Love in the Time of Coronavirus and Jalapeños

A recent tweet making the rounds reads, "Here's how to get a message across" and shows a photo of an official-looking sign from Round Rock, Texas: "Texas Coronavirus Protection. Wash your hands like you just got done slicing jalapeños for a batch of nachos and you need to take your contacts out. (That's 20 seconds of scrubbing, y'all.)"  I laughed, as they say, out loud (how else?).  

I have been washing my hands a lot. There's no hand sanitizer to be found in stores and when I look online, the stuff costs more than printer ink, that formerly most expensive fluid on the planet. I looked up how to make your own because I remember reading an article in the New Yorker years ago about the invention of Purell, and I thought, gee, that seems pretty basic.  I've yet to get the craft project underway however and am just carrying on washing my hands very often while singing Happy Birthday twice, once to each cat, and using the gel dispensers at work and in banks and shops and wherever else I can find them, and nagging my family to do the same. Thanks to the still-chilly weather along with all the alcohol and soap, I now have dishpan hands, a dire fate for a woman according to the Palmolive advert of my childhood.

Another childhood memory came to me as I washed my hands this morning (happy birthday, dear Chica...) while twisting my wrists to avoid getting my sleeves wet: this was a maneuver I practiced only in winter in southern California. For a few months, December to February, my mother insisted we children wear long-sleeved tops (...but Mo-o-om) and soon after Thanksgiving, we would re-learn the extra step of pushing the sleeves up our arms before grabbing the soap. February to November is a long time for a child so each year, we struggled anew to remember, suffering a string of soggy cuffs until it became habit. I'm learning again, not because I can go 10 months without warm clothing, but because it seems I have gotten sloppier in my hand-washing. A digital swipe of lather did me fine. Now I have to keep those jalapeño hands front of mind. Advice to avoid travel is becoming more prominent. I have plans to head west this week. To go or not to go? What constitutes travel? My first stop is home--Los Angeles. Another stop to see my sister, and then my son. The only part of the trip I consider travel is Tucson to attend a literary festival and a writing workshop that I am honored to be invited to.  

After 9/11, when planes were downed and getting across the Atlantic near-impossible, I felt a species of panic knowing that even if something terrible happened at 'home' in California, I could not get there.  My (semi-humorous) tag-line is that I can be homesick wherever I am; there is always somewhere I am not and miss. Occasionally I indulge in imagining how I would feel if I still lived where my roots were, where I grew up. The fantasy falls apart because in that scenario I would be without my husband and my children and want to cry. I do though compare myself and my family to some of our friends here, born and bred here or near. "Are you from Toronto?" I sometimes ask a new acquaintance. "Oh no," they'll say. "I'm from Burlington." Mentally I re-phrase their answer: "Yes."

Journalist Jacqui Banaszynski writes in the most recent Nieman Storyboard: "Coronavirus is as big as it gets...We find ourselves in the oft-talked-about but rarely realized same boat. That's not just about the potential for illness, but about the economy, how we're being served — or not — by our public institutions, civil and lifestyle disruption, and even about who gets to own the truth of this story."

It's fucking scary. And it is even scarier for those of us--those many of us--whose lives and life histories and families are scattered across the globe, whose boats are always afloat. Do I go to LA to see my parents? Vancouver to see my son? Seattle to my sister's? Take my daughter with me? Does husband go to London in a few weeks for work and to see his parents?  

Be careful out there.

It's a new world, one in which the best we can do is aim to stay safe, stay strong, stay sensible, and not worry about stockpiling toilet paper (there are other solutions). 

Wash our hands and think of jalapeños. 

Segregation and the UK

Last night at 11:00 pm, GMT, the UK left the EU to go it alone.

It's not just Brexit that betrays a British bent toward separation. It's also the taps.

I cannot recall the last time I saw separate hot and cold faucets in a sink in the US or Canada. Maybe, just maybe, decades ago in my grandparents' apartment on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn. In England though I see this segregated plumbing all the time. Last summer; last week; in friends' homes, in public loos.

