Month: May 2013

We couldn’t have had a better day for an elevator ride to the 17th floor lookout tower atop the Canada Life building on University Avenue. A once-a-year opportunity to see the city from what was, in 1931, Toronto’s tallest edifice. The limestone-clad beauty is filled with art deco detail, perfectly executed in marble, plaster and bronze.
The tower was a state-of-the-art weather beacon, announcing conditions in coded bars of electric light bulbs. It still works, as does the scale model in the lobby. The tower view looking west affords a unique take on the OCAD (Ontario College of Art and Design) addition, with Frank Gehry’s titanium blue addition to the Art Gallery of Ontario just behind.

So you hoped to sit down for your long ride home, but all of the seats are taken… many of them by inanimate objects that didn’t pay fare.
What do you do? Ask the owner of the bags, knapsack or muffins to hold their possessions on their laps so that you may be seated? Are you crazy? Is sitting worth the risk of being sworn at, spat upon, punched, knifed or shot?
No. You sneak out you phone camera and post a photo to this social-service site. [Warning: appropriately offensive language]
Thanks for the link, Sandy Zwyer.

This weekend, all kinds of Toronto buildings that are normally closed to public access will be open to all. Check this list… or this one.
Danica and I get around to some of these every year and we recommend the opportunity. Doris McCarthy’s Fool’s Paradise was a favourite last year.

It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.

Pablo Picasso
Would we be collecting works by Ruth Comfort… paying large sums for them?

I met Ruth Comfort briefly back in the late 70s, introduced by Karen Bell (still a friend) and her husband Jim Mackie (long time gone). Jim was a colleague; a commercial artist and a skilled, knowledgeable, talented illustrator. His work was stylish, clever and readily saleable… light years away from Ruth’s art. And yet, Jim was drawn to her work, buying some pieces that Karen still has.
Karen shared this rather nice example when I asked about Ruth.
What did Jim see? And why am I remembering Ruth Comfort’s work more than 3 decades after I first saw it?

Elijah Harper had a lot of guts. In 1990 he held out as the only member of the Manitoba legislature to refuse the unanimous consent needed to fast track the Meech Lake Accord through the house. Imagine the pressure to conform. But no one had thought it important to consult Canada’s aboriginal people about that Accord. Big mistake.
One lone figure, holding his famous eagle feather, stood firm and the Meech Lake Accord died.
Now Elijah Harper has died, too. He lies in state in the Mantoba legislature where he made history, receiving the honour that is his due.

Welcome to my “no production values” dissertation on streaming video at our house. I shot the video in available (very low) light using a Blackberry Playbook. It does HD video, as it happens.

Now that you’ve seen my nonsense, here’s a better look at Joni’s hummingbirds.

This one shows the two artists in 1966, painting designs on a hoarding in front of Vancouver’s courthouse (now the home of the Vancouver Art Gallery, as it happens.) Helen is paying me a compliment, ripping off my design for a bas relief that still adorns the garage that was my sculpture studio.

I thought I felt a little earthquake shudder here in Toronto this morning, so I checked Google for news. Yup…there was a little one, centred in Braeside. But that was less interesting than the photo that turned up as part of my quick search. Nice one, Montreal.

“April is the cruelest month”
— T.S. Eliot
“May can be pretty cruel, too.”
— Bill Andersen

Poor Leafs fans. They are trained to expect disappointment but their team has such a nasty talent for raising hopes, then crushing them at the last minute.