Fiat Lux et Tenebra

1. The encroaching darkness

I am not sure when I first noticed it.  Rings appearing around lights.  The figures on the Union Station departure boards doubling. Not so much blurriness, but darkness.  

One’s eyesight declines with age. It happens. It was happening to me.  I would have to live with this existential angst as I approached my fiftieth year. “You are aging. But your health is excellent. You should rejoice in that. Others have it much worse.”  

My biannual eye exams detected nothing other than a growing need for reading glasses. Nothing more.

One evening, standing in the shower, I got soap in my left eye and shut it. I realized that my right eye was worse. Drastically worse. 

Making eye contact had never been easy for me.  Now, when I looked up, I felt my wounded right eye staring into blurry space, and I avoided it even more. My confidence plummeted. My work suffered.

2. The shadows of my mind

When I was younger, I had rituals to keep away the darkness. At night, I would recite a mental prayer to keep me safe from all manner of diseases.  There was a rhythm, a ritual to these recitations, a liturgy to give me comfort from the horrible things I read about every day.  When I was a little older, I added nuclear war to the things I prayed would not happen to me.  My vision of the future was limited to what was safe, what was nearby.  The love of others had always been hard for me to obtain; best to go with the sure thing.

3. Let there be light

As I crossed into my 20s, I began to question the fundamental premise of fear I had built my life around.  The world itself was opening, the Berlin Wall falling, the Cold War receding.  I made new friends, ended relationships, began others. I survived—no, I thrived.  I turned my focus from the minute and precise to the large and expansive. The mysteries of life no longer frightened me; to the contrary, I embraced them, drinking deeply of newfound springs of knowledge. The liturgy of fears was forgotten, and with them, my old faith.   The world could be an awful place, but a beautiful one as well.  I chose the light, a light bright enough to banish the shadows. I resolved to never let fear grip me again.

4. The world is getting better and better

Bathed in light, warding off the shadows, I took the better illuminated path, the easier way, the one presenting the least difficulties. I could not fail. I would not fail.  Instead, I would find another place to prevail, to be resilient, to pivot, to adapt. I would pick my battles. I would always see the best in any situation.  When the towers fell in 2001, I rejoiced in the coming together in its aftermath, the heroism of ordinary individuals, the unlikelihood of a repeat. I could lend my strength to the weak.  

5. Fears

Until I became the weak. Until I began to doubt myself, seeing myself in another’s eyes as less than. The last time, I had pivoted away from that challenge, chosen not to fight, to take another path.  This time, I could not. This time, I had to face myself. The shadows were again growing, threatening, looming around the corners. But I looked for the light, and I again found it, seized it. Beat back the shadows again, denied they existed at all. Confidence was regained in the speed at which the new doors opened, and I stepped through.

6. Hope

The world was bright and shiny again.  The election of Barack Obama underscored the possibility that the world truly was changing for the better. I was in a job I loved, learning, growing, flourishing, standing astride the path I had chosen, making it mine.   I could even turn back, pick up threads dropped long ago, such as my passion for the music of Rush, weaving them into a bright tapestry.  My father’s death, the financial crisis—nothing darkened my soul for too long.  

1. The encroaching darkness

Around 2014, I began to notice that the light seemed to be dimming. In the midst of some signs of progress in the United States—the passage of Obamacare, the legalization of same-sex marriage—increasingly an undercurrent of anger seemed to be rising to the surface.  But the light still seemed bright enough to sustain itself.  After all, the United States was a shining beacon of some of the finest ideals the world had ever seen; by no means perfect, these would carry the day, would they not? The high road would be taken, the truth would prevail…yes?

Driving around Hamilton on the evening of November 8, 2016, hearing the results come in from the election, I knew early that it was not going as expected. 

I had, like so many, taken the light for granted.

7. Numbness

Months later. My doctor was on leave. I put off making an appointment until when she returned. By then, I was fairly sure I knew the source of my problems, and she confirmed it: I had a cataract on my right eye. Six weeks later, I saw an optician, who noted that I actually had cataracts in both eyes.  The type I had were typically seen in people who had been on steroidal medications.  I never had been.  

The office said they would call me within a few weeks to set up the pre-surgical exam.

All I could see was shadow. I questioned my abilities, my intelligence, the fundamental perceptions of who I was as a person. I looked for the light. But for the first time, I was not encouraged by the world I saw around me. In the past, I had always been able to find joy.  I had no use for grief, for sorrow, for anger. These were things to be overcome. They were darkness. They were not to be indulged. I had no language for them.

Outside, I kept up the façade. Inside, all was grey. Numb.

In August, I contacted the optician wondering when I would be hearing from them. It was as if they had forgotten me, but within a few days, I had—at last! —an appointment for mid-September for the pre-surgical assessment. I even had a preliminary date for the surgery, September 23.

The light flickered encouragingly.

And then went out entirely.  I heard a few days after the appointment that my surgery was cancelled, and that I was to see my eye doctor at his office.  September 25, 2017 was one of the worst days of my entire life, as I sat in his chair hearing that my cataract was so bad that they were unable to operate.  I would have to be referred to a surgeon with experience in complex cataracts—a process that could take months.

