I just went to Trinity-Bellwoods Park on Queen West, where there was a gathering of redheads. It was an event organised by a couple of filmmakers—Gareth C. Scales and Aaron Champion—for an upcoming documentary about life as a ginger, so I thought I’d go check it out.
Unfortunately, the weather took a turn for the worse this weekend, after weeks of hot and sunny weather; just as I got there on my bike, the skies opened and the rain started to pour down!
My redheaded childhood
There must have been around 50 or so people there at the time, many of whom stood out from the crowd because of their fiery hair. Even though there weren’t as many redheads there as I’d originally expected, still I’d never before seen as large a number of gingers gathered together in one spot, at one time.
I noticed the filmmakers wandering through the different groups of people, microphones in hand and cameramen in tow, interviewing various subjects for the doc, and I would’ve stayed longer myself (I wouldn’t have minded having a cameo role in the film, to quickly talk about my experience growing up as a redhead) if it hadn’t been for the crappy weather. We redheads are, after all, supposedly a dying breed, so it’s only fair to document us for posterity while we’re still around!
Once it started raining, however, I noticed a growing number of people making their way out of the park. So I decided to leave too, and stopped instead at a local coffee shop to seek shelter, write this quick post, and ponder our potential extinction.
One time, I went to see a fortune teller just for the hell of it. She told me that I was married to a beautiful woman for many years, but that we were now divorced and had two children; a boy and a girl. Then, after looking at my lifeline, she told me I was going to live well into my 90s.
I can definitely say that the first two divinations were in no way true, but I’d like to think she got that last part right! Either way, I guess I was always skeptical about such things, but I was at least willing to reserve judgment until having tried it.
As you can no doubt tell, my skepticism remains.
Some people unfortunately believe what they’re told by these so-called tellers and psychics, and the results can be very unpleasant indeed – as Leilani dos Santos found out the hard way.
As Wednesday morning came and I got ready for work, I looked out the window to check if there would be any rain in store for Toronto. The sky looked clear, and it seemed there was no threat of wet weather today. However, what definitely was in store as I looked outside was a pair of young raccoons on the tarp-covered rooftop terrace. They were in a very playful mood, rolling around the deck having an early morning wrestling match.
They may be considered pests by most people, but they are damn cute at that age. I managed to capture them on video.
I’m going for my first cello lesson in a few minutes. I rented a 4/4 Yamaha from Long & McQuade and have booked a series of lessons at a local music school. I’m not sure what to expect from this first lesson, but I hope it’ll be interesting and that, overall, the whole process will be a voyage of discovery for me.
Toronto is getting ready for the 2010 G20 Summit, taking place over the June 26-27 weekend. Over the past few weeks we’ve noticed an increased police presence around the city, especially in our own neighbourhood in the West End. On a number of occasions we’ve rented a car to do the odd chore here and there, and as we’ve been driving around we’ve noticed lots of training exercises and maneuvers involving police motorcycles and black limos.
Walking down King Street West over the weekend, we saw what appeared to be another such training exercise; one of the biggest we’ve seen so far. I managed to record some of it on my phone, but I only thought to do so halfway through the procession of cars and motorcycles, so it was way more impressive at the time than the actual video depicts.
We went out for bike ride on Sunday, trying to find the entrance to a new bike path named the West Toronto Railpath. It took us about 20 minutes to wend our way through the West End until we finally reached Landsdowne, which is where the website map shows the (supposed) southern end of the path. If you decide to go check it out yourself, however, I’d advise you to take no notice of the map and instead go directly up to Dundas Street West from Landsdowne, then head west over the railway bridge until you see the signage on your right. Otherwise, you might end up riding around the neighbourhood like we did, trying to find the elusive entrance.
We eventually did find the trail, after searching for 30 minutes or so and having asked a very nice young lady for directions. It ain’t easy to spot, let me tell you that…
As we were riding around, we came across a cordoned-off street named Shirley. We could see residents walking up and down the street, bending down every now and then to arrange something on the ground, so we decided to get off our bikes and walk along to see what was happening. It looked like some sort of local festival, maybe a religious one of some sort, as people went along the whole stretch of the street pouring multi-coloured petals into wood frames, before patting down the petals and removing the frames to reveal a series of stylized patterns and shapes.
It looked very nice, as we walked the length of the street-long piece.
A colleague of mine is having an adventure of a lifetime at the moment – he’s cycling all the way across Canada to raise money for the Griffin Centre, a non-profit, charitable, mental health agency providing essential services to youth, adults and their families in Ontario.
Martin started a blog to record his journey from the West to East Coast, and in it he writes about his experiences, as well as uploading photos taken at various points along the way.
He’s hoping to get 7,300 km under his belt in around 3 months! Good luck Martin, it’s a great cause.
I went to Urban Dog near the Distillery District on Sunday, to pick up a pooch for some friends who were away at a wedding. As I was walking by one of the entrances to the District, I saw some public art on display there; a large sheet metal figure named Koilos by Michael Christian.
I enjoy walking through a city where artwork like this is available for all to see. I think this particular piece is quite cool and worth posting photos here.
Walking home last night after work, I tried to stay on the sunny side of the street as much as possible. Even though the weather is warming up, there’s still a chill in the air and keeping in the sun makes for a more pleasant stroll through the city.
My mobile sunbathing technique took me along King East and down Front Street, keeping to the south side. As I was heading west, I noticed clumps of people here and there up ahead of me, all looking up. As my gaze followed theirs, I was surprised to see a huge plume of smoke in the distance, just beyond the CN Tower and towards the lakeshore. At this point I had no idea what was happening, other than the obvious fact that a large fire was underway. Almost immediately, sirens started to sound and fire crews began to speed by in their trucks.
I took a picture. Actually, I took a few. It was the least I could do as my more dramatic side kicked in and I began to imagine this day going down in Canadian history as our very own 9/11!
Thankfully the terrorist scenario turned out not to be the case. When I got to my local pub closer to home, I found out that the top floor of a condo on Queen’s Quay had caught fire and the resulting plume was what we all saw. The smoke, however, was quite short-lived as the city’s emergency services went into action!
There were reports of no fatalities and only two injuries in the fire.
Click on the pictures below to see how exciting my life is on the way home from work.
I saw a new water feature on the way to work this morning, and it wasn’t the latest installation at the Toronto Sculpture Garden. Walking along Front Street approaching Frederick, I saw that the whole intersection there had been cordoned off. City Hydro workers were milling around, taking stock of whatever was happening in the middle of the intersection. As I got closer, I saw a series of sink holes running east to west through the middle of the road, with water welling up out of each of the holes.
I was born in England, spent part of my childhood in Zambia and eventually immigrated to Canada. This is a blog about my life, my thoughts, current events, and the occasional post here and there about my cats. I think that covers it all.
