The meme about home

[sabotabby]

mistersmearcase says:
Inspired by the lovely example (with photos!) of threepunchstuff, I am suggesting a meme: tell about the moment you came to an understanding with the place you were living--knew you were home, knew you weren't, just some time you had a big talk with everything around you.

There wasn't a moment. There were a series of moments, discussions and asides rather than epiphanies. I love this city, and love-of-place is quite frequently irrational. I won't talk at great length about Hogtown's virtues—there are bigger cities, more exciting cities, kinder cities, cities more steeped in history and politics—and my decision to stay is informed at least in part because my choices are limited. Still. It's home.



I. It was home before I moved here

I grew up, as you all probably know because I harp on about it a great deal, in a town about an hour-and-a-half north of Toronto, and that distance made a huge difference. I didn't grow up urban: I couldn't walk anywhere, and my playgrounds were empty fields and parklets rather than tree-lined streets. In my late teens, one by one, my slightly older friends moved to the city, which was convenient when I wanted to escape for a weekend.

R. was from Alliston; he used to drive a pick-up truck. He moved into a lamp factory in Parkdale (now a highly disputed building, incidentally) that had been converted into cheap lofts. I was still up in the suburbs; K. had recently moved into a small place above a pet store that was falling apart. R.'s loft, shared with two other arty goth types, was paradise. The big, exposed pipes in the ceiling were a source of constant background noise. K. and I fell asleep on the pull-out bed in the living room, listening to Bauhaus to drown out the sound. We woke up at 5 in the morning. The loft had huge windows and R. didn't bother with curtains. We felt like we'd woken up in the centre of the sun.

We didn't want to wake R.; K. scrawled a note thanking him for a great night. This is the most beautiful place I've ever woken up in. We slipped out quietly to greet the city before it woke.

II. The Socialist Utopia

I moved to Toronto at 19 to go to school. I needed a cheap place to live, so I moved into a student co-op. There were 11 people crammed into an old Victorian house in the Annex, nine in the house next door, 17 in the house beside that one. Someone always had a good idea, like partying at the house on Portland St., another loft mostly inhabited by anarchists and artists, or smoking up in the kitchen and eating kimchee by the bucketload.

We had a mouse infestation. The traps did nothing, but I became skilled at catching the little buggers myself. At 2 am, my housemate Dave was up, wearing his bathrobe and eating Mr. Noodles, when I wandered into the kitchen with a trapped mouse. "What do we do with it? Drop it in a rich neighbourhood?" Dave and I didn't bother with shoes. In our slippers and socks, we took our captive for a walk down Bloor Street and set it free in Yorkville.

Eventually, everyone I liked in my house, besides Chairwoman Mao, moved out. I spent increasing amounts of time two doors down, where wlach and zemleroi lived. They had a bread-maker named after a housemate who'd left, and a house decorated with paintings and mock propaganda posters. I could have stayed in co-op much longer had our house not come down with an infestation of giant rats.

III. The 2003 Municipal Election

This is not to be confused with an endorsement of David Miller. He's been a disappointment. This said, the departure of Mayor Mel Lastman, who represented a tradition of corruption and bowing to corporate and right-wing interests, opened up a tiny space for dialogue about what the city should become. The two forerunners in the election were John Tory and Barbara Hall, with the latter considered to be more progressive. Miller was considered too obscure and too left-wing to win—he talked about transit and housing and culture and livable cities. My mother was horrified when I said I was voting for him—he had no chance, and the race was close between the other two.

But for a brief moment, the city seemed to care about the things that Miller was talking about. We were afforded a glimpse of the possible. The anarchists and artists who'd clustered around Portland St. had grown into musicians and lobbyists and writers for alternative weeklies, and all of a sudden an obscure city councillor had won a landslide with a platform that stressed community and progressive values.

As I mentioned, he's been a disappointment since. But you should have seen the celebrations.

IV. Photos and fragments


Winter is really bleak here. This is the view outside of my old apartment, which was the first place I ever lived all by myself. I moved there after my ex and I broke up. It was tiny, but it was right downtown, and it was mine. I became fast friends with many of my neighbours and whenever I walked home, it would take me twice as long as it should because I was always running into people I knew.


People try to counteract that depressed wintery feeling by strapping fake coconut trees to telephone poles so it still feels like summer a bit. In the background, the famous Honest Ed's (R.I.P.).

On the shortest day of the year, we celebrate Winter Solstice with a parade that fills Kensington Market:


The papier-mache-and-giant-puppet tradition is alive and well.


It's a really great street party.


Then we light things on fire.


This is the Junction. It's one of the few downtownish neighbourhoods that hasn't been completely ruined by developers. Yet. I love old industrial buildings, and one day, maybe I'll move here.


The best time of day in Toronto is early evening. Hang out on a patio, watch the bats fly over my roof, or just wander around wondering if the sunset is supposed to be that colour, or is it the smog? I didn't say it was perfect, just that it's home.

P.S. Emma Goldman died here.