Lawrence Park Chronicles, Part 2

Be sure to check the first installment before reading the following.

Certainly, this man was not the first homeless person in Lawrence Park. Over the years, many vagrants walked up and down Yonge Street swathed in their mottled coats, strained track pants and multi layered coats. And, curiously, always in an apparent hurry to get somewhere.

For instance, there is one man, who, over the years, has grown an extensive crop of dreadlocks on his head. These are not the type of dreadlocks that many of the teenagers at Lawrence Park Collegiate Institute sport after they return home from summer camp where they discovered Bob Marley's "Legend" album for the first time. No, when he walked, he was trailed by a vile stench of urine, not patchouli. No one knows where he came from, or where he was going, but he never stayed in the area.

That was the significant part. The man now sitting on the bench was sticking around. Toronto has thousands living in and out of shelters, but they roam an eight block radius, far far away from here.

Our new resident took up residence on a wooden bench in front of the stone wall of the local library on Yonge Street. Day and night, he would stare out at the incessant traffic starting and stopping with the lights. Sometimes, when I passed him on the way to the subway, he would be slumped over, asleep. Strangely, he never lay down.

With the traffic coming and going at all hours, men going to work in their suits, nannies, joggers, dogs, and party-bound kids, he was the only person in the area not doing anything.

Lawrence Park is not the place to be idle. You have to be doing something. If you were not fully employed 40 hours a week, you should sign up for Hot Yoga in the afternoons, go for lunch at the club, take a course in literature, or head off to the garden club to glue together more scented topiaries to give away at Christmas. If finding a job is a problem, you can take a few career development courses that will help you find the ideal path.

Or you could volunteer at a charity. You know, give back to the world. Many neighbours sit on the board of charities dedicated to diseases and ailments for almost every part of the body: lungs, heart, breasts, prostate, colon, nerves, joints, eyes, and ears. You can organize the black-tie balls or hand out water at the annnual marathon. It provides a corporate setting for selfless acts of charity. You don’t have to get your hands dirty.

But our new neighbour had very dirty hands. I learned this when I finally decided that I should go over and talk to him…

(more to come)

Lawrence Park Chronicles

As I have moved from my family home into a new apartment, I have come to reflect upon where I just came from. For the last two years, I have been living at the home where I grew up. Now I am back living in conditions more fit to my level (sporadic at best) of income. This has made me think about my area - and a strange incident that recently happened.

Want to take a tour?

I grew up almost textbook privileged. Our neighbourhood, Lawrence Park, is north of downtown Toronto, just off the subway line. It is an area buffered from the hubbub of traffic by a lush system of ravines and parks, some manicured with exotic flowers, rose plantations, sculpted Junipers, and wrought iron fences, and flagstone embankments.

On weekends, the nearby streets are filled with stretched limos and fleets of Lincoln’s because entire wedding party's come here from afar to take the photos in the landscaped paradise. Fights have occurred between time-pressed grooms.

Early weekday mornings, men in dark suits stroll to work with a brief case in one hand, a rolled-up up newspaper in the other. Hours later, their children will arrive, attended by Philippine women whilst the parents are downtown at work (to afford for the privilege to work away from home). These foreign minders, chat among themselves while the kids play with sand. The retired ladies and gentlemen, meanwhile, occupy the tennis and lawn bowling greens in regulation white shorts and knee socks.

By the evening, the parents arrive home, and run through the park in groups of five or six with matching tights and reflective rain jackets. They are followed by an uncanny pack of Golden Retrievers with names like Becky and Bailey. They saunter home with a Starbucks in their hand (half-caf, no-fat, no foam, latte with a pump of vanilla). Late at night, their wayward teens huddle in the shadows, passing around a joint.

These parks not only raise the property values, they create an other-worldly sense that you are leaving the fascist concrete grid system.

Now walk up the streets, past the park.

Tall, mature maples shade our stately homes, arts-and crafts revival stuff with brick and stucco. Beautiful German cars or Ford Explorers (Eddie Baur edition) endow the interlocking stone driveways. Everyone has their own half acre of highly taxed real-estate with imported stones. These homes are in a constant state of improvement – van and trucks line the streets to install new kitchens and bathrooms.

In the summer, armies of brown men in pickup trucks mow the emerald grass. At night the automatic sprinklers put-put-put to undo the daily wilt. In the fall, the men blow away leaves; in the winter, they blow away snow.

Of course, if you knock in the door on the weekends, no one will answer the door because the residents are at their Muskoka cottages or the Collingwood chalet. It is a ghost town with the hum of air conditioners and programmed lights set to go off to 'scare' away burglars (I recorded these crickets to demonstrate).

