Random bits of Toronto fluff

Now that we’re back home, I’m planning new topics, but I have a few leftover Toronto photos that refuse to be wrestled into a single coherent theme. Be warned: meandering flight ahead.

First, Toronto wildlife. Not much. Hey, it was winter, and we spent all our outdoor time in wildlife-unfriendly city neighbourhoods. But I did manage to snag two examples.

These birds found an appropriate place to carry on their conversation. I believe they’re sparrows, and judging by their fluffed-up feathers probably as cold as I was after removing my gloves to take the photo. I’d have tried for a closer shot, but my fingers got numb.

The fellow below was rambling one afternoon through a parkette on a busy street. Maybe it forgot that it’s nocturnal?

Here’s one in the interesting architecture category, except this is actually a large backlit mural at Pearson Airport. We never made it downtown to the 130-year-old Gooderham Building (aka the Flatiron Building). That’s on the agenda for our next trip. I'd like to try matching this spectacular photo with one of my own.

The rest of the photos are transport/airport related. We took a Go Transit bus from/to Pearson Airport, trips that took less than half an hour on near-empty buses, and the bus stop was right outside our hotel. On our return trip, we caught a bus adapted in 2020 when it was thought plexiglass would slow the spread of COVID-19. Most experts don’t believe that anymore, but the plexiglass remains.

Such measures seem laughable now that we know COVID-19 is airborne. Of course, some people have odd ideas about how airflow works. An elderly relative of mine was convinced that her shower curtain wouldn’t dry if not left open on one side to allow air to flow around it. (The gap above the curtain seemed to have escaped her notice.)

The airports had COVID-19 measures in place, but some seemed dubious. When flying out of Vancouver, our boarding passes allocated the two of us to different zones even though we had seats next to each other. When asked, airline staff said this was intended to allow those in window and middle seats to settle in first and minimize having to jostle with strangers.

It’s a good idea, in theory. In practice, not so much, given human nature. At the very first boarding call, everyone surged into the lineup, regardless of zones. Stampeding onto that plane trumped any safety considerations. Announcements that the flight was full and some might have to check carry-ons increased the panic. Our carry-ons ended up at opposite ends of the plane, but at least not checked in. We were thankful for our N95 masks.

The sign below about air quality at Pearson Airport was reassuring, although the reference to disinfecting air with ultraviolet light reminded me of Donald Trump’s infamous briefing ("So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous - whether it's ultraviolet or just very powerful light.") I’m sure the airport relies on scientifically proven methods.

Keeping lineups moving and at the same time distanced is a challenge. I’m not sure the photos below capture this, but these portable posts and retractable belt stanchions force passengers to zigzag in close quarters before reaching the end of the security lineup.

As you can see, it wasn’t busy, so we took a shortcut to reach the end of the line.

We didn’t encounter any weather-related delays. The snow that fell on the West Coast around Christmas had mostly melted by the time our flight landed (though our feet got soaked trudging through slush created by the wet snow that welcomed us home). A few days later, it snowed good and proper again. See below.

I’m delighted that we missed the snowmageddon that pummelled Toronto last week. I like looking at snow through a window. I can do without trudging through it.

* Raccoon by Olga from NounProject.com

Toronto the good, the bad, the ugly

In my first Toronto post, I promised more photographs. Here they are, starting with the ugly.

Mr. Fluffster and I did a lot of walking, as Omicron made other pastimes unwise. Above, a stretch of Yonge Street between Sheppard Avenue and Highway 401. Hard to imagine a more desolate landscape. The street here has a sidewalk on one side only, and no redeeming features. With traffic (and a cold wind) whipping past us, this stretch made for a bleak walk.

When we started down Yonge Street, we expected to enjoy strolling past homes, businesses, and restaurants all the way. We’d both forgotten the ghastly wasteland around the highway. Sadly, it hasn’t changed for the better in the 32 years since we bid Toronto farewell.

Also ugly, but at least more colourful — the signage we saw when walking to/from my mother-in-law’s place. A cacophony of colours, styles, and fonts assaults the senses.

One more below. The discordant elements make it hard to focus on a single sign. It’s like a visual version of listening simultaneously to several different songs, sung off-key and at differing volumes.