I came home and had a panic attack.  What if I lost my drivers’ license before I could have surgery?  What if I lost my job?  What if what I had could not be fixed?  What if the darkness were permanent?  What if? 

8. A door opens

But in the midst of that darkness, that very afternoon, my doctor called.  He had found a doctor in Mississauga who dealt with complex cataracts.  And within hours, I had an appointment for one week later.

One year ago today, I had the cataract surgery in my right eye. The left eye followed at the beginning of December. 

The physical problem was corrected. But this—and the world—had broken me—old, long-healed fractures had opened up.  To someone looking in from the outside, there would have been little evidence of this.  Like a cat, I had learned to hide my pains very well out of fear of those who would prey on them.  I do not confide easily in others. The depth of my feelings is somewhat embarrassing, and I tend to minimize them.  After all, I came from an intact family with loving parents, am financially secure, have been married for 27 years, possess an outstanding education, and privilege in many ways. Materially, I have never wanted for anything. 

What had I to complain about? What had I to fear? 

I know the answer to that question now. I fear the future, a future where I might be deprived of these things, a world mourning what I once but no longer was, of potential squandered, of joy taken for granted now slipping through my fingers, a future where despite my best efforts, people turned on each other. A world diminished.  

Fear paralyzes me—unless I can find the language to name that fear, and then the courage to persist, to prevail despite it.  I have spent a full year searching for that language, and, like learning any new language, it has been at times overwhelming. But there is strength in understanding that others have passed this way, and have left signposts for me to see, to hear, to read…but most importantly, to feel. 

To name the fear, I must first accept that there is no light without shadow, no shadow without light. Those shadows cannot be willed away. They are part of the light, exist in balance with the light.  They are part of a whole. If I turn from the shadows, they do not disappear. They grow, unattended, no matter how much I want to believe they are not there at all.

But what I fear most is also true. Shadow has the power to fully obscure the light. This has happened before. I will see it, and the instinct will be to recoil, and insist it cannot happen again, and refuse to name it. But it can, and it will.

It is easy, so easy for me to slip into the shadows. To become numb. To succumb. To not have to feel the hurt and pain. To take the path of least resistance. To avoid failure. To shrug it off.  To wait for the great burst of light to dispel the gloom. 

What I fear most is this: that I will accept the shadow as light, accept that a life diminished is acceptable because it causes me less conflict, less pain.  Because it is more comfortable. 

Let there be light and shadow, and let me know the difference.

At this time, in this place

Even in darkness, there is light. And this is not so much darkness of the pitch black, starless variety, as greyness and gloom, where the light struggles, the rain falls, and it is easy to feel nothing because all of your senses are exhausted from the strain.

At this time, and in this place, I give thanks. For my parents who raised me, and the extended family who ensured an only child was not alone.

For true friends of many years and fewer years--for all that you are, for the love you have shown. For my husband, my partner, the closest I have ever come to understanding--truly understanding--another soul.

For the soft fur of a purring cat. For the sound of water falling. For words well chosen, beautiful or stark, legato or staccato, spoken or heard silently. For the symphony of a beautiful building, or the fugue of a monument to loss. And for the music itself, in all its forms, in joy and anger, sorrow and resignation, humour and biting wit, all of it, over many years and with many voices and instruments.

For the smell of warm cinnamon and spices, of wet leaves evoking red, orange, yellow and brown. For the play of light on clear water. For the most ancient of stones, and the story they tell. And for the stars, the timeless stars, each a tale of worlds existing only in my dreams.

These, I am thankful for, because in the days of deepening grey, they are my stars, and though there be clouds, I know they are there. Even when I cannot see them, even when they are just memories or images in my mind, they cannot be taken from me.

And for this, I give thanks, at this time, in this place.

Thanksgiving Day, 2018

9:35 am, 100th Street, Niagara Falls NY, October 6, 2018

Behind the chain link fence stretches a grassy field, benign, almost featureless.  It could be a park, but no friendly gate invites visitors.  Streets, or what once were streets, penetrate the perimeter, halting abruptly, the asphalt crumbling. Shrubs appear here and there—not the kind of shrubs that one might find in a country meadow, but the kind that are missing their houses. Because they are.

I have long wanted to come here, to see for myself. Driving down 100^th Street in Niagara Falls, I am struck by how desolate the area looks.  It could be an abandoned industrial area. In fact is is, but before and after that, it was a thriving neighbourhood. Houses were once here, with kids running up and down the street and across the big field to their elementary school. Sometimes they would run across something strange—a puddle with an oily slick, or an abandoned barrel, or an odd smell.  Everyone seemed to be sick, particularly the young ones.

The grassy field was the remains of a failed attempt to build a canal to bypass Niagara Falls. Forty years ago, the world learned that this site—the infamous Love Canal--was a toxic wasteland.  Residents were evacuated, their homes abandoned, condemned and eventually, torn down. The school that had been built right on top of the site was closed and eventually demolished. Millions of dollars were poured into sealing the site and in resolving the lawsuits the residents brought against the chemical company responsible for the dump.

