Canada Day Boat Cruise on Lake Ontario

One  of the fraternal groups within the Gay Community sponsors a boat cruise on Lake Ontario almost every summer. July 1, 2010 was a near perfect day for such an activity and the cruise was sold out. For those of you who are not familiar with Toronto and area, there are a series of small islands (large sand banks) a half mile or so from the foot of Yonge Street. We sailed through many of the passages between the islands, back and forth past the downtown core and well out onto the lake. There could not be a better way to see Toronto and the islands than that!

Being such a perfect day, ours was not the only craft out on the water. Here is a canoe passing between our boat and another cruise ship.

                             If you think that the canoeist was brave - how about this kayaker?

As well as all sorts of tour boats and private craft, there was a 'Tall Ship' gathering too.

                                  This boat looks more like an Oriental junk than a 'Tall Ship'.

                      Another 'Tall Ship' was moored beside some condominium towers.

It being such a lovely day the Center Island ferries were continually passing back and forth - full while bound for the islands and near empty on the return trip.

Cruising east from the boat slip we were soon past the downtown core and could see St. James Anglican Cathedral.

Where is the cathedral in the above photo? The green spire in front of the tallest building on the right hand side.

                                                  And  it was a grand day for sailing too!

As the captain of our boat kept cruising back and forth, the views were not always in chronological order. Here are two more 'Tall Ships' moored off of the islands.

A rival to the cruise ship which we were on is the Mariposa Belle. Reminds one of the Mississippi and 'Showboat'?

To the east of the downtown core is an estuary into which the Don River flows. A local street passes over on a bridge with the elevated Gardner Expressway behind it. As our boat approached this spot the helmsman turned to the right so we cruised between Wards Island and the Leslie Street Spit (Tommy Thompson Park).

 Trees on Wards Island are in the foreground with the CN Tower and condominium buildings along the shore and the bank towers in behind.

                                         Looking across Ward Island to the downtown core

Two more unusual watercraft. Yes - the guy on the surfboard was actually paddling in the channel and the craft near to him is a Native Indian canoe!

          The derelict Leslie Street Spit Lighthouse as seen from off of Ward Island.

When I snapped this photo our boat was a couple of miles out on the lake from the islands

                                          Cruising through the passages between the islands

On our way back to 'port' the Captain steered towards the west near the mouth of the Humber River and the arced foot/bicycle bridge over that waterway. The bridge can be seen behind the two sailboats

This is the ferry which carries passengers across the strait to the Billy Bishop Airport

From there the captain steered the boat to the pier from whence we had left. A day among great friends and out on the lake in sunshine and a nice breeze, I was tired - but the cruise was well worth the price. 

Toronto Waterfront

Actually, Toronto's waterfront extends all the way from the boundary between Etobicoke and Mississauga to the west to the boundary between Scarborough and Ajax to the east. I have written about some of that area to the west and to the east but, except for the Toronto Islands, not about the territory in the middle. I will begin with the ferry docks and move west from there.

There are four ferries which ply the waters between the Islands and the downtown core. Two of these ferries go back and forth between downtown and Center Island, one goes to and from Ward's Island to the east and the fourth one (which is a 'barge' ferry) to and from Hanlan's Point - the western extremity  of the islands. It is by this method that delivery trucks and school buses are able to cross over and return.

The following photo is of the ferry terminal at the foot of Bay Street.

From here I will move east for a couple of blocks to the Redpath Sugar Refinery. There is/was an artist based at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco who moved from city to city painting images of whales  upon walls. The attached was painted upon the Redpath Sugar facility.

Much of the downtown center waterfront is a bunch of condominium buildings - including along the quay immediately across from the ferry terminal. When I chanced to go by, one of the boats that are leased out for parties was in view.

It is only towards the furthest west - and the furthest east - that one finds bathing beaches. However, there are 'sun bathing' beaches in the central core. The following photo is of one of them and the name of this spot is 'Sugar Beach'! It is built upon a pier so, while there is sand, beach umbrellas, and deck chairs, there is no where to bathe in the water - only in the sun.

