at the lunch break, it became apparent that my accent is not from the U.K. “Oh yeah, you sound Canadian,” she said. “In fact, like you’re from Toronto!” That made me smile.

The Drake Hotel

That was a highlight, but we can take some nice sunny walks just from our neighborhood, as well. One day we just meandered down [West] Queen Street West as far as a roti shop—a favourite Toronto food. The roti seller asked us if we were sure we wanted medium, but there were three hotter levels than medium listed, so we thought, why not? Turns out he was right: medium was as hot as I ever want to eat!

I have an inordinate affection for public libraries, especially in Toronto. The Toronto Reference Library has long been one of my happy places, as I’ve looked at many old books that don’t circulate there, and I also love photographing the many distinctive neighbourhood libraries. 

This one is near the Native Canadian Centre of Toronto. I dropped in for their annual holiday craft fair. A very jolly Native female Santa Claus kept popping out and yelling “Ho, ho, ho!” at me, which set me up for the carolers when I got back to Roncesvalles.

The Lillian H. Smith branch library is on College Street, where I began another long Advent walk. Actually I began it at the Ontario Legislative Building, Queens Park.

I’d already been there around Remembrance Day, only to find that I was there at the wrong time to see the Members of Provincial Parliament at work. That day they were having an extra long lunch break. I have never been successful on any attempt; by the time I came back in December, they were already on holiday break—until February! Can anyone work less than MPPs?

At least they got the menorah up.

Anyway, the farther west you walk on College Street, the more Old World Little Italy (and Portugal) get. 

If you make it as far as Ossington Ave., as I did, you can have “the best falafel” in Toronto, at the imaginatively named College Falafel. The Albanian proprietors make everything from scratch, including baklava and some almond cookies that looked pretty good. I was sorry to be too full for dessert!

As you can see, eating well has not been a problem here. For the most part, though, we’ve enjoyed being able to buy food and fix meals at home. T. has borrowed a slow cooker from Jay, so we don’t feel the absence of an oven. We paid a visit to the St. Lawrence Market one day and T. got some particularly tender meat there. The upstairs gallery of St. Lawrence Market was once the council chamber of city hall, and all the buildings are another good example of architecture that was almost torn down around 1970, but saved by a citizens’ group.

One of the voices that did much to empower people to save their communities like this was Jane Jacobs’s. She started with The Death and Life of Great American Cities, but transplanted to Canada because of her opposition to the Vietnam war. Here, she became a citizen and participated in the saving of Toronto from

even more expressways. There is a tribute to Jane Jacobs at 401 Richmond, a delightful heaven of galleries in what was (in the early 20th century) a lithographer’s warehouse. I found myself wandering past studios, watching people do interesting artistic things, and just wanting to stay. Oh, and they sell bagels too.

A cool way to transition from one washroom to another

At the nearby Canadian Broadcasting Company studios they were getting ready for Sounds of the Season, a day of live broadcasts and food bank collections. I passed the poinsettias and checked out some old radio and film equipment the CBC exhibits downstairs. This is all free, by the way.

Hall named for Peter Mansbridge, longtime (now retired) anchor of The National. Hear his authoritative voice: "Not boys' bridge, MAN's bridge!" 

My climatic preference, for winter anyway, is cold but clear. I much prefer the longer days (counterintuitively, Toronto is much farther south than England) and sunshine on snow to grey, rainy days, but we’ve had some of both. On one of the former, with enough wind chill to need to cover my face, I took one of my favourite walks, from the base of Roncesvalles to Mimico and over the Humber Bay Bridge.

The Sunnyside Pavilion. In the 1920s this was a popular swimming spot for Torontonians (in the summer!)

My turnaround point, in Humber Bay Park, is a memorial to those killed in the bombing of Air India Flight 182 in 1985. Of the more than 300 people killed in that and a related bombing at Tokyo airport, 29 were from Mississauga, where Toronto’s Pearson airport is located. It was the worst terrorist attack in Canadian history. Despite or perhaps related to this, the memorial is a peaceful and beautiful place.

