IVAAN, 1971: The Accidental Te**orist...I Mean, Tourist.

By late 1970, Ivaan was seriously, passionately interested in metal arts.  He loved everything about it.  As an experiment, he decided to make
himself a belt out of a strip of empty bullet casings he'd found in the neighbourhood Army Surplus store.  He cast a bronze buckle that he'd
designed for himself. This was a purely decorative belt, because all those bullet casings would never have fit through the belt loops of his jeans.  But he slung it around his hips over top of his jeans, and actually it looked pretty cool.

Ivaan was still working as a photographer for Maclean Hunter Publishing, but he was pretty much up all night doing experiments in metal arts.
He was burning the candle at both ends - so much so that he wasn't really paying attention to what was happening in the world around him.
He had never heard of the October Crisis, the FLQ, the kidnapping of James Cross and Pierre Laporte.  If he'd heard of it, he'd probably have  assumed the War Measures Act was the name of a band.

Ivaan was just happy doing what he did best.  And in that happy mood, he cheerfully volunteered on behalf of Maclean Hunter Publishing to drive out to the airport and pick up someone who was flying into Toronto to be interviewed for Macleans Magazine and to be photographed by Ivaan himself.  Ivaan jumped in his British Racing Green Volvo 124, with its saffron coloured racing stripes, parked the car, strode into the airport smelling of patchouli oil, long hair flowing to his shoulders, handlebar moustache drooping, wearing his black panama hat, his boots, and around his hips....the bullet belt.

Five minutes later, two security officers tapped him on the shoulder.  Ten minutes later, Ivaan was in the Airport Security Office being interviewed by the RCMP.  He took off his bullet belt, demonstrated that the shell casings were empty, produced his Maclean Hunter press pass, and half an hour later, he was released with a stern lecture about the seriousness of the War Measures Act.

One year later, Macleans Magazine sported this tongue-in-cheek cover shot by Ivaan.  Yes, that's Ivaan himself on the left of the photo.  I don't think the top brass at Maclean Hunter ever learned the true story behind this cover.   It's one of my favourite shots of him.

BLOWN AWAY: IVAAN'S CUBAN ADVENTURE, Part Two.

After the hurricane had died down, staying in the hotel was less than appealing.  There was broken glass everywhere, bats swooped through the lobby every evening,  eliciting screams from the hotel guests, and a large band of gypsies had taken up residence in the hotel.  We decided to make ourselves scarce.  We went down to the waterfront outside the hotel to look around and were promptly accosted by a man intent on robbing us.  It was only through Ivaan's quick thinking that we escaped.

We headed downtown along the Malecon and came across a large crowd standing on the breakwater looking out into the harbour.  The waves were still high, and a small fishing boat had capsized.  Two men and a young boy who had fallen overboard were flailing in the deep water.  They had apparently gone out to catch some fish, which are plentiful in the wake of a hurricane.  In the distance, a tiny rescue tug was chugging slowly towards them, but it was pretty clear it was not going to reach them in time.  It was horrifying.

We headed downtown.  On every corner, musicians were congregated on street corners singing and playing songs from Ry Cooder's Buena Vista Social Club.  On every street, children were running up to us asking for caramelas (candy) and luckily we had brought plenty from Toronto for just this purpose.

No trip to a strange city would be complete for Ivaan unless it included trips to every one of the second hand camera stores.  There were several such stores, all run by seedy-looking Russian expatriates.  Each of them promised that if Ivaan would just step into their back room, they would show him the rare treasures they had hidden back there.  Ivaan was desperate to see these cameras.  I was just as determined that we were going to leave, as things were beginning to feel very unsafe.  

We had not been back at the hotel for long before the telephone rang and the front desk clerk told us we had a visitor who wanted to see us in the lobby.  We realized that the Russians had followed us back to the hotel.  Needless to say, we stayed in our room and didn't answer the door.

Havana was an incredible photo op.  The ornate, crumbling buildings, the 1950s American cars in pastel colours, the incredible ingenuity of the Cuban people who seemed able to repair absolutely anything.  Cuban women were very uninhibited about their attire.  Women of every shape and size, and of every age, wore bright pink or yellow spandex.

In spite of the trauma of our vacation, Ivaan was sorry to leave.  He'd made two friends in Havana: a stray dog he named Perrito and a lame bird he called Frosty.  As the food in the hotel was pretty much inedible, Ivaan collected all the roast pork he could find in the restaurant and took it outside to feed Perrito.  All the breads and cereals he could find were saved for Frosty.

