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.
I’d turned down some friends to go to E.L. Ruddy last week. One said in response, a bit bitterly, “Just because you’re not drinking, does that mean you have to become a hermit?” Answer is no, so I suggested to my friend that we meet for lunch, which is less booze-forward meal in my circles, at Massey College.
“Am cool going to Massey, never been there—but where does one eat there? The cafeteria?”
“Yes. Cafeteria style. My treat,” I wrote back.
“Okay, reserve my cafeteria tray! See ya then!” he texted back.
Massey College in the University of Toronto is a residence that holds 70 graduate students. The college, designed by Vancouver architect Ron Thom, is a three-storey yellow brick enclave on the U of T campus, on Devonshire Place. It’s designed as a kind of latter-day castle, with a kind of turreted bell tower; they ring the bell at 12:15 p.m. for lunch. I became affiliated with Massey in 2012 when, following three years of rejections, I finally earned a Massey Journalism Fellowship. This fellowship affords its recipients an academic year away from their day job (in my case my reporting job at the National Post), during which I travelled to Newfoundland, Germany and Finland (three junkets) and audited a range of courses at the U of T.
Lunch is a big deal at Massey. After clearing the porter at the gate, one enters the central courtyard, past the fountain to the big black wood doors. One then ascends a flight of stone stairs to Ondaatje Hall, a room with 10-metre ceilings and long tables flanked by wooden chairs whose leather backs bear the logo of Massey College, a crest with the words sapare aude, or “dare to know.”
John, he of the cafeteria remark, was impressed, and took a few photos of the place. He said he’d walked by before and even posted a photo of the outside, dubbing it “”Ministry of Ninjutsu,” for its forbidding fortress-like walls. But he’d never been inside. We got our lunches (chicken masala and rice) and sat down. We thought we’d have a nice chat, catching up over the meal, but then a man sat down right beside us. This is tradition at Massey—one is supposed to take the next available chair, to facilitate the exchange of knowledge that is at the heart of the college’s mission. Christopher had been a graduate law student in the 1980s and lived two years on a scholarship through the Connaught Fund, created after the U of T sold a research laboratory it owned, following the discovery of insulin at the university about a century ago.
Christopher now works at the University of London at the intersection of artificial intelligence and cloud storage. He really wanted to mix it up. He learned quickly that my friend and I are writers and proceeded to launch us into a wide-ranging debate about AI and how it will affect writers. Somewhere along the way I mentioned that my friend and I were at lunch because I was doing a dry January.
We then got into a protracted discussion about the Middle East, generally agreeing that we were no fans of Benjamin Netanyahu. Somehow, over coffee, Christopher steered the discussion back to AI; he really wants me to be concerned about how it will affect my craft. I mentioned that everything I write, including this blog post, ultimately gets scraped by bots to feed the AI writing monster. Still, I said, “I don’t think AI could write the book I wrote about maple syrup.”
“Well, I hate to say this to you, but after your book comes out, AI will have it as a source to write its maple syrup book,” he said. “I fear that you will be so depressed after lunching with me that you will have to go home and have a drink.”
Hmm. He has a point. But I haven’t cracked yet! Here’s to booze-free lunches filled with scintilating banter! Happy New Year!