Whoville

Photo by: mirandaceleste

When I think of the Welsh and Wales, I think of the Whos of Dr. Seuss' Whoville in the Grinch Who Stole Christmas. Specifically, those in the 1960s animated television show. The Grinch has taken everything away, all the tinsel and trappings, yet the Whos don't skip a beat, they don't even notice, and they gather together in the centre of town, hold hands, and sing -- and their singing floats up and up to the sky.

In Cardiff, people walk down the streets laughing, relaxed, shop cheerfully in drugstores, young fathers proudly push their children in strollers. Down at Mermaid Quay, the captain of a tour boat jokes over his mic to a quiet midday Cardiff Bay that his boat can't be missed -- it's the one with the handsome captain.

A businessman walks through Sophia Gardens and stops to pick up a discarded pop can. There is a sense that if a child were in trouble, fifty people would drop everything and run to that child's rescue. Every time I pull out my map on my circuitous bike trips, someone stops to make sure I can find my way.

The Whos melted the icy heartless Grinch, so it's no wonder that depth of sentiment leaves me in a sense of awe.

The very funny travel writer Bill Bryson wrote in Notes From A Small Island -- about a much too short visit to Wales as part of his travels through Great Britain -- that he was endeared, on watching a soap opera in the Welsh language, that the Welsh had no words for 'dirty weekend' and had to revert to English to describe the illicit liaison.

In a well-observed piece for the TimesOnline last year, Hugo Rifkind pondered 'Why Wales Is Suddenly Cool,' and one of the reasons he came up with was that the country hearkens back in a consciously-retro way to simpler times and values.

Jim Byers, travel editor for The Toronto Star, simply says "This place is seriously undersold."

Amen.

journalism

At the end of October, our editor-in-chief of 18 months was guided out the door.

The situation at work has been so dour and restricted and manic during that tenure that those of us who are still there are feeling a little blinded and stunned at the daylight streaming in.

Celebrations and therapeutic dart games have ensued.

Still, the distaste for all that can be bad and wrong about this industry, on top of the disintegration of the industry itself as any of us know it, is leading many of us planning 'exit strategies.'

tenby, little town of the fishes

Tenby, Pembrokeshire, Wales

Top to bottom:
1. S. Beach, low tide
2-4. N. Beach
5. S. Beach, high tide

rhythm of life

My recent stay in Cardiff has set my mind on moving there.

So much to do now, it is mind-boggling. I am hoping I can be there by next September. This trip was very helpful in making me feel I can do it -- one small step at a time.

The place feels like home in every way, and I feel I can get work there. It doesn't have to be in the media (newspaper journalism is crumbling worldwide). I look forward to just living and working and being part of a community. On the side, if it presents itself, BBC Wales is there as something to play at.

It won't cost me more to live there than here, and most places there come furnished, so I 'simply' need to get myself down to basics, basics and throw things out, give things away, sell things, and put the rest in storage.

All of this has to be finetuned, of course -- but the sense of forward motion is good.

When I was in Cardiff, I followed the advice of Paul Harris, my trusty guide for all things Welsh, and went to sit in on a practice of the Cardiff Arms Club Male Choir. They practice on Mondays and Thursday nights, and because I was there for almost two weeks I went to two of their Monday night practices. So, so amazing.

The first night they were recording a 30 second radio jingle with the BBC for the opening of the John Lewis Cardiff department store in late September. Fascinating to watch that process (fascinating for me -- very repetitive for them).

The second Monday was a regular practice and a group of 20 other Canadians showed up to watch, so the choir put on a bit of a show for us. This group of about 70 men, mostly middleaged and older, unspectacular in many ways, opened their mouths and filled the air with life. The sun outside the large picture windows was setting and silhouetting the empty, dark stadium and light clouds, and inside these voices swung high and low and interplayed.

Since my return to Toronto, I've attended a performance of the Toronto-Welsh Male Voice Choir, who I also heard last March. I didn't think they were very good then. Maybe it was the venue, because this time they sounded good indeed. And they performed Rhythm of Life -- a song I heard in Cardiff for the first time and loved immediately. This performance by last year's runners-up in the BBC's Last Choir Standing -- the Welsh Ysgol Glanaethwy -- is remarkable (they would have had my vote.)

Apparently the song is originally from Sweet Charity, and its lyrics probably more adult and cynical than the tune suggests. But the tune, and the listening to it, is full of joy and sure sets one dancing.

Caerdydd -- September 2009

Top to bottom:

People Like Us: sculptor John Clinch

Mermaid Quay, Cardiff Bay

Cardiff Market

Y Mochyn Du, local pub

Millennium Stadium on River Taff

Cardiff Bay from Penarth

From Pit to Port: John Clinch, Jon Buck

Countdown to Cardiff

Photo: Gordonplant

In mid-September I will be heading to Wales and Cardiff for 12 days. That will be three times longer than any of my last two previous stays of around 4 days.

