Distractions, reflections

I’m fortunate to not have to travel far to go to Toronto Jazz Festival events. I can choose between bicycling or taking the streetcar! The jazz festival brings some great bands to town. Andy and I went to see The Bad Plus at the Glenn Gould Studio, in the CBC Broadcasting Centre. The trio is an entertaining mix of styles — and not just musical styles. Ethan Iverson, on piano, wore a suit and tie, and had a totally deadpan delivery in his slow delivery of jokes. Reid Anderson let his bass do the talking, pushes the music forward with lots of energy.

Dave King was a wild man on drums. Of the three, he attracts the most attention, with a big smile on his face.

For a jazz combo of three acoustic instrument, this group feels like a rock band. They’re great musicians, but they don’t take themselves too seriously. The Glenn Gould Studio feels a bit formal for a jazz performance, but the sound is great.

Simon and I live downtown, and have usually driven (way) uptown to visit Greg. Our preferred mode of transportation is bicycle, so good weather presented an opportunity for a tour. I’m less ambitious in my distances than Simon, and suggested reduced pedaling by riding the TTC. We started the journey from Queen Street East up to Pape Station — after I changed two flat tires. The gauge on the new bicycle pump reads differently!

I chose my vintage 1983 touring bike with cycling shoes and toe clips for this trip. Simon has a really nice Cannondale touring bike, but doesn’t like to park it outside. He chose to ride his father’s old bike, and thought flip flops were sufficient for pedaling in the summer heat .

From Pape Station, we rode up to the Kennedy station, and changed to the Scarborough LRT. Bikes are not that unusual on the subway, outside of rush hour.

The LRT routing jogs north before turning due east, so Midland station is closest to Unionville. This is where our ride seriously started.

Our home is in downtown Toronto, where there’s still wildlife. There was a wailing just outside our bedroom window, and we spotted a baby raccoon without its mother nearby. The nest was under the eaves of the porch roof in the house two doors down.

The baby wailed and wailed. Neighbours and passers-by stopped to find out about the noise. It seems as though the mother might have wandered off, and the baby was hungry. Some neighbours threw up fruits and vegetables onto the roof, but the baby raccoon didn’t seem to want those.

In Riverside (or South Riverdale), we live near one of Toronto’s Chinatowns. As with most Chinatowns, parking a car is annoying. It’s close enough to home for a walk, but bicycling is better: two wheels are speedier, and bike racks mean that that I can carry more than with two arms. The ride westbound takes me past the Queen-Saulter Library. When the boys were young, Diana spent a lot of time in the Queen-Saulter Parent-Child Centre behind the library.

At the northwest corner of Queen Street East at Broadview Avenue is the New Broadview House Hotel. The strip club on the ground floor marks the neighbourhood as ungentrified, although rumours of a renovation into boutique hotel sometimes appear.

On the southeast corner of Queen Street East and Broadview Avenue is a caribbean restaurant, The Real Jerk. The bright colours make it a landmark, and disguise the prior history of the building as former branch of the Royal Bank.

The 504 King streetcar comes from downtown, follows Queen Street East for a few blocks, and then turns north onto Broadview Avenue.

The Cai Yuan store at the southeast corner of Broadview Avenue and Gerrard Street always has large displays of fresh fruit outside facing north, and vegetables and packaged goods facing west.

On the south side of the Gerrard Street, as the next building east, is a branch of Trinity Supermarket. This building was renovated a few years ago, and I shop here often.

Going out to listen to music can be a big event for me. I watch for bands on tour, and check listings in local clubs when I’m on the road. Now and then, there’s the opportunity to local musicians playing local venues. I called up Apostolos, and we went out to hear the Paul DeLong Quintet at The Rex, late on a Sunday night.

Paul DeLong is a drummer who has had a successful career. He’s known as a performer in the studio as well as on the road. I didn’t know exactly what the band would be playing that evening, but I was sure that they would be a set of great musicians.

On stage, the band was casual, and were having fun. In the audience, we enjoyed their performance. Watching great musicians performing naturally is a pleasure.

In honour of Jane Jacobs, Toronto was one of the cities offering a weekend of “free, community-based series of urban walking tours, led by volunteer guides”. Of the 68 tours available in Toronto, I chose the Jane’s Walk on “Creating an Urban Estuary at the Mouth of the Don” led by Ken Greenberg. It was an easy bike ride to the starting point, the Keating Channel Pub in the Port Lands.

Ken Greenberg had described the walk as follows:

Major world cities such as Toronto are in transition, needing to re-integrate strategically important post-industrial landscapes while reframing their interactions with the natural environment. Through a major initiative of WATERFRONToronto the long neglected area where the Don River enters Toronto Harbour is being transformed into a naturalized river mouth in a generous park setting as the centerpiece of vibrant new mixed-use riverfront and lakefront neighborhood that unifies the goals of ecological restoration and urban regeneration. A team led by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates of which I am part was selected through an international competition to guide this effort. The tour will explore the past, present and future of this remarkable site.

Looking northwest from the pub, downstream on the Keating Channel, the Cherry Street bridge south of Lakeshore Boulevard East is in the foreground, and downtown Toronto is beyond.

Looking east, upstream on the Keating Channel, the elevated Gardiner Expressway turns north to enter the Don Valley Parkway. The Don River would naturally have gone south through the area now the Port Lands, but was redirected at the beginning of the 20th century to flush sewage more rapidly into the harbour as an alternative to the natural path through the marsh. Greenberg foreshadowed the announcement by Mayor David Miller that the elevated roadway would be brought down to grade, and routed further north so that promenades can be constructed along both the north and south banks.