From Hot Docs To Forsythia, Festival Season Comes Into Bloom
As usual it's too late to write much and JM and I have to get to bed soon so we are ready… [more]
Geese Eggs For Lunch, Seagull For Dinner & A Midnight Feast With Some Baby Raccoons
Don Mills, where JM and I currently work, is not rich in natural diversity. It's a concrete… [more]
Meeting Our Toronto Necropolis Neighbours
JM and I finally got round to visiting our closest landmark neighbour this weekend. Even… [more]
Wishing For Whistler’s Secret Treehouse With The Don Valley Wildlife
I am foolishly starting a post when it's already almost bedtime but I just had to share my… [more]
Close Encounter With A Cabbagetown Raccoon
Continuing the exciting animal-spotting theme that started with chipmunks and groundhogs… [more]
High Park Cherry Blossom And A Visit From The Alpen Fairy
It's been another busy week in the JM-CWS household but I think we now have the morning… [more]
Discovering Cabbagetown: From Karaoke Chaos To Coffee And The Cobourg
We're a week in to our new Cabbagetown home and I'm finally able to get round to a post. … [more]
You Know It’s Spring In Toronto When The (Maple) Leafs Are Out
I can't remember where I first heard that joke about knowing it's spring when the leafs are… [more]
When Gateposts Wear Bonnets You Know It’s Springtime In The Annex
As the crazy weather continues - today I think we hit 25 or 26° - so too do the funny antics… [more]
(Picnic) Seats, Shoots & Leaves: Springtime Comes To Toronto But Christmas Still Prevails
Last weekend the clocks went forward and almost simultaneously temperatures leapt into… [more]
Sewing A New Cabbagetown Patch With A Cow, Some Sheep And The Three Little Pigs
From the heady climes of New Orleans it was back to Toronto and straight into estate agent… [more]
The Great US Adventure, Part VIII: Down And Dirty In The Mardi Gras Swamp
At last, I've reached the final day of our great American adventure. Since we returned… [more]
The Great US Adventure, Part VII: To The Garden District And Beyond
Breakfast, once we had emerged from our Frenchman-induced fog, was a hangover-banishing confection… [more]
The Great US Adventure, Part VI: The Dead And The Blues
Our second day in New Orleans kicked off with one of the much anticipated Patrick breakfasts. … [more]
The Great US Adventure, Part V: A Warm & Wet New Orleans Welcome
We left Chicago in the early hours, long before the streets were full of tourists and commuters. … [more]
Cabbagetown now in full blossom
As usual it’s too late to write much and JM and I have to get to bed soon so we are ready for our big trip back to the UK tomorrow. It feels as if this visit has been far off on the horizon for ages and all of a sudden we’re leaving!
Last weekend I went to see three fantastic films as part of Toronto’s annual Hot Docs Film Festival: Beware of Mr. Baker, The Invisible War and The World Before Her. They were all wonderful, upsetting, thought-provoking and entertaining. After seeing Mr Baker on Saturday afternoon I immediately put my headphones in and listened to Cream’s White Room at full volume (trailer below).
Unfortunately, because The World Before Her screened on Sunday morning, it meant I missed the Cabbagetown Forsythia Festival for which our landlady Shannon was being crowned Queen. On the way to the bus I did pass many people dressed in yellow (apparently a tradition) and I’ve seen the photos now so I know we missed out.
On Saturday JM and I dined out on the Danforth at Pizzeria Libretto, which has a certificate to prove it is authentically Neapolitan. The two huge wood-burning ovens really have been imported all the way from Italy and the chefs only use San Marzano tomatoes and Fiore di Latte Mozzarella. Our pizzas were incredibly light – and they both came loaded with white anchovies and accompanied by glass bottles of Peroni.
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The feathered friends of Don Mills
Don Mills, where JM and I currently work, is not rich in natural diversity. It’s a concrete jungle of highways, malls and anonymous office spaces. When we get off the bus in the morning we have to scamper across six lanes of commuter traffic to reach our building.
Next to the PostMedia car park is another car park servicing the Korean supermarket, where I occasionally go to get sushi, and a few other bland, slightly depressing flat-pack shops and restaurants. On the other side of the road is a strip of grass and another row of grey, indeterminate edifices. The only thing remarkable about these surroundings is that a flock of Canada geese have, for some inexplicable reason, chosen to set up home here.
Call of the Canada Goose (Branta canadensis)
One of the many interesting facts I’ve gleaned from reading the Wikipedia entry on Canada geese is that they’re actually flightless for twenty to forty days during the summer molt and breeding season. There is one goose in particular who seems to enjoy some passive nicotine inhalation as she often hangs out right next to the smoking area.