The city commissioned the world renowned cellist - Yo Yo Mah - to help design a 'symphony' garden in the middle of which is a small stage where folk can lounge on the grass while listening to music. The photos of the garden above and following are a part of that.

The most prominent edifice in the city is the CN Tower which is almost immediately beside what was known as 'Skydome' but has been renamed The Roger's Center. The above photo shows one of the elevators which connect the ground to the viewing platform near the top (it is on the left hand side of the pylon and a little less than half way to the top). The item high and to the right is not an elevator but a light stanchion. I have been up there four or five times - the last time was with a friend from the Bay area of California. I am terrified of heights so, although I know that the glass floor of the viewing area is perfectly safe I flatly refused to stand on it - until she dragged me out there. I have a photo taken by a professional photographer of that incident and it looks as if we were literally standing in space! I have no idea what has become of that photo but, if I find it, I will scan it and add it here.


Moving on west of there one comes to Bathurst Street at the foot of which is another small ferry which takes people across to Billy Bishop Airport which has been leased to Porter Airlines. Here is a photo of one of their aircraft coming in for a landing.

Moving on, the seawall walk goes by some more parkland to the grounds of the Canadian National Exhibition. Along there one always sees plenty of waterfowl.

Three Canada geese keeping a close eye upon a female mallard and two ducklings.

Immediately across from where I took the above photo is Inukshuk Park and, of course, a real inukshuk.

The Chinese Lantern Festival was photographed largely at Ontario Place which is an adjunct to the Canadian National Exhibition grounds. Usually I attend the CNE every summer and, while there, I look at the displays of sand sculptures in one of the pavilions and visit the farm animals on display in another building.

Not having an artistic bone in my body, I continually marvel at the creations by people who do.

On one visit I saw alpacas for the first time (I have seen many llamas). First a small group.

A young alpaca who seems to be saying, "Take me home with you PLEASE!

 


 

Guns and Ammunition

I have been toying with ideas for this post ever since the tragedies at Shady Nook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut and the shootings at West Webster, New York and, also, I was spurred by the post of Michael (aka Kananaskis Traveler). Both he and I were raised in homes where hunting was a way to put some meat on the table so there was at least one shotgun as well as rifles and ammunition in the house.

Dad enjoyed hunting and fishing which - unfortunately - did not rub off on me, his oldest son. In the autumn  of each year Dad and some buddies would go hunting. The activity was relatively successful when it came to waterfowl (mallards, teal and Canada geese) but not when it came to bigger game like deer or moose.

For my fourteenth birthday I was given a new 22 caliber rifle and, it went without saying, I was to go to target practice. I did not like spending hours on cold afternoons shooting at targets placed upon posts across a field from where we were positioned. However, what was even worse was target practice using clay pigeons. As the junior member of the group, it was my task to release the clay pigeons and then be deafened by the three or more others around me banging away with their shotguns while hoping to see the targets disintegrate in mid-air. The noise always reduced me to a quivering sobbing heap.

Always I have hated loud noises - even summer thunder overhead. 

While Dad never brought home the carcass of a deer nor a moose, it was extremely rare for him to return empty handed from a hunt for waterfowl. On one occasion Mom was in hospital and Grandma was looking after the household so she ordered me to pluck and disembowel bird carcasses so she could cook them for dinner. I flatly refused - but was not punished for my disobedience. In the end those carcasses rotted and had to be thrown away.

I guess that I was/am a 'wuss'!

This has nothing to do with hunting but this does put me in mind of two unusual meals where the meat portion was a novelty.

We lived in a semi-rural area and a man with a specially equipped truck came around once or twice a week. He liked my parents so, once, he offered something special to our family. Near Edmonton, Alberta is Wood Buffalo National Park and a herd of buffalo live there. Each year the herd was culled and the carcasses of the slaughtered bison are sold. Mom purchased a cut of roast from him and cooked it. The cooked meat had a dark color to it  but it tasted very good.

