9 November 2025 – Another downtown alley, another grimy shed in a downtown alley, the usual casual scrawls and scars.
Amidst all that, I suddenly realize, eleven neatly lettered words.
Echoes of old strife, rage, pain and loss.
Echoes, also, of love and enduring hope for another chance.
Posted by icelandpenny on 9 November 2025
https://icelandpenny.com/2025/11/09/echoes-in-the-alley/
26 October 2025 – A double pun, both parts inspired by what I see, this drizzle-rich day, at the VanDusen Botanical Garden.
One part, the Michael Dennis cedar sculptures visible from the forecourt, which I always enjoy…
but whose title I always forget. I have to read it anew each visit: Confidence, says the label, Western red cedar, 2012.
Truth to tell, I don’t quite understand this title.
Dennis’ cedar sculpture for Guelph Park was called Reclining Figure, a name that made obvious sense — though also a name that disappeared from popular memory when the piece was recast in bronze, nicknamed The Dude, and in turn caused the park itself to become known as Dude Chilling Park. (But that is another story, and one I’ve already told you.)
To me, this Van Dusen duo look more contemplative than confident. Pffft, who cares? Confidence is an admirable characteristic, so let’s run with it. Confidence in my outerwear to be as waterproof as it claims, for example… confidence in nature’s transitions each season… confidence in the bones and installations of this Garden to be of interest, whatever the season, whatever the weather.
Confidence immediately justified. This is what greets me, as I start northward along the west side of Livingstone Lake.
Contrasts in the slopes to my left, fall textures and colours at play against the deep green of the coniferous background.
Sculptural details, in seed pods I can’t identify…
and in a curious fall fruit that I can, namely the Common Medlar (Mespilus germanica).
Then, just before I reach the footbridge that divides Livingstone Lake from Heron Lake, I see this enormous leaf on the ground before me.
Which I can also identify, and which sets me looking for more.
This is a Gunnera leaf — Gunnera manicata, aka Giant Chilean Rhubarb, and worthy of the adjective. One leaf can be a couple of metres wide, clumps run 3-plus metres high and 3-4 metres across. There are great clusters of this plant around the inter-zone of these two lakes.
The plant towers over visitors all summer long.
In fall, it is cut back…
and its leaves inverted, to protect plant crowns from winter temperatures.
I’m properly awed by Gunnera in summer, I giggle at it in winter.
Giant pixie caps!
I’m across the foot bridge now, looking north into Heron Lake, taking in the whole sweep of autumn complexity, from desiccated russet stalks at my feet to flaming trees in the distance. So rich.
Also, in places, so denuded.
I follow the sweep of this dug-over flower bed, past that uprooted tree, and come to a signpost that promises me the most extraordinary amount of choice: both seasonal and geographic.
Here’s where the other part of my punning post title kicks in. I am offered a stroll, and I take it. Specifically, at this point, an autumn stroll in Eastern North America.
Yes. It is very all-of-that.
A side trail loops me past the Cypress Pond, and brings me out once again to the south-east curve of Livingstone Lake.
Where I rejoin the Confidence couple.
I too have confidence — confidence they watch over their lake, just as The Dude watches over his park.
I take my leave.
Posted by icelandpenny on 26 October 2025
https://icelandpenny.com/2025/10/26/strolling-with-confidence/
23 October 2025 – I had a much longer title in mind. To wit: “Above/Below/In Front/Behind/Then/Now/Here/There… and All the In-betweens.” Aren’t you glad I restrained myself?
That verbal onslaught is prompted by yet another walk along the north shore of False Creek, from foot of Davie east to Main. More specifically, prompted by this:
I only now, after all these years, bother to learn that this artsy structure has a name. It is one of the two shelters + glass panels that comprise Lookout (Dikeakos + Best, 1999), which traces the natural & industrial history of the area and is an early contribution to the public art we enjoy on both sides of the water.
You can spread the image, read the keywords panel by panel — or just read this paragraph! L to R: “box cars, flat cars, tank cars” / “dining cars, sleeping cars” / “… the yard master makes a train…” / [then a panel written to be read from the other side] / “all built and all rebuilt” / “gone and a thousand things leave, not a trace” / “lumber co yards, islets of gravel.”
