Fun in Toronto

Photo: Lillian Allen in top square with student Reena in art installation

The book tour takes me to Toronto where I will be doing two readings this week. Of course I had to come a few days earlier to reconnect with friends and family here. For the first part of my time here I stayed with my friends Shelley and Peter. Shelley and I went to school together and we spent several days going through our old high school yearbooks. More memories and finding out what has happened to old friends, which seems to be the theme of this trip.

Lillian Allen is another long time friend in Toronto whose daughter Anta had just turned twenty-nine and invited me to her birthday lunch. I have known Anta since she has been a very little girl and it is with so much pleasure that I observe her becoming such a capable, lovely, intelligent woman.

I was lucky to be in Toronto for the 5th Annual Nuit Blanche, which starts at 6:57 pm (I didn't make this up) and goes until sunrise. The people take over the streets; Yonge Street and others were blocked off to cars, chock full of pedestrians ready to party. Nuit Blanche is described thusly: "For one sleepless night experience Toronto transformed by artists". There are art installations throughout the city and the streets are full of people walking about, laughing, enjoying themselves, eating food from the many stands in the street, crowding around different installations. It is really a big street party. Lillian and I wandered for hours. Almost every person was either talking on a cell phone or holding one, as in fact, the Nuit Blanche information booklet encouraged people to go online on their phones to stay connected. It's a different world out there.

We walked over to the Ontario College of Art and Design University, where Lily teaches. There was a large art installation on a wall of a building - one of Lillian's students, Reena, was filmed live from somewhere inside the building and her face was projected on the wall. "Volunteers" would then come into an outside booth and be projected in a little square on her main feed. Reena called it the empathic booth - she would read four protest chants and the volunteer would identify which one she or he most identified with and then would "perform" it. Reena was delighted when Lillian showed up in the booth and made sure the audience all knew that they were dealing with one of Canada's premier dub poets. Lillian did not disappoint - she was masterful with her protest chant.

We walked for hours until the crowd became more drunken young men than people out for a party and then we left. The feeling in the streets had changed and the beer bottles were much more visible now. It was time to go home.

Spent the next morning at a family brunch hosted by my cousin David where I saw relatives and friends I hadn't seen for twenty or thirty years. Then the rest of the day and evening was spent with Trish - a friend from Calgary whom I had "lost" in the very early '90's and hadn't seen since. I just found her again a few months ago and was delighted to talk with her, share oysters and a few drinks and a delicious French meal and catch up on the last few decades. I also bonded with her dog, Finn; I miss my Reenie so much I think I would bond with a stone if it reminded me of my dog. Finn really was a lovely little critter.

The next day I found out that not only had I been on the Winnipeg bestseller list for three weeks but I was now #3 on the Calgary non-fiction bestseller list. How cool is that! The tour continues.....