Dear Readers, we have been very lucky so far with the weather in Toronto, but today the skyscrapers have disappeared into the low clouds. It’s difficult to keep your spirits up when the world outside is so dismal and grey, but fortunately R, who is looking after our cat while we’re away, has been sending me updates and photos so I know exactly how Willow is getting on.

To start with she was definitely very suspicious.

But as the days have worn on, she’s started to relax, and to even come downstairs when she hears the door open to see if there’s any food in the offing…

And now she is quite happy to be stroked…

And seems generally much more relaxed.

This morning R tells me that her 3 year-old daughter was ‘reading’ an Ursula Le Guin story to the cat, who was unimpressed but unfazed. I told R that the cat was used to Tolstoy so maybe felt a bit underwhelmed :-). And just look at that lovely London weather! R tells me that the cat is following the sun  around the house, as usual. She’d have a spot of bother doing that here in Toronto today.

One thing that R and I have both concluded is that the cat is probably now completely deaf – last time I tried to get her into a cat carrier she was asleep and I was able to pick her up gently and pop her in before she even noticed, something I would never have been able to do if she’d been able to hear me – I swear that she slept with one ear open. Also, her yowls for food and attention have gotten much louder, so I suspect she can’t hear herself. Still, apart from that she seems perfectly happy, and I’m really pleased that she’s eating well while we’re away. It’s one less thing to worry about.

And so we’re at the turning point of the holiday, with a few more lovely friends to see, and my mother-in-law’s 95th birthday on Thursday. It’s been a hard trip in many ways, but there are many compensations. Still, I find my thoughts turning gradually back towards home. Let’s see what the next few days brings.

Dear Readers, Richmond Avenue runs east/west through Toronto, and en route it seems to change its nature several times. Here, for example, we get a fine view of the CN tower, once the tallest free-standing structure in the world (at 1815 feet) but now relegated to the tallest free-standing structure on land in the Western Hemisphere. So there. And believe me, there is currently a sponsored run which takes place on the internal staircase, and I imagine that would be enough to give pause to even the keenest of runners. At one point there was also the ‘opportunity’ to do a bungee jump from the top, the very thought of which makes my stomach flip.

Further along, we come to this array of black polished stone with what looks like green drinking straws poked through it. It’s called ‘Nova’ and it’s by Canadian sculptor Shayne  Dark. The building itself is known as the Tableau Condominium.

And what do I see to the left, but a portrait of Anne Boleyn?

And what is the name of the attached pub? As an A-Level History student (with a speciality in Tudor history) I am somewhat taken aback, for the only Queen Anne that I know ruled from 1665 to 1714 and was played by Olivia Coleman in ‘The Favourite’. Anne Boleyn was never queen in her own right as we know, what with her head getting chopped off etc etc. Maybe this is Canadian wishful thinking. 

Anyhow, on we go – we are aiming for the new local history museum, known as Myseum, which is at 401 Richmond Street. And here it is.

They have an exhibition called ‘Ten’, which is about ten Toronto neighbourhoods, but I find it a little disappointing. There’s both too much to take in, and not enough of any one thing to follow a coherent thread. Plus, there is a man pontificating to his friend at the top of his capacious lungs. One thing I have found on this trip is that I am becoming allergic to words for the sake of words. I find myself yearning for a bit of silent contemplation. Still, the etiquette of museums and galleries is very different in different places – I remember being heartily ‘shushed’ in MOMA in New York for discussing a piece too loudly with a friend, and that isn’t a pleasant experience either. Maybe I’ll take myself off on a silent retreat at some point and see if that helps to moderate my rapidly decreasing sociability.

Onwards! Back we go towards our hotel (The Cambridge Suites – we have being staying here for the best part of twenty years but it, too, is earmarked for development into condominiums). We spot a very big ‘ghost sign’, an indication of how the neighbourhood used to be. I think it says ‘Tip Top Tailors’, and indeed there was such a company in Toronto. They had a huge factory on the lakeshore which is now, believe it or not, some more condominiums.

The Tip Top Tailors building (Photo by By SimonP – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7109242)

Next, we have the Mandarin Oriental hotel with its strange metal animal wrapped around the glass outside. It’s called ‘Rising’ and the sculptor is Zhuang Huan. Apparently it cost $CAD5m. It is supposed to resemble a dragon with a flock of birds rising from it. To me, it looks more like an unfortunate animal being devoured by sparrows, but maybe that’s just my inner philistine coming through. See what you think.