Enough ugly. Let’s move on to the bad. Just one. No, this isn’t the photo that appears in Reflections on plain language and dog poop. This one’s new!

I did more research, in case I missed something last time, but found only the same two repeal notices in the online Vaughan By-law Library:

No unrepealed By-law 122-87 is listed.

The “87” refers to the year it was passed. This mind-boggling sign has been threatening pet owners for at least 8 years (since 2014, when I first saw it) and possibly much longer (up to 35 years?) Bad sign. Very bad sign!

On to the good. We’ve always enjoyed looking at interesting architecture and houses from a bygone era. Toronto has lots. The day we walked down Yonge Street, we saw several lovely old buildings, like this hydro-electric substation.

Glengrove Substation, built in 1930

Glenview Apartments date back to at least 1941, possibly earlier

Lawrence Park Apartments, built in 1925

Also, one bright little orphaned house, currently a doggie daycare and grooming “boutique,” jauntily hanging in there between soulless apartment buildings.

What a good house!

As I wrote earlier, our hotel room faced Gibson House Museum. The day our performance of Come from Away was cancelled, we decided to check out this historical house instead. Not live theatre, of course, but still interesting.

Two staff members welcomed us with delight. They must have been bored stiff waiting for visitors to show up during a pandemic.**

Since we were the only ones to book a tour that day, our guide gave us a personalized, yet physically distanced, tour (plus traditional gingerbread cookies). Windows left wide open ensured adequate ventilation. We kept our coats on and sidled closer to the fireplace whenever we could. Our guide kindly threw more logs on the fire when we started to turn blue.

I won’t recount the history of this 19th century farmhouse (you can find that here), just one tidbit. In 1837, the government burned down the original Gibson House in retaliation for the owner’s involvement in William Lyon Mackenzie’s Battle of Montgomery’s Tavern. David Gibson fled to the US, leaving his family behind, was pardoned in 1843, and returned from exile to (re)build the house you see above and resume his surveying career.

We made our own small contribution to the 1837 rebellion:

Mr. Fluffster and his mom doing their bit for responsible government

David’s wife Eliza, who looked after the family while he was in exile and on the road surveying, likely has her own rich history, but all we know about her is that after ensuring her children were safe, she rescued the clock-face and mechanical workings of their grandfather clock from the fire. They were later installed into a new clock that’s still standing in the parlour. Eliza deserves more recognition for her competence.

Finally, below, a rare sighting. Public telephones are few and far between now. I assume these particular ones work, though I never saw them used.

Not sure whether these phones qualify as good, bad, or ugly; good because they’re useful or bad because they’re unused and just take up space? Ok, maybe not ugly.

More photos to come in my next post.

* Created by Prettycons, Luis Prado, and David Šauer from the Noun Project.
** All Toronto museums closed due to COVID-19 a week after we visited.

Don't break my washing machine!

“When you go home, you have to write a story about my washing machine,” my mother-in-law said, after Mr. Fluffster asked if he should call the police to mediate the dispute between me and his mother. “Send it to me because I have to approve it first.” Which I did.

I love my mother-in-law dearly, but occasionally we butt heads over household matters. We’re both strong-willed; we each like to get our own way.

The washing machine incident happened on one of our last days in Toronto. Mr. Fluffster and I had been visiting with her every day for nearly two weeks. We’d already done two loads of laundry in her washing machine (pictured above) during two earlier visits. Both times, I put the laundry in, but my mother-in-law took charge of actually starting the machine.

Having watched her start it twice before, I insisted on doing it myself this time around. Under her watchful eye, I set it for a normal load and warm temperature, checked the time showing on the panel (58 minutes), and walked away.

More than an hour later, it was still running. The panel showed 16 minutes left, which couldn’t be right, but then chocolate or wine or something else tempted me away.

A half hour later, we both went to look at the still-running machine. This time, the panel showed 9 minutes. Odd. It had now been long enough to wash three loads, so my mother-in-law pushed the Start/Pause button, then turned off the power. I pulled on the door repeatedly. It wouldn’t budge. “Don’t break my machine!” my mother-in-law said. “Just wait.” We waited. The door wouldn’t open. I wanted to pull harder, but she objected. We turned the power back on again. It still wouldn’t open.

