File Under: Heartwarming

The taxi driver at the Moncton airport hailed from outside Canada--like me.

I flew to Moncton for work-- to attend the AGE-WELL annual conference--and his was the cab that took several of us from airport to hotel. He drove a minivan, perfect for the four of us plus luggage. Then it turned out there was woman on her own also queuing for a taxi, also attending the same conference and heading for the same hotel. A brief muddled conversation ensued and she joined us, or vice versa; in any case, we all climbed in the car for the ten-minute journey. (Moncton is small: population 85,198 in 2017. A one-horse town.) "It is here," the driver informed us as he turned into the hotel's circular drive, pulling up behind another taxi disgorging some of our colleagues also traveling from the airport.

I proffered plastic. "How much?"

The driver turned to hand me his machine. "You pay for all?" He sounded surprised.

"Sure," I said, surprised too. It was a taxi, not a train. What difference did it make to the driver who paid and how we divided our costs? I would be reimbursed; it all ultimately came from the same governmental pot of funds for our project, a multi-year endeavor around training new professionals and developing technology to improve the experience of aging.

The total came to forty-two dollars which seemed rather a lot for such a short journey, but then what did I know about the Maritimes? Apparently in Canada's northern reaches a banana could cost five bucks. The money machine requested my email address to which it promised to send a receipt. I added a tip, got out, and noted the number of the car, a habit in case of forgotten objects.

"How much was your ride from the airport?" I asked a colleague from the other taxi.

"Twenty-two, about."

"Darn. We've been taken for a ride. Ah, well." Our fault really, I thought; in a new city, we should have checked the cost. Lesson learned.

Roy, one of my co-passengers, overheard and responded with outrage and energy rather than my own philosophy and sloth. "No way! Can you send me the receipt?"

I did, and Roy launched a small campaign. He provided periodic updates during the conference. The taxi company could not identify the driver based on the receipt. "Oh, well," I said again.

"If only we knew the number of the car," Roy said.

I shared it. Roy called the company. "They say they'll get back to me," he reported as he and I and a few others walked along the main street in search of dinner one evening. Roy paused briefly to snap a picture of a 'help wanted' sign in a shop window. This puzzled me.

"Tired of AGE-WELL? Job-hunting?"

He laughed. "No. But there's a site where if you post job ads, they pay you a few dollars. It accumulates." I gained some insight into Roy and his zealous pursuit of the $20. I felt a niggle of worry for the taxi driver.

The three days of the conference were full and busy. At the end, several of us shared a ten-minute, twenty-dollar, uneventful ride to the airport where our flight was delayed only an hour or two. (We used the time to work.) I returned home to a late dinner, enjoyed a relaxing weekend, and on Monday totted up my expenses to submit the form for reimbursement. I did mention the overcharge for the taxi ride, offering to pay out of pocket, but my supervisor said, "Don't worry about it. These things happen."

They do. But then something else happened: I got an email under the taxi company's name whose message read, "I'm sorry for what happened I quoted two different groups each group 20$ 2 groups 40$ but if you are together trip is 24 $ and I'm very very sorry I didn't steal anyone please send to me your bank informations I send the money now your trip 24$+ you give me tips 5$ you need 11$ I'm so sorry I didn't steal you send to me your bank information bay my Email please."

[Sic.]

He signed his name, a lovely biblical one, like Adam.

It smote my heart, that note. In spite of the smite, though, I hesitated to share my bank details. Roy and my supervisor concurred: don't send any financial information. (In truth it would have been difficult as I am a financial Luddite.) But how to balance the taxi driver's dignity with the loss of taxpayers' dollars--dollars intended for the betterment of older adults' lives? I walked around with the question for a day or two before figuring out a course of action. I mentioned my solution to a few people, who shook their heads. "Yeah, right. No." I could simply make a donation myself, but that would not address the driver's injured honor. Maybe it was a put on, but maybe not. I would give it a try.

"Dear Adam," I wrote. "Thank you for your apology. I can see there might have been a misunderstanding. It is too complicated for me to send you my bank information and my employer has already reimbursed me for what I spent. But I want to let you know that the money is to help older people in Canada. If you would like to, you could make a donation to a charity for the elderly." I mentioned one in Moncton.

A week later came this message, verbatim other than the name:

"Hi Leslie,
I am Linda B---, office manager for the New Brunswick Senior Citizens' Federation. The driver came to the Office and made a donation to us of 20$. He gave me his phone to send you this message, you can call me anytime to confirm this. Thank you!"

In my own office in Toronto I laughed aloud. I did not call Linda to confirm. I simply enjoyed the cockles of my heart growing toasty, and wrote to Adam: "Thank you."

File under: heartwarming.

Canada, naturally

Massey Creek

A truth I've confessed before is that Toronto and environs do not float my aesthetic boat. "A city within a park," proclaim signs at the entrances to Toronto's city parks. H'mmm. Unconvincing. But lately my harsh opinions are softening as I explore cycling routes along the Pam Am Path, leading from the lakeshore up the Don River and beyond. True, getting there can be harrowing, and the noise of cars on Lakeshore Drive, the Gardiner Expressway, and the Don Valley Parkway follows me for a time, but eventually I reach flowing rivers and a waving lake and wildflowers, and recently, bright-colored leaves. Eventually the roads vanish and only cyclists and walkers remain.

