Manif des casseroles, Toronto

Last night, you may have heard a bit of a cling clang clonk here and there. In over 70 locations across Canada and around the world, crowds took to the streets to show solidarity with Quebec. And by Quebec, I mean the people of Quebec. Not its government.

For a more informed view on this, you should read this article by Willy Blomme.

And for an idea of what it sounded like, you should check out this video (not by me):

I’m not particularly politically active. When it comes to politics, I tend to get frustrated, depressed, and overwhelmed and go into denial rather than get angry and active. But after the premier of Quebec’s pretty much fascist handling of student protests against tuition fees in that province, I joined the movement to show my support, my anger, and my hope that actually, this generation may not be apathetic after all.  So I put on my red shirt, grabbed a pot (actually a lid: as a seasoned casserole participant in Montreal, my mother warned me to bring something light) and a wooden spoon and made my way to Dufferin Grove Park in Toronto.

It was amazing to feel this kind of togetherness in Toronto, considering the cold, big city it sometimes is.

It’s hard to take photos while walking and clanging a pot when the light isn’t great. And being short doesn’t help. What was great was the sound, the community, the people coming out of their houses and banging on their pots as we all walked by.  Estimates put the crowd at 2,500 at its peak. I don’t think they can ignore this.

People gather at Dufferin Grove Park with their pots and pans.

The next generation is learning to be heard.

Not yet marching, but definitely loud.

Cling cling cling-cling-cling.

Gathering with neon green signs and such.

Alex and Sarah with improvised noise-makers.

I like the look of this guy.

The media was there.

Marching out of the park.

And onto the street.  So-so-so solidarité!

We marched. My ears buzzed.  Bloor Street West, Toronto.

Goodbye boots! or: Moi, mes souliers ont très bien voyagé…

I leave for my trip around pieces of the world (turns out it’s a big place) in less than two months, so I’ve starting thinking about what I’ll be bringing with me.

The hardest thing to decide on is shoes, mostly because they are bulky and they need to be right: if your feet are happy, chances are you’ll be ok. If your feet hurt, are cold, are hot, are bleeding, chances are your entire self will be miserable.

But what shoes do you take with you when you will be trudging around in mountains and temperate rain forests and still want to look relatively cool when biking in Portland and strutting around Los Angeles drinking a $19 smoothie?

I finally decided on light (weight, not colour) sneakers with ok treads and black canvas slip-ons for when my sneakers are soaking wet from being caught in the rain or falling into a creek. And my glow-in-the-dark flip flops for gross hostel showers, obviously.

But this means that I have to say goodbye to my dear, ol’faithful boots.

These boots were made for walking.

Dear Blundstones, goodbye.  Goodbye laceless boots of perfection that I’ve worn every day for years and years. You’ve served me well. It will be hard to leave you behind.

We’ve travelled to lands far and wide together and attended many functions you were quite inappropriate for.

I bought you when I left Canada when I moved to the UK in 2005 and you’ve seen me through a lot since then.  Here’s a little photo memorial to you, my steadfast friends.

This can be the soundtrack:

And here we go.

At the Toronto airport, taking pictures of vats of water as a distraction from the fact I was moving to Norwich, England, for a year. Wearing new Blundstones. August 2005.

California Beach in Norfolk, UK. Celebrating a sunny May Day 2006 in style.

Getting on a flight to Sandane, Norway.

Back in Canada, with Dan-Vy, celebrating our TAships on the mountain in Montreal.September 2007.

Chilling out during a visit to the Venice of the north, i.e. Birmingham.

Being a tourist during my first work trip, Peggy’s Cove, Nova Scotia.

In Boston for a Josh Ritter concert.

A cold stop-over after my trip to Kenya.  With Brecht in Berlin in Berlin.

Sort of soon and sort of far

In two months to the day, I’ll be in a train heading west.
*If the lord’s a-willin’ and the crick don’t rise.

Pulling out of Toronto’s Union Station. Look: I can take pictures of the future.

My first step in my trip around the world (or, more accurately, my trip to places until the funds dry up) will begin with days and days and days in a train.

Not exactly the Orient Express, but still infused with some of the romance, the Canadian will chug through some of this big country, which I expect to feel bigger the longer I watch trees and rocks and wheat for days and days and days, from Toronto to Vancouver. Do the names of trains get italicized in MLA style?

I’m not going to lie: 1.5 hours into my train ride to Ottawa last week, I was looking at my watch and wondering if I’d made a horrible mistake when I booked my 83-hour journey.

But I keep thinking of the fact that I want to know my own country, even if it’s just a little slit of it straight across, from a moving vehicle. I keep reminding myself that I have the time, probably for the last time in my life, to just sit and look at the world literally going by for 4 days. And I have never seen Saskatchewan.

