Dry January

I have a friend whom I met when he contacted me after I reviewed his book in the Globe and Mail. We met at a bar for a drink; we’ve been getting together every few months since then, which was a few years ago, usually for dinner or drinks, either near at a dive called E.L. Ruddy, which is a vegan watering hole down at the end of my block, or sometimes closer to his house, which is east of Yonge Street.
My friend heads to Argentina next week and we wanted to see one another before he left. But co-incidentally I’ve decided to do a Dry January. It’s something I’ve done over the last few years; harder than it sounds. I am not a big drinker but I do drink a beer or a glass of wine, or sometimes a bit of rye, a few times a week, and I’m trying to lose weight and I know alcohol is not good for you anyway, so I figure a Dry January is a good idea.

Several hundred people gathered on the south lawn of Queen’s Park in front of the Ontario legislature on Saturday, Nov. 23, 2024, at 2 p.m. I went there with my son Frits, and our friend Francis met us there. We stood by the pedestel of a bronze statue of a guy named Whitney and we listened to about ten speeches. It felt really good.
The government of Doug Ford, the Progressive Conservative premier of Ontario, announced the other day that they want to rip out many kilometres of bike lanes in Toronto, including bike lanes on Yonge Street, University Avenue and Bloor Street. A lot of people are righteously pissed off about it.
I’ve lived in Toronto for 30 years this fall. Before I moved here I lived in New York. Before that I lived in Montreal.
In Montreal I rode a white Raleigh mountain bike to my job at The Gazette (weather permitting). At that time, more than 30 years ago, Montreal had safe, physically separated bike lanes. I used to ride down Berri Street from my home in the Plateau to my job at the newspaper. There was also a decent bike lane on de Maisonneuve Blvd at the time, and pretty good bike lanes too down at the Old Port and going out along the Lachine Canal. I rode my bike all the time. Once an off-duty police officer hit me on Laurier Street and left with nothing more than an apology; generally, though, I felt safe.

This afternoon before supper I practiced my tennis game, banging a pale green Wilson us open ball into the brick wall that spreads across from our house. As I banged the ball, the evening sun poured onto me from between the bars of the gate, painted Cadbury-purple, that bars entry to the west part of the factory. We bought this house in 2007, so we’ve lived across from the wall for 17 years. I grew up on a farm; we had a lot of cool stuff like hills to sled down and apple trees to climb, a river to swim in and fields in which to cross-country ski, and what seemed like a limitless supply of fresh vegetables, but we did not have any brick walls.

Is a brick wall an asset? I am not sure I would phrase it that way, but the red brick wall – four stories high, as long as a city block, and about a century old — and the Cadbury chocolate factory it encloses, are, if not friends, at least aspects of existence.

We have a love-hate, mostly hate, relationship with the factory; on Sunday morning they backed up a tanker truck to the wall and hooked up a hose to a proboscis that juts from the factory, and at intervals this truck emitted a whooshing sound that sounded like the air brakes on a freight train.

I am just back from a couple of weeks in British Columbia. It occurred to me that for me B.C. is the Old Country; where I am from; the crucible of old traditions that have stayed with me in my wanderings.

My parents met on a ship from the Netherlands and settled in B.C. in 1958. I was born in New Westminster. My parents split in 1964 and we went our separate ways; not sure exactly what led to the breakup, but is was a bit scorched earth I guess in the sense that neither of my parents, nor us three eldest kids, ever lived in Vancouver much after that. That said, both my parents went on to have kids with other partners. Now I have three siblings in B.C.: a brother in Surrey south of Vancouver, a sister on Vancouver Island and a sister further north on the mainland in the South Cariboo region.

Sabatino and Mario are friends.

I met Mario first. The other day as I walked our younger dog on the sidewalk by our house, a man  emerged from a house across the street. That house changed hands last year, and the new owners, who I think are architects, are doing a lot of work on it.

“Hi,” said the man, who was a bit older, perhaps 70, and did a good job filling out his work clothes.

“Hi,” I replied. “What are you up to?”

“We are rewiring this house,” he said.

“Oh, so you are electricians? Are you available?” I asked.

“I am not the electrician. He is coming out in a bit. You can talk to him when he comes out,” he said. He said his name was Mario. We shook hands.

A few minutes later a second man came out of the old brick house and walked through the yard to the sidewalk, and then down the street a few paces to where he’d parked his white panel van alongside the chocolate factory, across from our house. The second guy, whom Mario introduced to me as Sabatino, could not have been more physically different from the first. Mario is portly and of average height; Sabatino is tiny. They seem about the same age.

My sister Sylvia van Oort is travelling in Italy with my brother-in-law, Franc van Oort. They sent this from Palermo. Sylvia wrote the words and Franc made the drawing.

There is a place in downtown Palermo where everybody goes by at one time or another. We walked from our tiny apartment through a narrow alley, turned right and found ourselves on the via Vittorio Emmanuele, the main thoroughfare down to the sea. A few blocks down we came to the beating heart of downtown – I Quattro Canti, or four corners, where the two main streets of this city have intersected for many centuries. As both streets are now largely pedestrianized there was a coming together on this crossroads, as though two rivers were meeting, a large semi circular fountain on each scalloped out corner, with below each one steps, and above each rising three stories high, a  sculpture of dignitaries in 17th century garb, above which statues of angels, then more decorations, and eventually the roofs. Every type of person imaginable entered the space strolling about, or conversely determinedly going about their business. Tiny motorized scooters zipped through, often with two people plus bags balanced on them, parents pushing strollers, tourists with rolling suitcases, and the odd ‘carabinieri’ car who seem to be able to get anywhere at all.