Category Archives: True Stories

Anecdotes from my past and present.

Toronto Day 62

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photo by Kelly Robson

photo by Kelly Robson

When we moved to Toronto I got more diligent about checking in using Yelp, using the app to track the various cafes and restaurants Kelly and I have been trying out. It’s less true now than it was, but in our first few weeks here I was often sitting in a perfectly nice joint with no real clue as to where I was.

And then, when I would get the I wanna go back to that place, where was that place? itch, I didn’t have to try to remember its address–which would be impossible. Or even its name–honestly, that’d be pretty unlikely. The incomparable Sense Appeal was, until I looked it up, “that place with the black and white bags that I posted on Instagram.” But I didn’t have to know! I just scrolled through my check-ins until the answer turned up, in red and white, complete with map. Turns out it was less than a kilometer from the house.

I am apparently the only Yelper currently active in the West Queen West area, though. Eight weeks of trying to track my own movements has netted me a handful of Dukedoms, on just about every place I’ve been more than twice. True, I’d been auditioning a lot of coffee houses, looking for the all important remote work site, but still!

Speaking of apps, the one that counts the number of days I’ve been here would also like you all to know it’s 160 days until December 25th.

Toronto seems to have more work-at-cafe culture than Vancouver. A lot of places are jammed with computer-using busy people by as early as ten, and there’s a very serious air about it.

Also, they seem to think you should be tall. One of the reason for all the auditioning was I kept finding perfectly nice places whose tabletops were too high for me to either write long hand or safely type.

Seriously! In the end, I had to go to MEC and buy an inflatable camping pillow. Which I now carry in my portable office along with all my other carp! How crazed is that?

Toronto Transition, now with more skunk

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It’s day fifty-nine of my residency here in Toronto, and the heat has come. Right this second the weather channel claims that it’s 31 degrees and feels like 38. If we had “feels like” in Vancouver, it’s news to me. I am too new at this to mind–I like heat, and since our house has AC I can get out of it whenever I like.

Today on my way home from the cafe I stopped to iPhotograph one of the neighbors, who appeared to be cooling off in a very whimsical garden pond on Tecumseth Street:
Stinky is trapped in the neighbour's fountain. Me and some construction dudes built him a bridge to safety.

It was all very idyllic and summery, despite the slight risk of getting stench-bombed. But by the time I’d taken a few pictures, I’d realized Stinky was actually trapped down there, and trying to reach the rocks so he could get out.

And, you know. OMG. Skunk! I thought: am I really going to do anything about this?

Apparently I am that much of an idiot. I mooched a board from the construction site across the street and risked being made a toxic waste dump to lay it out for the little dude. It was too short. But the construction guys were so nice! They brought me an enormous two-by-four, and watched me set it up for him, and didn’t once put out a “We’re waiting for the physical comedy punchline where you get sprayed” vibe.

After we’d made the improvised bridge, we gave the little guy some privacy. He didn’t seem all that bright, but I figured that at least he had a chance, now, to get out of the water. I sure hope he does, because if I walk past there tomorrow and see his wee floating body, I’ll start pondering whether I need to carry elbow-length leather weasel-wrangling gloves in my writing kit. And probably also cry.

In the meantime, hurrah–I didn’t get sprayed.

Toronto Transition, Day Fifty

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Saturday was our fiftieth day here in the big city, and I am definitely beginning to have a sense of things having settled. The apartment is squared away and I’m finding some satisfying routines. I’m starting to feel, for Downward Dog, the first wisps of the deep affection I felt for Open Door Yoga in Vancouver.

The landscapes are still incredibly new, of course. There is no place I can go where I’ve seen and noticed everything. By chance we spent both this past Saturday and the one before walking north up Bathhurst Street . . . and on the most recent jaunt, I saw this, which I’d totally missed the first time.

For some reason, @kormantic, this makes me think of you.

I’m building up my mental maps of the neighborhood, but there’s an enormous novelty factor. It’s exciting, because there’s always something new to see. Touristy, you know? But it also means there’s rarely a moment where I can lapse into walking on auto-pilot.

In other news, my latest session of Creating Universes, Building Worlds has opened up at the UCLA Writers’ Extension Program. (I didn’t announce registration this time simply because class filled so quickly.) I’m looking forward to meeting a new crop of writers and seeing what they write this summer.

Finally, and on a related topic, I’m not doing the Clarion West Write-a-Thon. I love this event, but the things I need to accomplish right now don’t lend themselves well to a Thon.

Drug dealers in my new ‘hood

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One of the things that is weird about Toronto is that there are no London Drugs stores. A result of this seems to be that there’s a Shoppers Drug Mart on every third block, at least downtown.

More Shoppers than you can shake a stick at...

Inside many (if not all) of these fine pharmaceutical outlets is a cash machine for my bank and a stub of a Canada Post.

Despite this reality, there seems to be an actual branch of my bank strategically placed between the Shoppers. The’ve divvied up the city. The branches have bigger cash machines with more exciting menu options, and seem incredibly under-used. Every time I’ve gone into one–moving makes you bank a lot–the receptionist has swooped in on me like a hungry grizzly hittin’ the salmon run hard, cheerfully determined that Holy shit, this client came in here to utilize one of our services! and then helped me to find a wildly bored bank teller, cunningly concealed behind what passes for a wicket these days, usually within spitting distance and clear sight of the main doors.

It’s perhaps worth noting that I’ve been successfully finding bank tellers in their natural habitat since the Seventies without the assistance of wild-eyed chirpy twenty-somethings. I really hope it’s worth noting, anyway, because I actually couldn’t help saying so the second time it happened.

What’s really weird or perhaps comical about this situation, though, is that even though there are at least twenty-five Shoppers within an hour’s walk of my apartment (I didn’t count the bank branches) and even though I walk past at least two of them every single effing day no matter where I’m going, I am wildly excited that there’s going to be one opening on the ground floor of my shiny new still-under-construction condo building. Every day I attempt to peer through the paper on its windows and guess how much longer!

I actually dreamed somebody told me it wouldn’t open until October, and I was angry to hear it. Pissed off, argumentative angry. “That’s a lie! They’re stocking now!”

I’ve come to the conclusion that this is because the presence of a pharmacy in a Shoppers doesn’t change the fact that what it really is is a high-end convenience store. Of course I want a postal outlet directly underfoot. A bank machine? Sure! Why should I have to walk 250 meters to get money? They also have overpriced milk, and greeting cards, and umbrellas and the mittens I keep losing, and gift cards for major e-commerce sites, and lipstick, and one of the frozen entrees Kelly takes to work.

If it’s convenience they’re selling, this insanity makes sense. Because the closer they are, the more convenience I’m getting, right?

It’s either that or maybe they shoot “Love Us and Spend Money Here, Alyx,” mind-control high-beams out of their illuminated signs.

Watery Wanderings

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The tall ship festival made for a fun morning. It would have been worth it just to finally make it to the shores of Lake Ontario, after five weeks in the city without a glimpse of water. The harbour is very pretty, and I could see Billy Bishop Airport and Toronto or maybe Ward island.

I shot my first Toronto cormorant, paddling in the fresh water:

My first #toronto cormorant. In fresh water and everything!

The ships were fun to tour. I didn’t pick up anything I hadn’t learned on my day sail with S.A.L.T.S., but I did learn about an organization called Sisters Under Sail, and am contemplating whether my next research sail might be with them. In the meantime, I’ve bought their T-shirt.