Octopus eating seagull at Ogden Point breakwater by Ginger Morneau
Creepier than cigarette-addicted geese is the BC octopus with a taste for seagull. An amateur photographer called Ginger Morneau has become temporarily famous on the Internet for having captured the bizarre life and death struggle between a metre-long Great Pacific mollusc and a hapless gull, around whose head it had managed to wrap its tentacles.
Morneau admits to feeling some sympathy for the gull — though not quite enough to brave a rescue attempt.
She also says her family later celebrated their adventure with a calamari appetizer.
Back on dry land Canadian creatures of a furrier variety were also satiating their appetites in unorthodox ways. Early Thursday morning police were called to a Beaches home by a terrified couple who had locked themselves in a bedroom while as intruders ransacked their property.
The homeowners told CBC News they heard noises in the attic. They called a roofer who came out and boarded up a hole — but the roofers action may have trapped a mother and two baby raccoons inside the roof.
After hearing a ruckus in the night the homeowners came out of a bedroom to find the water running in the kitchen sink and raccoons enjoying a buffet on the kitchen counter, courtesy of a fruit basket.
The babies in the video are impossibly cute but I suspect I would have been equally petrified if I woke up in the middle of the night to find them running amok in my kitchen.
Ahead of the cyclist and the husky is another man on a skateboard being pulled by a husky
JM and I finally got round to visiting our closest landmark neighbour this weekend. Even nearer to our new home than the sheep, chicks and pigs of Riverdale Farm are the final remains of nearly 50,000 Canadian residents.
The Toronto Necropolis was established in 1850 and is the city’s oldest cemetery. There is a beautiful little chapel to the left of the entrance opposite the farm which, as the plaque in front puts it, is ‘one of the finest examples of Gothic Revival architecture in Canada’.
The Scottish born American and Canadian journalist William Lyon Mackenzie is buried here. As well as serving as Toronto’s first mayor (1834) he was also a leader in the 1837 Upper Canada Rebellion. Some of the bodies now residing in the Necropolis were moved from Potter’s Field in what is now Yorkville after that burial ground started to contaminate the town.
I’m not sure what it’s specifically commemorating but inside the cemetery there’s a monument in the shape of an open book with the text of psalm 23 printed on it. When I was at school we sang this in the choir and I have clear memories of our music teacher Mr. Gaston getting very excited about the amount of emphasis we placed on the last ‘k’ of ‘Yea, though I walk‘.
We did, of course, also have a wander through the farm, which happened to coincide with feeding time. The pigs especially were squealing their heads off and climbing all over each other to get inside their stall and at their sloppy dinner.
It’s now Sunday evening and, rather unusually, we have plans. The husband of lovely Asmaa who I worked with at the Montreal Gazette, is showing his film The Frog Princes at the TIFF Bell Lightbox as part of Toronto’s Hot Docs festival. So I better finish scoffing my own dinner and get a move on.
Joe Allen's magical HemLoft treehouse in Whistler
I am foolishly starting a post when it’s already almost bedtime but I just had to share my favourite story of the week so far. A man in Whistler, B.C. has built this beautiful, extraordinary wooden tree dwelling in the forest called HemLoft. It has been in construction for years but it’s only now, since it was featured in a magazine, that people have realised it’s even there.
CBC’s As It Happens interviewed the creator, Joel Allen, on Wednesday and he just has such a fascinating, inspiring story. Apparently it was when he and his friend were competing in something called ‘sport sleeping’, where you have to find the most exciting place to sleep every night, that he discovered his preference for resting at elevation. He said he spent one night on a water tower and that, while it’s a fun place to sleep, the quality of sleep itself isn’t that great.
He was also interviewed by the National Post:
Q: Where were you living when you built it?
A: In my Ford Escort hatchback, and I thought a tree house definitely wouldn’t be a downgrade.Q: When was the last time you were there?
A: Last week. I was doing some maintenance and meeting some of the people who have started finding it. I lived there last summer, but I didn’t build it to live in it, per se. I built if for everybody who can find it. And I actually freaked out and had a near meltdown when people started to. I guess I felt kind of vulnerableQ: What are the neighbours like?
A: Multi-multi-ka-billionaires. I’m not sure we’d mix well.Q: And the view?
A: A lot of branches. That was on purpose so it couldn’t be spotted from the air. There are mossy, rocky outcrops and you are looking at the other trees — 50 feet up. It’s the unadulterated beauty of being in the forest. There are a lot of bears. When we lived there last summer there was a bear that would wander by each morning.