Husband had been wanting to visit Canada's first 'urban national park', established a couple of years ago on the eastern fringes of the city, so over Canadian Thanksgiving weekend we took a family walk  to check it out. "Not as...wild as I was expecting," mused husband. I guess the clue was in the adjective. We did see colorful leaves and a huge fish zip through mere inches of water--quite a sight.

Thanksgiving in Rouge National Urban Park 

Rouge National Urban Park

           

A fisherman friend informed me later that it was a Chinook salmon, swimming up the Rouge River to breed and die. I was very impressed to think it had managed the journey all the way to Lake Ontario from the north Pacific, but the friend gently informed me that the species had been transplanted to the Great Lakes. Still, it put me in mind of the book and film Paddle to the Sea which the kids loved back when they were small. After our mini-hike we visited Fool's Paradise, the former home of the late local artist Doris McCarthy. It perches dramatically on the Scarborough Bluffs overlooking Lake Ontario, and serves as an artist's residence. The current artist-in-residence had kindly invited us for post-Thanksgiving tea and cake.

Recently I visited Moncton. It is in New Brunswick, the province sandwiched between Maine and Nova Scotia, home to wonders that Raffi, the Canadian children's singer, enumerated in his song  C-A-N-A-D-A. One of these, the 'tidal bore'--not to be confused with the 'reversing falls'--can be seen right in the middle of Moncton. I did not make the trip with the specific aim of witnessing this phenomenon, but when work sent me thence and the conference hotel proved to be five hundred meters from Bore View Park, I knew my chance had come.

As I could have predicted from the name, the tidal bore is linked to tides, in particular the incoming tide, which happens but twice a day. I looked up a tide table and discovered that for the days of the conference, these times occurred in the late afternoon or the unspeakably early morning. At a meeting scheduled for 2:30 the first day I checked my watch obsessively and prayed that we would finish by 4:30 so I could slip away in time for the 4:54 event. But we had much to discuss, consider, debate, and plan. At 4:30 I could stand it no longer. "Hey," I said brightly, "How about we walk and talk? There's this thing called the tidal bore..." After some doubtful glances, my lovely colleagues indulged me and off we trotted.



It was I'm afraid a bit of a dud. Monctonians we met along the riverside path assured us that when the moon is full and the sun is high, the phenomenon truly is something to behold. "People surf it for 29 kilometers!" said one enthusiastic woman. "Here, I'll show you the video on my phone." I politely declined, as it was then a choice between watching her recording or the real--though underwhelming- thing. But I did find YouTube evidence of actual people surfing the bore.

Moncton offered good food, insane taxi drivers, cars that screeched to a halt at the mere sight of a pedestrian on a curb, and most excellent coffee at Café Cognito. I'd go back just for that. I missed visiting Magnetic Hill, another possible reason to return (or not; opinions vary).

The lesson I learn again and again, through trips to cities like Thunder Bay, Winnipeg, Halifax, and now Moncton (as well as through national elections) is that Toronto is not Canada, in the same way that London is not the UK. In England, I lived in Durham and Brighton, i.e. in Not-London; I railed against articles in The Garudian travel section informing readers that Bath is only a two hour drive away (from LONDON, maybe. NOT from Durham). It is easy, however, to forget that similarly Toronto is its own bubble. I have lived here for nine years (gasp) and feel I know it fairly well. But I remain pretty ignorant of Canada. Perhaps I need to listen to Raffi more.  

The 22nd Anniversary: A Marriage Story

In July Simon and I celebrated our 22nd wedding anniversary. It's not a big one on the calendar of grand events; the traditional gift for it is copper, "a soft and malleable metal that holds a special significance for a long-married couple". When we hit twenty years I had felt some amazement. Me, married for twenty years? I spent much of my life imagining myself as single forever. I did not seem to have the knack of commitment to one person. And yet, I thought to myself back then, I would be such a good wife. 

Time has proven me both right and wrong. I do have the knack of commitment and I'm not too shabby at the wife thing (I have confirmed this assessment with husband). We celebrated with an afternoon and evening at a nearby day spa, and then took ourselves out to dinner at a newish, French-ish restaurant in our neighbourhood, Café Cancan on Harbord Street, scoring a coveted table on the lovely patio. At first glance the menu items did not spark joy: too outré, or bijou, or some other French word suggesting we would go home hungry. The burger tempted me but seemed like chickening out, and the price for it ridiculous (twenty-six dollars!). So we ordered the Moroccan-style chicken instead (ironically). Also smoked trout, and intriguing sides, including pea and fava fricassee with ‘house cheese’, and Dimitri’s garlic mushrooms. Everything was utterly delicious. I would go back again for Dimitri’s mushrooms alone. I ordered a cocktail called C’est La Vie with a little bough of mint in it and thought of my old brown Honda Civic which had gold racing stripes and the license plate SAYLVEE (later SAI LA V; long story) and Simon debated between something chartreuse and something red, eventually selecting the gin-based 'Cyd Cherise'. Primary colors abounded: Simon's scarlet drink; the green of mint, pea, and fava; and for dessert, a vivid yellow lemon posset (yes, same word that describes baby spit-up in England, or at least in the northeast of England) with tonka-bean meringues and fresh mint leaves. (We consumed a lot of mint.) 