For a short while in the 1950s specially licensed butcher shops were allowed to sell horse meat. As the price per pound was less than that of a pound of beef Mom purchased enough for a roast while on a shopping trip into New Westminster. Among our neighbors was the Philcox family. The head of the clan lived near to where we had first lived on Dawes Hill while one of his sons and family lived about half a mile east of where we were then living. Mr Philcox had a team of horses and a plow and, every spring, he would visit the families of his offspring and plow their yards for them.

Always it was Dad's task to carve the roast. His position at the dinner table was the south seat with the highway outside passing behind his back. As he was about to carve into the roast he paused with the carving knife in one hand and the fork in the other and said, "If Old Man Philcox passes along the highway with his team of horses while I am carving, it will finish  me!".

Mr Philcox did not pass by at that crucial moment!

West Humber River - Toronto

One day I dropped by the Information Desk in the rotunda of Toronto City Hall to ask if any more 'Discovery Walk' maps had been published. While chatting with the clerk I mentioned that I loved walking/hiking and exploring the city on foot. Upon hearing that she said, "Oh!" and grabbed some documents from another shelf. In that bundle of papers was a two-sided detailed map of all of the hiking and bicycle paths in the city. As this gave me many new options in planning hikes - I felt that  I had won the jackpot!

Already I was quite familiar with the hikes in the city core so I looked towards the boundaries for more ideas. Up in the northwest corner of the city is Humber College (one of numerous colleges which are strewn around the City and suburbs). It is above the valley which was carved by the West Humber River and the map showed a path extending all the way from Steeles Avenue West down to where it met the parent stream - Humber River - at Scarlett Road. That would be my next hike!

I took the subway west to Kipling Station where I transferred to the northbound Kipling Avenue bus for a long ride up to Steeles  Avenue and another transfer to that bus. After delays a bus finally arrived at Kipling and Steeles and, finally, I arrived at Humber College - only I alighted at the wrong stop and had blocks of suburbia to walk through before I finally reached the banks of the stream.

                      The West Humber River with the Steeles Avenue West bridge in the background.

I really do not like 'retracing steps' but that is what I had to do in order to hike along the river bank from top (that is - from where it crossed from York Region into the city proper) to bottom.

                                      The West Humber flowing under the Steeles Avenue bridge
 

                                           Looking back towards the bridge.

As you may have noted already - that is an area of natural vegetation so there were lots of wildflowers.

                                                                 More wildflowers

As many of you know, I lived in Australia for a number of years so, when I came upon this, I was quite bemused.

Well, Toronto is a multicultural city and that includes Australians!

The walk was a very pleasant one and the bicycle path wandered in and out of the forest. At one point I looked across the valley and could see some of the campus buildings.

The pathway did cross the stream from time to time and this is one of the bicycle/walking bridges. The red building that can be glimpsed over the trees and shrubs to the left is a part of the campus.

                                                            Bucolic beauty

                                                              More wildflowers.

                                                               The pathway that beckons

                                                The pathway meanders down the valley

At this spot I saw a groundhog/woodchuck but, by the time I got my camera ready, it had disappeared into its burrow under those shrubs.

                                       The river as seen through the bull rushes.

Ordinary 'spray can' graffiti leaves me cold but I am awed by the art created by folk with spray cans - and, usually, in underpasses. The next three photos are of the artwork created in the Islington Avenue underpass.

 

Lester B. Pearson International Airport is only a few miles west northwest of where I was so I found myself walking beneath the flight path for departing aircraft.

                       The Air Canada aircraft is about to fly past the jet trail left by another airplane.

                                                           To me - this is a beautiful vista!

I was not quite at the point which I was aiming for but I came upon a bus route so I caught the next one to the Wilson Subway Station and came home. One last view of the Humber West River.

Memories of Christmasses Past

All of us have memories of special 'Festive' occasions in our lives. However, the dominant one is of Christmas - no matter if it is a depressing recollection or a very joyous one - we remember.

My oldest memory of Christmas is of the one when I was five years old and Alda was three. I do not remember the tree - nor the feast - but the surprising gifts that 'Santa' left under the tree. Alda received a doll buggy while I was given a little red car in which I could sit and propel by working pedals. However - I also remember how easy it was for me to bark my shins on the metal frame. Ouch! That hurt!