Then there’s the New Brutalism of the Sheraton hotel…

And then there’s the Victory building, tucked away between a couple of towers. In its day (it was completed in 1937) it was strikingly modern, and I love all the art deco flourishes. It was apparently the first office tower in Canada to be completely air-conditioned. These days, it is leased out for office/co-working space, but at least the building is intact, unlike those who have been stripped and demolished.

So, like so much of Toronto, Richmond Street is a hodge-podge, from ultra-modern tower blocks to 1930s gems. There is so much construction still going on that it’s difficult to find the place charming at the moment – I have never seen so many concrete-mixers in a downtown area, and I live in London. What will be left when it’s done, and how will it all ‘sit’ together? Only time will tell.

View along Eastbourne Avenue

Dear Readers, my husband grew up in the leafy neighbourhood of Yonge and Eglinton, an area of medium-sized family homes with huge maple trees and some stunning magnolias, like the one below. When he was growing up, children used to play in the street (and there are still a few basketball hoops around). It’s generally a quiet place. John’s mother has lived here for more than sixty years, and when she first moved in it was a place where everyone knew their neighbours. Alas, over the years things have changed – as in so many places the community is more fractured, with shopping, education and work all taking place in different directions and different  parts of town. When people talk scathingly about the ’15 minute city’ idea, it’s worth remembering that it isn’t actually that new – people used to do their shopping locally, their children would go to local schools, and they certainly wouldn’t be commuting for hours. It wasn’t perfect, but it did foster neighbourliness and a sense of belonging to ‘somewhere’. 

Because the power and telephone lines are above ground, some of the trees have been pruned around where the wires run, which can  make for some most unusual shapes (and some very brutal cutting back in some places).

Ouch.

You can still hear birds singing – there was a house finch singing from a shrub in my mother-in-law’s garden yesterday, and the sparrows are positively boisterous. But then you get to the corner, and this is what you see:

Below gives a view back towards Davisville Station, and shows the scale of the streets before all this ‘condominiumation’. I wouldn’t mind so much if any of these new apartments were affordable for the average Torontonian just starting out in life, but the prices are eye-watering. As with London, I wonder where all the people that are so vital to the life of a city – the health workers, the cleaners, the transport workers, the emergency service workers – are going to end up living.

So many of the local high streets were comprised of two-storey buildings with ‘mom and pop’ stores on the ground floor, and flats above. There were local restaurants and delicatessens, hairdressers and repair shops, the inevitable coffee shops (many of them local businesses rather than chains), bakers and butchers and probably candlestick makers as well. Now, many of these businesses are blighted by development plans, not just for more condos, but also because of the new Light Railway that is being built, plus a subway extension.

Still, there are a few businesses that are worth a mention and are still hanging on in spite of everything that the pandemic, the condominium building and the transport disruption.

First up is Mr Phipps. I just realised that it’s actually called Phipps Bakery, after all these years of adding the ‘Mr’. It does the best butter tarts, and it’s where we’ve ordered the birthday cake for John’s Mum (who will be 95 next week). The staff are lovely, and if you fancy a sweet treat you won’t do better, plus their challah bread is stunning. They’ve been going since 1986 and make all their own baked goods so if you’re in Toronto, give them a visit. You won’t be disappointed.

Secondly, there’s the Crosstown Coffee Bar – great coffee, and the people running it are so friendly. They have a short menu of lunch sandwiches, and their apple and oatmeal muffin is delicious.

And finally, about 20 minutes walk away on Mount Pleasant there’s Domaine Mamo, a restaurant that we hadn’t visited before, but which is a small, neighbourly place which definitely deserves to succeed. If you go, do not miss the panisse (chickpea chips) – they are so delicious and more-ish, probably the best I’ve ever tasted.

Dear Readers, whenever I come to downtown Toronto, I am amazed at both how urban it is, and how a variety of creatures are still making it their home. Unlike London or New York, Toronto has no substantial parks or greenspaces in its core, and this can make it feel rather oppressive to me, especially on a dull, grey day. I suspect that maybe Torontonians feel the same way, because since I first started visiting here, there has been an absolute boom in dog ownership. Maybe this is the pandemic effect, maybe it’s the growth in the number of apartments, but there are small (and a few large) dogs everywhere. This beagle was visiting a coffee shop that we were sitting in (Versus, which is on Adelaide East – highly recommended) and I loved the way that he never took his eyes away from the door as he waited for his owner. He’s not the youngest of dogs, and I always find canine devotion very moving.