"Time flies, suns rise and shadows fall/ Let it pass by. Love reigns forever over all."

One of our friends asked what we’ve doing on our “vacation” in their fair city. Usually it feels like real life, not vacation, but as you can see there have been days I’ve felt like a tourist in my own city. One place I’d never made it into before was the Elgin and Winter Garden Theatre Centre. It’s a functioning theatre, run by the Ontario heritage department, but for more than five decades the upper theatre (the Winter Garden) was shut up and forgotten about. The Elgin and Winter Garden is the last remaining double-decker theatre in the world—a glowing relic of the vaudeville era.

It’s a really interesting tour, well worth $12 if you happen to be in town. I’d known the film version of the musical Chicago was filmed in Toronto (naturally) but not that it was filmed at the Elgin Theatre. As was The Shape of Water, that weird film we saw at the drive-in movies in Charters Towers, Queensland. In another Chicago twist, the seats in the Winter Garden Theatre are from the historic Biograph Theatre.

The most interesting thing about the rediscovered and painstakingly restored Winter Garden Theatre is the system of beech trunks, branches, and leaves that decorate the whole place. It surprised me that when the theatre was redecorated after sixty years, real trees were still used. I used to be a volunteer fire marshal at work, and stories were impressed upon me such as such as the Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire, the deadliest in history (it killed far more people than died in the Air India bombing). But it was only a few years ago that the Winter Garden Theatre was finally redecorated with fake leaves, less of a fire hazard. 

My favourite moment of the tour, though, was down in the lobby, when I looked up and was photographing the names of various artists and art forms engraved around the edges of the ceiling. I noticed that the name of composer Franz Liszt was misspelled. Sure enough, we were told later that there was a typo, so to speak, in the original decor and it had been faithfully restored. Could any of us spot it?

Hey, I’m a proofreader.

I mentioned in my first post how Jay told her students about different traditions: for example, her background is Hindu so she celebrates Diwali, whereas her husband’s is Catholic (as is T’s) so she also celebrates Christmas with him. And lucky she does, too, as that’s where we’re spending Christmas Eve and Day! Should be a blast.

A musical theme: Toronto 3

I have a few regrets in my life. One is not buying nine doughnuts for a pound in Cleethorpes; another is never buying art by Jay Russell, who incorporated vinyl records into his jazz paintings. And a third regret is that, in all the years I lived in Toronto, I never went to Hugh’s Room. 

Throughout the 2000s this venue has hosted pretty much every legend of folk and acoustic music I could name: Pete Seeger, Maria Muldaur, Janis Ian, Eric Andersen, Ian Tyson, Judy Collins. I didn’t come when Richie Havens, a Woodstock icon, played here the year I moved away; now he’s gone. And I wasn’t there when Odetta played what turned out to be her last concert on earth, in October 2008. (She was supposed to perform at President Obama’s inauguration, but didn’t live to see it.)

We are now living near Roncesvalles Avenue, and I was thrilled to find that Hugh’s Room is still alive, just up the street. Like so many great arts-related spaces, it closed for financial reasons, but unlike many it reopened last year as a non-profit community venue. Hugh’s Room Live was welcoming back Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, and I was going to be there.

Elliott, 87, is a last living link to the generation that inspired Bob Dylan, rather than the other way around. He was a friend of Woody Guthrie and brought traditional American songs not only to the mainstream, but to England (Mick Jagger claimed the Rolling Stones were his biggest fans). I got to the bar and thought I’d order a drink before squeezing my way in among the supper tables. While the warmup act started, a white-haired man wearing suspenders came over and stood beside me at the bar. I heard fellow patrons murmuring “Hey, that’s him” before he put on his cowboy hat and made his way to the stage. So yes, I have sat at a bar next to Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. 