Ottawa: nice enough, but no need to stay more than a night or two

Ottawa, Canada’s sleepy capital, seems to get nicer each time I visit.

The canal.

It might even get a little more interesting.

Photo from the Extremely Short Play Festival at the Arts Court Library taken from CBC Website. As in all festivals, a couple of pieces were fantastic, some were very good, and some were not. The transitions between plays were pretty cool, with bits of script projected on the stage (see image for example of effect).

This time, I was there on a lightning-speed visit to give a photography workshop to a classroom full of brilliant teenagers for Brila [check out the work of last year's group here].

While the class was out and about around Ottawa making their own snapshot narratives, I took a couple of pictures of the eeriness that is an empty classroom.

And all was suddenly quiet.

Light on seats.

Works in progress.

…and then we jumped in a car and drove to Montreal (stopping in a parking lot to eat sundaes and salty fries).

Just your typical road-trippers.

London (!) Ontario (.)

After rising at a ridiculous hour for a Saturday, I met up with Trenna, my friend who, it turns out, had been up shooting all night long and hadn’t actually slept yet. So no complaints about 6am on a Saturday from me.

We were awake to take the bus to London (Ontario) to embrace harmony and understanding (ie: see Hair).  And we weren’t the only ones on our way to the great metropolis: we literally got the last two seats on the Greyhound. We puttered away, leaving a dozen people in the dust. I hope they got to where they were going.

The Toronto bus station is depressing.

After some lunch at the Church Key and a bit of window-shopping on Richmond Row (I found a shop that reminded me exactly of my favourite one in Norwich), Trenna went back to our hostel for a much-needed nap and I walked around.  ACBB is a cute, friendly, and central house, though lacking in heat and hot water this weekend.  They gave us extra blankets, though, and it ended up being a relatively toasty night.

Seller of stuff.

London getting ready for a race.

This is a tree. You can find it in London.

Other native plants of London grow neon and sturdy.

On my walk, I found the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame attached to the tourist office. I got to read all about important Canadian medical pioneers and learned a great deal in the short time I was there.  Did you know that the “Drake Clip,” used to cure aneurisms, was designed by Dr. Charles Drake, the Chairman of the Department of Clinical Neurological Sciences at the University of Western Ontario (ie- a Londoner!)? Note: when you Google “Drake clip,” video clips of songs by that Degrassi kid come up first.  

The first pace-maker.

Covent Garden Market.

But enough with pictures of London- we were there for Hair, long beautiful hair (long, straight, curly, fuzzy, snaggy, shaggy, ratty, matty, oily, greasy, fleecy, shining, gleaming, streaming, flaxen, waxen, knotted, polka dotted, twisted, beaded, braided, powered, flowered and confettied, bangled, tangled, spangled and spahettied hair!)

Hair at the Grand Theatre in London, Ontario.

I didn’t know anything about Hair, really, except that it was about hippies letting the sunshine in. Turns out it has nothing to do with Five Man Electrical Band’s song “Signs.”

The play’s script is messy and makes no sense (which is fine because it just kinda made me feel like I was stoned too), but the songs were mostly amazing, the performances rocked the house, and the set/costumes/look/atmosphere were great.  We were given daisies at the end and then dragged on stage to dance with the cast singing Let the Sunshine In.  I can put that on my resumé, right?

We left on a high and waited like groupies at the stage door.

Leaving with flowers in our hair.

And we took more embarrassing pictures:

Posing with posters- this makes us real “Hair-heads,” right?

Me and Paul (poster version)

Me and the über-talented Paul Dunn (star of the stage!), drinks-after-the-show-at-the-Church-Key version.

Things I learned about London, Ontario:
-There is vomit under the bridge. A lot of vomit.
-You will wait a long long time if you respect traffic lights.
-They name things after London, England (from the Thames to Covent Garden).
-Their parking lots are colourful (see below).

Pretty parking lot.

Trenna is an alien.

Destination: burger

Now that I know I’m leaving, I’m already starting to look at my city differently.  I’m already feeling nostalgic for things I’ll probably be too busy to actually miss.  So when I went to meet my friend Jenna for a burger, I took my time to look up, I look around, and then I was late.

But here are a few things I saw:

View from the office as I leave.

The other day, a car crashed into our building. So that happened.

The impact of the crash (detail).

Place to staple your poster to a post.

Spring is in Toronto, which means green flowers in leafless trees.

Knox College (University of Toronto). I like this college because it's pretty, but mostly because it shares a name with my favourite character in Dead Poets Society.

Giant flower pots in the middle of the street.