One other memory of that celebration that has remained with me was the supper hour radio broadcasts emanating from a department store in Vancouver - the voice of Santa accompanied by the voices of other children who were expressing their 'wish lists'. I believed - oh how I believed - that I was really hearing the voice of the magical elf.

Moving ahead three or four years to when I was eight or nine years old. We had moved to Dawes Hill in Coquitlam and the family was under financial stress on three fronts - the International Woodworkers of America (IWA) had been on strike so Dad had been without an income - Dad had had a thumb injured at work and was on Workmen's Compensation - and I had undergone the first of the three or four operations on my disfigured face.

There was no money - and then, on Christmas Eve, two checks were in the mailbox. One was a payout from the Workmen's Compensation Board (WCB) and the second was a belated Income Tax Refund. Dad took off for New Westminster to scour the stores for suitable presents. What he found for me was the one gift that I received during my childhood that I appreciated the most of all the gifts which I got during those years of growing up.   It was a box with the cardboard cutout of a castle and miniature knights and horses made of metal. I played with that gift over and over again for more than a year by which time the cardboard castle had become rather frayed.

During that space of time Mom and Dad celebrated their tenth wedding anniversary and Dad commissioned a neighbor lady (Albertine Poirier - later to become Alda's mother-in-law - and a woman who was very adept at embroidery and crocheting) to manufacture a beautiful table cloth as his gift to Mom. The basis of the cloth was white sheeting with embroidery and white crochet stitching along the edge and at the corners .That cloth graced our table until all of we children had left home and now it is in the possession of Alda - that was the tablecloth which graced her table when Ric and I visited over Christmas in 2005.

Albertine's third oldest son was Alex and he dropped by for a drink on that Christmas day. He had had a bit to drink before he arrived so he was somewhat clumsy - and knocked over the glass of red wine which Dad had offered him. There - on this pristine white tablecloth - was a large red stain. Not to worry - as the main piece of cloth in the creation was white sheeting, the stain washed right out while the colored embroidery stitches remained unharmed.

I received gifts every year but none were as memorable as that pedal car and the cardboard castle complete with knights. Also, when I began traveling and working for a church, I did not have the opportunity of spending Christmases with the family.

Family Christmas dinner in 1958 or '59. Naming from left to right, my kid brother Dan, Mom (nearly not in the photo at all!) an old family friend (George Hunt), me, Dad, Alda holding her first born son (Mark), Grandma, my niece (Donna) and my kid sister, Babs. The wag sitting next to me as I write this asked "Where's the turkey?" It is in front of Dad waiting to be carved!

And - Yes! - that is the tablecloth which Albertine Poirier  created as Dad's gift to Mom on their tenth wedding anniversary.



Here the church that I attend is the Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto.  For the past 22 years the congregation has rented the city's largest concert hall (Roy Thompson Hall) for the Christmas Eve celebration. I was one of the volunteers - as I have every Christmas Eve when I have been in town - in that huge hall on the night before last. There are more than 2800 seats and  all but 100 or so were occupied.  An organ, wind instruments and a choir of nearly 100 voices - WOW!

                                        Christmas Eve at Roy Thompson Hall in Toronto


A belated Merry Christmas to all of you!!!

Beliefs and Practices

As many of you know, I am a regular attendee at a Memoir Writing Group which meets at a branch library here in Toronto every Monday afternoon (except on holidays). Over the past two years many people have come and gone and one of them is Michael. He had lived in Alberta for a while and then returned there. He publishes a blog (titled "The Kananaskis Traveler") quite regularly. As I am on his mailing list I am notified each time that a new blog is published so I read them - and am challenged.

By this prologue I am 'setting the stage' - so to speak - for what I plan to cover here.

I do not come from a 'religious' family and yet my religious beliefs are very important in my life. My knowledge about what was important - or not - to those who have gone before  has given me much food for thought.