The dinner proved eventful, as we had to abandon the patio and dart indoors between starter and main because the heavens opened in a dramatic summer thunderstorm, foretold only by a single flash of lightning. Our new table by the window offered us a front-row view of the antics at the disputed cannabis café across the road. We finished the meal dry and comfortable and walked home after coffee, when the rain had shrunk to sprinkles. There the two younger children greeted us and brought us hot tea in bed. They, the dog, and the two cats curled up at our feet. I drifted off.

In that state of semi-retirement I had a dream. We, Simon and I, were back at the restaurant where we had ordered a dish described to us by our waiter as enclosing something green. He brought us a plate with a rolled-up crepe and put it between us on the table, to be shared. When we gently tugged it open with the tines of a fork, it released a small swarm of creatures, maybe eight or ten of them, like bright green sand crabs. Unlike the burrowing crustaceans, though, these beings hovered in the air in the manner of winged beetles and emitted a series of high-pitched tones, a sort of chant, before suddenly dropped to the plate still and silent. We were expected to eat them. Simon and I looked at each other. I prodded one with my fork but I don’t recall a crunch or a taste. I hope we didn’t eat them. It would be uncharacteristic of me to be so daring, but Simon might have sampled a bite.

I awoke in the small hours to find the children vanished, the pets nesting in the folds of duvet, the tea cold, and Simon asleep. We had to wait until the next day to exchange gifts. 

No problem. We're malleable that way.  

Cycling: Ups and Downs

Toronto is flat, flat, flat. Flat as a pancake, said my friend Heather's husband Mike before we moved to the place, giving me a little shiver of doubt about our plans. I like hills. I love mountains.

Lower Don River, PanAm Path

Turns out that Mike was mostly but not entirely right. Toronto is flat with just a gentle slope northward from the lake, the residue of retreating glaciers. But there are the ravines--crevices in the earth with running streams or rivers, paths of greenery, wildflowers, parks.  To shift gears, I've learned to seek out Cedarvale, the Lower Don Valley, Moore Park, Rosedale. Downs and ups. Contour lines,  but negative ones.

Cycling in Copenhagen
with eldest and youngest. Amagerstrand. 

The advantage of general flatness is for the cycling commuter. My favourite way to get to and from work, or around town on errands, is by bike. I think of cycling as the closest thing to human-powered flying, how birds feel, air rushing past, feet not touching the ground, mobile and lithe. It is a privilege to be able to live where I can ride to work with relative ease. When we lived in hilly Durham and I worked in Newcastle and dropped children at school and nursery it never seemed possible; in Brighton, again, the distance and children posed problems. In both places, lack of safe cycling infrastructure mitigated against the effort.  (It is better there now, at least in Brighton.)  Last month I visited elder son in Copenhagen and again loved the feeling of cycling in that city. So bike-friendly, so easy, so normal. I read recently that Copenhagen is the safest cycling city on the globe. "You'd have to ride 40x around the world before you'd have a serious crash,  in terms of statistical odds," tweeted @barbchamberlain.

Toronto's urban geography is in many ways like Copenhagen: flat, northern, downtown-focused. But Toronto missed the boat with respect to cycling ease and safety. Cars remain king, emperor, deity. We have some bike lanes, though very few protected and separated from cars. My most direct route to the office takes requires using bike lanes designated only by paint and running alongside both car lanes and streetcar tracks. They get very little respect by thoughtless drivers. I call them out when I can. The other day, a blue and sunny summer morning that made cycling to work a true treat, I tapped on the window of an Uber driver dropping passengers in front of a university student residence. "You're blocking the bike lane." Other cyclists wobbled past, dangerously in lanes of traffic, struggling not to fall into the treacherous streetcar tracks. "You could just pull into that driveway." I pointed.

He ignored me, so I moved in front of him, pulled out my phone and snapped a picture of his license plate. He leaned out his window. "Get out of my way! You are just envious of me." He shook his fist. "You will stay poor. You will die and go to hell!"

It took me a second to collect his meaning, that he thought I was riding my bike out of poverty and despair. That I envied him-- a man stuck inside a random black car on this sunny summer day! I started to laugh; I couldn't help it.

Such a revelation about how people live in the same world, occupy the same streets, and see things so very differently. As an anthropologist I should not be so surprised, but there you go. I was. I rode away, still marveling. Different strokes for different folks, of course, but I cannot help thinking that Mr. Die-And-Go-To-Hell would be a happier man if he got out of his shiny car and rode a bike once in a while. Perhaps not along College Street dodging Uber drivers, but certainly down a ravine, alongside a running stream, with wildflowers brushing his ankles. If only the world were such that he and I could have talked about it.

Hamilton Mon Amour

I went to Hamilton, finally: not the musical but the city in Ontario. Hamilton has a reputation for seediness and steel, which it manufactured for decades (the steel, anyway). I had often seen its smoky industrial profile in passing from the motorway, en route to Niagara and to the US border, but never stopped to investigate the place.