There some astonishing pictures in the official Flickr gallery. And the video is worth watching too:
Unfortunately for Joe Allen, now that his secret is out he’s facing the possibility that he might have to take it down because, strictly speaking, it’s built on government land.
Since the treehouse was built on crown land, I don’t technically own it, and so its fate is uncertain. For three years I kept the HemLoft secret, but now that I’m finished, I’ve found myself wanting to share it.
It took a lot of work to build it, and I’d rather not take it down, just yet. So I’ve been thinking of ways to expose the HemLoft, while somehow making it legal. To the best of my knowledge, Squatting on Whistler Mountain, beneath some of Western Canada’s most luxurious mega-homes would not be looked favourably upon.
Joe is asking people to vote on ideas he’s come with about how to keep the tree egg going. So far, most of the votes (about 77%) have gone in favour of trying to buy the nine square feet of land that the pod is currently occupying.
It really is time to go to bed now in our own funny little nest. My closest brush with nature so far this week has been spotting a real live woodpecker knocking on a tree when I was out running on Wednesday. Even without my specs on I could make out the blue feathers… and they really do knock on wood!
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Our new Cabbagetown street, Hillcrest Park
Continuing the exciting animal-spotting theme that started with chipmunks and groundhogs a couple of weekends ago, yesterday evening eagle-eyes JM spotted a big fat raccoon scuttling head-first down a tree.
This one was not worried at all about two gawping tourists squealing excitedly and pointing at it. To us raccoons still seem exotic, but to most Torontonians they’re a nuisance. As well as making themselves at home in people’s roofs and causing a racket as they scuttle around at night, one of the most annoying things they do is break into the bins reserved for organic waste and spill their contents across the street in search of leftover food scraps.
As the city starts to contemplate the next generation of green bins and how they will be designed, one of the most important considerations has to be their anti-raccoon capabilities.
“We never say raccoon-proof,” said Kevin Vibert, Toronto’s senior solid-waste management analyst. “To make a bin that is 100% raccoon-proof, you would almost have to build a vault.”
To generate some new ideas in the war against bin-raiders, some first year University of Toronto engineering students were asked to come up with innovative new solutions. Metro Morning spoke to Adrian Esser about his idea of using a magnetized lid and glove combination that would allow the bins to open for only a very short period of time while they are being emptied.
My new Cabbagetown friends, the Riverdale Farm pigs
According to Susan Fleming, who made a film about a family of raccoons called Raccoon Nation, latches are not generally effective. ‘Give raccoons a latch and, eventually, with those human-like hands, “they will fiddle with that latch until they get it”’.
As well as raccoon-spotting we also went to visit the pigs in Riverdale Farm this weekend. A poster on one of the notice boards declared there had been a new baby goat arrival and in one of the barns there was a glass box full of freshly hatched chicks. The blackbirds and starlings have been busy collecting twigs and building nests and we’ve noticed a few squirrels digging up their stashes of nuts.
All these spring-like activities are going to come of a grinding halt tomorrow when Quebec and Ontario are slammed by a snowstorm and winds of up to 80km per hour.
Temperatures… are forecast to fall to one degree C, and in some places will be several notches below freezing, which is up to 10 degrees below normal for this time of year, Environment Canada said.
Meanwhile in Quebec, it’ll look like a winter wonderland. Parts of the Saguenay region around Lac-St-Jean and southeast of Chicoutimi, as well as the Lower St. Lawrence, Gaspé and North Shore regions, had 15 to 20 centimetres of wet snow which began Saturday night and will last until Monday.
Riverdale Farm, pre-death storm chaos snow storm
One of my favourite sources of information about things to do and places to go in Toronto is blogTO. On Saturday afternoon when our plans to walk to the Don Valley Brick Works to see the farmer’s market were foiled by blustery weather, we put our trust in the blogTO app to find us a decent café near the Danforth. It came up with Si Espresso Bar.
I could have spent all day here – great coffee and the owner (Egidio, aka Edge) was fantastic – and seemed to know everyone that came through the door. BlogTO’s review is spot on:
As a working actor who has been in the game for twenty years, Edge’s gift for clever banter and more one-liners than I could possibly recount here (“use them all,” he shrugs) is uncommon and highly entertaining. Interactions with his regulars (which they, literally, all seem to be) are loaded with familiarity, genuine kindness and endless enjoyment on both ends.
JM and I are becoming familiar faces at the House on Parliament now. We went back for dinner again on Saturday night (after spying the raccoon), and ended up making friends with another Scot called Stephen.