Odetta once said that her mother gave Elliott his nickname, because of his tendency to ramble on. He certainly lived up to this on the night. He started singing “San Francisco Bay Blues,” forgot the lyrics because someone was taking a picture, recovered, then launched into one shaggy dog story that led into another. Between the songs and the stories he was on stage for about an hour, then drank some whisky, broke into a Scottish accent, and sang some more. I thought making it to 10:00 PM was darn good for an 87-year-old. It was pretty good for me!

In my last post, I omitted the name of Alan, who showed me around the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives. Alan Miller is also acknowledged in the book I’m reading now: A Queer Love Story: The Letters of Jane Rule and Rick Bébout, edited by Marilyn R. Schuster. It’s a great plum pudding of a book to dive into in December. Jane, as the letters call her, was one of the first “public lesbians” in North America, writing both fiction and nonfiction that was groundbreaking in its depiction of our lives, most famously Desert of the Heart which was adapted into the film Desert Hearts. Rick was an editor with The Body Politic, a voice of the gay community during the transformative 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s. Both were “Americans by birth and Canadians by choice,” Jane leaving the U.S. during the McCarthy era and Rick during the Vietnam war. She was older and lived in rural British Columbia; he was younger and lived in the heart of Toronto’s gay ghetto, as it was then. Both were heartfelt practitioners of the art of letter writing, taking the time to sort out their thoughts on pressing issues of the time, and we’re fortunate that two such different people (in many ways) left us such a fascinating correspondence. 

When Jane Rule died in 2007 I was quoted somewhere (as “Canadian poet J. E. Knowles,” love it). My memory of Jane Rule was that she was radical in the 1980s and continued to be radical. In an era when we think we are so fluid and open and yet have such conservative acceptance of institutions like marriage or the military, it is a useful and sometimes uncomfortable challenge to read Jane and Rick’s letters. Jane and another U.S. expatriate, Helen Sonthoff, were lovers for decades yet never advocated either monogamy or state-sanctioned partnership as goals for queer people. Though Helen did say to Jane, rather charmingly I think, about fifteen years into living together that they should stop saying they didn’t believe in longterm relationships, even if they didn’t—it was tactless!

All of which is to say, some good reading time here, and the constant awareness that “the personal is political.” I had an interesting time on U.S. election night watching the returns come in with a bunch of Americans and a surprising number of Canadians, at a bar popular with U of T students. One of the notable results was how many women were elected, though this is not straightforward progress—no one would accuse Tennessee’s first woman senator, elected that day, of being progressive. At least I did not feel, as I did two years ago, as if my skin had been peeled off, too vulnerable even to leave the house. And that was in England.

A very different pub evening was Noir at the Bar, at which I heard a number of writers read, notably Liz Bugg. Liz and I have in common that we each haven’t published a novel in several years, though of course we have been writing. I hadn’t seen her since we both read at Glad Day Bookshop during World Pride.

With novelists Liz Bugg (centre) and Elizabeth Ruth, 2014

November is not winter, but it was already getting cold in Toronto. Fortunately this city is equipped with quite an extensive network of underground paths. You can start walking at the Toronto-Dominion Centre, with design by Mies van der Rohe.

The lobby of one of the towers has a free gallery of Inuit art, which is lovely for visitors who may not make it to Canada’s north. From there, make your way to Nathan Phillips Square, named for Toronto’s first Jewish mayor, and the site of the current City Hall. In winter it's an ice skating rink.

Ducking back into the underground system, I went via the Royal York Hotel to the Hockey Hall of Fame, which had a display of those who were about to be inducted. This year’s include legendary goalie Martin Brodeur, women’s great Jayna Hefford, and Willie O’Ree, the first black player in the National Hockey League.

From Brookfield Place where the Hall of Fame is located,

one can walk to Toronto’s Union Station 

and then take the Skywalk to the Skydome, or Rogers Centre as it’s now called. This is where the Toronto Blue Jays play baseball and the Argonauts Canadian football. Also here is the, for better or worse, defining landmark of the Toronto skyline, the CN Tower. This day its top was completely shrouded in cloud!