After some heated discussion, we set the washing machine for an additional short cycle, Drain + Spin, for 10 minutes, hoping that the door would unlock itself at the end of that. 

My mother-in-law said her machine had never done anything like this before. My heart sank as I considered the possibility I might be held responsible for repairing or replacing it. I also thought about getting through the next few days without clean socks or underwear.

At the three-minute mark, I headed straight for the machine to watch the final countdown. My mother-in-law did likewise. I won the race. At the end of three tense minutes, the door still wouldn’t open.

We debated about what to do. After taking a closer look, my mother-in-law realized that a shirt sleeve was stuck in the door. It was she, not I, who finally pulled hard enough to open the door.

Yes, it was indeed my fault. I hadn’t pushed the clothes in far enough when stuffing them into the machine. In my self-defence, I’ve never come across this problem before. The machines in our laundry room at home have never held our clothes hostage.

My mother-in-law then remembered that this had indeed happened to her once before, but she’d forgotten about it until then.

We couldn’t open the door because of the trapped sleeve, but why the wash cycle kept going remains a mystery.

Throughout this entire episode, Mr. Fluffster sat quietly on the couch, gazing out the window.

The Fluffsters go to Toronto, eat too much

I’m back. Time to start writing again (December posts were lined up in advance so I could take a few weeks off). Brace yourself: I have lots of accumulated photos/ideas.

When we bought plane tickets four months in advance, life (i.e., the state of the pandemic) looked manageable. Booster shots were due any day, case and hospitalization numbers were down across Canada, and I’d visited friends I hadn’t seen in person since March 2020.

So Mr. Fluffster and I made Big Plans. We’d visit his mum and other relatives, as well as my sister and her family. Proposed a get-together with a Vancouver friend who’d be in Toronto at the same time. Bought tickets for Come From Away, and for a New Year’s Day “Live from the Met” opera (Cinderella) at a cinema. Even talked about eating out at restaurants.

Then Omicron hit. Gradually our Plan devolved. We would see only Mr. Fluffster’s mum, nobody else. Audience capacity for Come From Away was reduced to 50%, then the show was cancelled altogether. While we did make it to the opera, we were 3 of only 21 people in a theatre that can hold 300+. No intermission, no food or drinks, no removing masks (though, unsurprisingly, two bozos wore them at half-mast). But nobody sat near us, and we took an Uber back to my mother-in-law’s place to avoid transit crowds and get to dinner faster.

Despite all the constraints, we enjoyed ourselves. Our hotel (overlooking Gibson House Museum, see photo above) was comfortable and quiet, the weather better than expected (temperatures mostly at or above zero, with a bit of snow, just as I requested at the end of The Fluffsters break with tradition). The meals Mr. Fluffster’s mum served were delicious and plentiful.

Still reeling from the crowded plane and airports (more people than I’ve seen in two years!), I was apprehensive about transit. On our first day, we walked from our hotel to my mother-in-law’s place (an hour away) and took a packed bus back. For the next 8 or 9 days, we walked both ways. We only got lost once (that new smartphone proved useful). On the one day we didn’t visit, we walked down Yonge Street for two and a half hours (about 10 kilometres).

We took transit the last couple of days because temperatures plummeted, but buses were much less crowded after New Year’s Eve.

How did we spend our time? We ate. And ate. My mother-in-law’s dining principle is if you enjoy something, you must eat it in enormous quantities. She’d started cooking and freezing food months earlier (in her three freezers). Over the course of 10 days, she fed us homemade ravioli, gnocchi, ricotta/rice balls, eggplant parmigiana, vegetable soup (with chicken in Mr. Fluffster’s), roasted cauliflower/broccoli, cucumber salad, breadsticks, meatballs and lamb skewers, and Abruzzese fritti di patate (traditional fried potato rings with raisins and topped with sugar, which we had for lunch. Twice.) And for dessert: panettone, torrone, roasted almonds, sasamelli cookies, cheesecake, and Turtles (my mother-in-law’s favourite chocolates).* Also, lots of wine, Averna, and brandy as a “zip-zip” (her term for a tipple) to go with meals.

