Not Mark!

I am back on a cruise ship after a few years practicing being a landlubber, and a lot of things have changed, but some have stayed the same. 

For example, we started out on ships with 1000 passengers, while this one, the Sun Princess, has over 4000. You wouldn’t think with that many people enjoying a vacation in the Caribbean sunshine that you would run into the same people multiple times, but it does happen, and when it is a case of persistent mistaken identity it becomes a story for this blog. 

One evening on the first day, we were watching one of the many activities in the large Atrium in the centre of the ship, when a couple approached us and started talking to me about something I knew nothing about. Looking puzzled, I said, “I’m sorry, do I know you?”

“Yea, Mark,  we were talking in the lineup to get registered, remember it’s Beth & Tony from Boston.”

Well, I am getting old, and perhaps my memory isn’t what it was when I could remember the names of all 350 students in my school and most of their little siblings, but I knew I had not chatted with Beth & Tony from Boston.

“I’m sorry, but I am not Mark, my name is Art and I'm  from Toronto.”

She gently reached out and touched my arm, “Ha Ha Mark, that’s very funny I’ll see you around, say hello to Martha for me.”, and away she went down towards the buffet.

On day two, I ran into the same lady again, and I was suddenly "Mark" once more. I was thanked for a lovely time with drinks last night in the Crooners Bar. Well we did have drinks in the Crooners, but it was before dinner not the evening, and it was not with Beth & Tony. “Listen, “ I said, "I really am not Mark, my name really is Art and I did not have drinks with you last night.”

The poor lady really did look confused, “Mark, are you serious, you must have a twin on the boat then.”

“Yes, seriously I am not Mark, I’m sorry but you really must have me mixed up with someone else, my name is Art not Mark.”

“That is amazing, you really must have a twin on the boat.” She said, and I thought she must finally believe me. 

On day three, another of the sea days that I enjoy so much, I was standing in line waiting for a cup of Strawberry Sorbet, and I noticed the same lady in line behind me waiting to order, and when she finished putting her request in, she came over to me and said, “We really do have to stop meeting like this.”

Well, I assumed she now knew I was Art and not the mysterious Mark, so I simply replied “That is very true, I agree.”

“But,” She replied, I really do need to thank you for pulling Tony’s butt out of the soup last night, he completely forgot to bring the Christmas lights I had put out for him; it was so good of you to lend him that string of lights. We will make sure to get them back to you.”

“I’m sorry, but again, I have no idea what you are talking about. I am not Mark, I am Art, And I did not lend Tony any Christmas lights.” I told her - she obviously did not believe me last time so I added. “Ok, look, come over here and wait for my order to come up, I ordered strawbeerry sorbet and he is going to do it now. Listen when he calls me name.”

Sure enough, the server came over with my strawberry sorbet and announced “ARTHUR”, and I took my nice cold sorbet. “See,”, I said, ‘Arthur’ or ‘Art’ for short, not ‘Mark’. So I guess if you want to return the lights, you will have to look for someone who looks exactly like me, but answers to the name ‘Mark’.”.

Now I suppose she could be stalking me for some reason, but I have encountered her three times in three days on a boat carrying 4000 vacationing passengers, and I am yet to come around a corner and come face to face with someone who looks exactly like me.  . . . . . And I do wonder if the next time I see her it will be as “Mark” or as “Art”.

Joy of Writing - Story -3 - Mad House

Today he found the walk through the park was a bit odder than usual. There were the usual homeless folk hanging around in their group in the circle, and the fellow in the motorized chair was as usual holding court by his park bench, but there seems to be a seriously increased level of security all over the park. He wondered what was going on. He looked at the bench out by the entrance and the old lady who usually sat there reading was gone; she was always there. Very odd. Then he noticed that there was a crowd over by the garden centre and they seemed to be dancing wildly to music in their heads. 

Walking over to one of the security people he asked what was going on. 

“We are not sure, but that group is getting everyone very much on on edge, It is almost like they are from the Mad House or something.”

He decided the only thing to do was to actually go ask them so he walked over to the group who had now stopped dancing and were speaking in a rather agitated manner to each other. Tapping one of them on the back he asked,  “What is this all about?”

The young lady turned to him and he stepped back in shock, Her face was painted a brilliant green and he then noticed that most of the crowd sported the same kind kind of facial colouring. She however smiled and said is a cheerful voice, “Oh didn’t you get the memo, the provincial government has finally called the election and we are just celebrating; we are all voting GREEN this year.”

Story 2 - Doors?

There is no way out of this room I find myself in. In fact I don’t even see any doors or windows at all, but I’m sure there was a door when I came in, there had to be. But I look around and I do not see any way out. In fact, thinking about it I must have come in through a door, but there is none now. This is a real mystery, Maybe I am dreaming I can’t be in a room with no way out. 