Make no mistake, Love Canal is not gone. It’s right there, still toxic, though putatively contained now. There are no signs to identify it.  No museum or historical marker exists to tell its story. So the land itself must provide the words—the roads to nowhere, the driveways to invisible homes, the echoes in time of the children once running along 100^th Street as I drive south. On my right, that vast, empty, toxic field, its secrets buried for good now, so they say.  Nature is reclaiming this place. As in the lands surrounding Chernobyl, nature pays no mind to toxic chemicals. It breaks down those all those artifacts of humanity. 

The haunting of this place is that the knowledge that when all trace of humans are long gone, the enemy will still lurk within.  Love Canal is buried, but does not rest in peace.

*****

I first learned about Love Canal after picking up Lois Gibbs' account, Love Canal: The Story Continues many years ago.  Correction:  I first heard about Love Canal when the story broke in 1978. I was eleven, and old enough to understand.  The late 70s were a strange, toxic time dominated by a kind of malaise, a brokenness that seemed to infect the world after the last vestiges of the Vietnam War were cleared away.  Nixon's resignation in 1974 followed by the fall of Saigon in 1975 marked the closing of an era, but the new era was just tired and hurt and hopeless in so many ways.  Wounds were licked.  Nostalgia was invoked. Escapism reigned, and Star Wars was a New Hope before it knew it was. 

In many ways, the Love Canal story is a positive one, of how those committed to the truth can eventually overcome the odds and effect change, but there was a cost--in human lives, in relationships destroyed, dreams deferred, divisions sown. 

A few links:

Love Canal Today: 'We Know What's In Our Backyard'

A History of the Love Canal Disaster

Love Canal's Legacy Lingers

Love Canal Containment Zone (Atlas Obscura)

Why Do People Still Live at Love Canal?

Forty Years

Today, as I prep for tomorrow's Feast of the Bear, celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Barony of Septentria, I came across a thing.  

****

The Tale of the Great Bear of the North

by Magistra Nicolaa de Bracton

Presented at Twelfth Night, AS 45

In the beginning of time, before civilization touched the lands of the North, the Great Bear roamed free, alone beneath the stars, ever wandering, ever searching. It is said that on the coldest of cold nights, his mate and his cub were taken from him, and the earth rang with his howls and roars of anguish.  Frigga, mate to the All-Father, heard these cries and came to him, and took pity on the white bear, bereft of mate and child, and offered this to him: “We cannot unwind the skein which the Norns have spun. But look to the sky, and know that in this Northern land, your kin will be with you always.”

And she pointed to the sky, where whirled the Great She-Bear and her cub, clad in stars, mother and child, always circling the Polestar.

“This is of great comfort to me,” said the Bear, “but what am I to do here, alone, below?”

“You must give your heart to the land, and your descendants will be multiplied upon this earth,” said Frigga.

The Bear wondered at this and how it might come to pass without his mate by his side, but kept silent.  For many years, the land was in his care, but he was alone. 

Far to the West, in the land of the setting sun, Apollo did look down from his chariot and espied a people thirsting for knowledge, searching in the darkness for truth.   One day he perchance came upon them, dressed in fine clothes, speaking the languages of civilized folk.  He heard the clash of sword upon sword, but found not warfare, but gentle courtesy and chivalry.  “I shall drive my sun-chariot close, and its light shall shine brightly upon these people, and they shall have my protection,” said he.  So bright was the sun that shone that it nourished a new Society.   And in those lands did King Richard and Queen Marynel rule, followed by King Henrik and Queen Wendryn, and King Richard the Second and his queens, Anne and Diana, and King Henrik the second and Queen Leanne; and King William and Queen Sheryl. 

And in the reign of King Siegfried and Queen Marynel, word reached Their Majesties that a fierce woman approached the Kingdom of the West, riding upon a tiger.  She demanded entry into their hall.  Apollo recognized Durga the Invincible from the Eastern lands, and knew she would not be denied her wish, for she is fearless and ever-patient, and so opened the minds of Their Majesties.

“My people are restless,” said she.  “They desire to know your ways, but not to be governed by you.  They wish to be self-sufficient.  They have read the sacred texts.  Will you grant them your blessing to rule their own Kingdom?  The lands of the East are far from you, and will not trouble you.”

Their Majesties nodded, and appointed Lady Elfrida to travel to the lands of the East.  And Durga was satisfied, and returned to her lands.  Lady Elfrida did appoint Maragorn and Adrienne to preside at the first tournament in Eastern lands as King and Queen, and in that grand tournament Bruce of Cloves won the Crown for his lady Florence, and reigned for a full year.  

