The Clever Pup

Sunday in the Olympic Park with Neville

2012-01-27T10:10:00.000-05:00

Neville Gabie, artist in residence at London's Olympic Park has paid tribute to the construction workers at the 2012 Games site by interpreting French post-impressionist Georges Seurat's Bathers at Asnieres in his own way.

Landscapers, engineers, designers and security staff inhabit the photograph recreating the 1884 painting.

From what little I know of Seurat, he was enamoured with France's industrial age. He makes an effort to include the factories and their bellowing smoke stacks in the background when he could just as easily glossed over them. I'm guessing Georges would be tickled with this "post-industrial" take on his "Bathers".

(ODA via Getty Image)

My Casual-Hip 'Hood

2012-01-24T10:54:00.000-05:00

Although this originally ran in the New York Times in October, I just found it. My hip 'hood is thrumming again, and apparently makes for one of Toronto's most engaging strolls. There really is so much new happening I'd need a whole month to dedicate to my great neighbourhood. Please click on the link.

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2011/10/09/travel/20111009-surfacing.html

A Low-Slung Piece Of Toronto Gains Casual-Hip Cachet

Begin Slide Show

By MICHAEL KAMINER
IN the Roncesvalles Village area of Toronto, shop windows still trumpet “godziny otwarcia” — Polish for “opening hours.” But as young, creative types have snapped up homes, this west-end Polish enclave has morphed into a hub of local design and casual-hip dining. After a multiyear neighborhood reconstruction project that temporarily cut streetcar service and starved merchants, Roncesvalles Avenue — the area’s main artery — is thrumming again. Despite their big-city location, the street’s indie bookstores, quirky coffeehouses and smart boutiques feel more like small-town hangouts, with stroller-pushing locals popping in to chat up proprietors. Tree-lined and low-slung, with a blessed absence of the chain stores that have crept across Toronto, the rejuvenated “Roncey” now makes for one of the city’s most engaging strolls.

Begin Slide Show »

photo from polishfestival.ca

Every Kitchen Needs One

2012-01-13T10:28:00.001-05:00

And I'll take two. Not in my wildest dreams unfortunately. But any of these posters would trump the somber Schiele reproduction we bought for our kitchen. Four hundred food- and wine-related vintage posters will go under the hammer in New York on February 12. Hosting this sale is Poster Auctions International and it should be a smorgasbord of food and drink advertising. The culinary arts will be celebrated through posters from the eras of Art Nouveau, Art Deco and Modern design.

150 years of gastronomy will be covered in these original advertisements for wine, beer, liqueur and chocolate plus a myriad of other household staples. Some of these iconic images include those designed by Cappiello, Nizzoli’s Campari poster, menu designs by Alphonse Mucha, and a unique image by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec for a celebratory banquet. Wonder how much that will go for?

This show will be on view, free to the public beginning Friday, January 27 through Saturday, February 11. For those of us not lucky enough to live in NYC the 160-page catalogue ($40) is available at www.posterauctions.com.

Vintage posters can also be purchased through the auction' parent site, The International Poster Center. Prices range from the low thousands to the many thousands. Trial proofs of Toulouse-Lautrecs iconic posters are offered in the $30,000 range

Although without a website in this day and age, Alternative Arts at 491 Bloor Street West in Toronto have catalogues upon catalogues of reproductions of this stuff. I'm guessing the end result would be cheaper. Just guessing. Another website for vintage art posters is vintagearte.artehouse.com and there are thousands to pick from at allposters.ca.

with thanks to artdaily.com for the images and the original article

The Elephant and the Dove - Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo at the AGO

2012-01-12T11:00:00.002-05:00

In the autumn of 2012 the Art Gallery of Ontario will exhibit works by Mexican artist Frida Kahlo and her on again, off again husband Diego Rivera. Frida & Diego: Passion, Politics and Painting will feature works by the two artists, primarily drawn from the Museo Dolores Olmedo in Mexico city. The works to be exhibited will highlight Rivera and Kahlo’s lives, both together and apart, their politics and how their passionate views and activism influenced their work. The exhibition will be at the AGO from Oct. 20, 2012 through Jan. 20, 2013. Frida & Diego: Passion, Politics and Painting is presented in collaboration with the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia, which will display the exhibition in February 2013.

Photo by Carl van Vechten via Wikipedia

Frida Kahlo is a fascinating woman who should never be dismissed as the lady with the eyebrows who painted only portraits of herself. Her paintings were described by the Surrealist André Breton as “a ribbon around a bomb,” She was called a Surrealist by some, but she resisted the label and claimed she painted her reality, not her dreams. Rivera's and Kahlo's work show their support for the Communist movement, as well as the concept of Mexicanidad, an identification with Mexico’s indigenous roots.