I'm booked to fly out of Hamilton into Dublin, and then an hour flight from Dublin into Cardiff. On my return I'll be spending a day in Dublin (I've never been to one of my ancestral homes, Ireland) and should also be able to visit with a former Metro co-worker who moved there at the beginning of the year.

In Cardiff I'm all set for a B&B in the town centre and will rent a bike and just explore all there is to see on land and water.

Cardiff, here I come.

Goin' to the chapel

A week from today and my 24-year-old niece Kate and her fiance Neil will be wife and husband.

I am so looking forward to the joyous occasion. I am sure I will cry when my brother Kelly walks her down the aisle (and I would be surprised if he didn't cry, too.)

She is the first in her generation in our family to wed and they are a ready, solid couple.

The celebration will be at my brother and sister-in-law's home on a lake in Michigan, under a tent under the August moon, with anywhere from 200 to 300 in attendance.

There will be dancing outside to a Beatles' cover band. All night long.

My younger niece and nephew, Sarah and Shawn -- 7 (going on 8) and 6 -- will be flower girl and ring bearer respectively.

And I will be a very proud and happy aunt and sister.

Toronto the Strange

Top photo: gbalogh Bottom photo: FuzzyRixard

When I first moved to Toronto, I would see painted moose in a few locations. I actually thought at one point it was an Asian symbol I was totally unaware of, as I only saw them outside of Asian businesses (obviously, not painted as those above). How naive. I have since learned it was a brainstorm of former mayor Mel Lastman to put Toronto on somebody's map. Fortunately -- in my opinion anyway -- there are only a few of these creations left, out of an original 326. A few is OK. The Ronald McDonald moose directly above graces the headquarters next door to my place of work.

Toronto local TV is graced with more than its share of outrageous pitchmen. The aforementioned former mayor Mel Lastman has passed his furniture business on to his son as well as his Bad Boy sense of the grab-their-attention sell.

Check out Idomo Furniture's fuzzy flowerchild gone grey on YouTube. (There must be something about the furniture business.)

But the worst (and more original) offender is Russell Oliver of Oliver Jewellery. This guy is just kind of creepy (and he has a whole slew of commercials -- playing fairly often). The sadly defunct Royal Canadian Air Farce pegged him more than 10 years ago.

And, for now, last but not least, are the multitude of raccoons in this city. Coming home at 2:30 a.m. I generally can see them every other night -- but especially the night before garbage pickups. Very healthy, fat, lumbering raccoons, often with three or four little ones waddling in their humpbacked manner across the streets. I've even seen one in broad daylight, flattening itself through an opening into the attic of a three-storey home. It is a mystery to me why the new Porter Airlines picked a raccoon -- Mr. Porter -- as its symbol.

Toronto, the Not so Good

Also, just a sampling:

• The lack of a true centre in the city
• Yonge and Dundas Square -- more concrete surrounded by sky-high advertising in an attempt to imitate Times Square. This could have been the city centre, but feels like the inside of a pinball game.
• The displaced and homeless -- In a fifteen-minute walk I can easily come across at least three people talking to themselves, and then several more in no condition to talk to anyone, not even themselves. It is very sad, especially the number who seem to have primarily mental disorders.
• The lack of true space for children to play. The schoolyard behind me (all asphalt) has its gates locked and basketball courts off limits when school ends.
• The lack of truly good breakfast places (in the downtown anyway)
• Surprising lack of good, medium-priced restaurants downtown.
• The way the media (and Torontonians) complain about the weather.
• The way traffic gets snarled as soon as anything precipitates, rain or snow -- even if it is just a drizzle.
• The scary-looking tranny sex workers on my street in the wee hours of the morning.

Toronto the Good

Photo: K-Billz

Certainly not a comprehensive list, but here are some of my favourite things about Toronto:

• The Toronto Islands
• Summers in the city -- any weekend, from downtown, I can walk in any direction and probably find a festival I don't even know about
• Taste of the Danforth (the annual, primarily Greek, street festival)
• Riverview Farm and the Necropolis Cemetery
• Broadview Park -- across the Don Valley from Riverview with a sunset view of downtown
• Cherry Beach
• The CN Tower with its LED lights -- I can watch them change from the couch in my livingroom
• The view from my apartment of downtown on the right, treetops on the left, and the lake straight ahead in the distance behind The Islands
• The scarves, head-coverings and robes of women from India, Africa and the Mideast -- so feminine and flowing, always flattering, so graceful, and such beautiful colours
• Film festivals
• TVO
• Rick Mercer (I know he's a Maritimer, but his show is based here)
• The city's mayor, David Miller -- an intelligent man with vision
• The George Street Diner (after searching for almost six years, I have found the perfect diner)
• The ravines and the way they weave throughout the city
• The most amazing bookstores, used and new
• Street jewellery
• The Philosopher's Walk, U of T

Global Soul

Photo by: PhotoGrandma

I have just finished reading Pico Iyer's 2000 book The Global Soul. I was interested in it because he tackles the subject of globalization and rootlessness and also has a central chapter on Toronto.