The passing of Durga had roused a great dragon from his slumber, and the dragon saw from afar the people of the East and the birth of their Kingdom.  He looked beneath his wing and saw on the shores of the great lake others searching for the light of civilization.  Emissaries were sent, and Countess Adrienne did come to the city on the shore of the great lake, and a grand tournament was held, and the victor proclaimed Baron Under the Mountain.  This was Cariadoc of the Bow.   But the dragon was not satisfied, and he confronted the Lady of the Tiger.  “It is not right that I bow to you,” said the dragon. “You are not sacred to my people.”  He extended his right talon, so that it fell just west of the great city of steel. “All lands west of here I claim for my own.”   The Lady of the Tiger laughed.  “I have no desire to rule such uncivilized people.  Perhaps in the future these barbarians and my people might meet here to settle the matter.   The Dragon laughed and departed, and such did the Coronation of King Cariadoc and Queen Diana Alene transpire in the fourth year since the light came to the shores of the West.

But the Dragon did not inhabit these lands alone. The great wolf Fenrir was wont to prowl in the northern reaches, far from the dragon’s fiery breath.  In the great North Woods a band of people came together who venerated Fenrir and carried his image before them into battle. Three of their number had travelled to the Kingdom of the West in its third year and saw the wonders of civilization there. In the fourth year the people in the North Woods came together and began to form a barony, sending emissaries to the West Kingdom.  But messengers were slow and unreliable and were lost in the great distance, and so the people of Fenrir moved forward not knowing that around them, a new Kingdom was growing.  In the fall of the fifth year of the Society, King Franz of the Middle, hearing strange tales of this stronghold in the great woods, came in person to witness its wonders.  The victor of the tournament that day, Thorvald inn Grimmi, who had been one of the three to travel to the West, was invested as Baron and knighted on the field, and his lady Signy, who had also traveled to the West, became Baroness.  The Lost Barony had been found, and many of its line would sit the Dragon Thrones.

Amongst the people of the North Woods was one Finnvarr de Taahe, a knight whose wanderings took him through the lands to the East of the North Woods, and indeed, into the lands of the Tiger of the East.   It was there that he came to dwell in Mirkewode for a time and won for himself the Crown of the East.  In those days, there was no requirement that King and Queen dwell in their own Kingdom, and so his Queen was Caellyn, a lady of the North Woods.  Travelling between his home in the East and his keep in the North Woods, he travelled through lands yet unclaimed and unpopulated, though full of scholars and merchants, and he resolved to return.  His passing was not unnoticed.  The Great Bear of the North watched him from afar, and wondered what this might foretell.

Count Finnvarr built a hall within the city of scholars on the shore of the ancient lake, but yet he was still alone, and travelled often to the North Woods, where he told tales of the wondrous things in the city of scholars and the beauty of the wilds without.  One lady, Gillian d’Uriel, heard these stories and resolved to come to that land as well.  Others from the city of scholars soon joined them as well, and in the ninth year of the Society the outpost on the shore of the ancient lake known as Eoforwic arose. 

Soon other outposts arose as well, Noerlandia to the north, Ben Dunfirthshire to the west.   The Great Bear of the North discovered them in his wanderings.  He kept silent, but found that ever more he was drawn to these people, and the people began to catch glimpses of him during his wanderings, standing alone, his eyes sad yet hopeful.  The people of Noerlandia instituted a feast in his honour, but he did not yet come amongst them.   Yet he watched, and kept guard over them.

And so it came to pass in time that Count Finnvarr won the right to the throne of the Middle and he and Caellyn were crowned in Eoforwic in the twelfth year of the Society.   One day the King was out riding in the woods and found himself separated from his retinue. It was then that the Great Bear showed himself.  The King was not afraid.  “Great Bear, I have seen you from afar for many months, and so have all those who dwell in these lands.  Yet you do not fear us, nor hunt us for food.  What is the meaning of this?”

“Great King,” said the Bear, “I have felt the love of these people for this land.  I dwell alone in these lands, and have for many years done so.  The land has been my only companion, and it is my heart and soul.   Your people have honoured me, and yet I have kept apart, fearful of what might come to pass.”

“You are a mighty bear,” said the King.  “What have you to fear?

“I fear that I will love again, and lose my mate and child, as I did many years ago.  But yet Frigga foretold to me that my descendants would be multiplied were I to give the land my heart.  I did not know how this could be, and then your people came to dwell amongst trees, rivers, lakes and meadows alongside me, and I felt their love for what I love, and I knew that I must find my mate amongst them, for they are destined for greatness.  But I would not usurp your place, O King.”

The King inclined his head, and said, “Great Bear of the North, I and my line rule vast lands to the west and south.  It is in my power to raise these people to greater glory, and I had already resolved to do so.  But we have lacked a leader.   They shall be a barony called Septentria and you shall rule as Baron in my stead.”

“Alas, “said the Bear, “Great as the love I bear for this land, I cannot rule over humans.  But I have seen a lady amongst you, beloved by all her people, who came to these lands not long after you. Where I am rough and beastly, she is gentle and speaks with the voice of a poet, and is renowned far and wide.  She inspires all to create great beauty with their hands, voices, and hearts.  She is mother to these people, and thus my mate in deed if not in name.  If she were to accept the Coronet of a Baroness, I would ever be beside her to protect her, the land, and the people.”

“You speak of the Lady Gillian,” said the King.

“I do,” said the Great Bear of the North.

“Never before has a Baroness ruled alone,” said the King.

“She will not rule alone. She has the heart of a Bear,” said the Great Bear.