The people in these homes are true professionals. My closest neighbours consist of a doctor, a lawyer, a lawyer, a lawyer, an investment banker, a university president, an opera singer, a CEO of a major bank, a president of an oil company, a stock broker, a stock broker. Their children are all in training, wisked off in kilts and ill-fitting blazers to private school, then to skating lessons at the club after class.

Even though there is not one non-white person within five kilometers, in the most multicultural city in world, Lawrence Park has some diversity: our neighbours are half-Jewish.

Although “neighbour” is not really a good word. In most countries, your "neighbours" help you with the children, lend you an egg, or come over for company. Not here. With so much to do, there is no time to chat with that person you sometimes glimpse taking out the garbage in a bathrobe.

But these are not bad people and cannot be faulted for much. It is a peaceful place; a tranquil home to raise children. A dream, really.

The only violent incident happened when an elderly couple was murdered at their chalet by a local vagrant from Barrie. He packed the man and wife into the trunk of their car and left them in the driveway of their home down the street. Thankfully, however, the house still sold at fair market value.

Then a few weeks ago, a most curious thing happened. It was early in the morning, as the men where going to work, when on a park bench appeared a man with a knotted beard who wore a hooded sweatshirt. By the afternoon he was still there. In the evening he was still there. The next morning he was still there. A week later, it was clear he was not going anywhere.

Lawrence Park's newest resident didn’t have a home or a job…

(stay tuned)

Chicken, Scientology, Coffee, and Math

I have moved. I have a new home. For two months anyway. I am subletting a room from the drummer of a famous band whilst he stays at the Scientology celebrity centre in Hollywood, California. I am on the second floor of a two storey building on the corner of a busy intersection. My window overlooks a small back alley with garbage bins and boxes. Next door is a Portugese chicken restaraunt, its massive oven fans blow during the day. White noise, while walls. At night I smelll chicken. Below, is a coffee shop. When I wake up it smells like Americanos.

Since the room came fully furnished, I have a double bed and a bookshelf fileed with Scientology DVDs, books, binders, and assorted nick nacks.

Ironically, this room, fifteen years ago used to be office space. What business? A dour, red-headed math tutor name Ms. Empy. Who did she tutor in grade six because he was terrible at math? Me. Yes, in this very room.

At 10am, I heard noise in the alley. I looked out. A ring of teenagers were huddled around a joint. Baked chicken, baked brains. Ms. Empy would not have been impressed.

Maybe I can hand out a few Scientology books.

K'naan on Violence

What's it like when journalists always ask you about your history with violence in Somalia? You are often protrayed as knowing "true" gangsterism as opposed to the rappers on MTV...

My knowing violence is not an accomplishment to me—I never use it to say this is tougher or anything, nor my survival is an accomplishment. What does that say if my survival is an accomplishment? Does that mean that my friends that died and didn’t survive are less accomplished? That’s the thing that bothers me when they are written in that form.

You can now read the entire interview on Chart Magazine

K'naan Questions

K'naan is Canada's latest hip hop phenomenon. Born in Somalia, he learned to shoot a gun at age 8, faced a firing squad (and survived), and left the country on very last commercial flight out. Now settled in Toronto, he recorded his first album this year to much acclaim from people like Mos Def and other American rap artists. In an industry dominated by faux-gangsterism, he puts things in perspective. When they talk about guns, K'naan talks about rocket propelled grenades. And he's a great interview. Soft spoken, easy to giggle. Here's one of his answers during our chat over the phone last week:

What skill have you learned from your days growing up that has help you survive in this business?

That the philosophy that life is parallel with death. That there is no real from the two. What that does for you as a human being is it takes away the factor of -- I am fortunate that I am not afraid of much. And that is what I was given from my growing up. I'm in the position that there is no way to lose-- you put out what you want and feel what you want to feel and I'm not afraid of losing any because there is nothing to lose if I live by death.

Laura Madera

"Canadian Painting" means "The Group of 7" and their associated admirers like Emily Carr, Arthur Shilling or Gaston Rebry. When these artists were paddling through Algonquin and the arctic in their canoes, impressionism and modernism had suddenly come to the Canadian wilderness. These paintings came to represent the very essence of Canadian identity-- even if by force.

Today, this movement adorns coffee tables and bookshelves around the world.

But painting trees and forests has become a bit tiresome, no matter how beautiful (Tom Thompson's West Wind for example). But painters like Laura Madera, have come to represent Canada's landscape and how it has changed in 100 years: from big woods to big box stores.

We still have great forests, but for most Canadians (who are mostly urban) stores and roads are the landscapes. Areas around downtown cores are built without much purpose or any sense of design. Certainly no community or organic sense of purpose other than commerce.

However, this is where Laura Madera (of Vancouver) decided to set up her easel. By painting concrete and metal, she uncovers something beautiful, yet sadly so. In fact, despite the blandness of the surroundings, people live in these places, human drama occurs.

Check out some of the paintings: http://www.lauramadera.com/recentp.html