To our amazement, when we returned home, the tour company offered us a replacement trip to Cuba, which we could use within six months.  Ivaan was determined to go back, if only to see Perrito and Frosty.  Not surprisingly, I put my foot down firmly.  Once was more than enough.

BLOWN AWAY: IVAAN'S CUBAN ADVENTURE, Part One.

This morning, I found a little notebook that had been in my purse the week we went to Cuba.  My handwriting is pretty bad.  That's because most of the entries were written in black darkness.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Let's start at the beginning.

In 2001, Ivaan decided we should go on vacation.   He thought he'd like to go to Cuba.  I wasn't wild about the idea, but Ivaan's first stroke had taken place the previous year.  He was just regaining his confidence and his memory, and I didn't want to spoil his pleasure by hovering over him and second-guessing his every decision.    So Ivaan went to his travel agent and booked our vacation.   I vowed that I would just go along for the ride and keep my opinions to myself.

Three days before we were due to leave, the travel agent called Ivaan to tell him Hurricane Mitchell was due to touch down in Cuba during our stay.  She offered to postpone our vacation.  Ivaan declined.  She offered us another destination.  Again Ivaan declined.  He thought it would be an adventure, as he'd never experienced a hurricane before.  He opted for Cuba.  If he'd mentioned the call from the travel agent to me, I'm pretty sure I would have refused to go.  But he didn't.

I did not know Cuba had a national sumo wrestling team.  I also did not know Ivaan and I would not be sitting next to each other on the plane.
He was seated directly in front of me, beside a person of average size.  I had an aisle seat directly over the wing, beside a member of the Cuban national sumo wrestling team.   He might have been the captain of the team, for all I know.  He was that big.  He and his teammates, who occupied the rear half of the plane, were enjoying the flight immensely.  Every so often, my seatmate turned to shout something jovial to one of his compatriots or reached across me to beckon the flight attendant to bring him another beer.  They were clearly celebrity passengers on this flight.  I have never been so squashed in my life.

Four and a half miserable hours later, we arrived in Havana and were transported in a rickety bus to the saddest-looking beachside resort on the whole island.  We were taken to our room, which smelled so strongly of mildew we had to insist on another room.  By this time it was midnight. At 2 a.m. the telephone rang.  It was the front desk, telling us we should prepare to be evacuated due to the approaching hurricane.  Ivaan seemed suspiciously unconcerned about news of a hurricane, and confessed that he'd known about it all along.  We tried to sleep.  At 5 o'clock the phone rang again.  We were told to come to the lobby immediately.  We did.  Outside the main doors, a gigantic Mercedes Benz bus awaited us.  It must have belonged to Fidel Castro - or the sumo wrestling team. It was to be by far the only memory of luxury we took away from our trip to Cuba.

Two hours later, we were deposited at the entrance to a hotel in downtown Havana and instructed to go and check in.  No one at the front desk had heard of us, or of any of our fellow vacationers, most of whom spoke neither Spanish nor English.  I'd studied Spanish in high school, and Ivaan had lived in South America a couple of decades previously, so we talked our way into a room on an upper floor fairly quickly.  It was a very nice room.  Unfortunately, we didn't  get to see much of it.  After settling in, we went down to the lobby and were amused to  observe that the palm trees in front of the hotel were bent double by the wind.  We went outside and  took some photos of each other holding onto the trees.  If this was a hurricane, we told each other, it was no big deal.  We went back inside.  Hotel staff were putting masking tape on all the windows in the shape of an X.  Just a precaution, said Ivaan.

We returned to our room.  The front desk called and asked us to leave our luggage and come down to the lobby.  There we were directed to a large windowless conference room in the basement of the hotel.  Actually, all 500 guests of the hotel  were directed there.  Probably 498 of them smoked.  There were small children.  There were babies.  And there were two women who were members of the world's oldest profession. As the hurricane picked up momentum, the electrical power failed.  No lights...except for the glow of the ends of 498 cigarettes, illuminating the members of the world's oldest profession as they nonchalantly plied their trade.  When dinner was served, there were two choices:  you could have roast pork sandwiches, or you could have potato chips.   We spent three days locked in this windowless conference room in the dark, eating potato chips, drinking canned ginger ale  and breathing second hand smoke.  On the second day, Ivaan bribed some chambermaids to go up to our room and bring us some sheets and towels.  On the third day, when the hurricane was finally dying down, Ivaan resourcefully bribed the hotel employees to let us be among the first guests to return to our rooms.  We got into the front of a packed elevator and started our ascent.  We were about five and a half floors up when the power went out again.  Plunged into darkness, the elevator ground to a halt between floors.  That is where we remained for two hours.  I probably had the best position in the elevator, as I was jammed against the doors, so whatever air drifted in from the elevator shaft was blowing directly in my face.

