My daily walks have educated me about the way the city is constantly changing. Buildings and businesses rise and fall so rapidly, a two-week interval between routes is always sufficient to guarantee some major novelty to note.
New streets are rare, though, so I am recording the appearance of this one on nearby Edgewood Avenue. A Catholic public school has been demolished. Frame and chipboard townhouses will line a new road that cuts at a right angle through the old school foundation and across the former playing field.
I wish that I had photographed our local commercial strip along Gerrard when we moved here in the 80s. None of the stores are the same today. I especially miss smiling at the bold red letters identifying the misspelled PERFERRED PRINTING shop.
Never too late to start, so here’s one from today. The old corner store has been temporarily fluffed into sales office for condo units that will be standing on the site before long. The demolition permit has been issued.
You might be amused to see how the condo has been presented since its introduction back in 2007. It has been a long and twisted road. Let’s start at the beginning.
Month: March 2014
The Wendigo in Helen Andersen art
There are mysterious images in some of my mother’s paintings of aboriginal myths and symbols. When I asked author John Robert Colombo what one of them might be, he replied at once, “Wendigo”. Then he gave me a copy of one of his hundreds of published books, Canadian Tales of Terror.
The collection of Algernon Blackwood stories includes a ripping tale of horror in the Canadian bush, wherein a French Canadian guide is swept up by a powerful spirit, transported at burning velocity and dizzying height, away from his camp and companions. He returns, a broken shell of his former self, hardly recognizable, demented and soon dead. He had seen the Wendigo.
The monster spirit of Algonquian lore is just one manifestation of similar beings known to the original peoples of this continent. West Coast cultures had their own versions and they probably inspired Helen’s imagery. Tsonokwa, Wild Woman of the Woods, another spirit figure, also appears with some frequency in the paintings.
Just what these images meant to my mother, I cannot say, but they spoke to her — and for her — in some way. Her art is often restless, unsettled, edgy and raw. That she felt some spiritual truth in tales like those of the Wendigo does not surprise me and I think John Robert Colombo has got it right.
Colombo's Northrop Frye compilation arrives
The Northrop Frye Quote Book
Compiled and introduced by
John Robert Colombo
356 pages, Dundurn Press, 2014
ISBN: 9781459719583
Thanks to a decade of skilled, scholarly labour, a comprehensive collection of quotations by Canada’s world-renowned literary critic has been published.
I love quotations and aphorisms and enjoy rolling them around in my mind. More than mental candies (although they can be yummy), good ones stimulate fresh thinking and mean different things in different situations.
Quote books often draw from many authors. Northrop Frye is exceptional in providing so much material from a single brain. This collection will provide years of pondering on a wide variety of subjects.
There was a lot to talk about last night
Beach Hill Neighbourhood Association Annual General Meeting
Tree Plantings, new sidewalks, park improvements, gardens, car sharing, spring bulbs in planters, new community bulletin board, Spring Clean-Up, skating rinks in parks, new local businesses on Gerrard, farmers’ market, pop-up stores, underpass landscaping, new condo building on the corner, ravine nature walks, men’s pub nights, Bake-o-rama fundraiser, web site and Facebook page … and the list goes on.
David Irvine at the Flying Pony Café
Nerda Lisa looks a little stunned, hanging among David Irvine’s collection of revamped thrift store art.
Back in the 80s, another guy in Toronto was making postcards with hand-painted King Kongs climbing the CN Tower and so on. Banksy has done some famous ones. Wayne White does it with lettering. Done well, it is an amusing way of lampooning kitsch. David Irvine does it well. He also removes some of the “serious” from serious art, and that’s fun.
RIP John Koerner, B.C. painter
John Koerner was an outstanding artist and one of Helen Andersen’s favourite teachers. Here she is with John, sometime before her death in 1995. John lived on to the age of 100, still working right to the end. He leaves a huge body of excellent work and his influence on other artists was a significant shaping force in Canadian West Coast painting.