I climb up to the street, take a closer look at the inscribed and silhouette steel uprights, also part of the story.
Natural + industrial history indeed, from “mudflats” upper left to “red caboose” lower right.
Then I check the panel meant to be read from this, the street, side:
This one you can read for yourselves. And, given all these prompts, you can also take a stab at imagining “as if it were” all still present as it used to be.
What you will have trouble reading, even if you spread the image, is the black-lettered graffito neatly inked in just below “across the waters.” It says: “build a washroom.”
I think this is perfect. An interjection of a “now” reality in a tribute to “then.”
It is also a further prompt to do what I do every time I pass this installation, with its invitation to remember the past, superimpose it on the present, build it into my understanding of how much more is still Here-And-Now than is Right-Now visible. Every time, my mind flips back, vaguely but insistently, to Italo Calvino’s 1972 book, Invisible Cities. As one astute reviewer observed, the novel is “a travelogue to places that do not exist.” It also invites us to think more richly about how we define “exist.” (Side nod to the wise fox, who taught The Little Prince, “What is essential is invisible to the eye.”)
I am primed, in other words, to read above, below and ‘way inside the everyday sights that greet me as I walk.
Jerry Pethick’s Time Top sculpture, for example, that invites us to imagine a time top spinning across the galaxy…
to crash-land on the shores of the Pacific Ocean, right here…
or the blue bands of A False Creek (Rhonda Weppler, Trevor Mahovsky), that invite us to imagine what all this will look like if climate change indeed causes ocean levels to rise 4-6 metres…
and, right next to it, another interjection of a “now” reality, again in the form of a polite and neatly lettered graffito. This one, beneath the No Dogs Allowed notice there on the right, yanks our attention back to the present. “Clean The Water,” it snaps.
I stop my fancy metaphysics for a moment, offer myself a simple contrast between sky-high…
and shoreline…
then, sideways, a panorama of nature, reminding us that it invented fall colours long before built structures began to emulate them…
followed by, at my feet, the tight focus of a single fallen leaf…
reminding us that diversity, whether in or out of political favour, is the building-block reality of life.
However pure green this leaf long appeared to be, all these other colours were woven into it right from the start and are equally part of it. As are (side nod to Thich Nhat Hanh and the concept of interbeing) sunlight, water and soil, plus all the nutrients of those three elements as well, all of which made the existence of this leaf possible.
Quite literally, the universe in a single leaf.
Enough. I think I’m done. But, no.
There is one more juxtaposition. One more interweaving. One more dance to vibrate my own little world, as I walk on by.
Upper right: nature’s wasp nest. Lower left: street-guy’s sneakers. Both at home in the tree. A tree shedding its leaves, itself at home with the cycles of the universe.
I laugh, shed my pomposity, and take myself home.
Posted by icelandpenny on 23 October 2025
https://icelandpenny.com/2025/10/23/and-all-the-in-betweens/
18 October 2025 – A wonderful bit of British slang: the verb “to grizzle.” It describes the act of complaining or whining, at a low decibel level, but continuing on and on and forever-bloody-on. Which makes it such a lovely companion, in more than rhyme scheme, for the verb “to drizzle.” It describes the act of rain that falls at a low intensity level, but also continues on and on and forever-bloody-on.
This afternoon, for example.
I am equipped for the latter, and reject the former. — like most Vancouverites, I hasten to add. We know where we live.
Scotia Street seems an appropriate start for a drizzle-walk.
It overlaps with the final stretch of Brewery Creek, which, in the days when it had not yet been sewered, ran into the east end of False Creek, which had not yet been filled in.
Grey sky & low visibility along Scotia, but colours pop, both autumnal foliage and seasonal umbrellas.
Ditto the red truck marking the Red Truck Beer Company, down there where Scotia ends (or starts) at East 1st Avenue. Beyond the brewery yard, I can see dim outlines of the lowest level of the mountains to the north, but nothing higher up, only the drizzling sky.
The mountain peaks may be hiding, but not us Vancouverites. As I turn onto 1st Avenue, a stream of people erupts from the Crossfit BC doorway opposite, and starts pelting on down the street ahead of me.