As in other Commonwealth countries, the 11th of November is Remembrance Day. Armistice Day, its original name in the U.S., memorializes the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month 100 years ago, the armistice that marked the end of the Great War in Europe. The great slaughter of that war, and the bad peace that followed it, were enough to ensure that a second world war would come, but of course in 1918 people didn’t know that. We remembered their relief, and the great loss of life that war entails, at the Cenotaph ceremony at Old City Hall.

Photos courtesy of T.

I have an earring from the market in Luang Prabang, Laos, that was made from shrapnel found lying around after the Vietnam war. I have also had occasion in Canada to wear the Aran sweater I bought in Connemara, Ireland, and these items from different parts of the world have attracted comments from strangers here, though not as many as my flag backpack! One woman sitting next to me on the streetcar said “I like your bomb earring!” I explained that it was made to look like a bomb, out of an actual bomb, and sold in support of a community in Laos. When she heard the story she liked the earring even better—she called it “anti-bomb.” Seemed appropriate for this poppy-wearing time of year.

T.'s poppy in the snow

The last place I lived in Toronto—the flophouse, as I call it—was near Sherbourne Street, in the St. James Town neighborhood. I wouldn't normally go back there but I had occasion to when Lucinda Williams and her band, Buick 6, were in town performing for the 20th anniversary of a great album, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. I couldn't get tickets in advance and wondered if it would even be worth standing with general admission, but I showed up at the Phoenix Concert Theatre anyway. It was remarkable to see how the rather grotty part of town I remembered has been jazzed up. The big apartment buildings are still there, but they have wall art now, and the grungy No Frills supermarket has been replaced by a FreshCo. There’s even a Wine Rack on Sherbourne!

For its part, the Phoenix seemed determined to take everyone back to the 1990s, and not just musically. Everyone, including those with advance tickets, had to stand out in the cold for ages before the doors opened. Then those with tickets on their phones had to wait even longer, because no one could find the technology to scan them! For those of us who didn’t have tickets, it was cash only. Luckily, I pay cash, so in I sailed ahead of the fuming people with virtual tickets. We’d been standing so long that after the show (which was good, by the way) one of the women from the line recognized me by my hat, so we chatted in the subway. Going out at night for live music, talking to women I didn't know—it really did feel like the ’90s to me.

Lucinda Williams & Buick 6

We’ve had repeat dinners with friends too, including Trudy, Maria, and Wayne and Jay. One of the beautiful things about being here for months is that we have time to see people, even host them, and not just cram into a pub once with everyone (not that that wasn’t fun in the past). A close second, for me, has been our neighbourhood, including being a walk away from more than one independent bookstore. Twickenham has never been the same since Langtons Bookshop closed, but where we live now has been more fortunate. In fact, I’ve read several articles recently about how those independent bookshops that remain in North America can thrive, in spite of all that big-box stores and Amazon.com have thrown at them. It’s no wonder. Going into Another Story Book Shop on Roncesvalles and picking up A Queer Love Story or my special order, Lonely Planet’s Central America on a Shoestring, means having a conversation with a bookseller about the book, or our respective travels. You can browse there, and the authors might actually get some money out of you.

Speaking of our neighbourhood, I was back at Hugh’s Room Live late in November.

One of the characteristics of Canadians is to call attention to someone’s Canadianness—to claim that person. Some people are annoyed by this, but there are two good reasons for it. One is that, in the absence of a Canadian claim, the person is invariably assumed to be American. The other reason, at least in the case of songwriters, is that Canada punches above its weight. Many Canadians really are among the greatest, although not everybody likes to listen to Neil Young or, for that matter, Buffy Sainte-Marie. (Buffy has said she knows some people can’t stand the sound of her voice, and she’s O.K. with that. It happens.)

