COVID-19 hit Canada hard somewhere around the second week of March, 2020. I remember it well, because the shutdowns began in earnest just days before my husband’s birthday, and right about the time that Mirvish Theatre sent me an email advising me that I’d be receiving a refund for the tickets I’d purchased for a show that week. The theatre had gone dark, as had most of the city’s offices, stores, services, and restaurants.
Continue reading
What a difference a week makes! Since the inauguration, I haven’t had a single communication with another person that didn’t involve a distanced high five, and a recounting of how much better we’re all sleeping and eating since we saw the backend and ignominious departure of the previous resident of the White House.
It’s Tuesday yet again. Apparently it repeats itself every six days. Bugger! This means it’s column writing day and I am not remotely focused on the task at hand. This could mean a ridiculously lengthy dissertation or stupidly short piece of nonsense. We’ll see where this one goes??
Living in “middle class” North America a) in 2019, you have no need for guns in your daily routine. No need to shoot your lunch and no need to keep the “wolf” from your door, literally.
Sounds sensible, ehh? That’s what you’d think. However, apparently not everyone agrees. Last summer the “Angel of Death” laid its clammy hand on Toronto, as there was a mass shooting on the Danforth, with fatalities and wounded. Many lives were changed forever, in a second. They were innocent lives.
But first……
Excitement, elation, anticipation (with a dash of skepticism) followed by heartbreak, letdown, expectations and hope dashed….all in the span of 24 hours. Sound dramatic? It was actually. (It’s that emotional 5-year-old inside me) Cause? For the first time in my career as a photographer a selection of my photographs were about to be published in a national newspaper…the Toronto Star! Skepticism? The photo credit. It began with vagaries followed by a number of confirmations (not without some prodding at my end) letting me know everything was well in hand. Well…..you can guess the rest. I opened the paper and my name was nowhere to be found, but someone else’s was…..
It’s Boom Town for realtors in Toronto these days. 243,400 houses were sold last year, and as of April of this year, the average residence in the city had a starting price tag of a cool $921,000.
My old house in Scarborough, which we sold last July, was re-sold twice more by speculators before the year ended, each time jumping another $100K or so in price. It’s now been demolished and rebuilt as a monster home. I wouldn’t recognize the place, they tell me.
Well…..here it is already…..2017! Blink and both Christmas and New Year’s Eve are over, a fait accompli. Phffft….gone! Tout fini! Finito! Done and dusted! ….and here we are…. Has much changed? No, not really. Resolutions? Nope. Heading to the gym? Not on your life!!! The dance floor suits me just fine. Focus? I’m working on it. Oh look, a shiny thing……
1969 or maybe early 1970.A darkened Montreal rec room, outside sound dulled by faux wood paneling and shag carpeting, with the ubiquitous mirrored bar off to the side. My girlfriend, Colleen, and I slink into the room, prepared to be kicked out by her big brother Bill, the music maven of her family, if we giggled too much.If we behaved, we’d be allowed to listen, at least for a while, to the new record Bill had brought home to enjoy with some of his cooler (and older, so therefore hotter) friends. We crept into the darkness, wide eyed.
Last week I wrote about working on Skip Prokop’s upcoming biography project and how we’re attempting to raise funds to get the thing written and published. https://kapipal.com/projects/skip-prokop-biography-project/
(Editor’s Note: Pat Blythe shares a stirring speech from 1991 in Celebration of Canada Day 2015)
Here’s Pat….
We, as a country, have our issues. Canada is not immune to political woes and embarrassments. We are not impervious to the stupidity of our politicians on either the local or international stage. We are not exempt from the ludicrous and foolish follies of our leaders or, sometime the downright unthinking cruelty of their decisions. But to many around the world we are still “Canada the good”, THE place to live, to settle, to raise families. ….and although sometimes we appear to roll over and play dead, don’t piss us off too much….there’s a lot more to us than meets the eye….
Bullseye Records of Canada
Segarini: Don't Believe a Word I Say 