SWEEP

The Portland House: Before Sweeping

The Portland House:  After Sweeping

In September 2008, two and a half months before his death, a special collection of Ivaan's metal art was exhibited at KUMF Gallery (The Canadian Ukrainian Art Foundation).  Entitled "Sweepings:  Treasures from the Atelier Floor", this was an exhibition of the metal art that Ivaan made for no purpose other than the joy of creation.   The title of the exhibition was pure Ivaan, and pure tongue in cheek.  On the one hand, it referred to the fact that the pieces on display were made in between commissioned works, and were literally swept aside when the need to commence a commissioned work became pressing.  At the same time, it was his affectionate tribute to the understated role I played in his artistic life since he suffered his second stroke in 2002.   People often asked us how much I participated in his metal art.  I'd always answer, truthfully, "Not at all".  Ivaan's more humorous (but equally true) response was invariably:  "She's really, really good at sweeping."  What we both meant was that, although he borrowed my hands from time to time, we only ever used his brain.  He had no instinct for order and neatness; I have no creative impulse.    He created; I swept.

As I've previously mentioned, Ivaan was totally oblivious to the domestic aspects of married life.  Ivaan never mowed the lawn, never shovelled the snow, never took out the garbage, cooked, vacuumed,  loaded the dishwasher, or did laundry.   He didn't even recognize that these tasks existed, thus never expected that anyone would do them. So it's fortunate that I enjoy running a household.

Our house on Portland Street was built in 1855.  It was a fabulous house, shaped like a shoebox tipped up on end:  three tall storeys, with the kitchen on the third floor.   As much as I have ever experienced the joy of creation, it has been through renovating the Portland house.   Fortunately, there was no shortage of potential for renovation; a lot can go wrong with a house in 140 years.

Early one Saturday morning, I awoke with an idea:  I decided to remove the wall that separated the narrow front hall from the living room.  I knew it wasn't a load-bearing wall, as all the supporting walls ran north to south.    I knew that removing a lath-and-plaster wall would be a surefire way to ruin a perfectly good weekend....unless I could find someone to help me.

Ivaan had an Achilles heel, and it was in the form of a genuine phobia for clumsy people, or for someone using the wrong tool for the job.  It drove him crazy.

You may wonder why a vegetarian even had a steak knife in the drawer, but it was with a steak knife that I made the first cut into that lath-and-plaster wall. Having removed the first segment of plaster, I kept diligently sawing with the steak knife, dropping the small pieces of severed plaster into a wastepaper basket until I'd excised about a square foot of plaster.  By this time, Ivaan was awake, and his curiosity had gotten the better of him.  He came part way down the stairs, peered around the corner and asked, "What on earth are you doing?"   All innocent, I replied, "I'm taking down this wall" and held up what was left of the steak knife.  At that moment, several million years of evolution began to evanesce before my eyes.  Ivaan headed for the back porch and returned carrying a crowbar and a sledgehammer.  "Stand aside", said Homo Sapiens.

Ten minutes later, the entire wall lay in ruins on the floor.    Homo Sapiens put down The Correct Tools For The Job, and with an imperious wave of his hand in the general direction of the debris, uttered the one terse syllable that came to represent our life together in metal arts:  "Sweep."

And that, dear readers, is how Ivaan renovated the Portland house.

ANNIVERSARIES

April 1, 1996: Our first anniversary

For a man who was in no particular rush to get married in the first place, Ivaan could top anyone when it came to planning a memorable anniversary.  It wasn't a difficult date to remember, as we were married on April Fool's Day.  (We joked that if things didn't work out between us, we could claim it had been an April Fool's prank - albeit an expensive one - not an actual wedding.)
The morning of our first wedding anniversary, Ivaan announced that he was taking me on an all-expenses-paid shopping trip.  Our destination was to be a surprise, however.  We headed out by TTC, Ivaan leading the way, and about 40 minutes later, I found myself being led not into Holt Renfrew as I'd hoped, but into Home Depot.
I wasn't disappointed, but I confess to being slightly surprised.   However, I was part way through renovating our house, so I decided to make the most of the opportunity.  I began by selecting some wooden mouldings to frame doorways.    Now, just to be perfectly clear, when I say that "I" was part way through renovating our house, I don't mean "we" were part way through renovating our house.  No.  You see, Ivaan was not a renovating type of guy, and for Ivaan, even snow shovelling, lawn mowing and taking out the garbage all fell into the category of "renovation".
It's lucky that I enjoy renovation, in the widest sense of the word, because with the exception of one notable occasion - the subject of an upcoming blog - renovation was solely my responsibility.
I had selected enough wooden mouldings to trim all the doorways in the second floor hallway when Ivaan mentioned the sole condition he was imposing on this all-expenses-paid anniversary extravaganza:  whatever I chose, I had to carry home by myself on the TTC.  Wooden door mouldings are heavy.  They also come in eight-foot lengths.    In case you are wondering, it is rather difficult to  manoeuvre an eight-foot length of lumber through the front doors of a TTC streetcar.    When one is carrying eight of them, it is next to impossible, but I managed somehow.  Once on board, Ivaan suddenly began to pretend he wasn't with me.  He rolled his eyes and exchanged disapproving glances with the other passengers.   On one occasion, he muttered loudly, "SOME PEOPLE..."  It  was impossible to carry the pieces of moulding vertically, as they were too long.  I didn't want them resting on the floor where they would get dirty and trip people, so I had to balance them on the backs of several seats, rendering those seats inaccessible for other passengers.
Ivaan took a photograph of me and my lumber after we disembarked at the King and Portland streetcar stop. I still have the picture.  For some reason I was smiling.  Perhaps I was wondering what he would dream up for our next anniversary.