When our friend and neighbor back in England, Janet, drew my attention to the song “Northwest Passage” by Stan Rogers, I didn’t think I’d ever heard of him. Yes, he was from Canada, and probably not famous anywhere else. I was haunted by the song, but it turned out I did know Stan Rogers’s work. For years, when I attended the Church of the Holy Trinity on Easter Sunday, after the service and all the sacred music was over, someone would bang out “The Mary Ellen Carter” on the piano as a kind of secular postlude. We would gather around and sing the chorus: “Rise again!” Thanks to the prompt from Janet (who’s English), I found that this was also the work of Stan Rogers, and wouldn’t you know Hugh’s Room Live was hosting its annual Stan Rogers Tribute.

I have many Canadian musicians on a fantastic collection I listen to, but I don’t seem destined to hear any of them in person. When we were in Winnipeg Big Dave McLean was hosting jam night at the Honky Tonk on Main Street, but we had an early morning flight to Churchill so didn’t go. Then Linda McRae was supposed to sing at the Stan Rogers tribute, but she was sick! Luckily for us Beth Rogers, Stan’s stepdaughter, joined other family members and the songs Linda McRae would have sung were covered.

I haven’t heard all two hundred songs that Stan Rogers wrote or recorded in his thirty-three years on earth. But I can tell you that every one I heard at Hugh’s Room was really good. This, too, is probably a matter of taste. Many people can probably live their whole lives happily without singing along to “The Mary Ellen Carter” or the encore “Northwest Passage” with a roomful of people. For me, it was one of the most moving experiences I've ever had, never mind on these travels.

“No matter what you've lost, be it a home, a love, a friend

Like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again!”

Walking in love: Toronto 2

Toronto is not a beautiful city, in the way that Chicago is. Indeed, because of their similar climate and setting on the Great Lakes, the two cities are often compared, usually unfavourably to Toronto. It has certainly not managed its lakefront as attractively as Chicago’s, though this has improved in the years since I lived here. There’s now a bikeable path, the Martin Goodman Trail, that runs all along Lake Ontario and joins up with the Trans-Canada Trail that reaches the Atlantic, Arctic, and Pacific Oceans.

Nor does it have the impressive range of beautiful architecture that Chicago does. I fell in love with Chicago when I was very young—she was my first love, and is still my favourite U.S. city. But Toronto also has advantages, and typically, they’re understated if not bland ones. Toronto didn't give the world electric blues, but I can take the subway any time and never wonder if this line is safe or not. Although violent crime is sadly not unknown, Toronto is still remarkably safe compared with most U.S. cities. That may not be saying much. Gun deaths there are so numerous that Chicago cannot even be plotted on the same graph, for example, as the entire United Kingdom.

But I digress.

Hungary memorial. The Toronto lakefront is dotted with monuments like these.

One of my favorite lakefront walks takes me to Little Norway, the only original part of which still standing is this flagpole. During World War II, Norwegians in exile trained pilots here, near what is now Toronto Island airport. It was part of the resistance to Nazi occupation. (The CN Tower, premier symbol of Toronto, is visible in the background.)

Most Torontonians are not actually from here. About half the city’s population was born outside Canada, as I was, and many of the other people I’ve met here are from different provinces. But even some who’ve spent their whole lives here don’t love it. Part of living in Toronto, and perhaps other places, is complaining about it. Again, I’m different in that when I was living in the most basic accommodation, at one of the lowest points of my life, I realized how much I really enjoyed being here.

Lake Ontario

Part of it is the odd fact that my “happy places” have always included the Great Lakes. I grew up visiting my grandparents when they lived in Lakeside, Ohio, and remember many summer—and winter—days and evening just walking along Lake Erie, telling stories to myself and thinking. Later, I moved to Chicago and spent time walking along Lake Michigan. Neither those walks, nor my long walks along Lake Ontario in my twenties and thirties, were in beautiful places, but that wasn’t what I was looking for. I was working out something—a poem, a decision, a friend’s death. Being able to walk down the street, or take a streetcar, and wear out my old paths along the lakefront is coming home for me.