"Tiene alguien fosforos?" asked Ivaan, and luckily a few of our fellow passengers pulled out their matches and cigarette lighters.  This gave
Ivaan enough light to reach up and remove the grill covering the overhead fan, increasing the air flow just slightly.  As the minutes ticked by, some of the passengers became grouchy.  Ivaan was still cheerful, though the exertion of removing the fan cover had caused him to break out in a sweat.  "Great sauna", he quipped.  "What time is my massage?"  A very large German lady standing right behind Ivaan snapped at him in a heavy German accent:  "Dat is NOT very funny!"  "Serves you right for the Holocaust", I hissed.  Just then we heard Spanish voices  outside the elevator calling to us and within minutes the doors were forcibly opened, between floors and we were able to jump to the floor below.

The adventure did not end here.  Things got worse.  But that's for another post, so stay tuned.

PRANKED AGAIN: The Week We Got Stairs

Our house on Portland Street was built in 1855.   It was an incredibly vertical house: three storeys,  high ceilings, a very small footprint - from the outside, it looked exactly like a shoebox tipped up on end.    But after 140 years, the stair treads between the first and second floors were worn with deep grooves left by the feet of all the generations of occupants who had climbed the stairs over the years.  I decided it was time to replace the staircase.

My paternal great grandfather, Barnett Levy, had been a staircase carpenter back in east end London at the beginning of the 20th century, and during the Week of the Staircase, I sincerely regretted never having met him.    However, a friend introduced us to a woodworking company who introduced us to a stair carpenter, and - at least in theory - our staircase replacement project was in progress.

As a cost-saving measure, we'd agreed to remove the original staircase just before the new stairs arrived.  On Sunday, when the stair carpenter called to say the new staircase would be installed the next day, I rented a long ladder, got my toolbox, and prepared to wield my crowbar and sledgehammer. Just before the first hammer blow, Ivaan spoke up:  "Take care when you're removing those stair treads", he cautioned.  "I know people who are paying fifty dollars each for worn stair treads in good condition."

With all the precision of a surgeon, I removed the treads without damaging a single one.  It took a really long time.  From the second floor landing,  Ivaan supervised.  By the time I had fourteen of them piled on the floor next to me, Ivaan could contain his laughter no longer.  "I can't believe you fell for that one", he howled.

The rest of the staircase was removed in stony silence, punctuated only by the ringing of the telephone.  It was the stair carpenter, calling to say the new stairs would not be ready until the following Friday.   I learned some valuable new skills that week.  They included climbing down a ladder while wearing a motorcycle helmet and carrying both a briefcase and a cat.

The new staircase, once installed, was perfectly satisfactory, but wow, was it ever straight.  And boring.  So we decided to finish it off with leopard print broadloom, a carved double-rope mahogany bannister with bronze hardware handmade by Ivaan, and the ultimate "flourish" - a pie-shaped mahogany stair leading to the living room, which would also serve as a stage for the Pyromaniac Choir - our nieces and nephews - when they felt like performing during family get-togethers. This is a photo of my Dad (the grandson of Barnett Levy) checking out our newly installed "stage" leading to the staircase we'd replaced.

FROGGIE

In 1996, The Advocates' Society approached Ivaan to discuss creating an original sculpture which would become their Award of Justice.
The Society already used as their symbol the gryphon, a mythical creature said to be the offspring of an eagle and a lion, which had a long tradition of symbolizing justice in English Common Law.

The Advocates' Society is a Toronto-based organization of Ontario trial lawyers and judges, the roots of which go back to 1965. Its membership includes the most famous and remarkable legal minds in Canada.  Ivaan was thrilled at the prospect of creating a sculpture for them.

The Award of Justice was intended as an award which would be presented biennially to a lawyer who had distinguished himself or herself by taking on a legal case which would have been considered unpopular or unwinnable, either because of the nature of the case or the disfavour in which the public might have held the person accused - in other words, a case which could have damaged the career of any barrister who took it on.  So a lawyer who might be worthy of an award like this would be someone who believed that an unpopular accused's right to a fair trial and excellent legal representation outweighed any potential harm that might be done to the reputation of the individual defending such an accused.

