The scenes around Toronto

The sun is setting, and I feel myself sinking into the serenity of that warm glow while I putter away in the kitchen, munching on bits of food, fiddling with my guitar, penning a few words here and there.

Last week, we madly explored Toronto. I played a show at the Supermarket, in the funky digs of Kensington Market, with Daniel Sky and Claire Jenkins also on the bill--amazing performances all around! Hooked up with lots of friends, saw tonnes of live music, danced, drank, performed and ate our way through a number of good scenes:



Peter Katz and his girlfriend introduce us to Mayan hot chocolate at the Distillery! It's love...




A night on the town with Kyle Riabko. Curt starts with martinis. Good sign of frivolty to come.




Doug Friesen, who played bass on my last album, introduces us to huge plates of food and the best coffee in Toronto at Cafe Brazilianos.




We ended the week with a grand retreat to visit Curt’s brother’s family in the quaint, small town of Paris, Ontario for a few days. By the time we arrived in Paris, we were ready to sink into some family time, get sleepy and slow, indulge in long, sweet meandering conversations. With the change of pace, we begin noticing different things. The evenings are getting cooler. We comment on the farms we pass by and their strange looking crops. Ginseng? Of course, we entered a different kind of mayhem—a big beautiful house filled with babies and love and laughter and accepted the new flow of it all just fine.




Enjoying dinner with nephew Magnus. My dinner looks rather bland next to his: tonight he chooses waffles with banana, ice cream and syrup. Prepared by yours truly...




Tonight I returned by myself to Toronto to get ready to head into the studio tomorrow. So here I am, nestled in the kitchen by myself, enjoying solitude that I haven’t had or desired in a few days, drinking tea for the first time since the initial assault of summer heat. It's my way of ushering in the new season, I suppose.

Tomorrow, Don and I rehearse for our television debut! A new show is being launched this fall on the Food Network: “Fresh with Anna Olson” who also hosts the show “Sugar.” This episode features a fundraising concert for a local charity that Anna is involved with, and Don and I are the performers. So I enter the land of television, with hardly a sniff of what I’m to encounter! Very excited for a few days of fun with the crew and Anna and Michael! Thought I must admint, I’m completely tired of trivial details crowding my mental space, like what I’ll wear! So I resolve to forget about such things, and every time my mind wanders there, I just pick up the guitar and ask it to return me to the soul of the matter. Maybe I’ll call my mother.

I'm not thinking much about returning to Saskatoon, to tell you the truth. It's quite different having Curt along with me on this adventure. We're laughing louder and longer, speaking from the heart, and discovering our own little wonders to share with each other. It's quite the romance, really. We're thinking of stopping in Chicago on our way home, give the senses once last shock of big city music before returning to the prairie. Gin and blues...and then we'll be ready for whatever comes next.

Summer in Toronto

We arrived in Toronto surprisingly refreshed after driving for thirty hours from Saskatoon. Our stop in Ottawa was the perfect way to begin this one-month adventure, visiting family and our new nephew Lief who totally seduced us. We were blessed to be invited up to Curt’s uncle’s cottage on Legatt Lake and experience the serenity and beauty of an Ontario lake. Rose wine at lunch over hand-made spring rolls. Lounging on the dock until the hot sun forces us into the most perfectly temperate lake, swimming and swimming and swimming. There was no reason to think or feel a thing beyond that moment.



Curt's strategy for recovering from the drive from Saskatoon to Toronto.


So we entered Toronto relaxed and ready for adventure. We’re staying at an apartment off the Danforth, which is flooded with restaurants, lounges and shops. This is Greek town, so the small sidewalk patios are crowded with people feasting on souvlaki, spanokopitas, feta and tomato. We hear about the taste of the Danforth, when over two million Torontians will wander down this street over the weekend. They shut down the Danforth and restaurants set up booths selling skewers and shaved pork and baklava and sweet corn with the husks pulled down. Rather than make a note to attend it, we know we’ll hardly be able to avoid it, living a mere block from the action.

The first couple days in Toronto, we settle into a routine, working in the morning and then hitting the streets in the late afternoon to explore new neighborhoods, most often gone until the wee hours of the morning when we catch the last subway home. We are ravenous in our exploration, throwing ourselves into streets, buildings, and cafes to absorb each new idea.

Curt is better than me at slowly taking it all in. He saunters down these streets, where my pace is always slightly more feverish. I pull him in. Look at this, look at this, did you see that, I call back over my shoulder, always onto the next discovery before he even has a chance to respond. After a couple days though, we balance each other.

On Friday, we hit the Taste of the Danforth. It is complete chaos. I am overwhelmed by the throngs of people and their wild display of style and identity. I am assaulted by the smells of grilled meats, pork and pastries. We float along, absorbed into the crowd. We attempt conversation a few times, but are interrupted by people or our own distraction. So instead, we listen to the chatter and shouts and general noise of the street.


Tasting the Danforth...

I’m hungry. I am watching these people savor flavors or greedily gorge themselves and it reminds me that we skipped lunch today. Everything looks delicious and I’m paralyzed by choice. Paralyzed. I surf around. Each time I start to make a decision, the line is too long, or I see something better, or I get distracted. I’m starting to get angry at myself—this unfocused confusion is starting to grate me. My eyes are madly sweeping the scene trying to take it all in. All of it, and my mind is hopelessly trying to keep up.

After dinner, we retreat, satisfied. A little dizzy from the experience of the Danforth, we decide to avoid it as much as possible for the rest of the weekend. But I begin to realize that much of my experience on the Danforth exaggerates what I’ve been feeling since we got here. A little dizzy. A little overwhelmed.

It’s cathartic to be free of the mirrors crowding my hometown that tell me who I am. I’ve always loved the anonymity of being in a big city. And here, the exploration of new ideas and scenes and music gets my creative juices flowing, flowing in and out like people dancing on and off of subway cars. A mad, disorganized yet graceful dance.

So the adventure continues, and what we don’t know, we make up as we go along.