Some friends suggested we meet in the city's downtown for lunch at the end of June during the long Canada Day weekend (which precedes the Fourth of July by a few days and is a diffuse version of American Independence Day, much like Canadian Thanksgiving's relationship to American Thanksgiving. Earlier, milder, vaguer, still fun. There are fireworks). 

So, with a mix of trepidation and anticipation husband and I set out on a drive that our map app said would take an hour. About halfway there we realized that tech had failed us; the motorway was jammed solid. We abandoned it and switched apps. Waze sent us on something called the North Service Road, which led us into the city past Dundern Castle. No one had told me Hamilton had a castle. It all started to seem more promising.  Signs for something called Cootes Paradise flashed past. Also intriguing. We arrived, horribly late, to an understanding welcome. Bless our friends.

And indeed, it turned out to be a lovely lunch at a place called "The French", on a downtown street showing signs of recent renovation, graced by a fountain and whimsical art. The menu included waffles with pulled duck and fresh berries, and a Mexican-style eggs benedict with a crispy corn tortilla and guacamole. Delicious and a far cry from the hot dog street-vendor I had envisioned as Hamiltonian cuisine. Conversation and coffee flowed. 

Hamilton street art

Afterward, the couple who lived and taught in Hamilton invited the rest of us (husband and me from Toronto; another anthropologist and her husband from Buffalo-- all three couples united by having a female North American anthropologist half, and an English academic-of-some-stripe male half) to their lovely home near McMaster University for tea. Afterward they led us on a tour of the campus, which--again contrary to my clearly misinformed expectation--was pleasant and green with a cheerful student community huddled round (cheerful though largely empty on this summer long weekend).

McMaster University

After saying farewells husband and I set off to explore the nearby town of Dundas (formerly called Cootes Paradise, re-named for a Scotsman who never visited Canada) and then to see a bit of the Niagara Escarpment, a long low cigar-shaped outcropping that runs toward the US border and into some border history, it seems. The War of 1812, largely forgotten in Britain and barely remembered in the US, looms large in the Canadian history books: "This trail," reads the sign, "approximates the route taken in early August 1812 by Major-General Isaac Brock to repulse the first American invasion of Upper Canada in the War of 1812."  

 

Repulsing Americans in the War of 1812

We saw no Redcoats as we walked this part of the Bruce Trail, a section called the Iroquoia, which runs through a Carolinian forest--not, it turns out--an order of monks hidden in trees but instead a 'biogeographical zone'. The label is subject to some controversy. I looked it up, expecting a simple answer. Fie on that.

"What are we to make of this word Carolinian? Perhaps, like many words, it is evolving; a semantic moving target, blurred, difficult to define," wrote Ken Colthurst, forester, and Gerry Waldron, biologist, in 1994 ("Carolinian Canada"). "As it is we have a term that is provincial in both senses. Is it reasonable to change terminology at a political border?" So, not just a dispute, but a dispute with implications for international relations. The authors continued to muse about which species characterize this zone, whatever it be called, including Sassafras and Tuliptree as dominants. "Some flowering dogwood in the understory would be nice," they decided, with, as co-dominants, "Black Walnut, Black Oak, White Oak, Red Maple, Pignut Hickory, and Black Gum." Finally: "By using Carolinian in this way," Colthurst and Waldron concluded, "we may lose some of the romance (and redolency) but just might gain some precision from conformity. We wouldn't be surprised if you disagreed."

Not I. Give me redolency every time.

The drive home was a doddle and took just over an hour. I think we'll be coming back for more. 

Raptors on Parade

I keep trying to love Toronto. Every so often I think I have managed it and then something messes it up. Today, for instance. The Raptors won the National Basketball Association tournament (though as my sister says, how does the 'National' part work for the Toronto Raptors?). Hooray! So there was a parade today ending with speeches and a party in the big square in front of City Hall.

Two million people are coming, they told us. The University of Toronto circulated a message saying 'feel free, no need to show up to work or class'. The mayor said 'let your people go' to all the employers in town. I didn't exactly attend the parade but I went to the office, practically on the parade route. I dressed in several layers and headed to work, thinking, "Toronto, you could be warmer. It is mid-summer in a few days." The thermometer maybe hit 18C.

Younger son, a year of uni under his belt, has a new job volunteering as a researcher on a project based at St. Mike's Hospital. The hospital has research offices in the Eaton Centre, Toronto's downtown shopping mall, just the other side of the parade destination. 

Public transport was rammed and jammed. Son reported that it was shoulder to shoulder on the subway train. A Pakistani friend at work said that on the bus this morning he felt like he was back in Karachi, the way everyone was pushing close and closer. 

I rode my bike and parked it off the street near my building. The hordes of fans in black and red streamed past. I wore black and red, too. The security guard stood out in front, soaking up the atmosphere. At lunchtime I called my son and said, "Let's meet." He headed west while I walked east, just on the edge of the parade route, and we found a table at a below-ground Vietnamese restaurant I had wanted to try. I saw empty tables through its windows and scurried in. Some of the hordes followed and the tables filled. 