Ivaan's gryphon sculpture project began with him looking at other examples of how gryphons had been depicted throughout history and in art.  Not satisfied with what he saw, he set out to create a realistic looking sculpture of a gryphon - not easy, because no one had ever seen one.   He carved his vision in a hard, sticky type of wax, which was incredibly difficult and labour intensive.  Sometimes he'd bring it home from his studio and work on it at the kitchen table after dinner.  I used to tease him that it looked like a squirrel that had fallen into a vat of tar.  He nicknamed it Froggie, for some reason, but as Froggie took shape, it was clear that this was going to be one of Ivaan's most remarkable works of art.   We had endless discussions about the nose, or beak, and Ivaan always claimed that he had modelled it on the handsome and prominent proboscis of Mr. Justice Charles Dubin.  Although Ivaan hated the idea of anyone interfering in his art, he eventually recruited me to cut out some of the feathers to apply to the upper torso of Froggie.

In a playful moment, Ivaan carved a heart on Froggie's chest, right where a human heart would be, and inside the heart, he carved the word MOM.  He then covered the heart "tattoo" with a feather, and explained to me that behind every fine lawyer who was destined to receive this award was a mother who deserved some recognition for her support and encouragement.

When Froggie was finished, he held aloft a sword, on the tip of which was unevenly balanced a set of weigh scales, representing a legal case which was so tipped against the accused as to be unwinnable.

Froggie, or The Award of Justice, as he was now known, was first presented in 1997, coincidentally by Mr. Justice Charles Dubin, whose nose had served as a model for the sculpture.  It is not the most prestigious award The Advocates' Society presents.  That honour would fall to The Advocates' Society Medal.   But Ivaan attended every presentation of The Award of Justice, until his death, and never failed to point out to the recipient's mother exactly where the MOM heart tattoo was located, and what it meant.  I often think of the individuals who have received The Award of Justice to date: Raj Anand, Jeffery Wilson, Barbara Jackman, David Lepofsky, Jacquie Chic, Susan Vella and Lawrence Greenspon, and how they must marvel at this gothic creature watching over their legal career.

THE COFFIN STORY: Part One

Ivaan was never a man to plan ahead.  He lived in the moment.   So I was a bit surprised, in early 2007, to find him sitting at the computer doing research on coffins.  He explained how impressed he had been by the funeral, many years prior,  of a Bishop of his church, Vladyka Michael. (Vladyka means Bishop in Ukrainian.)  It seems that Vladyka Michael had chosen to be buried in a simple linen shroud and a plain pine casket.  As Ukrainian Orthodox funerals go, this would have been quite "unorthodox".  For a Bishop, it would have been virtually unheard of.    Ivaan decided that when he died, in tribute to Vladyka Michael, whom he admired enormously, he also would be buried in a linen shroud and a plain pine coffin.

Adding to the complexity of his task, Ivaan had decided that his own casket must be kosher and contain absolutely no animal products, metals or synthetics.  He wanted to honour the Biblical edict "ashes to ashes."  After considerable research, Ivaan found what he wanted at a small company, Arkwood Caskets, in Ashland, Oregon.  Arkwood Caskets fit together with dovetail joints and resemble a giant wooden pencil box with a sliding lid. Ivaan placed his order.

Two weeks later, Ivaan suffered his fourth stroke.  It was a serious one and the hospital felt it was time for Ivaan to go into a long term care facility.  I was determined that his wish to return to Toronto Rehabilitation Institute be respected, as I knew Ivaan would go downhill very quickly if placed in a nursing home.  I quickly learned that the best interests and wishes of the patient are not deciding factors in determining where they are transferred from the acute care hospital, and it was a real battle to get the all-powerful social worker's decision reversed.   Fortunately, Toronto Rehab intervened and agreed to take Ivaan for five weeks of rehabilitation, to enable me to sell our home and find wheelchair accessible accommodation for us near his  hospitals.

We were still in the acute care hospital, however, when our friend Myron Dylynsky, who works in real estate, jumped into action and put our house up for sale immediately.  The first day it was listed, a request for a showing was received.  There was no lock box on the house yet, so Myron called the hospital and asked if I could go home and unlock the door for the prospective buyers.  I hurried home.  When I arrived, the telephone was ringing.    As I answered it, I was opening the blinds on the living room window.   It was the hospital social worker on the telephone.  Listening to her, I couldn't comprehend what she was trying to tell me.  The words "end of life situation" meant nothing to me.  As I struggled to understand the reason for her call, I  was also watching a UPS truck pull up in front of our house and unload a large box from the back of the vehicle. Mystified, I watched the delivery men approach our house and knock on the front door.  Again, the social worker reiterated the  phrase "end of life situation" and I suddenly realized what the delivery was.

"Excuse me for a moment", I said to the social worker, "Ivaan's coffin has just arrived."

There was dead silence on the other end of the phone.  Clearly the social worker thought it was my idea of a joke, and ended the call abruptly.