And so, in May of the thirteenth year of the Society, the Barony of Septentria was born, raised to high status by Queen Kirsten of the Middle, and the lady Gillian, to the joy of the people, took up the Coronet as its Baroness.   And the Great Bear of the North, Ursus Septentriae, alone no more, ever protects his people in peace and in war, and his descendants are multiplied upon the land.

The architecture of time

It is no secret that ceremony and ritual are deeply fascinating and meaningful to me, which is an odd thing to say for someone who is…well, not an atheist, but not not an atheist; agnostic doesn’t really quite describe me, either, because my not knowing is a kind of belief of its own, a revelling in the mysteries that are greater than me, the structures unseen that leave their cryptic marks.  It’s a something--an emotion, an intuition—based on what I can I observe through my five senses. (Five. That number. Again.)  I look for patterns, for cycles, for what repeats and resonates, for what forms the cellars and walls and windows and decoration of time itself.  To me, a ceremony or a ritual acknowledges this architecture, sometimes simply admiring what has been built before, sometimes building new rooms or knocking down walls or adding a storey. Sometimes there is a façade that seems familiar but the inside has been gutted and all has been made shiny or new. Sometimes we simply walk among the ruins and imagine the buildings that were once there and try to reconstruct them.

If time is a dimension, like the singularity, breadth, and depth, a fourth axis that we can depict only in its reflection, then the events of the past exist somewhen, and have a continuing reality. Just because we are in the attic does not mean the basement ceases to exist.  But we also perceive time as a repeating cycle, where we visit the buildings that those who went before built.  Sometimes we remember and build new structures in their image.  Sometimes we can only see the ruins, or the faintest outlines, because we lack the senses to fully perceive what is past (and, it should be said, the future, because if the past is a reality, so, then, is the future, even if we cannot touch it.) Sometimes words, or music, or items wrought in gold or clay or iron, or bedecked in pigments, come to us over the days, years, centuries, millennia. Sometimes all that remains is puzzled in the bands of rocks or tree-stumps, and sometimes all that comes to us is light itself, spattered about the sky.  

This time of year the cycles sing to me. For 27 years now, the rhythm of the summer has pulsed towards Pennsic, much as our medieval forebears in England moved towards the Feast of the Assumption and the times of the harvest fast approached. I have attended all but two of those years, and the ritual seems to have changed little, even though of course it has, slowly and imperceptibly.  Faces once young now become lined with care, and new faces appear. The dates have moved earlier; has Pennsic not always started in July?  The camps of my youth have vanished, replaced by camps that have always been there (until they will not). The streets rearrange themselves incrementally, but to back away is to see only permanence. That fort has always been there, has it not? (I once put pen to paper and wrote of its construction. This is just history now.) Once, just once, there were fireworks. 

Others look on this place and write truths. They are not my truths, but they are true.

Once, in the marketplace, I came across an apparition—a band of Janissaries, marching in double turns, with drums and horns and cymbals—and I saw it only once, almost believed it had been a dream. But it was not, and this year, I will march with the Janissaries, and history will be recreated, although I will not perceive it ever again in the same way.  Last year, I stood at the top of the field, paused, checking to left and right where two others, in tabards of their kingdoms, stood in wait, and then the three of us stepped forward, leading three kingdoms onto the field in long columns, and I spoke the words to herald in my King and Queen. I was the Voice of the Crown.  This year, my only oath is to my people, my voice only for them, the tabard laid aside until my labours are complete.

One last time, the nineteenth time, I will labour as the sun sinks to record words—my own, and others’-- that will be read and perhaps forgotten, but then, perhaps, not. I will send the words across the years.  The fort has always been there, has it not? We were fifteen thousand once, if only in theory.

Each year, I look around, know that this could always—always be the last year.  What will it be like, should I return, the next time?  The future is out there, unknown as of yet, but inevitable, unstoppable. We cannot freeze the moment a little bit longer, but the snippets of a tune on the wind, the smell of fresh woodsmoke, the snap of a banner—I have been here before. The architecture of time is all around me, and words and music, sight and sound, adorn its walls.  It is part of me, and I of it.  The cycle continues.

Queen and University, 11:45 am, July 3, 2018

I have stood at this intersection for 28 years now. The water, cool, shallow in its aqua pool, plays across from me, although I do not hear its gurgle over headphones and traffic, but it is there, as it has always been in summer, the years of construction notwithstanding. To my south, the Four Seasons Centre. No longer new, not yet old. The other three corners, as they have been for many years. The CN Tower looms behind the Shangri-La. Once that air was vacant, not so long ago.

Change boils you slowly, like the proverbial frog, until you look around and realize that the new has pushed up through the old like weeds through a crumbling sidewalk. The city is like the facade of an old Art Deco building slapped onto a new one. You recognize the landmarks, here, here, over there, but the fabric is subtly altering and morphing. Already, sleazy Yonge Street has vanished, replaced with glass and cleaned brick facades.  Artsy Queen West has moved further west and upscale. Where there is an old building, there is a developer with a plan for a condo.