The morning of our second anniversary, Ivaan announced that once again he had a surprise in store for me.  We headed out early in the morning, Ivaan leading the way.  After a fairly lengthy walk, he stopped outside a blood donor clinic. opened the door and motioned for me to enter.  If you've been a blood donor in the last couple of decades, you'll be familiar with the detailed questions that potential donors are required to answer aloud before their pint of blood is extracted.  I've never been able to get through answering the questions without laughing, which often starts the person asking the questions laughing as well.  
Ivaan sat in the waiting room with a magazine while I donated blood.  Once I was finished, he took my arm and escorted me to a nearby coffee shop.  I sat down while he ordered a couple of coffees, then beckoned to me to peruse the baked goods in their display case.  "That lemon poppyseed muffin looks good.  They're baked right here on the premises", he said.  "Why don't you order it?"  "No, thanks, I'm not hungry.  Coffee is fine", I replied.   Several times he tried in vain to get me to order the muffin, until I became slightly irritated and suggested he order it himself, if he felt so strongly about it.
Ivaan sighed deeply.  With a pained expression, he asked me, "Why do you always have to have the last word?  Can't you just agree with me for once?" The sales clerk was watching us intently, probably wondering if we were about to have a huge argument.  I began to feel slightly embarrassed.  Biting back a stinging retort, I suggested we share the lemon poppyseed muffin. After all, it was our anniversary, and I wondered if his criticism were perhaps justified.    The sales clerk put the muffin on a plate and brought it to our table with a knife so I could cut it in half.  I was careful to cut it right down the middle, so Ivaan would feel like he had won.   Part way through cutting through the muffin  I heard a decidedly un-cake-like clunk.
Now, I'm very familiar with bakeries.  My brother is a baker.  As a teenager, I used to work after school in the Harbord Bakery, which is coincidentally where I first met Ivaan.  I once sliced through an entire cigarette embedded in a loaf of light rye bread.  I've heard all the urban legends about lumps of aluminum foil, stones, and even small rodents being found inside loaves of bread.  (Note to the legal profession:  none of these instances occurred at my brother's bakery.)
That un-cake-like clunk sounded to my experienced ears like metal hitting metal.  I put the knife down and opened the muffin with my fingers. Baked inside the muffin was a beautiful heavy gold ring by Ivaan.  The poor sales clerk looked as though she were going to collapse.  She'd had to keep a close  eye on that lemon poppyseed muffin all morning, to ensure that no one else bought it before we got there.
Up until that moment, I'd have said that nothing could have surprised me more than the morning Ivaan proposed to me (on one knee, in his dressing gown, on the living room floor) but I think the anniversary muffin incident probably takes the cake.

IVAAN AND THE SHOES ON HIS FEET

I'm saving Ivaan's red shoes.  They're quite well worn, despite the fact that he didn't wear them often.  He bought them in the late 1980s and was still wearing them, on occasion, in 1995 when he opened his studio on Queen Street West.  Ivaan liked the way they looked, loved the colour, which is much more red in actual fact than in the photo.  He took good care of them, as evidenced by the fact that they've obviously been to the shoe repair more than once.  Even at size 45, though, they were two full sizes too small, and definitely too narrow, which was no impediment to the pleasure he got from looking down and seeing them on his feet.