Spadina Quay Wetland, an oasis where once there was a parking lot

Toronto Music Garden, designed by Yo Yo Ma (apparently) to reflect a Bach cello suite

Toronto is a very walkable city. There are lots of places where one can dip into the ravines and temporarily forget one is even in a city. There are parks everywhere, from tiny square “parkettes” to the vastness of Sunnybrook or High Park. It makes all the difference to be able to walk to High Park from where we’re living now. Again, not a place of stunning beauty, but a place I can be happy on an everyday basis.

Grenadier Pond, High Park

One of the first things we did when we got back from Manitoba was join Out & Out, a gay and lesbian activities group, for a “fall colours” walk.

I was a member of Out & Out before I left Toronto. It’s a group of people who organize all kinds of activities besides going to bars. My most memorable outing with them was in January 2009, when a three-hour dogsledding adventure near Huntsville, Ontario, turned into five hours (the dogs could tell I didn’t know what I was doing). Very cold weather and lots of being dumped into snowbanks.

The leader of this walk happened to be the same guy who gave me a ride up to Huntsville on that occasion, and he remembered it for the same reason I do: toes. We both got frostnip, and still feel those particular toes go cold before anywhere else. Fortunately today’s walk was in much milder weather.

We’ve also had a few opportunities to catch up with our friends Trudy and Maria. I used to work with Trudy years ago, and when Maria, her daughter, was working in England for a while, she was a frequent guest at our place. When we got back to Toronto, Maria suggested brunch at a place called Insomnia. 

“In the afternoon?” Trudy said. I assured her that, yes, we were supposed to have been up all night partying!

We walked past the corner of Bloor and Bathurst Streets, where for decades Honest Ed’s took up an entire city block. The pride of Ed Mirvish, a store that seemed to have everything including free turkeys at the holidays, has been demolished by his son, presumably so yet more condos can go up. 

Really?

We also got together with Marg, another friend from Canadian Tire days, and her son Spencer. Marg and Spencer came to London a few years ago too, and we enjoyed seeing them there. We had so much fun with Marg that I saw her again a few weeks later, along with several other friends who hadn't all gotten together for ages.

With Arlene, Jay, Marg, Monty, Jay's husband Wayne, Stéphanie, and Tom

Even without seeing familiar faces, I’ve just enjoyed hanging around our neighbourhood, Roncesvalles Village. One morning I saw four police officers on horseback, having their coffee break. That afternoon a man was playing the saxophone down by the lakefront. 

Interior, High Park library

Just taking the streetcar can be enough to evoke happy memories. Passing Roy Thomson Hall, for example, I happened to hear k. d. lang’s version of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” on my iPod. The first time I ever heard that electrifying song was from k.d. herself, barefoot on the stage at Roy Thomson Hall. To me it’s still the definitive version.

Another day we went to Little India on Gerrard Street East. I hadn't been there since my first visit to Toronto. One of the great things about Indian restaurants in North America, that doesn’t seem to exist in England, is the buffet, where you can get a portion of as many different dishes as you went. It suits me perfectly because I never want just one (or even two or three) items from an Indian menu.

Afterwards we had a stroll through Leslieville. More than ten years ago, when I lived in Toronto, The New York Times “discovered” Leslieville, which apparently was where the cool lesbians were hanging out (I was never there). Ever since then, of course, it’s gotten too expensive. 

I’ve been taking advantage of our time in one place to study at Toronto’s excellent Spanish Centre. I’ve gone there before to refresh my Spanish, minimal as it is, and Carla from Caracas has proven an excellent instructor. As much as I’m not looking forward to leaving Canada at all, the winter here seems like a good time to head south to Latin America, so I’m brushing up. Sometimes, when we’re working with partners, the level of hubbub in the classroom approaches that of a colonial-era “blab school.”

It’s been humbling to attempt conversation with my fellow students, especially a couple originally from East Africa for whom English is, at least, a second language; they speak Italian too. They proudly say “I am from Canada” in Spanish, but they aren’t even learning in their native language, which I think is impressive. (Incidentally, I find it much easier to say “Soy de los Estados Unidos” when I’m here in Canada. In other parts of the world I don’t feel like I’m from one place.)

