savage snow

on my portuguese fig...

on my spanish grape...

on my french rose...

on my italian jardiniere...

denaturalization

the slow and laboured denudation of the American Hotel on the derogated part of Main Street...

the inevitable dénouement lying in a pile of gutted and discarded bricks...

the deployment of developmental mercenaries has been activated...

marking my clark park:: part III

As the leaves slowly drift away again from the drowsy trees of Clark Park, small windows open up between the branches toward the views of the city skyline and the north shore mountains...

I clamber around the high points of the park searching for such glimpses ornately framed by the golden and russet foliage, baring branches and darkened trunks...

and through the lacerating arboreal veil, the gleaming glass towers and the snow draped mountain peaks appear only as enticing mirages in the far, far distance...

paradigs

Paraphrasal Housekeeping

the wenonah

 

The Wenonah building has sat comfortably on the southwest corner of Main Street and East 11th Avenue for close to a century now...

The elegant neo-classical doorway to the apartments has been maintained and adds a grace-note to this side of the building on East 11th that houses a theatre studio and a massage and therapy centre on the street level...

The residents have also greened this section of the sidewalk with lush plantings...parting for a back view of the Holy Trinity Ukrainian Orthodox Church on East 10th Avenue...

Many of the casement windows still retain scenic and intricate stained glass panes adding sparks of colour and light to the solid brick façade...

[I would like to know more about the Wenonah - if anyone out there has information about this building and/or knows someone who lives in the apartments, please do let me know...thank you!]

MAIN-taining

Main Street a few blocks north and south of Broadway has evolved into a hub of hipness so mainstream it has lost some of its hard-earned edginess - and has inevitably acquired the flash flood of corporate chain and condo development dredging...
And yet on a sunny fall weekend during another one of its frequent street festivals - SHIFT? SHRIFT? SIFT?? - the essence of the Main of yore faded in and out of my consciousness, like an old movie that hasn't quite finished unreeling...

[note the new incongruous TIM HORTONS (in the above window's reflection) now ensconced in the cool old marble and glass bank building on the southwest corner of Broadway and Main]

[glue-splotch pattern left after the sign was taken down when the store had to close from damages of a fire next door and a few over]

[during the street festival, the resident of this apartment posted this heartfelt note that was barely visible from the street below - no one paid any attention by turning the music down!]

[where the fire had started and razed, now waiting for a new configuration of commerce]

[but gracious living still goes on around the corner...*]

*more images of the WENONAH in my next post...

backwater stills

another scatological study of an ursine nature...

slightly worn antler missing detached moose...

pioneer coop for fowl long feasted on...

a gang of chainlinks hanging about...

retired from a generation of growing seasons...

rusticated still life perched in certitude...

the river that feeds a thousand fields...

a pristine source that flows into that river deep...

backwoods pathos

Five hundred kilometers north east of Vancouver and we are in a river valley of very few inhabitants...
Land was cheap and one could bird call hundreds of acres a kingdom of one's own for a sing along song...
As we explored one such lyrical kingdom, we stumbled upon a wooded meadow tombstoned with dozens of dead cars - a verdant graveyard of long abandoned machines - as incongruous a setting as a rose garden in a parking garage....

not only decomposing car-davers, but a canoe corpse...

and even a fossilizing snowmobile...

and more implanted rusting hulks...

before almost stepping on fresh scatological evidence of a greater, and much furrier, presence in these deep dark woods...