ZooWoods, a long-term ecological research project of the Department of Zoology (UofT)

Full-on nature in the middle of Toronto (ZooGardens)

This is Robarts Library at the University of Toronto. Spaceship? Turkey? Turkey.

The window of the Bata Shoe Museum

One of my favourite used book stores in the city

These guys wanted me to take their picture (at least one of them did). I did not sponsor a child like they asked me to because of the religious affiliations of their particular charity. They were nice about it.

Rats of the sky, looking pretty fly.

Remember Lee's Palace? They repainted it.

Today, HotDocs opened in its new theatre.

Jenna waiting for me.

Burger! Sweet, sweet burger.

When you get no news, make your own

I got tired of refreshing my inbox, waiting for someone to tell me that I didn’t get an amazing apprenticeship at a cool theatre in Washington.

This is me waiting. (Actually, this is me during dissertation-writing time/heatwave, Norwich, 2006, but you get the idea.)

So I decided to not wait anymore, and I went ahead and booked myself a one-way ticket to New Zealand.

I don't have any pictures of New Zealand yet, so this photo of one of my T-shirts will have to serve to illustrate it for now. See, it's an anatomical drawing of a kiwi bird made out of kiwi fruit and I love it.

I bought the ticket online, without cancellation insurance, over morning coffee, half-asleep.

The plan is to go around the world and what I have now is a ticket from Los Angeles to New Zealand.  And the knowledge that I’ll have to get to Los Angeles from Toronto somehow

What I don’t have is a budget or a plan.  I haven’t actually really thought about it.  I’ve thought about it, but I haven’t really thought about it if you know what I mean.  That’s how it’s done, kids.

Close your eyes and jump off that cliff.  And hope that at the bottom, there’s a deep pool to land in, one so buoyant it acts more like a refreshing trampoline.

This is what my lunch break looks like

I’ll admit it, the winter (though it was far from harsh) put a bit of a damper on my idea of being a tourist in my own city.

But Spring is now in the air and I thought I’d try to see what I could see during my one-hour lunch break.  Luckily I work in a great part of Toronto, close to the university, Chinatown, and Kensington Market.

Going out with the intention of taking pictures made me look harder and forced me to frame things differently.  I also got smiled at a whole lot more, wandering the streets with a camera around my neck.

This is the view from my desk. Not bad, eh?

Hello lampost, what'cha knowing, I've come to watch your flowers growin'

Toronto isn't only skyscrappers

Sunny alleys are not scary

Toronto has a bit of everything... (Baldwin street)

View of the CN Tower from Beverley street

Creepy mannequins in a window, Spadina avenue

A hipster, some shoes, and a retro streetcar in Chinatown

Bubble tea and sugar cane juice on Spadina avenue

Some goods for sale in Chinatown, Toronto

The fruit and veg shop, Chinatown

Chinatown, Toronto

Walking from Spadina to Kensington Market

Kensington, Toronto

In Kensington Market, you can see people on tricycles choosing fresh herbs on the sidewalk

The roof of Courage My Love, my all-time favourite vintage shop in Toronto

There are hip things in Kensington, like hula-hoops

Stores in Kensington Market, Toronto

The best little spice shop, where you can get Mexican chilli powder for cheap

Shiny sunglasses

Bikes+art=Kensington

Take-out menus, College Street

College Street, Toronto

The library where I sometimes get videos and books on my lunch breaks, but not today. Today I looked.

The University of Toronto Bookstore

This is what a mailbox looks like in Canada

The UofT student centre with trees and hot dog stand

CN Tower view from the alley near my office

Step one: dream

While I wait to know my fate, it doesn’t hurt to start/keep dreaming, does it? It kind of does.

Turns out that if you don’t feed it, the travel bug starts to act up and you begin to exhibit symptoms such as itchy feet and an insatiable lust for (unattainable) wandering.

Side effects include googling backpacks (what do you think of this one?) and checking flight prices obsessively.

One remedy? Vicarious travel.
Here are a few suggestions on how to do this:

READ

Some of my favourite travel blogs right now include:

Lateral Movements Lauren’s amazing blog about working her way around the world is terribly inspiring and well-written.

Plan A  I love reading about Heather and Duncan’s travels. And all the descriptions of yummy food.

nod ‘n’ smile This NYC blogger is going around the world and has great articles, pictures, and tips to show for it. Love her!

There are loads of great travel writers out there (and they seem to be multiplying recently). Here are a few books that I’ve read recently that have had an impact on my life and dreams (in terms of travel).

Mary Kingsley on a stamp.

