Category: Daily updates

Generally musings of the day, usually accompanied by a photograph

Brainiversary

It has been one year since my brother’s successful brain surgery. I am eternally grateful to everyone who helped him: the surgical team, the nurses and rest of the hospital staff, and his friends who organized his ‘big brain benefit’ and provided post-surgical support.

The last few months have been a really tough time for me — with more challenges ahead — but the anniversary provides a reminder of what is most important and makes me once again filled with relief and gratitude, as I was in Victoria a year ago.

Dr. Ian Fleetwood — thank you. Perhaps one day I will unveil a project which I am undertaking to thank the land at a scale commensurate with my gratitude.

Toronto’s bike season re-emerging

Snowbanks are still dwindling and another winter blast is still expected, but I was nonetheless able to ride my bike every day from Saturday through Monday.

Official Neon Rides likely won’t resume until April, but if attractive weather warrants it we might undertake some unofficial rides sooner. For me, that would represent the re-emergence of a social community which I have badly missed through the winter’s flurries and pools of slushy brine.

Watching the snow fall

Winter has fallen decisively across Toronto. Right now it’s longjohns-and-a-toque weather inside my small apartment, with nothing but white to see at any distance outside the windows.

I brought my bike in for an annual tune-up, plus a shifter repair and replacement tires. I don’t expect much biking for several months, but it was good to get it into the shop during their less busy time. I’m getting an upgrade to Schwalbe Marathon Plus tires, which the staff say are good for puncture resistance, plus replacing the seat which is gradually eroding away with a more comfortable and better one.

I am looking forward enormously to the return of bicycling season. The city seems so much more open and endowed with possibility when it is possible to get anywhere without worrying about TTC delays or deep snow banks.

First time at Biidaasige Park

Photo by Jess

I had a great Saturday. It was cool enough not to be oppressive, and I was able to ride down the Don past the Brickworks to the new Biidaasige (bee-daw-sih-geh) Park. The park is very impressive. They have turned the engineered, industrial, concrete landscape around the mouth of the Don River into a real human space again, and an alluring one. There is a large outdoor adventure playground with ziplines, charmingly rendered animal play sculptures, and two-story high treehouses shaped like a raccoon and an owl, the latter of which has a tiny amphitheater in front. Within a large landscape of springy concrete, kids can use human-powered pumps to move water into a simulated watershed with controllable floodgates and sand areas to play in. There are curving paths along the new rivercourse, which is lined thickly with native plants. There are also boat launches and fishing spots.

The park grand opening was happening just a short ride from the Neon Riders BBQ, so I was able to see some friends there and bring one back for another ride through Biidaasige Park. After that, another friend from the Riders had a charmingly creative and playful music gig in Bickford Park, which was further enriched for me by a pair of very friendly dogs who were part of the small audience.

A river mouth should be a geographical anchor and natural point of interest. As someone who has walked extensively all over Toronto, the way the Don came to an end failed to satisfy those expectations. With Corktown Common, Biidaasige Park, and the other park areas still in progress, the city is doing a great job at making the river mouth part of the human landscape again. I have thought for years that Toronto’s greatest planning blunder was cutting off the city from the lake with the Gardiner Expressway. Personally, I would be fine with getting rid of the whole thing through the mechanism of less driving downtown, but while we are waiting it’s great that at least the river is being reclaimed.

The ziplines all had long lines of small children on Saturday, so I will need to return when things are less crowded. I expect Biidaasige Park to become a popular break spot for Neon Rides.

P.S. At an arts and crafts station, I was taught to make ‘seed bombs’ out of dirt, pottery clay, and heirloom open-pollinated seeds of Common Evening Primrose (Oenothera lamarckiana) from the Ecoseedbank in Montreal. The flowers are native to the region and good for pollinators, and the initiative reminds me of charming videos of dogs who help re-seed the forest after fires in Chile.

Island ride

I had never taken a bicycle to the Toronto Island before, so yesterday I went with my friend Lance to ride the different tracks:

He also very kindly made us bannock, coffee, and bacon on his portable twig stove, and even brought along hammocks and lent me one after:

Soon, some friends are planning to ride up the Humber from Old Mill station toward the West Humber trail and Claireville conservation area.

Processing mortality

Even though it wasn’t my life at risk, the experience of my brother Sasha’s stoke and brain surgery has had a profound and lasting effect on me.

I feel like the last few years have been a waterfall of grief. I learned about Peter Russell and John Godfrey’s grave illnesses shortly before their deaths and funerals. I have gone through the loss of my relationship with Katrina, as well as an initiative which I hoped would finally give me a functional platform to fight climate change from.

In the lead-up to Peter and John’s funerals, I spent large amounts of time pre-grieving: deliberately working through, naming, and experiencing the feelings, so I might be able to avoid being overwhelmed when the time for dignity and gratitude came at the celebrations of their lives. I was doing much the same in Victoria (along with fervently, atheistically praying for his welfare): emotionally working through every possible outcome, steeling and reinforcing myself for whatever might come.

In the time since I returned to Toronto, I have still felt seized with these feelings and questions. In part, the experience underscored how I am now definitively past any sort of preparation or training stage in my life. There is no escape from dealing with life at its most serious, and from deciding how to use it in furtherance of one’s values and goals. Figuring out how to cope with a world where some beloved things are gone forever and where all others are threatened is a substantial challenge if you refuse to fall back on feel-good rationalizations or unjustified optimism.

Life is fragile and subject to arbitrary and abrupt revocation. It is also a realm where a person can be easily dominated by those who feel entitled to control them. Coping with and making sense of life, with all of its limitations and confusions and conflicts, remains an ongoing effort.

The day after the surgery — and following a practice that Sasha taught me — I walked from the hospital to Thetis Lake and walked around the water under the cover of ancient trees. The feeling of relief and gratitude was overwhelming, but I was surprised by the realization that this would also have been the right thing to do if the worst had happened: to thank the land from a position of agony and gratitude for the gift that had been my remarkable brother.

Linking routes in western Toronto

Yesterday’s route in green

After work yesterday, I took advantage of the Bloor bike lanes prior to their removal and connected some disconnected tracks in the west of the city. I rode all the way to where the bike lanes end at Kipling, then took Dundas West northeast to where it splits: with St. Clair Avenue north of the rail lines and Dundas south. I took St. Clair to Prospect Cemetery, and then the familiar route north up the cemetery and then east along the York Beltline and Kay Gardiner Beltline trails.

Bad weather projected for Thursday has the Neon Ride delayed until Friday, and I am also talking with friends about a daylong ride north up the Humber ravine to the arboretum.