By the time I’ve walked another block, I start meeting them on their return trip. Apparently this is just the warm-up for an indoor class.
I veer through False Creek Flats, filled in originally to provide land for railway-oriented industry and warehouses. The area is morphing into a new post-industrial life centred around digital media, clean technologies, medical research & the like, but the transformation is not complete. Sodden skies suit the still-gritty streets that lie beneath them.
Farther west, I twine my way first around the pollinator meadows lining the Ontario Street bioswale, where logs and their tiny fungi gleam brown and gold…
and then among the condos just off Quebec Street, where the gleam is metallic but equally appropriate. When could suit a fountain sculpture (Eyes On The Street, Marie Khouri & Charlotte Well) better, than a drizzling sky?
By the time I am walking along West 2nd Avenue…
I am prepared to concede that the sky is no longer drizzling. It is raining. Same visual impact — just look how that orange traffic light spills on down the street, bouncing from one puddle to the next — but damn, there’s nothing “low-level” about this.
(A passing woman & I grin at each other in mutual approval: we are each snug in waterproof clothing, and therefore spurn umbrellas.)
In Olympic Village Plaza, one of Myfanwy MacLeod’s The Birds sculptures tilts his stainless steel head to the elements…
Canada Geese bend their feathered heads to rich pickings in the grass (the mountains have now totally disappeared)…
and the cast-iron cycle of eggs/tadpoles/frogs on the storm sewer cover (Musqueam artists Susan Point and daughter Kelly Connell)…
is completely and perfectly at home in the dancing rain.
Meanwhile, the human beings at the street corner…
look distinctly less comfortable.
I am quite sufficiently comfortable, thank you, since only my outer layer is wet.
But, even so… I call it a day.
I may not grizzle, but I do know when I’ve had enough drizzle.
Posted by icelandpenny on 18 October 2025
https://icelandpenny.com/2025/10/18/drizzle-no-grizzle/
13 October 2025 – It is a sodden day. Sodden skies. Sodden streets. Sodden umbrellas over human heads. Sodden feathers atop that pigeon.
A dispirited context, in other words.
All the more reason to enjoy the flamingos.
Which, even though shocking pink…
are “green.”
One less car!
(Only later, looking more closely at the decal, do I notice it is one less car because somebody torched it, not because Rad Power chose to ride a bicycle.)
A final moment of appreciation for the total look, right down to those handsome wooden running boards…
and I go about my business.
Posted by icelandpenny on 13 October 2025
https://icelandpenny.com/2025/10/13/dance-of-the-green-flamingos/
2 October 2025 – I’m over at St. George & East 6th, hunkered down for the view south along this stretch of the St. George Rainway.
Then I pay serious attention to the map — to the lost small-c creek and to the lost big-c False Creek as well, lost when (1915 onward) they filled in the final stretch to create industrial & railway land. I trace my finger along that bright turquoise line, showing us the shoreline that used to be.
I study the 1889 photo…
and then I go study the 2025 reality, from that same Main & 7th intersection.
Well… the mountains are the same!
Posted by icelandpenny on 2 October 2025
https://icelandpenny.com/2025/10/02/then-now/
19 September 2025 – You come back home with fresh eyes for your own city.
I wake up yesterday and, just before 7 a.m., stare awe-struck at the grandeur of clouds drifting above and among the mountains, in a still-opalescent sky.
Aand today, just now, I fall into fits of giggles at the decals on this slightly battered car.
First, the grouping as a whole…
and then, the exquisitely perfect placement of the cat claws vis-à-vis the dings in the car body.
After that I stroll the perimeter of Dude Chilling Park, just ’cause it’s my local park and I love the way The Dude watches over us…
from his perch on the south/east corner of this ordinary patch of grass.
“Ordinary” to the eye, that is — not-very-large rectangle of grass, some trees around, some benches around, and that’s it. But people gravitate, in considerate and companionable ways, and they enjoy themselves and they thrive and they make magic.
Today’s magic: what I find at the south/west corner of the park.
