New maps of the Lockdown City
It’s become a cliché to say that this endless lockdown changed how we understand the cities we live in, but I too am going to announce that. I now live in a different city to the one I lived in on March 14, 2020.
I began with modestly long and familiar walks, but as everything worth going out for remained shuttered, the walks extended to 10km, then 15, then even longer, and the bicycle rides to 20km, 30, the other day to the exhausting 34k. I don’t use the apps like Strava – I need all the battery juice for podcast audio and street maps or alltrails.com – so I would retrace the distance upon return, on google maps. This sprawled out, randomly patchworked city began revealing itself as cosier and more manageable. It became quite doable to go on foot from Bloor East to Kew Gardens and the Beach, with strategically placed breaks. Eglinton East too is within reach, while St Clair East/West is practically the back yard. Bicycling to Scarborough Bluffs is also feasible, and discovering Harrison Properties and Rosetta McClain Gardens on your way there on an extremely cold day, the lake white-green, is the reward for those who dared. Getting to the Huron-Wendat ossuary on Taber Hill on a bike is complicated but worth the effort. One day I’d find myself walking past the synagogues on Bathurst south of Eglinton with traffic zipping by, another peeking through the (closed, of course) storefront of the quaint Czech café on Christie, or taking a break on a bench next to what looks like a social housing complex off Christie and being greeted by a plaque that tells me that Marian Engel lived there and cast the building in one of her works (Lunatic Villas, 1981).
The city’s wilderness came forward. I now know that I can walk to Yonge from my area on Bloor East through a ravine – by dipping to the Rosedale Valley Road, where the cars spoil the experience – and that I can get from Sherbourne to Yonge-St Clair diagonally, though a proper forest. The trail through the thickets behind Brickworks takes you straight to the Mount Pleasant Cemetery, and if you have the energy, across the cemetery to the Kay Gardiner beltline, a decommissioned train track turned park. Last summer I biked to Yorkdale Mall primarily through the green shortcuts, the Nordheimer ravine and the Cedarvale park. There’s some faff happening around the Humber River north of Bloor so would not recommend going there as the city blocked off the entire river bank. The south side of the Don Valley trail and that area is, turns out, a construction hell at the moment, as the new, flooding-resistant Portlands are being built and re-wilded. Still, some pleasant bits of the Martin Goodman east trail remain, around the Tommy Thompson park.
I’ve gotten to know the wealthiest areas of the city well – I live just south of Rosedale, and a few blocks away from Cabbagetown. Make any foray into Toronto’s wilderness and you’ll notice the wilderness backyards – those numerous Toronto properties that back up against a massive chunk of nature and land. Long sections of the western lakeshore are off limit to passers-by as they belong to private households and foreign consulates. The Humber and the Don rivers are largely well trod and public, but the creeks! the creeks are more a private matter. Golf clubs love them – Scarborough Golf and Country Club, the Rosedale Golf Club and the Islington Golf Club are stunning places on creeks and tributaries, open to members only (I’ve learned recently after trespassing… the gate was open to the Islington Club, and I think the city ordered them opened temporarily due to the situation, no?) When I set out to explore the Mimico Creek, I discovered it was mostly unavailable south of Bloor: you start north of Bloor, then get the Islington Golf Club interruption, then scoot over Kipling to find the entrance to the accessible to the public stretch of the trail that ends at Eglinton. The southern part of the waterway leading to the lake is effectively owned by the private house owners.
Rosedale is notorious for this, but of course Baby Point too, and many other neighbourhoods. There are numerous houses in Rosedale that come with a hill and a forest, in addition to the garden space proper. The house that appears in the Gilmore Girls pilot is one of those, as is the famous Integral House. I spotted at least two gated private streets in Rosedale which warn that they are meant for people living there only. Before my night time Rosedale walks, I was not aware how much effort goes to the lighting presentation of the houses. Some streets are like quiet theatre sets at night, beautifully strategically lit to showcase features, put accents and emphasize contrasts. Often a car by a private security company would glide past me at night, discreetly, or it will be parked outside certain houses. What does one have to do for a living to own a Rosedale house? There’s a man on TikTok who dares to knock on doors of some of the Toronto mansions to ask what the owners do for a living (what we all want to know) and some people are more coy than others.
Halfway through the pandemic, I started listening to podcasts on my walks, and this added another layer to the city. From now on I’ll remember a particular spot on Amelia in Cabbagetown as the place where I laughed out loud when Anna Khachiyan described to the lads of the Fifth Column AOC’s “protruding nipples” in some post-Capitol invasion video that AOC released. I LOL’d too on a quiet Macpherson St. one night when the Rest is History guys called the Mensheviks “centrist dads” in their episode on the Russian Revolution, and stopped to cringe on King East while Domic Sandbrook described how Robespierre died at the end of the French Rev episode. As for This Jungian Life, the city is full of it, especially the Rosedale Valley Road and the Harbord Street. Ramsden Park is marked by the extraordinary episode of The Meaningful Life with Dr Kathryn Mannix in which she describes how humans die. The Regent Park athletic grounds and the green commons across Dundas E resonate with the voices of the Fifth Column trio, and Bloor around Ossington with their recent chat with an immigration expert. Somehow Meghan Daum’s podcast tends to come on when I’m downtown – the Front Street and Wellington and the now desolate CN tower itself, the Queens Quay, and the Garrison Crossing bridge. Blocked and Reported is associated with one of my favourite walks, northbound on Yonge (with traffic the only downside) toward St Clair and then west, past the art deco building where Glenn Gould used to live, toward Russell Hill Road. “Money goes where it wants to go”, Adam Curtis said in my ear – and to David Runciman on Talking Politics -- as I walked past the spot where Edgar meets Roxborough in Rosedale, where you can smell the working fireplaces from surrounding houses on a chilly evening.
I know which Little Free Libraries tend to be good, and which are bullshit. (People who drop off accounting textbooks, travel guides from 1985 and trash fiction: curse be upon you.)
I know behind which houses and buildings along Dupont you can get on to the train tracks. There are pathways along most tracks in the city, and they offer unusual views.
Given our unfortunate situation with public loos, another layer of mapping involves uh places where one had to pee in fresh air. I am not proud of it, OK! I had no choice but to pee next to an abandoned ruin of a house in the Junction, by a secluded spot in Derrydowns Park, and by a power transfer pole not far from the Winston Churchill park.
Then there are the dessert places. It all started with Longo’s on Bloor East, and its vast variety of cakes by the slice. Which ones will be available today? A reason to go out, a project, a surprise in store. But then to the walks and rides, the mapping layer called DESSERTS was gradually added. Bobette & Belle on Queen East. Le Beau croissanterie in Regents Park and the ice cream place in that general area. Bakerbots on Delaware. Filosophy on Bloordale. Dufflets on Queen West, and now Lyon Nord too. The odd Metro and Loblaws, if all else fails. Patisserie 27 on Jane and Annette. Lale’s on Lakeshore West in the Long Branch area. Suruthi take-out on Parliament for onion bhajis. When I can’t be arsed to make bread at home, Thuet or Sud Forno or Mattachioni. Is the end of this lockdown going to see me with 10 additional kilos? “I didn’t take up drinking, though I am acquiring a cake problem” I said to a health care worker recently, and she seemed to understand. But my next project is gradually getting off cakes and moving on to savouries. I had one too many triple vanilla slices from the Whole Food on Avenue Road in the last few weeks and I realized that was quite enough of refined sugar for a year.
The rest of the habits I think I’m going to keep. Y’know? Minus the peeing in the wild, need I add.