Mary Kingsley’s Travels in West Africa (1895) I re-read this brick while re-writing my play Virginia Aldridge, BSc last year and was reminded of how adventurous and surprisingly hilarious Mary Kingsley was. After her parents died, she travelled to many places no European had been before and apparently changed some of the perceptions about Africa at the time. She wrestled a crocodile.

Rachel Friedman’s A Good Girl’s Guide to Getting Lost (2011) I really loved this coming-of-age travel memoir. I related to the ‘good girl’ label sticking a little too firmly and making it hard to just let go. But then she does follow her heart to Ireland and that’s where it all starts… Funny, engaging, and inspiring.

The Lost Girls (2010) by Jennifer Baggett, Holly C. Corbett, and Amanda Pressner.  Although it wasn’t as jam-packed with adventure or revelations as I expected, kudos go to these women for going for it, writing about it, and using their savvy business skills to brand themselves as the ones to follow.

Susan Jane Gilman’s Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven (2009) Not to name-drop or anything, but this memoir was suggested to me by Rachel Friedman (over Twitter).  This is a page-turner about two American girls naively exploring the People’s Republic of China in the 1980s. It’s so engrossing that you won’t mind reading it on the subway, even though the cover is embarrassing (naked girl hiding behind her backpack. Really? Note: the paperback edition cover is much, much better.)

Just realised this is very close to the backpack I want...

Graham Greene’s Travels with my Aunt (1969) Not only will this novel make you laugh out loud, but you will get to travel through Europe, then on the Orient Express from Paris to Istanbul and finally to South America with an 70-year-old woman.  Apparently the only book Greene wrote “for the fun of it.”  You can tell.

Colm Tóibín’s Brooklyn (2009). I’m not sure if this novel about an Irish girl moving to Brooklyn in the 1950s counts as a travel novel, but it’s one of my all-time favourite books and everyone should read it.  The end.

LISTEN

A few songs to dream about travel by (turns out they’re all folky and about America):

City of New Orleans by Arlo Guthrie

Harrisburg by Josh Ritter

California by Joni Mitchell

America by Simon and Garfunkel

WATCH

Away We Go

I Went Down

L’auberge espagnole

Lost in Translation

Into the Wild

The Motorcycle Diaries

Before Sunset

In Bruges

The limbo between freedom and awesome

I’m waiting for an answer.  I’m pretty sure that answer will be “no” and that I’ll have an entire year of freedom in front of me to fill.

What am I saying “a year”? I’ll have whatever time I have in front of me free and empty…

See, my steady nine to five life is coming to an end in three months and then… what?

This is what freedom/standing at the edge of the unknown looks like. Except that in this metaphor, there should only be one shadow. (Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania)

There are two (known and admittedly awesome) ways this thing called my life could go starting in July.

I’ve applied for a year-long directing internship at a fantastic theatre that will remain nameless for jinxing purposes.  I’ve been waiting for an answer, a hint either way, for a couple of months now (that’s what you get when you apply early… damned keenness).

I feel like I’ll know soon, but it’ll never be soon enough (patience running out).  I’ve given myself permission to email them on Wednesday to see what’s up. Maybe they don’t tell losers they didn’t get it.

If I don’t get it (which is likely), that means I’m actually going around the world.  Actually, this time. (Last time I had this plan, it ended up being a 5-week trip to East Africa which, while absolutely amazing, was not around the world, I’m sure you’ll agree.)

Another world. But not actually around the world. Kenya, November 2010.

So while I’ve been waiting for the inevitable “sorry, we’ve chosen someone else for this internship,” I’ve found a cheap ticket to the other side of the globe.  But I’m waiting for that no first. Because it might not be a “no”.

I’ve found out what the exchange rate is for the Fijian dollar.  I’ve realized I have enough Via Preference points to get from Toronto to Vancouver on the train for free.  I’ve looked at backpack options at MEC and even elsewhere.  I’ve promised friends in India and California I’ll visit.

I’m ready to go!  Or rather, I’m ready to start thinking of getting ready to go!

This also is a metaphor. Lamu, Kenya.

But what if I get the internship?  Then I’d pack up a suitcase and jump on a bus to get a year of experience in the field I’m desperate to work in, a field that seems pretty impenetrable at the moment.  They don’t pay much (what’s new?), but they give you an apartment to live in (!).  It’s too perfect not to believe it wasn’t made for me.  But last year, when I applied, it wasn’t meant for me. Visualisation exercises don’t work, by the way. They just make for harsh awakenings.

But this year, my harsh awakening will be that of getting to travel, getting to throw my savings into flights and travel gizmos and a new camera.

Lamu, Kenya. November 2010.

So… any tips on managing impatience and lack of control? Because I am starting to lose it.