We poked our heads into a crevice of the big square but could get no further. The crowds cheered and laughed and I thought, "I could get to really like this city. What spirit." Son returned to his office and I to mine.

100,000+ Raptors fans in Nathan Phillips Square (photo from Twitter)

News footage showed that politicians mounted the stage when the basketball stars arrived in their busses: Mayor Tory, Premier Ford, and Prime Minister Trudeau. The crowd, bless them, hundreds of thousands in the square itself, booed the premier, Doug Ford, who is systematically and maliciously decimating the best of the province and most especially, of Toronto, his nemesis. He is defunding public health and education, reducing the cost of beer and increasing its availability. 'Keep them sick, stupid, and drunk' seems to be his motto.

A couple of hours later, son texted me. "Are you in lockdown, too?" Not words to thrill a mother's heart.

About three seconds of Googling told me that there had been a shooting in the square. There were police on scene immediately of course but the shooters ran--right into the Eaton Centre, across the street. Hence the lockdown.

Scary stuff. Gunmen in the building where my son was at work. In truth I my fear was less for the physical safety of son and colleagues--those offices are darned hard to find; I've tried--than for his discomfort and anxiety. He would have a bad time and I so very much wanted him to be happy.

As it happened, he was fine. He hung out in his supervisor's office with other volunteers and research staff, and had to chat with them. Good. The shooters got caught and disarmed by the cops. The victims are recovering in hospital, having been taken thence by an ambulance escorted by mounted police.

"Are they letting you go now?"

"They're not telling us anything," son texted back. 

I tried calling the hospital's Communications office and identified myself as the mother of one of the research volunteers at their Eaton Centre offices and asked when the staff there would be released. "We have offices at the Eaton Centre?" the woman on the other end asked. She said she would call me back.

Before she could, son texted that they had the all-clear and could go. He decided to stay and finish his work for the day, though.

I spoke to him when he got home. He was sanguine. "Dad says dinner will be late because his bike got stolen," son reported. It had been parked and locked on College Street, not far from our house. It was a great bike, gorgeous blue and yellow. Thieving vermin. 

I finished off my own work and headed out, hoping to find my own bike in its place. There it was amid a floe of rubbish and other detritus from two million people celebrating their team getting an orange ball through a metal hoop the greatest number of times.

Still trying, Toronto. I am still trying.

Native and Old Stock

There's been a debate roiling since before we moved here about the wording of the Canadian national anthem, O Canada, which contained the lines "True patriot love/in all thy sons command." The lyrics scan just as well with the gender-neutral phrase 'True patriot love/ in all of us command." And eventually, last year, the Senate officially approved the change.

There's another line in the anthem that bothers me: "My home and native land." However long I live in Canada it will never be my native land and it's the same for quite a few of us.  In Toronto, over 50% of residents were born outside of Canada; even if we become citizens, it still won't be our native land.

The former prime minister, Stephen Harper (odious man) made a comment some years ago about health-care benefits for refugees. He said, "We do not offer them a better health-care plan than the ordinary Canadian can receive. I think that's something that both new and existing and old-stock Canadians can agree with." The 'Old Stock' epithet blew up around him-- as he deserved. A commentator referred to his choice of words as a political 'dog whistle', a signal audible only to those attuned to that register. In this case, though, it backfired and he drew (well-earned, it seems) accusations of racism and manipulative identity politics.

The man was soon out of office (toppled by Trudeau) but those words rattle on. A Canadian playwright, Hannah Moscovitch, wrote a play called "Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story" about Jews fleeing to Canada from brutal pogroms in Romania early in the 20th century (about the same time my grandparents reached Ellis Island escaping pogroms in the Ukraine). Two weeks ago, husband, daughter, and I saw the production at Toronto's Tarragon Theatre and loved it.

But in truth, the 'old stock' Canadians (and Americans) are the indigenous populations. Canada does a better job of acknowledging both their existence and the crimes committed against them by the hordes of invaders. Yesterday, as part of the annual celebration of Doors Open Toronto, I got to visit the Native Women's Resource Centre of Toronto, a building I've cycled past numerous times. This time I parked my bike in the scruffy urban park across the street, shoved my helmet and reflective gear in a shopping bag, and went into the cool old dark converted house. High ceilings, polished wood, a long straight flight of white-painted stairs ascending. A man with a pony-tail greeted me and showed me how to smudge by burning one of the four sacred medicines in a container and bringing the smoke to my face. He chose tobacco for me and lit it in an abalone shell.

Native Women's Resource Centre of Toronto

We talk about how abalone comes from ocean coasts--you can dive for it in California--and must have been traded. "Yes, a lot of trade," he said. "People prefer the western sage, from the prairies, and the tobacco had to come from the south." The good old days, before NAFTA and Europeans. My guide tells me that he comes to the centre once a week, or sometimes twice, to teach Ojibwe language. "I tell my students that they already speak Ojibwe. You do too. You know what moccasins are?"

