soul food

Photo by: catznbirdz

Often on a Sunday my mother and I would do a 'circle-tour' around Essex County. It would take hours and while away an afternoon. Starting in Windsor we would head inland passing farmers' fields in whatever stage of dress the season bore, head to Leamington for the long version of the tour, or cut down to the lake at Kingsville, for the shorter version.

Then we would travel the Lake Erie shore through the small towns, pass the greenhouses, by the cottages, breathing in the fresh lake air.

Eventually we would hit old, historic Amherstburg where Lake Erie began, widening out from the currents of the Detroit River further upstream. It was our ice cream stop. Further along, heading back to Windsor, if the season allowed, we would stop at the old farmers' stands in LaSalle.

Then, back in Windsor, following the shores of the Detroit River until time to turn inland.

I miss those rides and the way it connected us to the land -- and to each other.

So, yesterday I went out in search of somewhere -- anywhere -- away from the city of Toronto, where I could feel 'away', yet connect to the earth.

My intention was to find a spot by a lake or a stream and hike and read.

Instead, I wandered by a Highlands Games in Uxbridge, paid my entry and listened to the drums and pipes fill the summer air. I watched the highland dancers, saw Scottish cattle and dogs, and the big men throwing weights. I could have stayed for the Rankin Sisters, but drove on and up the road saw the manse where Lucy Maud Montgomery lived with her minister husband after leaving P.E.I.

Drove on to Scugog Lake and Port Perry. Had an ice cream cone and took deep breathes of the cool, wide, dark lake. Got back in the car and came across a Powwow on Scugog Island. It was just finishing, but I was able to walk around the booths and grounds, and the drums played off a recording.

I went as far as Lindsay and came back along another route, through golden fields of wheat, shoulder-high corn, small towns where Toronto was not in the equation.

I found my circle-tour. Only a half hour on the Don Valley Expressway, and then hinterlands varying with horse farms, baseball and soccer and sunflower fields, lakes and streams, and many places to explore in the future.

night magic

Photo: Sean Galbraith

My apartment faces south to Lake Ontario and to the right, the downtown Toronto skyline, alit at night. Over the last several weeks I've been privy to fantastical light displays as the city tested the new LED lights for the CN Tower.

I usually get home from work shortly after 2 a.m. and the Tower, previously blacked out with only airplane signals, would be red, then green, then purple. The colours shifted into each other, disappeared, were there all at once. They pulsed up and down the elevator shafts.

It was silent music, not very unlike the northern lights, a dance of shimmering, waving colours.

I sat on my couch and the show would go on until 3 a.m.

I missed the official launch a few days ago. And apparently the awesome displays I saw regularly for a week are not going to be the standard, but only for special occasions. Too bad. I miss the quiet shifting rainbow already.

But even when the colours stay stable and don't shimmy or glide, they are a lovely touch, and it's hard to believe the Tower was dark for so long.

Y, oh, Y!

Photo: Steven Evans

I am in love with a building. I've fallen in love with a city before on first sight -- that being Edinburgh, Scotland, with its castle rising above green parks, and sweeping me into the 18th century.
And certainly I've been enamoured and impressed with buildings and architecture in the past.

But rarely have I seen a structure so well-designed and suited to its purpose than the Metro Central YMCA.

I joined the 'Y' last weekend to help my middleaged, rusting body try to regain a sense of form and life. I can't say it was love at first sight, though its pool beckoned through glass as I walked in the doors. No, it was a gradual awareness and appreciation over my first week that everything about the place has been thought-out, is amazingly functional, and aesthetically pleasing.
And it's a gym!

It's a gym that inspires, from its airy pools to its centrepiece of stairs that climbs like Mayan steps, challenging and beckoning.

I think it's going to become a second home -- to which my body will say thank you.