Mr. Fluffster joked that I was being treated like a second-class citizen because I got leftover ravioli whenever they ate meat. I wholeheartedly embraced second-class citizenship.

We persuaded my mother-in-law to let us order takeout once. We must have caught her at a weak moment, as she adamantly refused to consider it again, even though she enjoyed the food. She would have prepared/thawed even more meals if we hadn’t pointed out that her fridge wasn’t big enough for all the leftovers. Half the food she prepared for us remains in her freezers.

All but the ravioli and some sasamelli were gluten-free — quite an accomplishment for an 85-year-old who has used wheat flour her entire life. Mr. Fluffster had given her a heads-up about his new dietary limitation so she mastered preparing traditional favourites with gluten-free flour. The taste and quality far outranked store-bought options.

Most days, we’d have lunch soon after arriving, then lounge around digesting for a few hours before having dinner and waddling back to our hotel. I felt like a glutton (though that didn’t impair my appetite, of course).

When we got home, I stepped onto the scale, fearing the worst. I’d lost five pounds. Must have been all that walking. We may have to do this again.

* Panettone is an Italian sweetbread filled with dried fruit and raisins, torrone is nougat, and sasamelli are like biscotti but softer.

Seen in the wild

The pandemic has led me to better appreciate my immediate surroundings. I used to take photos of loved ones against whatever backdrop we happened to find ourselves in. Now I take just as many without people. Occasionally, they fuel blog post ideas.

While I review and quickly delete some photos, others merit commentary. Above, the view from Lonsdale Quay, late afternoon, while out for a walk with a friend (our first in-person get-together since March 2020). As we chatted, the sun suddenly broke from behind the clouds. We whipped out our devices simultaneously to capture the moment.

Above, a monkey puzzle tree in Vancouver, taken on a mid-November walk with Mr. Fluffster. When we first moved here from Ontario, a large one stood just outside our apartment. Never having seen one before, I found it peculiar.

Like cockroaches, these odd-looking trees have been around longer than humans have, and might even outlive us (if climate change doesn’t get them).

Botanically named “Araucaria Araucana,” they’re native to Chile, but were imported to the UK and western North America for ornamental purposes. The common name was born in the mid-1800s when Charles Austin, a barrister, on seeing one for the first time, quipped that “climbing the spiny, spiralling branches would be a puzzle even for a monkey.” Given that monkeys aren’t native to any of the countries these grow in, this isn’t an issue, but the name stuck.

Odd myth: “Speaking while passing one will bring bad luck or cause you to grow a monkey’s tail.” I’m waiting for my tail, because we talked a lot around this one while taking the photo and my luck hasn’t deteriorated since then.

Other locals have said pretty much all there is to say about the one above. Our Barge on the Beach:

• has its own livestream on YouTube,
• shows up — with directions — if you Google “Barge Vancouver” or “Barge Chilling Park,”
• has a new sign (Barge Chilling Beach) installed by the Vancouver Parks Board
• has inspired its own version of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, and
• boasts at least one Twitter account (English Bay Barge).

Authorities can’t figure out how to budge it from where it ran aground, and it’s fast becoming a much-loved Vancouver attraction. Seems a keeper to me.

This car, which wouldn’t look out of place in a 1970s movie, is parked near my home. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a black and white in BC, and we don’t have county sheriffs in Canada. Our sheriffs work in courthouses, not out on the road. No Andy Griffiths in our town.

I had some faint misgivings about the term “Redneck Mafia.” A quick Google search revealed a book (Barking Goats and the Redneck Mafia), a peculiar song from 2008 by Canadian Studmuffin, assorted dodgy looking Facebook pages, a fanfiction site, a YouTube channel with half a dozen videos about raising hell in muscle cars, and at least one Twitter feed.

One of these days, that car will mosey on out of here again, and that’s ok. I’d rather keep the barge.

Finally, I leave you with the above gem, spotted when opening an email from my service provider while out of range of WiFi or cellular. No, that word didn’t appear once the email fully loaded, but still. Whoever typed the metadata could use an editor… Or maybe Telus should have picked a less risqué name.

If, on the other hand, we take it at face value, that would mean Telus is concerned about the wellbeing of our private parts when we’re out and about.