I have stood at this intersection for 28 years now, headphones injecting music directly into my brain. WiFi earbuds and an iPhone now, earphones teathered to an Aiwa Walkman knockoff then. Shostakovich now. New Order then.. I arrived in Toronto in August of 1990 and stood here. Explored, over the next couple of months the vintage clothing stores just a block or two west, bought an old army tunic that smelled of stale Edwardian soldier sweat. (Vodka takes care of that, I have since learned). Combed through the shelves at Active Surplus, spent a minute or two with a book at Bakka, bought garnet jewellery at one of the patchouli-scented boutiques further towards Spadina.  I was 23 years old, a grad student, and had my artistic sensibilities and geeky style sense to feed.

And then I boarded the 501 streetcar, and went west to Parkdale, seedy Parkdale, to find the nirvana of fabric.  Joining the SCA, I had been told about this “Orange Bag Store.” Designer Fabric Outlet.  I had never seen such a place.  I knew almost nothing about fabric when I first passed through its double doors, other than what I liked, and what I liked on that day was black-shot green taffeta and some geometric trim, diamond patterned, in bright mosaic colours.  This, I thought, would make for good clothing for an Ostrogoth. I was wholly devoted to the Ostrogoths in those days, a Theoderic the Great fangirl, and joining the SCA was satisfying my desire to think of myself as one from time to time, to fill in the scant knowledge presented in chronicles and letters with ideas of what life must have been like for people living at that time.

Soon, though, I surmised that green synthetic taffeta wasn’t it. The clothing I made from that fabric was never worn, but instead entered legend (at least in my own mind) as the Ostrogothic prom dress. My second trip to the wondrous store resulted in purple rayon and marvelous wide trim, which I fashioned into what was meant to be 11th century Venetian clothing. If one disregarded the hooks and eyes up the back (after all, they didn’t have zippers—I was learning fast!) it would wasn’t half bad. It sits in my closet to this day.

There were many more trips over the years. Marvelous bullion trim formed the decorative piece for a Rus’ povonik. There were Bayeaux tapestry-style tapestry pieces, and gleaming silks and soft cashmere woolens of many colours. There were the bolts of $2.99 cotton that went into rapier loaner armour that was used for many years. There were Laurel wreath appliqués, and the inheritance fabric—$60 a yard red and gold brocaded silk, affordable to a grad student only because of a bequest from my husband’s aunt—another piece that still hangs in my closet and is worn from time to time. The store changed little, other than to expand slightly. Upholstery fabrics and trims on the main floor, fashion fabrics upstairs.

But the surrounding city changed. In my first decade in Toronto I barely noticed. It was still all newish to me. I don’t remember when the BCE Place was finished. I don’t remember when the Woolworth’s was torn down, although I do remember the parking lot that replaced it and the architectural hot mess that was built later. Then I moved away for a few years, and when I returned, fired by a burgeoning interest in architecture, I started to see the subtle alterations in the fabric of the city. The Bishop's Block, the oldest building in the city--once a hotel, now dirty, neglected, unloved--was subsumed into the facade of the Shangi-La, a five-star hotel. Queen West—at least the strip between Bay and Spadina—began to be populated not by quirky, funky, artsy stores, but by chains with pretensions of fashionable hipness. Sometime in the 2000s, someone built the first condo in the downtown core, and soon they began to spread like toadstools after a spring rain.  Neighbourhoods once populated by students living in decrepit, subdivided Victorians began to attract wealthier sorts, who would buy one of these old homes, shoo out the artisans and aging immigrants, and make them into showcases. The architecture maven in me rejoiced at the rebirth, but the human in me knew the cost to the neighbourhoods.

On the 501 streetcar, now the entire length of Queen, all the way out to Dufferin, became to be populated with the quirky shops that once lived east of Spadina. The marginal—the street kids, the punks, the junkies—suddenly gone. Probably not suddenly, but when I had returned, I lived not in the core of Toronto, but in the suburbs, and I no longer rode the 501 streetcar with any regularity. Life continued without my gaze. Increasingly, I bought my fabric elsewhere—online, at other stores closer to the core—easier to reach from my downtown office—or at the local Fabricland. I was changing, too, no longer the grad student with dreams of life as a professor at some small college, surrounded by eager students, immersed in history. History, my vocation, my calling, was no longer my profession, but I kept it in my life, my passion. Even that began to change, as my love of architecture first, then all things Art Deco led me into the 20th century, where I met up with my first historical love from over 40 years past—the Second World War. 

But still, when it was needed, the Orange Bag Store still retained its magic. Nowhere else could you get silk in any colour you liked--dozens just in shades of gold. Bolts of silk twill, with its liquid drape in deep shades of red and blue and black; and more recently, fine white linen at $9.99 and $10.99 a yard beckoned, attracting me repeatedly. Around the store, the boundary of hipness began to spread into Parkdale, yet the margins still held. You could still see the downtrodden, the strange-eyed men yelling at traffic, the litter of syringes in back alleys, but increasingly, the renovators in their BMWs gave them the nervous side-eye, not acknowledging that they themselves were, in actuality, the ones who were out of place. 