What really impresses me about Toronto (and I may have mentioned this last year) is that it has much higher sparrow numbers than inner London does. Maybe some of the blighted and decrepit buildings that are waiting for demolition all over the city are providing a place for these social little creatures to nest. A small flock visited the outside terrace of the coffee shop (largely because another couple cradling a small white fluffy dog were eating pastries). I am always struck by how energetic these birds are, and how ready to take up every opportunity. Proper city dwellers, in other words. I always think that there is something of the Victorian urchin about them.

And of course there are the feral pigeons, always watchful, and as spring approaches, clearly full of thoughts of ‘love’. All over the city pigeons are bobbing and cooing and chasing females around the pavements, with food as a secondary obsession. The pigeon below was much more interested in the goings on of several birds at ground level than he was in mere croissant crumbs.

And everywhere, the signs of spring, as the dogwood twigs and pine foliage of the winter is pulled out of the displays outside banks and governmental buildings, and the bulbs and blossom burst into flower instead. I could wish that it was a bit drier and a bit warmer, but things are definitely moving on. And for Torontonians I’m sure it can’t come quickly enough.

Purseweb Spider (Atypus affinis) (Photo By Siga – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33463932

Dear Readers, I am a regular reader of the British Arachnological Society newsletter – as you can imagine this is generally a detailed and complicated read, but every so often there’s a story that I can identify with, and which reassures me that there are people out there who are every bit as concerned about their local wildlife as I am.And so it was with delight that I read the report from Hilary Grant, who lives in Jersey and who seems to spend a lot of time rescuing animals that have fallen into her swimming pool. She reports that in 2017, while looking out for newts who needed to be moved on from the pool to a more suitable habitat, she found her first purseweb spider males who had gone for an involuntary swim.

Purseweb spiders are found in many parts of Europe and southern England, and are the only European members of the trapdoor spider family. These are long-lived spiders, and have a most interesting life history. They create a tube web that is partially hidden underground, with the above-ground portion covered in leaves and debris. When an unsuspecting insect stands on the silk and becomes trapped, the spider leaps out, bites through the silk and drags the insect underground to eat it in peace. The spiders do not normally leave their tubes for any reason, except that in the autumn the males leave the safe haven of their tubes and try to find a female – sexual maturity usually takes at least four years. When the male finds a female, he will enter her burrow and the two live together until the male dies soon after mating. Then the spiderlings hatch, and they stay in the burrow with their mother for at least another year.

And so, the spiders that Grant was seeing were clearly on the march, and eventually she identified that they were coming to or from a colony in a flowerbed about 25 metres from the swimming pool. Feeling sorry for all the spiders who appeared to be drowned, she started fishing them out and putting them in  a flowerpot filled with kitchen paper. To her surprise, many of them revived – on one occasion she rescued five, and all five of them were ‘resurrected’, although a haul of eleven spiders resulted in only two surviving. One spider took a full 24 hours to revive, but still made a full recovery. It’s interesting to know that these spiders can survive total immersion in presumably chlorinated water for a period of time.

Grant suggests that, because the spiders live underground, they may have developed mechanisms that enable them to survive the occasional inundation that they must surely suffer – she points out that most spiders drown very quickly, with a heavy downpour being enough to kill even a largish spider. It got me to thinking about occasions when I’ve rescued caterpillars – I’ve found that the absorbent quality of kitchen paper helps to ‘pull’ the water out of the breathing tubes, or spiracles, which is how insects breathe. Spiders have an apparatus called a book lung, which opens on the underside of the abdomen, so I wonder if the paper has a similar ‘blotting’ effect on these structures.

The reaction of the spiders, on reviving, was either to hide in the folds of the kitchen paper or to attempt to ‘dig’ their way out – those enormous ‘jaws’ (known as chelicerae) have been likened to pick-axes. Indeed, Grant mentions that the only time she was ‘attacked’ by a purseweb spider was when she was carrying one to safety, and he ‘bit’ her  (though he was unable to pierce the skin) – she now realises that he was just testing the ‘ground’ of her hand in order to dig his way out of trouble.

I love this story for many reasons – firstly, because Grant is clearly a compassionate person who doesn’t want the spiders in her garden to suffer unnecessarily. Secondly, she has a spirit of scientific curiosity that I can empathise with. And finally, she has a sense of humour that I find most appealing – she describes one spider as ‘doing a very lively breaststroke’, and another as ‘ a grumpy individual’. I find her most inspiring, and hope that she continues to report on her spiders so that we can all see what they’re up to next.