A pop-up street sale is underway, one I’m sure no City authorities ever heard about (let alone licensed) and who cares, because it’s only a few tables and lots of good humour. I learn this young woman has clothes on offer because she’s moving to Rome tomorrow and can’t take everything; I learn this other young woman collects stuff and then moves it on, y’know?; and I learn that grizzled guy, the one with the racks of old LPs, is a Rolling Stones fan. I learn this last factoid because, when I tell him it was a thrill to see the name of jazz great Joe Pass once again, he replies, eyes a-gleam, “With the Stones!” I manage to contain my enthusiasm for the Stones, he ditto for Joe Pass — but we agree in our enthusiasm for Dude Chilling Park.
So there you are.
I am back home.
Posted by icelandpenny on 19 September 2025
https://icelandpenny.com/2025/09/19/grandeur-to-giggles/
14 September – And then, from morning to afternoon, I leave Toronto and land in Vancouver. Here I am, looking through slight drizzle to the mountains, with one last love-letter I want to offer “T.O.” (Tee-Oh, Toronto.)
My T.O., that is, nobody else’s — my own mix of memory and re-discovery, blind to what others would notice, alert to all my own triggers.
Glimpses from streetcars, for example.
A rampart mural by Shalak Attack, which I remember watching her paint, many years ago…
the distinctive two-tone brick and architecture I associate with my own decades in the Cabbagetown neighbourhood, but common to the city in that era…
and Streetcar Dog. Not unique to Toronto, but part of my own memory bank of riding the TTC.
Then there are my re-discoveries on foot, all around the Grange neighbourhood and the Art Gallery of Ontario, where I was for years a volunteer and therefore an area where I came and went, a very great deal.
Bronze turtle watching martial-arts in Butterfield Park, the new-since-my-time refurbishment of the land just east of Grange Park and south of OCAD (Ontario College of Art + Design) University…
Henry Moore’s Large Two Forms, looking very at home in its new home in the reinvented Grange Park, with the brilliant blue rear wall and distinctive Frank Gehry staircase as backdrop…
and, once inside, the soaring glulam arches of the AGO’s front-façade Galeria Italia.
Unchanged, these arches. Ditto, the way the Galeria invites you to look out across Dundas Street. Native son Gehry made sure his design honoured and welcomed the neighbourhood of his childhood as its own visual final wall.
I am in the AGO as much to walk old ground as to see current exhibitions, but in the end I do both.
The Joyce Wieland retrospective, Heart On, speaks not only to my memories of her bursting on the scene, but also to how current she now is, once again.
Wieland was a fierce ’60s-70s feminist and, despite (or perhaps because of) long years in New York, a fierce Canadian patriot as well. She often used the soft “feminine” skills of embroidery or quilting to express strong political convictions.
For example, with her 1970 work, I Love Canada – J’aime Canada.
Awwww. (Twist finger in cheek.) So sweet.
Now read the signage.
And read the embroidered fine print.
Wieland’s narrow definition of Canadian identity is now out-dated — but the rest of her analysis is Elbows-Up contemporary.
Some hours later, I leave the building. I still have more circling and prowling to do.
I check out the S/W corner of Dundas West & McCaul. It is also the N/E corner of the AGO footprint and, in my day, was still home to Moore’s Large Two Forms. For the first time, I see what now sits on that corner — Brian Jungen’s commissioned work, Couch Monster. (Read more, here, in a fine post by our WordPress colleague, Canadian Art Junkie.)
I circle the work, and also take in the larger view, including the top of an old mural by veteran Toronto artist Birdo, now obscured by newer construction and backed by even-newer construction.
Finally, and not with terrifically high hopes, I take myself across Dundas West and into the alley between Dundas and Darcy Street to the north. I am eager but also dreading to see what it’s like, these days. My memory is of an alley bursting with street art, full of the “garage-door art” that I associate with my memories of Toronto.
And…
there it still is. On and on, to the west, beyond the frame of this image. Not exactly as it was, of course not, but alive and current and so-very-T.O.
I turn right on a second, N/S, alley, passing delicate tendrils and other art as I go…
and emerge on Darcy Street.
Where I drink in an enclave of old downtown residential architecture, oh look, some still survives…
and then pivot on my heel to look east down the block. Out to McCaul Street.