Ivaan had a complicated relationship with footwear.  He loved beautiful shoes and boots and he didn't just collect them; he wore them too.   In 1993, he went with his sister Nadia and her family on a trip to Ukraine.  As footwear for the trip, he insisted on taking a beautiful pair of black cowboy boots I'd bought him for his previous birthday.  Knowing they'd be walking a lot, I suggested he take some comfortable shoes as well.  Ivaan demurred.   He loved those cowboy boots and he was determined to wear them.  I was fairly certain he was making a mistake, so I bought him a pair of canvas espadrilles and hid them in the bottom of his suitcase.  He didn't find them until he was already in Ukraine.  Disgusted, he promptly gave them away to the first person they fit.  Two weeks later, when Ivaan returned from Ukraine, he insisted vehemently that his cowboy boots  had been the perfect choice of footwear.  It wasn't until years later, when one of the friends he had made in Ukraine came to visit us, that I began to hear stories about Ivaan's boots.  Apparently, they had hurt him so much that he was obliged to take taxis everywhere.  In Ukraine, those boots became the stuff of legend.  Frankly, he might as well have left them in Ukraine, because he never wore them again.

After we were married, I started exerting not-so-subtle pressure on Ivaan to buy shoes that actually fit.   It was a short distance from discovering the pleasures of well-fitting, stylish footwear to discovering the pleasures of spa life.    Our wedding reception had taken place at The Elmwood Club; soon afterwards, it became The Elmwood Spa.  Initially, it wasn't easy to persuade Ivaan that he might actually enjoy a massage, but one visit to The Elmwood Spa was sufficient to convert him. Henceforth, many of our vacations were spent at a spa.  He became famous at The Hillcrest Spa in Port Hope for booking two 90-minute massages, back to back.

As his series of strokes began to permanently limit his mobility, Ivaan reluctantly agreed to let me give him a weekly pedicure.  I can't honestly say he enjoyed them; he was so inured to the memory of his toes hurting inside too-small shoes, and he worried that I might hurt him.  But one day at his rehabilitation hospital, Toronto Rehab, one of his therapists, having removed his socks and shoes for a therapy session, marvelled aloud at how beautiful and well-kept his feet were.  Ivaan was delighted, cherished the compliment, and never complained about pedicures again.

As for me, I cherish the red shoes.  They're a reminder of a younger Ivaan - the man who was so "form over function" that he'd suffer pain cheerfully for the pleasure of looking down and seeing a handsome pair of shoes on his feet.

THE NAVY CASHMERE OVERCOAT

For two years now, Ivaan's navy cashmere overcoat has been hanging in the closet.  That overcoat, together with a stylish navy fedora, was Ivaan's standard outer attire for occasions requiring a little je ne sais quoi in the sartorial department:  church, weddings, funerals or an evening at the opera. As overcoats go, it's a classic.

Truthfully, much of Ivaan's style over the years has revolved around items of attire.  In the 1970s he wore a black hat with a wide brim and some rustic looking bells and beads around the crown.  He wore the jeans I've described in an earlier blog.  He once had a pair of red velvet trousers made for himself, inspired apparently by what my father was wearing on the occasion they first met.   He's had two black leather jackets with his classic Ivaan signature in red chenille on the back.  (That's what the lettering on varsity-type leather jackets is called.)  In recent years, he was best known for a brown sheepskin aviator jacket, which he wore winter and summer, claiming that it was like insulation: it kept him at the perfect temperature.  Our nephew, Angus, who is a pilot, now wears this jacket in tribute to his uncle.

Ivaan's shoes were a source of wonder to members of our family.  He collected beautiful, expensive and stylish shoes and several members of our family who share a common shoe size have Ivaan to thank for their best footwear.

But the navy cashmere overcoat hung in the closet, unclaimed, and each time a family member tried it on I was secretly relieved that it didn't fit.  I wasn't ready to give it up.  Around the second anniversary of Ivaan's death, a chance remark by our close friend, Chris Robinson, about one of her daughters-in-law, suddenly woke me up to the destiny of the cashmere overcoat.    Chris has really, really good taste in daughters-in-law.  As a matter of fact, if you have sons of marriageable age, I urge you to consult with Chris about how to influence the most wonderful young women to join your family.

Chris' middle son, Gareth, is married to a drop-dead gorgeous, incredibly talented and utterly fabulous young woman named Meghan.  Among her many talents is the fact that she's a brilliant, inspired and accomplished costume maker.  Need I say more?  One quick email to Meghan - who adored Ivaan - had her and Gareth at my door.  I showed her the coat, told her what I was hoping for, and voila!  Last evening Meghan dropped over with the navy cashmere overcoat, completely taken apart and remade to fit me like a glove.