"I do. Is that Ojibwe?" It is. The plural, he explains, is moccasinnan.  We look at the program display, a whiteboard neatly divided into 31 squares with bright pink duct tape. The array of offerings intrigues me; there are several in which I would enroll. In addition to Ojibwe, there is beading, 'shopping math', computers, Liberty Moves, indigenous baby-food making, full moon ceremony, drum circle, 'red embers' (here's last month's). I ask about 'red embers' (having figured out from context that Liberty Moves is an exercise class), and it turns out to be a program linked to the Red Dresses, hung from trees to memorialize the many, way too many, missing and murdered Indigenous women across Canada.

On a nearby table are paper cups and jugs containing cedar tea and strawberry water. I sample both. My guide points me to the back of the building, to a small quiet outdoor enclosure. "You can see our sacred fire."

The fire is burning in a metal cauldron standing on three legs. There are low flames and a floating cloud of fragrant smoke; a group of four or five Spanish-speaking women lean over and take pictures. I edge around to the less-smoky side and sit by a couple of volunteers, one of whom has just lodged his small axe in a log on the ground. He identifies himself as the sacred fire-maker.

I admire the cauldron and ask if I might take a photo.

"Sure."

"I wondered whether you'd say yes," the other volunteer tells him.

"Well, this time I think it's okay."

The volunteer and I both ask when it wouldn't be; the fire-maker says, "When it's for a specific ceremony, like full moon."

I wonder aloud where the cauldron comes from, because the cut-out animal shapes in the metal are beautifully decorative. The fire-maker and the volunteer shrug and ask another volunteer who has been chatting with the Spanish-speakers. "I think I got it online. Maybe Canadian Tire," she laughs.

"Is it okay for me to burn some of the medicine?" I ask. Yes, they all say together, please do.

"Remember to hold it and put your thoughts into each pinch before burning it," the first volunteer says, and I give it a try: a pinch of tobacco, a pinch of white sage, one of cedar, a few strands of sweetgrass, my good thoughts.

I leave feeling oddly peaceful. These particular oldest-stock Canadians have created an oasis amid the occupation.

Employment office next door

Snowbirds

The dog likes California

In Canada lives a species of human beings they call 'snowbirds'. Like many other birds, these creatures emigrate from the True (and truly icy) North to southern climes in the winter months. Usually they are retirees without jobs holding them in place, and they are also child-free or, to continue the avian theme, empty-nesters, and thus exempt from the need to obey school term schedules. Ontario law permits residents to live outside of the province for seven months of the year while still retaining rights to health coverage and other public goods.

In this increasingly digital world, it's not only retirees who may participate in this circular migration. It is possible to work remotely. We decided to give it a try during husband's sabbatical this term (finally-- his first in 2 decades), and have decamped with high-school daughter to California. We are based in Los Angeles, staying with my kind and generous parents. The timing is pretty good. Daughter is in Grade 10, the second of four years of high school, and the one during which there is an amount of slack available. "Go ahead," advised her principal/ headmistress. "Let her enjoy the month. I'm sure she'll learn so much from being there. Don't worry too much about keeping up with assignments." And indeed the child has learned a lot. We've visited museums, seen wildlife (elephant seals, newborn harbor seal pups, sea otters, deer) and conversed with park rangers about them. She has discussed geography, talked politics, and, beautifully, has lots of time for reading books. We attended the LA Times Festival of Books and listened to Roxane Gay and Laurie Halse Anderson talk about rape culture and women's empowerment ("fuck forgiveness," said RG).

Diligent daughter did worry about keeping up with assignments. She kept an activity log for her PE teacher. We found a circus skills class for her to attend, and also visited Muscle Beach, in Santa Monica, where she further honed impossibly unbelievable feats of balance and strength. Relying on a variety of devices she has completed math homework and submitted essays; she has remote support from teachers and classmates. The other day she asked me to film her acting out a scene from a 'life in the 1950s' script, which her project group spliced into their own clips and handed in to the history teacher. And, blessedly, she gets a month of nights of plentiful sleep.

Husband has glued himself to his study space in my parents' dining room and written more of his book as well as composing papers he will present next month. I created two workspaces for myself: one in my old childhood bedroom and another, my favorite, for mornings, at the picnic table in the back garden, overlooking the swimming pool and the roses, azaleas, jasmine, and bougainvillea. I'm convinced that inhaling the floral scents and listening to the unpredictable hollow gong of windchimes in the pepper tree enhances my productivity. Hummingbirds buzz by. I've been disciplined, working for several hours every morning, and then taking the afternoons and evenings for activities with my parents and daughter (sometimes husband is persuaded to join us).

And best of all, timing-wise, I've managed to overlap at least a bit with both sisters, all their children, and a brother-in-law. I celebrated my birthday here and efficiently made it overlap with Passover Seder, so that much of the family could join me for both at once. Missing, unfortunately for us, were our sons, the elder in Europe for the term and the younger in the midst of final exams in Toronto. It's been a wonderful month with my parents who are both in their late eighties and full of vim and vigor. My dad continues to work three days a week and my mother keeps house. She tells me often to stop helping her. "I can do it myself," she says, feistily, reminding me of my children when they were small. Both parents looked after Jordi the dog (yes we brought the dog with us) while we drove up the Pacific Coast Highway for a few days. I honor them. They're kind of my role models.