Dad was French Canadian. He was born in the Ottawa, Ontario suburb of Billings Bridge and was the youngest child. Cancer claimed his father when Dad was about seven years old so his Mom packed up the family (an older brother and twin girls in between them in age) and moved them to Montreal where she had lived before she married Charles Lacasse. As it so happened, a Roman Catholic boys' orphanage needed a housekeeper and she was hired. The boys went there with her while the twin sisters were placed in the nearby Grey Nuns Convent. Thus all four of the children were raised in the atmosphere of a strong Roman Catholic environment.

Grandmere died when Dad was around twelve years old and, having attained that age, he was allowed to leave the orphanage in order to go and work for a market gardener. In recent years we have heard of horrible abuses committed against children in church run orphanages but Dad never mentioned this. However, he did mention his resentment at having to be Altar Boy at masses between daybreak and noon and having to go all those hours without anything to eat.

As an adult, Dad was not religious and never went to Mass - however, he encouraged his children to attend Sunday School which my oldest sister and I did.

As far as I know, Mom never had any religious instruction as a girl and young woman. To explain, I will now relate the story of my maternal grandmother.

Queechee ('Queenie') Leah De Lacey/Hollis - Brown was one of the older children in a large Irish/English/French/Jewish family (the 'Jewish' part was through her mother). By anecdotes that we kids were told,  we came to understand that our maternal great-grandfather was a very urbane man. Grandma was fond of telling the story of her Dad taking her to a religious service in London (Westminster Abbey? St Paul's?) and then to a theatrical performance after which he told her, "Take your pick - they are all make believe!" 

My grandmother's first husband - Mom's dad - was accidentally killed before Mom was born. The man whom I knew as Granddad was Ernie Brown - a Canadian soldier from Saskatchewan. I would describe him as a 'Deist' and not an adherent of any denomination. However, his mother was a devout Methodist and two of his three sisters were Glad Tidings Pentecostal and Baptist respectively. The third sister graduated as a nurse and moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I saw her only once in my life and have no idea as to her religious beliefs.

The youngest of Granddad's sisters was Great Aunt Edith Robinson. She, her husband and two children lived in the large commodious house on East 18th Street in North Vancouver, B.C. That was where we stayed when we had to be in Vancouver and, therefore, we were subject to the religious tenets of Aunt Edith. As a child, I found her to be very intimidating and somewhat frightening so, therefore, there was no appeal for me in her religious community. However, when she became an elderly widow she mellowed and was quite sweet.

In the meantime, Great Aunt Emma lived in the caretaker's suite in the Glad Tidings Tabernacle  (Pentecostal) in downtown Vancouver. She had been married but was divorced. We had one interest in common - stamp collecting. Occasionally I would take my stamp albums into Vancouver on a Saturday afternoon, have dinner with her - and then look at stamps. At no time did Aunt Emma proselytize.

As I mentioned previously, Ruskin, B.C. was a community with no churches so the West Coast Children's Mission (based in the agricultural community of Yarrow which is between Chilliwack and Abbotsford) - and Mennonite - came to our Community Hall and opened a Sunday School. As there was no Protestant community - that we knew of - in Coquitlam, Mom invited the Mennonite group to come to our new neighbourhood and start another Sunday School. That school existed for at least 15 years.

                                    Sunday School at the Schmidt home



When I was in my teens my high school buddy invited me to attend the Evening Service and the Young Peoples' Group at Como Lake United Church in Coquitlam. This led me to become involved in that denomination and, eventuallly, to attend seminary and be ordained.

While living in Australia I attended church when I lived in communities where there was one near by - and my greatest exposure was to the Methodist Church. At the same time I was exposed to evangelical folk and found tenets of their faith attractive while other tenets were intimidating.

In the 1970s I was a United Church of Canada clergyman on Bell island, Newfoundland and then Westboro United Church in Ottawa. At the same time the Charismatic Movement was fairly strong and I became involved. I believed in the laying on of hands and in healings but I was very confused when it came to my sexuality. Could I be a Christian and Gay at the same time? Eventually the answer sunk in - YES!!!

God made all people - Lesbian, Gay, Transgendered, Transsexual. Bisexual, Queer and Questioning - and the good news is that I am still exploring, questioning and learning. At the same time, I have reason to believe that I HAVE touched the lives of people in a positive way - and will continue to do so until the end of my earthly life.