I love how I look in it.  I feel when I'm wearing it that I'm in Ivaan's warm embrace.   Now, I know that with Meghan's talents, if anyone else asked her to remake a man's overcoat into a woman's, she'd say, "Uh, no."  But this was a labour of love and she has made me (and Ivaan) very, very proud.  Thank you, Meg.  You are a peach.  I will post some photos as soon as I get someone to point a camera in my direction.

SMOKY LAKE REVISITED

TYWONIUK'S BLACKSMITH SHOP, 1935
(c) Estate of Nick Gavinchuk

In 1949 Ivaan, his sister Nadia and their parents arrived in Canada from Germany, where they had lived for four years following their release from the Nazi forced labour camp where they were interned and in which Ivaan was born.   After the liberation, they had lived as refugees in a Displaced Persons camp for four years, until the Red Cross was able to find a sponsor for them, to enable them to immigrate to Canada.

Their sponsor was Alex Tywoniuk (pronounced Ti-von-YOOK).  He was the local blacksmith in the town of Smoky Lake, Alberta.  He had been a childhood friend of Ivaan's father in Ukraine, and had emigrated to Canada before the Second World War.  The Tywoniuk family arranged a place for the Kotulsky family to live, helped the parents find employment and get settled in their new country.  Ivaan often watched Mr. Tywoniuk at work in his blacksmith shop and became fascinated with the properties of molten metal.

The town is located about 90 minutes north-east of Edmonton. Winters aren't easy in Smoky Lake and Ivaan's father was already frail from years of forced labour in Nazi Germany.  When the local Ukrainian Orthodox Priest, Reverend Foty, was reassigned to the St. Volodymyr parish in Toronto in 1951, he urged Ivaan's parents to follow him to Toronto, where they'd be able to find employment that was less physically demanding, become part of his congregation, and join the already burgeoning Ukrainian community in Toronto.  It was good advice, and within a year or two, Ivaan's parents were able to buy their first modest home on Wyatt Avenue.

Flash forward to 1969.  Ivaan was working as a photographer for Chatelaine magazine when he was sent to Alberta on assignment.  While there, he made a point of stopping by Smoky Lake and visiting the Tywoniuk family.  Again, his fascination with metalsmithing was awakened, and when Ivaan returned to Toronto, he started experimenting with metal work.  By December of that year, he was so engrossed in his new passion that he often stayed up all night working on a project.  Although he kept working at Maclean Hunter until 1973, his love of metal work eventually won out; he quit his job at Maclean Hunter to devote himself full time to his newfound career.

Ivaan and his sister Nadia often reminisced about Smoky Lake, and by 2000 Ivaan had decided they were going to make a pilgrimage back there. However, Ivaan suffered his first stroke in March of that year and Nadia's husband, Nick, suffered a heart attack in May.  Their trip to Smoky Lake  was postponed till the following year, which happened to be the 75th anniversary of the town.   Ivaan and Nadia arrived in the midst of the anniversary celebrations, and received a warm welcome.  The local newspaper wrote a feature article about them.  They visited Alex Tywoniuk in the nursing home where he lived.  They visited the cemetery where his wife was buried.  They visited the old blacksmith shop.  They ate peach bread - which, they were quick to point out, contains no peaches. They were chauffeured around by Alex Tywoniuk's son Walter and his wife Lucie.   And incredibly, 50 years after they left, the townspeople still remembered them with affection.   It was an emotional experience for both Nadia and Ivaan, and a bonding experience too.  They often talked nostalgically about their return to Smoky Lake, and even years later, it always seemed they were talking about an event that had happened just last week.

Smoky Lake is a little, cold town in northern Alberta.  It's the place where Nadia fell in love with books and Ivaan fell in love with metal arts. But for this small family,  who had resided there for less than two years, Smoky Lake was - and remains - the warmest place on earth.

CALENDAR GIRL REDUX: I'M ALSO POSTER GIRL

(c) 2010 Trillium Gift of Life Network

I wrote recently about the fact that I'd been asked to be photographed for the 2011 Trillium Gift of Life Network calendar. (I'm "Miss March".)  Well, here's some shameless self-promotion: they also put me on one of their posters.  The green card I'm holding contains their new slogan, which exhorts health care professionals to speak with families about end-of-life patients being screened as possible organ and tissue donors and to call TGLN to make the connection between possible organ and tissue donors and patients in urgent need of a transplant.  I've been volunteering with TGLN for six years now and I'm really passionate about organ and tissue donation.  It's the only way after our own lives are over that we can continue to make a positive physical difference here on earth.  Most of us never have the chance in our lifetimes to save a life, to be a hero.  Unless we're a firefighter, a paramedic or other health care professional, a lifeguard or a volunteer on a suicide prevention hotline, for whom heroism is daily life, our opportunity to make this kind of difference in an unknown person's life is very limited.