Then just as I was starting to panic, a section of the room that was in shadow was lit up by a bright light from the ceiling and there in the corner was a concealed door. Finally I had a way to escape; I admit it, I was a little worried for a while. I got up and walked over to the door and it opened as I approached, but walking through I realized that I was then in a room identical to the one I just left and the door I came through was the only door in this room. 

Joy of Writing - Story 1

It was Tuesday, but I was not expecting anything to be happening today. I had been told that it was a day off from work, so I was relaxing without having to do the usual work from home stuff. But just as my coffee was finally finishing from the Aero Press the door bell rang. Odd, no one ever comes to see me anymore since I was diagnosed. 

I slowly got up and shuffled to the door and looked out through the peep hole. There was no-one there. Looking out again just in case, I really could not see anyone, so I slowly opened the door leaving the security chain in place. I still could not see anyone, so I took the chain off and opened the door fully.

There, in front of me was a beautiful redhead in a black suit. 

 “Are you Logan Murphy?” She asked looking at a tablet in her hand. 

 “Yea, at least I think I still am.” I replied puzzled at how she suddenly appeared there. 

 “And you have been waiting for a cure for a while I suspect.” She said tapping on her tablet. 

 “I don’t understand, “ I said confused, “ I thought my condition was incurable and I was to be isolated here forever. “ 

 “Well that has all changed, and I was sent to get you. Can you be ready in 10 minutes, a car has been ordered.” 

 “What do you mean?” I exclaimed “I have no idea what to do, I wasn’t prepared for anything like this. Is there really a cure?” 

 The redhead just stood there “Listen, you need to come with me immediately, I don’t know any more than you do, I was just sent to get you. They told me not to worry about infection, so I assume there must be a cure. 

 At this point, I realized that I really did not care about anything else. I had reconciled myself to living on my own in my little government supplied apartment for the few years I had left and doing their menial “Work”. Now this girl was telling me I might have a second chance. 

 “I’m ready, let’s go I exclaimed, this is amazing. Where do we have to go? 

 “I have no idea, I am only the messenger, the car is downstairs waiting for us.” She explained. 

 As I closed the door and locked it, I realized that I had not been out of the apartment for five years, and I had no idea what to expect. We walked down the hallway and she called the elevator which took us down to the lobby. Outside, a silver car stood at the curb with the back door open. 

As I got in, the door closed and I heard a loud hiss as the compartment was sealed.

A Moving Forest

When I first visited Toronto 50 years ago, I was impressed that it was easy to drop down into one of the Ravine Parks and the city disappeared to be hidden by trees, and now that I am actually sort of living in Toronto I am impressed with the amount of trees in the city. Most streets except the very major ones have trees along them and there are parks full of trees scattered around the city. The condo we live in has a little forest of trees beside one of the buildings and when we look in every direction from our balcony there are patches of green. 

50 Trees waiting to move

But any city can always use more trees to provide shade and clean the air. So, when we got an e-mail announcing a moving forest it certainly peeked our interest. On a nice sunny, warm Saturday afternoon fifty trees comfortably planted in shopping carts were going to be wheeled through the downtown from an inner-city park down to the waterfront.

Volunteers waiting to move the forest

So, we bowed out of helping a niece unpack from a recent move to Toronto and took Public Transit down to find this event. Sure enough, we found fifty shopping carts with a variety of tall 10 foot trees waiting outside a community centre with volunteers in bright Yellow shirts eager to transport them through the city. 

We probably could have volunteered to actually be the chauffeur for one of the trees, but we did not find out about the event in time, so we just followed along on the forest’s journey. This moving forest travelled slowly through the city and stopped at locations along the way to provide needed shade to areas of the city that needed it. The forest spent some time exploring the Bentway, the concrete park under the elevated Gardner Expressway which certainly could be improved with a few trees. Finally two hours later the trees ended up on the Toronto waterfront where I believe they will be planted in locations around Toronto where a bit more green will improve the neighbourhoods. 

Everyone ready to go

I was surprised to hear about a moving forest, but in Toronto almost anything can be expected and this was a fun and interesting event. 

The story of the Moving Forest

Greening the Bentway

End of the route; the Toronto waterfront

Lego and Rare Books

You might wonder what those little plastic interconnecting blocks have to do with rare books. It all started with a nice sunny warm spring day here in Toronto and me not wanting to waste the good weather. I had found an interesting article about Easter Eggs on an Internet site about Toronto, and it mentioned that one of the “eggs” was a Lego Tower in the west end of downtown. Now it wasn’t a real “Easter” egg even though it was around the season, it was one of the easter eggs that are little hidden gems in something. Apparently designers and engineers like to hide little indications (easter eggs) that they designed something and as a challenge for people to find. Common in computer games and software, I recently read about them in cars and trucks. This list of Easter Eggs were of little interesting things to see in the city of Toronto and they are always a good excuse for an outing so we decided to set out on a walk to see if we could find this Lego Tower Easter Egg.