They're not necessarily from days of yore. You can buy a brand-new one today at Homebase:

...while in the US and Canadian equivalent, Home Depot, there are none such for sale.

British people don't seem to mind facing the options of freezing or burning in order to wash their hands. "If you want it warm, just put in the plug and fill the basin," says one friend, with asperity. What? Crawl around to find the little rubber plug that's probably dropped behind the toilet? Scour the sink first? Please, no. Once, in a house I rented in Durham, I grew desperate and purchased a weird rubber Y-shaped contraption meant for washing one's hair in the sink.

I gave up after a while, though, frustrated by the frequency with which it sprang off one tap or the other and sprayed the opposite temperature everywhere.

Whatever deals Britain is able to negotiate with Europe in this post-Brexit era I suspect will be a little like that Y(why?)-shaped contraption: wobbly and unfit for purpose.

So mind the hot water.

Hot seats

At European beach resorts, say Brits, it's the Germans you have to watch out for. They commandeer the best sun-loungers, guarding them with vigilance. "They get up at dawn," a friend said darkly after a holiday several years ago, "Drape them with towels, and won't let them go."

On our recent family reunion/ vacation to celebrate my father's NINETIETH (90th!) birthday at a Mexican beach resort I discovered that it's not just the Germans who are beach chair warriors. There were sixteen of us on the trip so finding adjacent chaise longues for everyone was something akin to annexing a small territory. We aimed for batches of four or six. The flurry of text messages each morning conveyed the tension:

"Just did chairs but they were few and far between. I managed five but couldn't find any help to add or move more into the config"

"We got six chairs. In the middle off to the right a little"

Life in the chairs is pleasant for their occupants and not just because of the sun and sea. Men (always men) in uniform tread the narrow boardwalk behind us and offer drinks, help open or close or shift the huge umbrellas to increase or decrease the quantity of shade, and assist in the positioning or provisioning of chairs. They offer other services, too. "Glasses cleaning?" asks José. I knew he was José by his name-tag. Names are important. You want to tip the right person.

He brandishes a cloth and a spray bottle toward my sunglasses and I understand, though I decline. Next to me a middle-aged, Middle Eastern man says "Yes, please," and his glasses are duly polished. "No cucumbers any more?" he asks. 

"No more cucumbers. Just glasses," José agrees. "New management."

Later Daniel comes along and offers us miniature popsicles in plastic wrappers. Lime, pineapple, cantaloupe. He helps find a spare chair when one of my children joins me.

Our chairs, the cabanas, the fire pits, the volleyball court, and the beach bar all occupy one side of a low woven white rope strung along a line of square wooden stakes in the sand. On the other side stand itinerant sellers: of jewelry, sunglasses, shawls, bags. They gradually approach and sometimes breach the silken perimeter. Then Daniel's and José's supervisor remonstrates with them in Spanish and they nod, step back, move their wares, retreat. Slowly, though. I like that.

In our hotel room, Ana forms whimsical towel sculptures that perch on a corner of the tight bedspread. Each room gets one. Daily, we snap photos of them and circulate: "Look at this!"

I enjoyed the luxury. I admit it. We were celebrating and luxury was what we were after. We and our tourist dollars felt very welcome.

That ever-present first-world colonial guilt, though. I've been lucky to have enjoyed beaches and beach chairs in many places. Laps of luxury are always softly formed of other people's labour; there is no getting around it, but in some parts of the world the exchange feels fairer than in others. José, Daniel, Humberto, Ana, Maria-- they supported us with their labour; we supported them with our money. We work; they work. It sounds fair; I hope it is fair; it doesn't feel fair. Even if the hotel employees are well-paid and justly treated, I'm pretty sure the name-tag-less hawkers have it rough.

They do however get to stay in sunny Mexico, spotting whales, all year long.

Prospero año nuevo from icy Toronto.

Halls of Justice, Toronto.

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.