The larger world has, of course, intruded while we’ve been here. The week we were in Churchill happened to be the week marijuana, or cannabis, was legalized across Canada. I haven’t noticed many differences but then I’m not interested in smoking anything. One thing I have noticed, as in states where it’s legalized, is signs popping up warning what is and isn’t allowed. Near the U.S. border, and at the airport for example, there are signs reminding people not to attempt to cross internationally with cannabis, which is illegal.

More sobering was the attack on Etz Chaim=Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, which killed eleven people, including a woman from Forest Hill, the first neighbourhood I lived in in Toronto. We heard at the last minute about a vigil in North York and decided to show up. The vigil was held in Mel Lastman Square, named for the mayor of Toronto when I first lived here, who was the son of Jewish immigrants from Poland.

Someone I know from Glad Day Bookshop, who now teaches in Toronto, remarked that his students seem to think that anti-Jewish hatred was a particular episode that happened in the twentieth century. He has to teach them to see patterns, that anti-Semitism didn’t emerge from nowhere, nor does it, sadly, ever disappear. To counter it, an interfaith group in Toronto organized a “ring of peace” to go around the City Shul on the following Sabbath. Jews around the world were organizing to “Show Up for Shabbat” on the Saturday after the shooting, and some of us wanted to be there in solidarity.

City Shul shares its building with Bloor Street United Church, where I’ve sung shape note music with the Toronto Sacred Harp singers. Members of Holy Trinity, KAIROS, and other Christian groups showed up, having no idea how many people might join us. I was “point person” on the end, directing folks to fill in the gaps. As our line slowly stretched around the building, more and more Jewish people came for the service, some of them clearly not regular members of this congregation. I found myself directing congregants to the door with one hand and non-Jewish supporters to the line with my other. 

Usher with police officer

In the end there were more than a hundred of us, and people kept coming up and thanking us for being there. A couple of women even passed out Timbits, which are doughnut holes from Tim Hortons—possibly the most Canadian thing anyone could do. We were thanking them! I was fine until some of the Jewish folks started tearing up. I don’t think I’d ever said “Shabbat shalom” but I said it many times that day. When an usher nearby was asked by bewildered people what we were doing there (was this the line to get in?) she kept saying, “These are our neighbours!”

The TV news was there too. A woman asked the man standing next to me (with flower) which congregation he was from, and he explained that he was a Muslim. Later I saw an imam on television, stating that he was there because there should not be “such violence in our world.” To which I can only say, Amen.

Back in our own neighbourhood, T. was thrilled to discover that our local farmers’ market, unlike others in Toronto, doesn’t close for the season. It just moves indoors.

We get our meat there now, and maple syrup. I’ve particularly enjoyed the Stanners Vineyard wines from Prince Edward County—they make dry riesling, which I like better than the usual sweeter kind—and, given the neighbourhood we’re in, pierogi.

The last outdoor farmers' market of the year, Riverdale Farm

T. said if we lived in Toronto she would want to live here. I’m afraid that’s as much as I’ve been able to get out of her. Not that I blame her—probably no one wants to leave their country of origin without a good reason. Something I think is lost in the anti-immigrant rhetoric we often hear.

City Hall and Nathan Phillips Square

We had some pretty wet weather in November, but still got in some good city walks. One day we had a look round Old City Hall, now a courthouse, followed by the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives. They’ve moved to a small historic building, and the staff member on hand (the only archivist, I believe) was happy to show us around a collection that dates from 1972. T. pointed out a transgender manifesto from that time, which used the term afflicted for people with gender dysphoria. It was a contrast with the “this is the way I was born, and I’m proud” rhetoric that so empowered me as a young lesbian. Clearly the various strands of LGBTQ have much to learn from each other—and a lot of it can be learned at the CLGA.