It was a bit of a walk, but the day was warm and sunny, and we set out down Church Street to Queen’s Square and on to Hobart St where the Lego Tower was supposed to be located. 

This tower of  Lego was apparently a project started by a local resident who decided to decorate one of the city’s lamp poles outside his house by building lego around it and as it grew it got slightly out off control until it became a “tower”; sounded interesting.

What is that odd tower?

Now when exploring Toronto, you always find unexpected interesting things, and on this walk we came upon the huge slightly ugly building housing the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library. Situated on a bend in the road, the building really sticks out as you walk down Hobart Street. It is a large concrete building with an imposing tall concrete tower that when you see it you can’t help wondering what it’s function is. We had seen this building from a distance on another walk and wondered what it was. The Internet tells me that it opened in 1972, and is built in the Brutalist architectural style giving it a rather industrial look. Walking by we discovered that it was a rare book library, and then rounding the corner, looking up at the tall concrete tower, we found a sign indicating that we had arrived during an open house. Two retired folk out for a walk, our time was flexible so we decided to stop in to see what it was all about. 

Come in and see!

Turned out to be a interesting stop. There was a room all set for the open house with a selection of the rare books housed here. The friendly helpful staff told us all about the services the library provides. It holds around 700,000 rare books that are accessible to the public. You can go in and search their catalogue and they will bring you any volume you wish to research. Some of the books on display were fascinating so I can only imagine some of the interesting information you could find if you wished. Oh, and that odd tower on the front of the building actually serves absolutely no useful purpose. It was intended to house a clock in the original design, but as it became a reality, everyone agreed that the clock in the tower looked silly, so it is now just an empty tower. 

And after our detour to explore the rare books we did find the other tower, the lego one and although like the unused clock tower it serves no useful purpose other than decorating one of Toronto’s light poles. Smaller than I expected it is basically one layer of Lego bricks in a square around the pole with windows, doors, stairs and lego people all the way up high enough that if you wished to add to it, you would need to bring a ladder. And not an actual egg in sight.

A pretty impressive collection

Just one of the rare books

The Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library

Yup . . . a tower of lego

And it is a serious tower!

Riding the Subway

Since we do not have a car here in Toronto, we make use of the Toronto Transit system on a regular basis. We use the subway, the streetcars, the trains and the buses, but if it goes where you need to go, the trains; subway, GO Trains or the UP are the most efficient, as they are usually unaffected by the constant crazy Toronto traffic. 

Getting on at the Collage Station

One of my goals here in Toronto was to really explore the Subway system by exploiting TTC’s really nice two hour free transfer program. This means that you can transfer among any of the transit systems free for two hours. For example, if you are flying into Pearson Airport, you can take the UP train from the airport to UNION station downtown, take the Subway to the closest station and then a streetcar or bus to your final destination all for no additional fare so long as it is within the two hour limit. 

"Tap", your Presto card to use the system

We decided to get on the Subway at the stop closest to the condo, the College Station, and head north, stopping at every second station all the way to the end of the line at the Finch Station, which is over 13 km away. Once we reached the end of the line, we would then turn around and come back south stopping at the stations skipped on the trip north. I planned to take a picture of each station and then exit the station to snap another shot of the view outside the subway entrance. 

Waiting for the train

The stations are all different, different designs and layouts, different colours and different locations. Most are underground, but a few are on the surface. Some are stand-alone stations, where others are integrated into shopping centres or condo complexes. The only thing they all seem to have in common, is that they are all undergoing some kind of renovation or upgrading. We found exits closed, elevators not working and detours around construction to get into and out of the stations. 

The Subway to Finch Station

This 13 km trip would normally only have taken around 35 minutes, so the return would have normally been just over an hour, but stopping at every station, the total trip took us all afternoon, from 12:00 to 4:30, and surprisingly, it involved a lot of walking for a total of almost 7 km, including a lot of stairs up and down into the stations, so my new hip certainly made the experiment a lot easier. 

Riding the Subway

My original $2.25 “senior” fare lasted me all the way to the end of the line at the Finch Station and it was only on the way back down that I reached the two hour time limit and the usual “Free Transfer” that came up whenever I tapped my Presto card at the station entrances changed to the “$2.25 Fare” notification. 

Now we only did one section of the Toronto subway system; 13 km of the “V” shaped line 1 which is over 38 km long in total with 38 stops along the way and runs in a generally North/South direction. There are also two additional lines running East/West, but the additional lengths will have to wait for another time. 

Every stop is clearly marked

Outside the Subway Station

Some stations are pretty quiet

Everyone who lives near this stop must drive their car, but here comes our train!

The Davisville Station which we used a lot when Ryan lived near it.

Some stations are on the surface

Others are WAY down underground

Signs make it easy to plan your trip

Another station above ground

Last Stop, Wellesley station and a three block walk home.