I have stood at this intersection for 28 years now, waiting for the 501 streetcar, and today I ride it to pay my final respects.  After 65 years, Designer Fabric Outlet will soon close, and the entire store is on sale. Soon, the stories of the pilgrimages to the legendary Orange Bag Store will pass into memory, and then fade. Something else will rise in its place in Parkdale, and the not-so-young will pass it and remember, and the young will not understand. Today, I will seek out the bolts of fabric by the door, in search of bargain linen.  I will once again climb the stairs to the second floor, run my hand over the silks in rainbow colours, rub wools between finger and thumb, marvel at the textile treasures in the locked cases.  I will wander through the trim department, remembering the geometric, mosaic-like trim found there almost 28 years ago and the other finds over the years since—have I truly been coming here well more than half my life?  I will buy wool crepe for a 1920s cocoon coat, the yardage and the cost pinned to the fabric as it always has been, and talk with the store’s owner on whether there might be more of the linen in the back. But what I am here for is not fabric, or trim, or buttons, or thread. It is to remember, to pay tribute to what, for a handful of remaining days, is still the shrine of pilgrimage I remember, the enabler of dreams realized, a sparkling ornament in the fabric of the Toronto I came to nearly three decades ago.

I stand at this intersection again, at 5:15 pm, a heavy orange bag in my right hand, a familiar feeling. The second movement of the Shostakovich 2nd piano concerto is in my ears—simple, expressive, notes cascading, glittering like so many jewels upon silk. Across from me, the water, cool in its shallow pool, catches the light, a shimmering aquamarine sheet, and I remember. And then I cross the street, turn north, and the moment passes.

Full Fathom Five

Full fathom five thy father lies;

Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes:

Nothing of him that doth fade

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange.

Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell

Hark! Now I hear them – Ding-dong, bell.

— William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act I, Sc. II

We have been planning a trip to Tobermory since...well, probably for at least 20 years.  In the 90s, when both of my husband's parents were still alive and relatively fit to travel, we talked about the four of us visiting. Dave had been once, around 1980, remembered the glass-bottomed boat tour to view some of the shipwrecks that dot the area. His parents had been avid rockhounds when he was a child, and the limestone and dolostone rocks of the Niagara Escarpment with their abundant fossils were a natural draw. 

But we had never made it, until this past weekend. 

Like many of our friends, we have been recently much more interested in our own country's abundant attractions, and in spending our vacation dollars in Canada. This year we decided against a long vacation, instead looking to do a few weekend trips. Tobermory was at the top of the list. 

We live not far from the cliffs of the Niagara Escarpment and the Bruce Trail, which we walk regularly during the warmer seasons (and even sometimes in the winter).  The Escarpment itself is over 400 million years old and reaches all the way from New York, up through Ontario, across Manitoulin Island, into Michigan's Upper Peninsula, and down into Wisconsin. When the sediment for these rocks was formed, the area was a shallow tropical sea, not unlike the Great Barrier Reef. As the sea dried, the sediments became concentrated, and limestone absorbed magnesium, turning into dolomitic limestone, or dolostone, which is harder than limestone.  Once the rocks were exposed many millions of years later, erosion began, eating away the limestone and leaving the dolostone, creating cliffs and waterfalls and caves. Along the Bruce Peninsula, these rocks form spectacular cliffs along the edge of Georgian Bay.  The entire Escarpment in Ontario is a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve.

The weather forecast leading up to the weekend was gloomy, but other than a little bit of spit on Saturday, the showers kept well south of us during the hours we were out exploring, both Saturday and Sunday.  Our motel was a small, but fairly new and very nice Mom and Pop place (no chains in Tobermory) called the Escarpment Inn, which put us in walking distance of just about everything, from the boat launch to the small downtown area to the National Park visitors' centre. This was a good thing, as I realized late on Friday night after arriving that I had not brought a brush or comb, so after combing my hair with a fork that night, I was able to walk over to the supermarket and acquire means to un-muss my hair.

Tobermory does a decent job of not being overwhelmed by tacky touristy shops.  There are probably about a dozen shops clustered around Little Tub Harbour, including two very nice gallery-type places (one selling Brenda Roy's jewellery--I recognized the style immediately).  My one complaint is that there is a sameness to the restaurants--fish and chips and pub food, for the most part.  One of the two glass bottom boat companies runs out of this harbour, which is immediately adjacent to the ferry station.  We got to see the huge Chi-Cheemaun ferry boat arrive at one point;  it's absolutely massive.

The quote from Shakespeare above is the inspiration for the name of Fathom Five National Marine Park, which was the focus of our first day's excursion.  As I mentioned earlier, the Niagara escarpment goes all the way from New York State to Wisconsin.  At the tip of the Bruce Peninsula it disappears...underwater!   If you look at this map, you can clearly see the tightly bunched contour lines indicating a steep dropoff along the eastern side of the Bruce Peninsula and how they continue out along past Middle Island and Flowerpot Island. 

