STAIRWAY TO HECK

I love this building. It's a thrill just unlocking the door and walking inside. But every time friends visit and ask, "Can I see upstairs?" my blood pressure soars. Let's put it this way:  "upstairs" is a work in progress, and it's going to be a work in progress for quite some time.  I had no idea how many of my friends are frustrated architects.  They go upstairs to look around, come down looking pale and panic-stricken, and start throwing around terms like "pop off the roof" , "add another storey" and "blow out the south wall".

Now, I love renovating more than most people, but this  reno is going to be a challenge.  It's claustrophobic up there even when it's empty.   Claustrophobia sets in before you even get upstairs.  The stairway is 28 inches at its widest, and half way up it becomes 26 inches. This means nothing that goes upstairs can exceed 26 inches.  No fridge, no stove, no dishwasher, no washer, no dryer, no bathtub.

I  knew I couldn't replace the staircase until after my upstairs reno, but I wanted to cheer it up in the meantime.  I removed the commercial grade vinyl tiles.  Apparently they were held in place by school glue that hadn't dried in decades.  Here's how it looked part way through.  Nice, eh?

I thought if I left it exposed to the air for a day or two, the sticky glue would dry. No dice. So I decided to paint it with primer, because I knew primer would eventually dry.    I used the flamingo pink primer left over from the store.  That worked. So I painted over top with the leftover red paint from the store.  That worked even better.  Then I tiled the lower landing with black and

white stick-on tiles and continued that vibe up the first four stairs.  Here's how it looks now:

I changed the light fixture at the top of the stairs, and so for a total investment of $46 and an embarrassing amount of work, I have temporarily disguised the fact that the staircase is claustrophobic. Ivaan would be laughing at my ingenuity.

Next up?  The bathroom.  The floor in the upstairs bathroom is not remotely level.  The bathtub lists to one side so much that I'm looking for a shower curtain with a picture of the Titanic on it.  Ingenuity is not going to cut it when it comes to this bathroom reno.  Not even close.

Stay tuned  for The Sinking of the Titanic.

WHAT HAPPENS IN FEBRUARY STAYS IN FEBRUARY

February 3rd is a very significant day in our family because it is the birthday of three family members.  So when something happens on February 3rd, I usually remember it.

On February 3rd, 2012, I was on the Dupont bus, heading eastbound.  I was feeling dejected.  I'd just been to see a property that was for sale on Dupont, and I was disappointed that it was not going to be suitable for my purposes.  "I'll never find the kind of place I'm looking for", I grumbled to myself.  As the bus crossed Shaw Street, it passed a compact two-storey commercial building on the south side of the street.  I'd noticed it before, and admired it.  "If I owned that building, I'd never complain about anything again", I said to myself.  Here's what it looked like.

The following evening, my niece Justine emailed me a "Just Listed" flyer from a real estate agent, containing a listing for a house identical to, and just down the street from, our family home. "Look at this house; it's the same as Grandpa's", she wrote.  As I opened the attachment, I glanced at the house she was referring to, but was amazed to see there was a second listing on the flyer....for the building I'd coveted the day before.  It had not been for sale yesterday.  Suddenly it was for sale.  I didn't get too much sleep that night.  By the morning, I knew I had to act quickly.  I called our friend Myron, who is a realtor, and begged him to drop everything and take me to see it.  Myron made an appointment for three o'clock that afternoon.  By two-thirty I was in front of the building. 

Myron knows me pretty well.  So he wasn't too horrified when he pulled up in front of the building and found me inside, deep in conversation with Tatiana, the current owner.  We toured the building.  I made up my mind.  Myron made his recommendation.  I trust him a lot so I listened.  A few days later, Myron drew up an offer.  Another offer came in.  I sweetened my offer.  Dead silence.  It looked like I had lost out to a better offer. On February 13th I went to sleep wondering if I had made a mistake by not offering more money.  I woke up next morning telling myself that I regretted letting it slip through my fingers.  But all was not lost.  Myron phoned with news that I was still "in the game" and before the day was over, I'd received this amazing Valentine's gift from Ivaan.

The building didn't always look sleek and stylish; three years previously, Tatiana had bought the building from a family who had operated a shoe repair business there for 30 years.  Here's how it looked  at that time:

This is the building that Tatiana renovated into her stylish Pimlico Design Gallery.  In three short years, her business had grown to the point that she needed more space.  Loving the neighbourhood, she bought a bigger building one block away and renovated it to suit her interiors business.   And me?  It did not take much effort for me to convert "the Pimlico building", as it is known in the neighbourhood, to its newest incarnation, Atelier Ivaan.  The store was already almost perfect.  Here's what it looks like today:

Now that the Atelier Ivaan store is perfect, I have my work cut out for me on the second floor.  Let's just say it's going to be a work in progress for quite some time.  My next  blog entry will feature "before" photos of the second storey...once I work up the nerve.  But the store?  Ivaan would be so thrilled with this place.  I nearly cried watching the sign and banners go up.  It was a proud moment.  Yes, February was a good month this year.  Thank you, Ivaan.

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 visits 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.