Frida's relationship with the muralist Diego Rivera was a tempestuous one. They married in 1929. They divorced in November 1939 only to remarry in November of 1940. It seemed to be a case of "can't live with him, can't live without him". Early in their relationship they had a double studio/house built in San Angel; separate living quarters joined by a bridge. Rivera, despite his 300 pounds, was catnip for the ladies. Frida had many affairs with both men and women including Leon Trotsky, sculptor Isamu Noguchi and Jaqueline Lamba, the wife of André Breton. Many photos of Diego and Frida can be viewed on the PBS site.


riveraexperts.com

Hayden Herrera's biography of Frida Kahlo is an excellent read. Adapted from Herrera's book was the equally-excellent 2002 biographical film Frida. The movie was directed by Julie Taymor, currently avoiding brickbats for the Spiderman play. The movie is up there on my list of top 20 films and it's worth seeing.

Can't wait for October.

Swiss Christmas

2011-12-22T17:57:00.002-05:00

The wide variety of Christmas customs throughout Swiss villages reflects centuries of winter isolation that townsfolk endured when the heavy snow eliminated travel between mountain valleys. Their celebrations seem anything but neutral.

In the canton of Vaud, a Christmas lady named Tante Arie is a bearer of gifts. Represented as an old woman, half fairy, half witch, she comes down from a mountain on Christmas Eve riding a donkey. She brings gifts for good children but birch rods or dunce caps for the naughty ones.

Usually on December 6, the feast of St. Nicholas, Swiss school children parade through their villages, ringing bells of all sizes. The bells alert the villagers that a gift is expected from each household along the way. The gifts are usually some good things to eat or drink.


swisscommunity.org

The children's parade in the town of Weinfelden happens the last Thursday before Christmas. The children in the town parade through the streets with decorated beets. These beets have been hollowed out and lit from within with a candle. After singing carols in the town square, the children go to their schools where they dine on sausage and bread. At the same time, adults go the local tavern or coffeehouse, and the town council holds its annual budget meeting! Oh those crazy Weinfeldians!


myswitzerland.com

In the village of Ziefen, several dozen young bachelors walk a traditional route through the streets every Christmas Eve. The tallest bachelor dons a white beard and leads the procession while carrying a sooty rag attached to the end of a long pole. All the young bachelors wear oversized, long, dark coats and each wears a tall, black, top hat made of cardboard. Many of these hats are more then six feet high. Quiet a few onlookers get a face full of soot.

Celebrations are relatively quiet in the village of Hallwil where seven girls, 13 or 14-years-old, act out an ancient custom. A veiled Weihnachtchild (Christmas child), dressed in white, and six companions in rose-colored gowns visit village families in the evening. The Weihnachtchild greets the families with a silent handshake and distributes cake or cookies to the children while the other girls sing a carol. The departure of this group is also silent.

There is a crazy, yet ancient New Years Eve tradition in the town of Laupen. After dark on December 31, participating schoolboys, in three boisterous groups, meet on the hill at the local castle and proceed down to the village. In the first group are the "bell ringers", who swing large bells heard for miles around.

Next, the "broom men", carry long poles with bunches of juniper branches tied to the top. The third, and most bizarre group, the "bladder men" carry pig's bladders filled with air. The procession stops at various locations along the route as the leader recites a poem to the old year and wishes the crowd a happy new one. During the poem, the broom men wave their juniper brooms over the heads of the crowd. At the end of journey, the broom men and the bladder men, all armed with inflated pig's bladders, proceed to "beat" the onlookers, especially young ladies, until their weapons are in shreds.

The Clever Pup's Christmas Gift Ideas - Humanitarian Gifts

2011-12-21T10:28:00.001-05:00

Doing your part to make the world a better place is just a click away. Here are some charitable Christmas present suggestions.

We sponsor a little boy called Norbert in Kenya through Plan Canada. Plan Canada promotes their "Gifts of Hope" at this time of year. One goat for a village costs $75. This gift provides the possibility of a livelihood and income. Imagine what a flock of 12 could do. Ten mango trees would set you back only $100. They are planted in school gardens and their juicy and nutritious fruit provide an incentive to come to school. I especially like the idea of the Motorcycle Ambulance. For people living in remote communities without healthcare services, this $150 gift is a lifeline: it brings healthcare workers to isolated villages and it carries people from those villages to community health centres.

