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.
WALKING WOMAN 