Ivaan was a donor.  He'd made this decision of his own accord and I admire him tremendously for it.  He always said he wasn't a courageous sort of person, but he's my hero.  He knew it would make a huge positive difference to some unknown other families.  He was right.  It did.

If you're thinking you want to make this kind of difference, there are three things you need to do:

(1) Talk to your family about it, and tell them expressly what your wishes are.  You may not be conscious at the end of your life, so they need to know.  They don't have to agree with your decision, but they need to know.

(2)  Register your consent.  You can download the form from the Trillium Gift of Life website, - www.giftoflife.org - fill it out, sign it and send it in.  You can't apply online, but you can get the blank forms online.

(3) It's nice to carry a wallet card, but it's even better to go to the Health Card renewal place (ServiceOntario), tell them you want to register your consent to be a donor, and they will arrange to have your consent entered in the Ministry of Health database AND indicated on your Health Card.

And now, Poster Girl had better swivel herself around on the piano bench and get some practising done.  I'll bet my piano teacher wants to know why I appear to have turned my back on music.

If you're in a health care facility in 2011 and you see me smiling down at you from a poster, smile back.  And consider registering your consent to be a donor.  Please.  Thank you from Ivaan and from me.

CONNIE AND HER DAUGHTERS

Connie's Ring
(c) Estate of Ivaan Kotulsky

Today is the second anniversary of Ivaan's having left the planet, so I thought I'd use this occasion to write about someone else who left the planet and her enduring legacy.

Connie was a colleague of mine at Old City Hall, which is a courthouse in downtown Toronto, where I worked from 1988 until 1997.  She had a lot of style, and I often thought she could have had a successful theatrical career.  She had a handsome face, a strong voice, perfect elocution, a large vocabulary and considerable dramatic flair.  She was also what used to be called "well bred", a fact which probably mitigated against her taking up a career on the stage.  Connie had two young adult daughters, of whom she was justifiably proud.  They shared her strong good looks and had clearly inherited her sharp intellect and quick wit.

Connie loved Ivaan's jewellery, and one of the things on her to-do list was to get bracelets by Ivaan for her daughters, Vanessa and Tanya.  One of the very funny stories she used to tell was of the time when she decided to go to Ivaan's Queen Street West studio and look at bracelets.  Not realizing that Ivaan kept very erratic hours, she showed up one day and found the studio door locked.  Thinking he'd be back momentarily, Connie went into the local Greek restaurant to have a cup of tea and read the newspaper while she awaited his return.  She was busy doing both when she noticed the previously noisy restaurant had become silent.  Looking up, she quickly realized that she was the only female in the restaurant, that all the male customers and staff were watching her intently...and she began to suspect  that the coffee cups in front of them may have contained something stronger than coffee.  Clearly, it was a case of mistaken identity on two counts:  they thought Connie was an undercover cop, and she would cheerfully have joined them in something stronger than coffee if she'd known it was being served!

Connie never got to see any bracelets that day, but she told this story with great glee for months afterwards.

Six years ago, Connie felt that her life was becoming an increasingly uphill struggle, and she made the decision to end it.  Fiercely independent, she planned her exit so as to leave the planet with grace, dignity and a sense of purpose.  A few days later, Ivaan and I heard the news from another of my colleagues.  Ivaan, already quite ill himself, was very moved by her death and asked me to try to contact her daughters.  He wanted to offer each of them a piece of his jewellery, as a gift from their mother, to "close the loop" on the bracelet story. The problem was, both daughters were married and I couldn't recall their surnames and didn't know how to reach them.

When Ivaan died in December, 2008, contacting  Connie's daughters was still an item on his to-do list.  One day, out of the blue, the surname of her younger daughter, Tanya, suddenly came to mind and I was able to reach her through Facebook.  Tanya came to see All That Matters, the 40-year retrospective of Ivaan's work at the Ukrainian Museum of Canada, loved his work, and chose a ring which would be her mother's gift to her.   She asked her sister, Vanessa, to look at Ivaan's website and choose something for herself. Tanya and Vanessa are very different people.  Though they share many of Connie's attributes, they are complete individuals.  Yet, incredibly, they both chose exactly the same ring.

I hope that Ivaan and Connie are enjoying something a bit stronger than coffee in The World To Come and I'm sure they are probably still laughing over the bracelet story.  Both Tanya and Vanessa feel strongly connected to their rings and to their mother's legacy.  They are both fabulous, devoted mothers themselves.  They - and I - remember Connie with affection, pride and admiration.  Like Ivaan, she was larger than life.