This is not a book review. Just some thoughts and observations. I've found some of Iyer's ideas intriquing, others less so. His writing style can be circuitous at times, and though he has not become a favourite writer, he is thought-provoking. This book was written almost 10 years ago as well -- before 9/11 -- so if anything, globalism has continued to spin even further into a new reality.

He is quite fond of Toronto and its multiculturalism, at one point calling Canada the 'Empire of the future.' In a sense I feel that. He seems to think Toronto had it all together in 2000, but still I think of Toronto as a city that will SOME DAY be great. I don't think it knows itself. Yet he has travelled far more extensively than I ever will, so his perspective is, again, that of a worldly outsider.

Unfortunately, much of the Toronto I see and feel at times is more similar to the Atlanta, Georgia, he can't quite feel comfortable in.

The last two chapters of his book -- on his birthplace Britain and his adopted home Japan -- are the best and most involving, and maybe the book should have been re-arranged to have these chapters up front, as the chapters are essentially strung-together essays.

I have sensed this globalism strongly since coming to Toronto. Much of it is from living in the city, and much of it is due to my work at a newspaper. Windsor, where I was born and, for the most part, raised, was a multicultural border town. The multiculturalism there felt different. The city was built on subsequent waves of immigrants: French, English, Irish, then after World War II Italian, Ukrainian, East European. Later Chinese, Vietnamese, Middle Eastern and East European again. Yet though many of these groups would congregate in neighbourhoods, to me there was always a sense of everyone being an integral part of the city of Windsor. Windsor first, as a framework, and then, Canada, united them in a sense of community.

Of course, Windsor is about one-tenth the size of Toronto and Toronto is a little less than half of the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). The latest census in 2006 showed that half of the people in Toronto were born outside of Canada. So it is not an exaggeration when I say that if I walk downtown at any time of any day, if I see ten people, those ten people are most likely from ten different countries.

I have come to absorb a sense of the vibration that exists from this actuality. Everyone is very connected to another part of the globe -- not in a distant manner, but especially because of the Internet and mass communication and travel, in an everyday intimate manner. There is not a great sense of having left the homeland far behind. There is a sense of everyone trying to make sense of it -- and, I think -- for the most part doing a very good job.

I never considered myself 'provincial' living in Windsor, across the border from Detroit. I think, in a border town, and a port town, there is always a sense of 'the other' and travel, and other worlds.

However, since coming to Toronto, I definitely find myself in another realm. I have co-workers from Iran, India and Somalia who have come to Canada, not as refugees or with their parents, but for a job, in a life that has seen them hopscotch purposely around the globe. I am in awe at the level of sophistication and travel that most of the people new to this country possess.

Pico Iyer writes in The Global Soul, "increasingly nowadays, a sense of home or neighbourhood can emerge only from within." There is truth in that, especially if the sense of home or neighbourhood is constantly shifting.

I want to read John Ralston Saul's book A Fair Country, which brings forth the premise that Canada is different from any other country because it was founded, not really on European dogma, but on Aboriginal philosophies. I saw him on a TVO interview and the premise sounds brilliant.

Belonging

Photo: Gardinergirl

This past week TVO has had an exceptional weeklong package of stories on belonging -- Belong or Bust: Where Do I Fit In?

I videotaped much of it and watched it in the early hours of the morning after work. Most of it concerned stories of immigration, preceded by Canadian hosts who all had individual stories to tell of being different. The photo above is from Ireland Park in downtown Toronto, a park I have not yet seen.

I have always been fascinated by people who come from 'somewhere else.' Canada and the United States wouldn't exist (as they are now) without people coming from 'somewhere else.'

And now I am considering becoming an immigrant myself to the U.K. -- even if for a short time -- if economic circumstances allow.

I found the programming and some of the ideas related fascinating. Several of the hosts remarked on how they resented being asked "Where are you from?" when, though they looked 'foreign', were born and raised in Canada. I find this resentment a little strange. I'm often asked where I'm from -- even in my hometown of Windsor -- and I'm your typical Caucasian. I've never resented it. Rather I thought it interesting. So, I'm not sold on that being a negative or condescending question.

