LIFE OUTSIDE TORONTO

Exactly 25 years ago, Toronto Life magazine published a photojournalism spread by Ivaan that went on to win two National Magazine Awards: a gold and a silver. It was entitled No Fixed Address and it was as timely then as it is now. It was based on a collection of photographs he had taken of some of the people who live their lives on the streets of Toronto. They're not necessarily homeless, but it's safe to say they live a more transient life than most of the people who subscribe to Toronto Life. Ivaan had named his essay World Class City, but that was quickly axed and changed to No Fixed Address. It caused quite a stir, both positive and negative. Some people celebrated him for taking a close look at some of the people whose faces don't normally grace the pages of an upscale magazine. Others castigated him for taking advantage of his photographic subjects. Sadly, you could update the text and reprint that article today and it would highlight the exact same problem. An article recently appeared in Toronto Life Magazine's online site recently that may have caused less of a stir, but it has highlighted one of the pressing issues of the day: people leaving Toronto. It's something to speculate on: whether this will still be an important subject a quarter of a century from now. It's debatable whether any of us will be here in 25 years. I'm pretty sure I won't be. Yesterday I took my motorcycle out of the basement and, since it wasn't running, I tried to push it up the short hill from the basement walkout to the driveway. To my chagrin, I couldn't. It was a moment of awakening for me, and I have been asking myself since then why I even bother to have a motorcycle that I can't push uphill. I could do it last year, no problem. I'm one of the strongest women I know, of any age. But time marches on. So here's the first page of the article that appeared in the digital edition of torontolife.com on May 11th. If you want to read more, you'll have to do the Google thing.

It was, apparently, surprisingly well received by the readers of Toronto Life, so much so that an abbreviated version of the story appears in the print version of Toronto Life, on the Memoir page in the August issue. Meanwhile, here at Five Acres, life goes on as before. Many thanks to my good friend and neighbour, Cathleen J. Richards, for taking some good photographs of me.