So the escarpment continues along underneath Georgian Bay and Lake Huron, islands jutting up here and there until cliffs once again rise up on the southwest side of Manitoulin. And that dropoff means that this area of Georgian Bay is deep - as deep as 540 feet, much more than five fathoms (which is 30 feet)!  Once, when the sea levels were lower, these rocks were exposed. Scientists have even uncovered evidence that there was a waterfall bigger than Niagara Falls that is now completely submerged.

There are quite a few shipwrecks in the area.  Two are at the very end of Big Tub Harbour, which means that they can be easily seen in the shallow water.  This was the first order of business when we boarded the Evolution on Saturday morning.  The glass bottomed boats pass right over the more intact of the two shipwrecks, the Sweepstakes, which is in about 20 feet of water.  This was a schooner built in Burlington, ON in 1867 which initially was wrecked near Big Cove Island in August 1885 and then was towed into Big Tub Harbour, where it sank in September of the same year.  The other ship, the City of Grand Rapids, is in water that ranges from three to nine fee deep; parts even occasionally project above the water.  This was a steamship that caught fire while docked;  it was towed out into the harbour and sank in 1907.   I had noticed before boarding how clear the water was.  This was especially apparent when the tour boat passed over the Sweepstakes.  Even the motion of the boat did not stir up silt in the water. 

Once we had viewed the wrecks, the tour boat left Big Tub Harbour and picked up speed to reach Flowerpot Island, before slowing to pass all the way around, allowing beautiful views of the lightstation and the two "flowerpots." Flowerpots are formed at the side of cliffs where softer limestone has eroded away, leaving pipes or sea stacks of the harder dolostone. 

We were dropped off at Beachy Cove so that we could hike out to see the flowerpots up close.  The forest along the shore is redolent of cedar and dotted with caves also formed from the same erosion process that forms the flowerpots. Where rocks were exposed, it was easy to see the shapes of their ancient origins as coral reefs. After viewing the flowerpots, we then hiked out to the lightstation and the lighthouse museum before returning to the dock for our trip back.  

One thing that stood out for me during this part of the trip was how well Parks Canada was managing a very sensitive, easily-overwhelmed ecosystem.  Visitors are very much limited in number and ability to access the park--and they seem to mostly respect what they have been given access to. I saw very little evidence of graffiti or other destructive practices (although I did notice one person smoking--and receiving dirty looks from multiple others--she didn't dare leave a butt behind!)

This was also very much apparent in our visit to Bruce Peninsula National Park. We had decided Saturday evening might be a nice time to hike out to see the Grotto, a sea cave along the rocky eastern cliffs.  Apparently, the Grotto is so popular that on weekends, you need to reserve a parking spot to see it, and Saturday evening they were sold out. However, it was a simple process to request a spot for Sunday morning, which we did. The hike out through the forest of cedars flanking lakes was relatively peaceful, on a wide, well-maintained path, and we even saw some of the park's famous orchids. Upon reaching the shores, the wide path disappeared and was replaced by rocks that required serious clambering skills.  And there were a lot of people there clambering. Or, in some cases, hogging the photo spots. A melange of different languages was in the air, and ages ranged from the barely mobile to the...well, barely mobile.   

But the stretch of coastline was spectacular, featuring towering cliffs and tumbled rocks everywhere, and the same crystalline, sparkling water we had seen earlier.  This is actually part of the Bruce Trail, and you could see the trademark white flashes marked on trees and rocks. The Grotto itself was as amazing as promised, although we didn't descend into it (a crowd of very loud teen girls was lingering there, and Dave had the wrong shoes, anyway).  Just a little north up the trail, however, the crowds thinned out and one could climb to the top of one of the taller cliff faces and see a beautiful view largely free of giggling teenagers or pushy middle-aged ladies in bucket caps.  There is a good stretch of the Bruce Trail that passes over this difficult rocky shoreline--so very different than the gentle trails close to my house.  I was glad it was not raining.

After we returned on Saturday, we paid a visit to the Fathom Five National Park Visitors' Centre, and ascended the viewing tower that rises 65 feet from the ground, past the tops of the trees.  Here you could truly see the outlines of the escarpment, as it ran up to Tobermory and then disappeared under water, the islands its only evidence.  You can also see the first white flash along the Bruce Trail, and view a very interesting museum including part of a recovered shipwreck and other artifacts from the area.  After seeing the two national parts on this particular trip, along with those we saw last year in Nova Scotia, I have a heightened respect for Parks Canada. We had been impressed by the US National Park system (and still are), but Canada can easily stand on its own for the strength of its national park system.

A few photos can be found on my Facebook page. 

Coda: On the way home, we were musing about the history of the Bruce Trail.  The group that built the trail was formed in 1960, construction started in 1962, and the trail officially opened in 1967. In five years, 850 km of main trail and about 400 km of side trails were constructed--all by volunteers working in local communities. About half of the trail is on public land.  The Bruce Trail Conservancy has been slowly working at acquiring those portions that are still in private hands.  The creation of the Bruce Trail - and its effect on conserving the Niagara Escarpment--led directly to the UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve designation in 1990.  Never doubt what can be accomplished by dedicated volunteers when inspired by a worthy goal.