Still some old brick homes, and still the spire of St. Patrick’s Church (the 5th-oldest Roman Catholic parish in Toronto) as well — plus the immediate examples of all the new towers now exploding skyward.
There it all is.
The whole jarring/exhilarating, cacophonous/euphonious, forever-evolving symphony of the city.
So T.O.
Posted by icelandpenny on 14 September 2025
https://icelandpenny.com/2025/09/14/so-t-o/
12 September 2025 – More old + new, here in Toronto. The joy of time with old friends and familiar places, but also the joy of discovery.
For example, Biidaasige Park — some 40 hectares once complete, down at the mouth of the Don River and part of an even larger overall program to re-gentle, re-green and detoxify the sprawling Port Lands for what we now understand to be wiser, more multi-purpose and more inclusive use. Read more about Biidaasige (“Bee-daw-SEE-geh” with a hard “g”) on the City‘s website, on an analytical design website, and in her 6 September “As I walk Toronto” post by our WordPress colleague, Mary C.
The park is very much a work in progress, but some elements are already in place. They include several imaginative children’s playgrounds, one of which has as its guardian spirit, Snowy Owl.
Not only is his open tummy a stage for all kinds of child-friendly events, the interior of his body is open to visitors as well. You can walk inside…
and start climbing. Stairs, then ladders, and up you go.
Bang-thwack-ouch! Smack your head a few times and you finally realize the structure is child-scale. You learn to bend and duck accordingly.
Your reward? You get to look out through the Owl’s eyes, across the undulating playground, across Commissioner St. and westward toward downtown.
I scramble back down. We take ourselves off to explore trails down in the marshy areas around the various channels.
I am awestruck. This grubby, much-abused waterfront is being transformed. We lean on the railing of this pedestrian bridge and admire the grace of the new vehicular bridges, the abundant wild greenery along the banks, the habitat all this must offer for so many species. (Plus the knowledge of habitat yet to come, in plans for housing and further human community and settlement as well.)
And then… we move on.
The day is hot, and sunny, and, thanks to on-going park construction, noisy. We want still to be close to nature, but somewhere that offers soothing shade and a lack of noise.
All of which leads us to discover…
Mailbox Spider.
He is only some 4-5 km. away, slightly south-west of Biidaasige Park…
but in a very different world. The world of the Toronto islands.
More specifically and of importance to me, we are on one small island within that larger cluster: Algonquin Island, which is reached by a pedestrian bridge close to the Ward’s Island ferry dock.
Trace your finger over that pedestrian bridge and tap the intersection just off the bridge: Omaha and Ojibway avenues. Got it? Right there on that corner lot, almost invisible within its own mini-forest of trees and shrubbery, there is a white cottage. The white cottage where, 60 years ago, I used to live.
So it’s heavy-duty nostalgia time for me, and my friend is generously indulgent.
We stop, immediately off the bridge, to explore the community take/leave stand. It was active decades ago and, to my delight, is still active now.
A couple of Algonquin residents are near-by, people about my age. We chat, I explain I used to live here, I name a few names and they smile. We three didn’t know each other, but we each knew these other people.
Then, my friend and I, we just weave slowly up and down the narrow, car-free streets. (It is on Ojibway that we meet Mailbox Spider, with his blue cottage tucked away in the rear.)
The atmosphere is leafy, and peaceful. It is now a world of pretty smooth relations between residents and City — the welcome resolution of the long fight by residents and supporters to protect any residential community at all, in the face of the City’s desire to remove everybody and make the entire islands cluster into one big park. Now most of the land mass is park, but residential communities are recognized and stable on both Ward’s and Algonquin.
We reach the foot of Ojibway Avenue, down at Seneca, which runs along the island’s harbour-side waterfront, and offers panoramic views back across the water to the city core.
Including that CN Tower. I gave you only a distant and slivered view in my previous post; here it is, front and centre.
Still on Seneca, a good example of visitor/resident co-existence:
a bench for tourists and residents alike; one of the island’s many art boxes, again for the pleasure of tourists and residents alike — and a hammock in a resident’s front yard. For that family only, thank you!
Finally, my nostalgia satisfied and our minds and bodies refreshed by the peaceful environment…
we board a ferry, and head back to the city.