It was, however, no joke when the delivery men set the coffin down on the living room floor, handed me a sheet of paper, said "Sign here", then left.  I tried to move the coffin.   Impossible.  It was really heavy.  I was pondering what to do when the doorbell rang again.   It was the people who had come to see the house.   Three men walked in.  Four pairs of eyes gazed at the coffin on the living room floor.   Silence. Finally, one of the men spoke up.  "Does this come with the house?" he asked.

Their whirlwind tour through the house lasted less than five minutes.  They left, muttering something about Morticia Addams.  Clearly our home had not yet found its new owner.  My brother Dave arrived later that day and slid the coffin neatly under the dining room table.  That's where it remained, undetected,  until the house sold a few days later and we moved.

Over the next few days, I kept Ivaan company in the hospital while doing needlework.  One day, our friend Myron Dylynsky dropped in to Ivaan's hospital room for a visit,  "Isn't this a nice domestic scene?" he enthused.  "You're sitting here, keeping your husband company, and sewing.  What are you sewing, my dear?"  "His shroud", I replied.

Observing Myron's appalled reaction, I quickly learned to reply, "It's a tablecloth" when anyone inquired about my needlework project.

THE ART OF LOSING THINGS

Whenever a group of people gets together and starts reminiscing about Ivaan, a frequent topic of conversation involves Ivaan's "back room" and how chaotic it was.  Ivaan wasn't a hoarder in the classic sense, but he tended to put things down and hope he'd remember where he'd put them.   He was indiscriminate about what he kept, and so whatever constituted his "back room" at any given time was a complete catastrophe:  rare classic Leica cameras cheek-by-jowl with rolls of film that had expired during the Korean War, plastic junk from the dollar store sharing shelf space with old telephone books, dead batteries and plastic bags with someone's mother's scrap gold, waiting to be turned into wedding rings.  Ivaan's back room was not for the faint of heart.

Usually someone whose memory is heavily tinged with nostalgia will chuckle and say, "Yes, it was a disaster, but Ivaan always knew where everything was."

I love reminiscing about Ivaan, so I'll usually let it go, but the truth is, Ivaan never knew where anything was.  Frequently he spent more time worrying about where he'd left one of his creations than he did in making it in the first place.  He lost things all the time.  He created elaborate scenarios to explain where something was - or wasn't - and he wasn't lying, either:  he would completely convince himself that his imagined explanation was gospel.

The ruby-studded gold heart and chain in the photograph above is a case in point.  In 2006, Ivaan's studio was in a warehouse building two doors away from our house.  The warehouse was huge, and it had to be because it contained Ivaan's entire life:  over 700 cameras,  40 years worth of rubber jewellery moulds, bins full of photographs, bins full of metal, his workbench, power tools, books, memorabilia, much of it on - or under - his gigantic round mahogany table.  This gold heart is one of the most expensive and labour intensive pieces Ivaan ever made.  It's something a female member of the Medici family might wear.  It's spectacular.  And for some reason, Ivaan believed he had left it on the mahogany table, the day some contractors came to install a ventilation system in his studio.

Two days later, Ivaan said to me, in the quiet voice he used when he was really upset, that the contractors had stolen his ruby heart and chain,  which he'd  left on the mahogany table.  I was slightly incredulous, because I knew what was on that table, and if one were to have touched anything, one risked triggering an avalanche that would have buried the hapless contractors alive.  We discussed what to do.  Ivaan felt there was no point in reporting it to the police, or building management, or the ventilation company.  He said he would take the pain of the theft of his masterpiece to his grave.  He was genuinely deeply wounded by the loss.

A year later, I was at home, cleaning out the drawers of Ivaan's dressing table. In the very back of the top right drawer, behind the bow ties, the suspenders, the silk pocket squares, the handkerchiefs, the scarves, the yarmulke, the cufflinks,  tucked away neatly, was the ruby heart: the very same ruby heart and chain that Ivaan said the ventilation contractors had stolen.

I tried to keep my face perfectly solemn as I went to Ivaan and asked, "Remember the ruby heart and chain?"  Ivaan looked at me with a pained expression.  "Don't remind me", he said.  "Remember how those workmen took it off your mahogany table?"  I persisted.  "I will take that memory to my grave", reiterated Ivaan.  "It's so strange, what they did", I continued.  "What's so strange about it?  They stole my masterpiece" cried Ivaan.  "They probably didn't even know what it was, and they stole it."

I savoured my moment of triumph.  Finally I could resist no longer.  "What's so strange isn't that they stole it".  I  said.  "What's strange is that after they stole it, they broke in here and hid it in the back of your dresser drawer."  And I opened my hand and showed him the ruby heart and chain.

"Oh", said Ivaan. Just that one word.  "Oh."