Whenever I return to Toronto, I like to visit locations that framed my everyday experience in the city where I once lived. The old, dilapidated apartment building on Dundas St. W. where I first lived is still there, although the Toronto Coach Terminal behind it is currently being demolished. The apartments I later rented in the Annex, a neighbourhood in Midtown Toronto, haven’t changed much. The Harbord St. Bakery is still in business at the same location it has traded from since 1945.
I headed to Toronto City Hall and Nathan Phillips Square, recently refreshed for the FIFA World Cup. Photographic backdrops had been created for visitors drawn to the city for the matches. Documenting people taking pictures of other people turns the act of photographing into subject matter.
Walking up McCaul St. towards the Art Gallery of Ontario on Dundas Street, I stopped to frame a handsome old residential building. I caught a passing 505 Dundas streetcar in one shot and the profile of a stylish woman walking by in another.
At Wellington St. & Church St. I spotted a small dog on a lead by the Berczy Park fountain that could have passed for one of the 27 cast‑iron canines spouting water and gazing upward toward a golden bone perched at the top.
From Bay St., I entered Brookfield Place, a high, light-filled atrium, and studied the reflections of people in a newly installed sculpture called Anthems To Colour. I found my own reflection in the coloured panels as two businessmen passed on the other side.
On Queen St. W., I walked by The Cameron House, one of Toronto’s most iconic small music venues. There was a new mural on the east side of the building, but the one on the front hasn’t changed since my last visit three years ago. I was pleased to see the giant ants are still there, crawling across the façade. I raised my camera as two young men zipped by on a scooter.
Each of these settings, stored in memory like sets from an old play, reminded me of my time in Toronto many years ago. But the cacophony of sounds, streams of vehicles, and frenetic movement of people took me back to the present, where the performance of everyday life brought these spaces back to life again.
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