TVO often has shows from Britain, and their quality is high. Meet The Immigrants, a documentary, covered several immigrants, taking varying paths into the U.K. A drama, White Girl, presented the story of an English family moving into an all Muslim neighbourhood in England --finding themselves a minority in their own country.

Thought-provoking. In the Immigrants, it amazed me that Britain goes to Romania to import taxi drivers. In all the stories, the U.K. is a beacon of hope. Surprising to me (though it shouldn't be) is how knowledgeable many are of the hardships they may face, yet they are so eager and thankful for the opportunity. Particularly touching was a young man from the Middle East who had lived in Birmingham for awhile and was trying to get back illegally through Calais, France. He spoke of Birmingham with unabashed tenderness and respect. He did get back in and was trying to get asylum through the proper channels.

Steve Paikin on The Agenda presented a panel of ex-patriates who had lived or were raised abroad and had returned to Canada. They presented varying views on adjusting -- to other cultures, and to your 'own'.

The series ends today, but could go on and on -- so many perspectives and stories.

Rice Lake

Photos: John Charlton

A weekend getaway a few weeks back. Mine was under a full moon. Beauty matchless.

Tkaronto

Photo: Tkaronto

In my desire to leave this city, I have been reaching out to come to terms with it. From the beginning there have always been pleasant surprises mixed in with the frustrations and 'je ne sais quoi'.

Recently the city celebrated its 175th birthday and I attended some celebrations at the City Hall, which included a screening of the film Tkaronto. The film, which had premiered the fall before at the ImagiNATIVE Film festival (an excellent film festival), followed an aboriginal woman and a Metis man who shared several days together in the city. The film is about identity in all of its forms. The film's name comes from a Mohawk word, from which Toronto's name evolved.

One of the remarks that resonated with me was made by an elder to the woman who was interviewing him. He remarked how there was nothing in the city that reflected back to aboriginals who they were or where they came from. And that is true. Beyond several missions dedicated to helping down-and-out aboriginals downtown, there is nothing.

However, I am not aboriginal, and I can't say I feel reflected here either. I only feel reflected when I have more of a sense of nature and my place in it.

Last week, on PBS, the film Toronto: 175 premiered, and it did a nice job of giving this city a sense of history, of grounding, which to me it has always lacked. It is nice to know that every neighbourhood is not merely a tourist attraction of some sort.

In exploring for this post, I accidently came across, in an online thread, the best description of the city I have ever seen. One I wish I had been able to put into words. Birdonmyshoulder wrote in 2000:

I've decided that Toronto is a city with a hole in the centre. Sometimes people fall in. Sometimes they hover around the edge, loving the feeling of almost jumping, almost being sucked into it. And sometimes, you can see a lucky few being tossed into the air above the giant hole in the centre, lifted by the air from below. If you know where to look you can find these people, and you might even get lifted up yourself.

Happy Birthday, Mom

That's it. I need to acknowledge that today is my late Mom's birthday.

Happy birthday, feisty (in the best sense of the word) Arian -- Joan Alice Ann Baillargeon O'Brien.

Wai Lana yoga

Photo: Wai Lana

It has taken me a long time to find yoga dvds that do the trick: help me enjoy the movements (asanas), and make me look forward to doing them. The Wai Lana series accomplishes this, and in relaxing, beautiful natural settings and brilliant colours.

I first caught a glimpse of this unusual woman with the slow, pedantic, heavily-accented, voice on very early PBS TV (5 a.m.), as I was heading to bed. Instead of a bare-boned yoga studio, she was performing asanas in breathtaking locations where you could see the wind from the ocean blowing her hair and almost smell the salt air. She was dressed in elaborate, colourful, loose-fitting costumes with flowers in her hair and at her wrists and feet -- a strange amalgamation of Chinese, Polynesian, and Indian cultures.

After seeing her videos at a local healthfood store, I bought one, then all three of the beginner series. Her unusual voice, which I was afraid would grate on me, does not. The scenery inspires, as do her outfits (I want to bring colour back into my life!), and the asanas do the trick, simply.

The beginner series is full of simple exercises that are done slowly. I am not, never have been, and never will be flexible, yet these asanas are gentle as pilates is gentle. And I'm well aware pilates is based on yoga. I can feel how they strengthen my core and release tension. Several new asanas (for me), have been a great help in easing shoulder and neck issues brought about by too many hours at a computer.

The woman herself is quite an enigma. For all her success, there is little about her on the Internet beyond product placement. I would love to read an in-depth profile on how she has created this expansive career, apparently with a mystery husband and three children. Though if I were more of a writer than I currently am, I would think she would be a great story pitch.

Her package for little kids looks excellent.