This Saturday at the end of April we head back to Toronto where the weather forecast for the week is grim, chilly rain. I repeat: at the end of April. It's my recurring disappointment with Toronto. We endure a Canadian winter followed by an English one. Every year I'm disappointed anew.

So, while I don't look forward to empty-nesting, and can't quite imagine retirement, I do think that I could get the hang of this snowbirding gig.

My morning desk 

Elephant seals at Piedras Blancas

Birthday trail run

Daughter at Original Muscle Beach

ARTery

I often fall asleep on a sofa in my own sitting room, but rarely in the homes of strangers.  One recent Saturday night, however, I did exactly that, although--in my defense--only after being invited to close my eyes. And no, it was not a hypnosis session; I was at a concert. The person who suggested the eye closure was one of the musicians, the percussionist/violinist/ uielleann-piper, Oisin.

So I let my lids fall. During the intermission, the hostess, Kassandra, had brewed and shared out a large pot of soothing herbal tea, which perhaps didn't help with alertness. I noticed that many of us looked extremely relaxed.

Some of the audience sat on a sofas while others lay sprawled on cushions on the floor (the younger ones) or perched on kitchen chairs, or leaned on walls. The music, a mixture of Celtic, Middle Eastern, Appalachian, and Balkan folk tunes, filled the space, and drew us together in enjoying it. In general when I attend a concert I do not remember much if anything about the people sitting nearby, but as I recall this event a month later, I can envision my fellow guests very clearly. There was a knot of young women who curled up together, heads on each other's laps, at my feet. On a couch perpendicular to mine sat Jim and his wife. We had arrived at the same time as this couple and chatted a little in the lift coming up. "Don't I know you?" Jim eventually asked my husband. It turned out that they belonged to the same college at the university.

We were all there in Kassandra's flat because of an innovation called "ARTery," described to me by its founder as "like Air BnB for culture and the arts." The founder, Selima, and I were seated in the same row of an Air Canada flight from Vancouver to Toronto late last year. Normally I don't talk to strangers on a plane, at least not till near the end of the journey, because once you start it can be hard to end, and I enjoy the odd solitude of flying, of time to myself in a crowd of others. But during this journey I was not entirely myself. For one thing, I had turned into a bag lady, boarding the plane with easily half a dozen separate receptacles--a hiking backpack, a smaller drawstring backpack in a red-and-white Yayoi Kusama design, a pretty blue floral nylon bag-for-life, and a couple of plastic carrier bags containing shoes and my dinner (two separate bags), hiking boots tied together and strung over my shoulders. Normally I would have consolidated these items into a suitcase, but I had somehow managed on this occasion to leave my suitcase behind when I headed to the Vancouver airport and by the time I realized, it was too late to go back and retrieve it.

But that's another story. Selima, in the aisle seat, waited patiently while I stowed my load in various compartments. And then it turned out that someone from the conference I had been attending in Vancouver was seated a couple of rows ahead and he walked back to visit with me, leaning over my poor neighbor, until the crew secured the cabin doors and he returned to his seat. My conversation with Selima thus began with apologies and ended with.... well, it didn't, at least not in the air. We found one compelling topic after another. Finally I said, "I'd better try to grab a quick nap."

She looked at her watch and said, "Leslie, I'm sorry to tell you this, but we land in twenty minutes. No nap for you." I gaped. We had talked for five hours. And then Selima offered me a lift home in her Lyft, where we talked some more. She is one of the most interesting people I have ever met.

She's remarkable, in fact. One remarkable achievement is her foundation, with a friend, of ARTery, an organization or a network with the tagline "culture is more than content: it's connection" (About Artery). After years stationed as a journalist in the Middle East and in Washington, D.C. Selima felt the need to work at making something more than content, something to generate connection, and ARTery was born. It currently operates in Toronto and in New York City.

The ARTery  event I attended with my husband that evening last month in Kassandra's apartment above High Park, "A Small Wee Concert Vol 2", did just that trick.  It fostered connection. Husband and I connected with Jim, and with Jim's wife, with our hostess Kassandra, and with others in the room, not all of whose names we learned (or remembered-- so sorry, Jim's wife). But we talked. We deepened our connection with our friend Willy who accompanied us. And I made a small wee connection of the sleepy kind with Kassandra's sofa. (Willy confessed that he did, too.) I trust no one minded. I also hope I did not snore, or if I did, that Oisin's uielleann pipes drowned me out. The music was beautiful and memorable, the ambience almost opposite that of the anonymity of the concert hall.

So, thank you, Selima! And by the way I did get my suitcase back, thanks to a friend who posted on Instagram that she was in Vancouver for a few days and who kindly agreed to shepherd it home to Toronto.

What wonderful, connected world it can be.

Great Expectations

It's been a snowy, icy winter and it ain't over yet. I know that elsewhere in the northern hemisphere spring is starting to make itself felt, but not here in Toronto. It's a skating rink out there. Falling is a real risk.

On the other hand, or rather foot, as a family we're getting better at dealing with slippage. We have an impressive array of winter footwear, including my new acquisitions: snow boots with retractable spikes, by a Canadian company called Pajar.