Posted by icelandpenny on 12 September 2025
https://icelandpenny.com/2025/09/12/snowy-owl-mailbox-spider/
7 September – Continuing my new, but very happy, Winnipeg tradition, I go walkabouts on departure morning. Once again, art comes my way as a result.
I cross the Red River to neighbouring St-Boniface and, just as I’m completing a loop through the neighbourhood, I find myself pulled into a parkette.
By this.
It is Joe Fafard‘s 2011 sculpture, Entre chien et loup — a tribute to the French saying, to this francophone quartier, and to the mystery and energy of transition zones.
By 10:30 pm I’m in the train station, ready to board, eager for our 11:30 departure and all the new sights that will come our way.
Except we don’t promptly board, and we don’t leave at 11:30 pm. Instead, we board at 3:30 am.
By then we are the walking dead. (Including the staff change coming on board with us — just as tired as we are but, unlike us, required to be up and active and even happy-faced just a few hours later.)
I don’t know when we finally leave Winnipeg. I’m asleep.
8 September – When I awake, we are somewhere just over the Ontario border. It’s about 7:30 am, and Groggy Self doesn’t understand why she is awake.
But it’s very pretty, isn’t it? And still very northern-looking.
I could show you lots more photos of boreal forest and lakes. But I won’t! By now you know what they look like. So, instead, imagine you’re with me as I enjoy those stunning views, all day long.
And sunset, near Hornpayne.
9 September – We’re just leaving Washago as I slide up my blind around 7 am, passing a CN work station and a cluster of workers. I’m happy to offer them this tribute: maintaining, scheduling, running trains is hard work. Thank you.
A rusty-but-sturdy little bridge, as we pass Sudbury…
first flashes of fall colour among the trees, here near MacTier…
and also near MacTier, one example of the rocky islands that stud glacial lakes throughout the region. Complete with cottages. (You can see a white one peeking out on the left-hand side of the middle island.)
We’re on the Shield! The glorious, hard-rock Canadian Shield — more than 1 billion years old, and covering a good 50% of Canada’s land mass. Oh, I love this rock. This particular example near Torrance.
We’re now well into the transition from boreal forest to more southern, more deciduous, forest mixtures. Also in transition to gentler, but still water-rich, vistas — creeks, rivulets, rivers, marshy or rock-bordered, and flanked by forest. This particular example, near Severn Bridge.
Solar panels near Washago (northern tip of Lake Couchiching)…
and farmland. We’re back to farmland. This barn, near Brechin (east of Lake Simcoe).
I’ve loved this segment of the trip, dropping us down through Muskoka, one of Ontario’s “cottage country” regions and one where I have many happy memories.
We continue south, and as we enter Toronto, I’m into another rich cache of happy memories.
The tracks here run alongside the east branch of the Don River (just south of Eglinton Avenue East). I clap my hands like a child, in delight. I’ve walked these trails, walked that foot-bridge, stepped across these train tracks. Ohhhh, just look.
The scenery goes on being familiar, and then, as we round into Union Station, I hit old + new.
New construction, new towers — but back there, its silhouette slivered in between the two left-hand buildings, back there is the CN Tower. No longer new, but still iconic: it opened in 1976 and, at 553 metres, reigned as the world’s tallest free-standing structure until 2007.
It’s still handsome. And it still says Toronto.
Here I am.
In Toronto. Land cruise ended, magic beyond belief.
Thank you, all of you, who have crossed the country with me. I’ve enjoyed your company.
Epilogue – I want you to know: by the time we reach Toronto, we have made up all that late-time in Winnipeg. These few passenger trains have so little control over their running time! They share over-burdened train tracks with a great many freight trains — all of which claim priority. When push has to come to shove, as it often does, it’s the passenger train that sits on the siding. This explains why passenger train departure times are meant to be honoured, but arrival times are fiction. “Fiction” in the sense they are not the straight running time; they always have padding built in. Siding-waits are as much part of the trip as every station along the way.
Posted by icelandpenny on 9 September 2025
https://icelandpenny.com/2025/09/09/land-cruise-7-9-september/
WALKING WOMAN 