Spiked

They're great. I can't quite believe I need to own them but now that I do, I wear them with pride. Recently at a work event I spoke to the folks behind the "Rate My Treads" project at iDAPT, part of the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, who assign one, two, or three snowflakes (or none) based on boots' performance under conditions such as wet ice or cold ice and against various slopes. I asked how my pair had fared. "We haven't tested these yet," they said, examining my soles. "Email the company and ask them to send us a sample so we can rate them." Nice idea but somehow I doubt I'll get around to it. Instead I'll go by the rating my husband accords them.

What the Dickens?

"You're skipping over the ice patches like a mountain goat," he told me with some admiration, as he picked his own way more carefully in his spikeless footwear one dark evening. I know pride cometh before the fall, so I pledge to exercise care and humility, but I also have great expectations of these being the boots that will see me through not just the rest of this winter, but perhaps the rest of the winters I will spend in Toronto.

Not that I believe in omens but I did spot this stray page lying in the gutter outside Allan Gardens, where husband and I went with our neighbourhood garden club on Sunday. The centre-piece of the gardens is a series of large connected greenhouses. Entry is free and green is everywhere, in welcome contrast to the crystalline whiteness on the other side of the glass. I retracted the spikes of my boots and for an hour pretended it was springtime.

Allan Gardens conservatory: escape from winter

Scooby Doo and The Art of Parenting

I did a little de-cluttering over the holidays. Husband set me an example by completely clearing his study as he launches into his first sabbatical EVER, which, after 25 years of teaching, is quite a feat. I wish I had taken a 'before' picture but I couldn't tread far enough into the room to point a camera. There were piles of books and papers and folders and tea mugs literally everywhere. After the cleanse, it's a lovely space with actual flooring. 

Thus motivated, I scanned other rooms of the house for items that had overstayed their welcome, and my eyes fell on a battered biscuit-tin lid in the shape of Scooby-Doo's head. Should I toss it? Marie Kondo hovered in my thoughts, but I pushed her resolutely away. Scooby Doo sparks joy in me, and here's why.

Professor at work

Very often I second-guess my parenting abilities, convinced I've got it wrong, wrong, wrong, all wrong, and wonder how my kids have made it as far as they have with such a hopeless mum. It must be due to their excellent father, I conclude.  But every so often I find a shred of evidence that sometimes, somehow, the two of us together are doing okay. 

The Scooby Doo biscuit tin came to our family as a raffle prize about fourteen years ago, from a fête held at the Fold School, the tiny primary that our children attended in Hove. It was my first school fête and I remember being awed by the treasure trove of donations on offer to lucky winners: a wicker hamper piled high with gourmet foods and wines, a voucher for dinner at a very nice Japanese restaurant, a day out on someone's yacht. We bought a few strips of tickets and distributed them amongst our kids. When the time came to draw the numbers, we gathered round with the other families. The very first number chosen was held by our eldest child, aged not quite seven years old. Completely thrilled, he headed for the prize table, pausing at the food hamper, glancing at a regulation-sized football, not stopping until he reached the tin of biscuits decorated with his hero, Scooby Doo. He picked it up and returned to us, aglow, proudly victorious, chosen and chooser. 

We smiled with him, hugged and congratulated him, and then over his head, my eyes met Simon's as we both coloured in chagrin. Friends laughed and commiserated with us. 'Hard luck!' 'Hope he'll share!' Chuckle, chuckle. Other parents in the crowd had anticipated such a situation, done their reconnaissance, laid plans. One couple charged forward when their daughter's ticket was called and guided her hand away from a stuffed Winnie-the-Pooh and toward the voucher for the expensive sushi, mopping up her tears and plying her with sweets afterward. A well-prepared and clever mother told her son that she would pay him twenty pounds if he let her select the prize should his ticket be called (and it worked; they got the coveted food hamper). 

I admired the foresight and determination of those parents; Simon and I kicked ourselves afterward for our short-sighted weakness and vowed to do better the next time. I don't suppose we did, at least, not that I recall. Still, thinking about it now after the many long days and short years that have passed since then, I kind of wonder whether in some way, albeit accidentally, we had done the right thing. That restaurant meal is probably long-forgotten, the goodies in the hamper have been consumed or discarded. If I asked those winning parents to recall them, I bet they couldn't  (but if you're reading this and I'm wrong please let me know:)  Here in our house, though, on my bureau, I still have Scooby Doo's gormless face reminding me of our son's joy on that long-ago day, his bright smile, his arms hugging his lucky treasure. 

Once we had finished the Scooby-shaped cookies in the tin, we filled it with other ones. And when, eventually, the kids didn't care about him anymore, I moved the lid from the pantry to my bedroom and propped him on my dresser among the other detritus. Scooby Doo is not so much an object as an object lesson. He is certainly not clutter.

I could have done without the comment from the school secretary after the raffle ended, though, that day fourteen years ago. She came over to me, laughing, as we all helped clean up and set the room to rights.  "Do you know, at first I put that tin of biscuits in the hamper with the rest of the gourmet goodies," she said. "But then at the last moment, I thought, oh I'll just take it out to make a separate prize. Too bad for you, wasn't it?" 

I can't help but remember that, too, when I look at old Scooby. Also that he needs dusting.