We also give monthly to Médecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders). They were established in 1971 by a small group of French doctors who had worked in Biafra. Upon their return, they were determined to find a way to respond rapidly and effectively to public health emergencies, with complete independence from political, economic and religious influences. MSF is one of the world's leading independent international medical relief organizations, working in nearly 60 countries worldwide and with operational centres in 19 countries.

If something doesn't happen soon at the Toronto Zoo, our illustrious mayor Rob Ford will probably let the animals out to graze in the backyards of Eastern Scarborough. I used to sponsor a Matchies Tree Kangaroo. I bet you didn't even know they existed. Bob Barker's rescuing our elephants. Why not "come on down" and sponsor your favourite zoo animal.

Moosoneepuppyrescue.com

For those ready to have a dog in their life there is the Moosonee Puppy Rescue. My Toronto neighbourhood is teaming with kind-hearted people who have adopted these dogs. Here's a bit about the Rescue. The Moosonee Puppy Rescue began in 2003. In the isolated First Nations communities of Moosonee, Moose Factory, Attawapiskat, Fort Albany and Kashechewan, dogs are left to face a life of neglect. Overbreeding occurs and as there are no veterinarian services in these communities, dogs may be trapped or shot. These puppies have amazing temperaments (I know 2 personally), but puppies take a lot of attention and devotion. If you're ready to take the leap, contact Sharron at Moosonee Puppy Rescue. If you can't take a dog, there are other ways to help out by purchasing crafts and photographs created in support of the dogs. Or you can donate by visiting this page.

The Memory Project will provide every living Canadian veteran of the Second World War and the Korean War with the opportunity to share their memories through oral interviews and digitized artefacts and memorabilia. This nationwide bilingual project will create a record of Canada’s participation these wars as seen through the eyes of thousands of veterans. I think this is a great idea. As I cry more at each passing Remembrance Day, I thought I'd better donate.

thestop.com

Another Toronto foundation that I think is just great is The Stop. The Stop strives to increase access to healthy food in a manner that maintains dignity, builds community and challenges inequality. Better than a food bank, The Stop provides frontline services to the community including community kitchens, bake-ovens and markets, a sustainable food production and educational centre with a state-of-the art greenhouse. They have after school programs and summer camps focusing on teaching kids positive attitudes towards healthy eating. The Drop In is a safe place where anyone can enjoy delicious food. And speaking of dropping in - Jamie Oliver dropped in for a half-hour whistle-stop but ending up touring The Stop's Green Barns and After School programs for two hours. "Amazing", he said. There are many ways to give. Become a member for $50.

The Clever Pup's Christmas Gift Ideas - Guy Stuff.

2011-12-17T10:06:00.001-05:00

I bought a varnished hand like the one above, when I was in Paris. It's never used for its intended purpose as a sketching aid, but we have lots of fun with it. At the moment it's holding a selection of paint samples. The little articulated mannequins are found in most art supply stores. They are endlessly amusing.

Maps and city plans like this can be found in places similar to Beach Antique Maps and Prints.

Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it is too dark to read. Thanks,Groucho. Also dogs don't need bookends to keep them nice and straight on the shelf. Here's to killing two birds with one stone. The top set are no longer available from Restoration Hardware but they have others to choose from. Brass or bronze bookends can usually be found if you poke about in antique markets and...

yank.ca

...if you're lucky enough to have a well-curated antique or flea market in your neighbourhood, maybe you can find interesting gifts for the time-traveler in your life. A Toronto favourite is Yank Azman who sets up at the Sunday Antique Market at the St. Lawrence Market Building North.

yank.ca

Moleskine has turned into an industry, selling reading glasses, pencils, pouches, manbags as well as the nice-to-get notebooks. I especially like the one with the accordion file in the back. It's useful for travel. These seem to be in a number of higher end book and stationery shops.

Useful globes like this can be found at Replogle. No, I didn't just choke on my cereal. Replogle.com

Oh so very cool Steampunk accessories can be found on etsy. These goggles are at Attic Raiders.

If only I could find a robe as nice as this one.

Great for relieving stress.

I think these tattoo sleeves are pretty cool. Accessorize with biceps and you're set.

You can probably tell by these suggestions that the men in my life are indoor-cats who don't care much for organized sport. It's so pleasant.

Here are more suggestions. I'd like them too.

This bust of Napoleon is definitely out of my price range. But I love it. It's a definite for a Sherlock Holmes aficionado.

Old post cards bring out the snoop in me. A wonderful stocking stuffer.

Can you imagine this in an oval frame? Due to my Art History classes I've got Napoleon fever.. Allposters.com

http://www.worldwidenature.com/

We have two candelabra like this and our candle consumption is breaking the bank. I hope these are inspiring. Next time I'll have some charitable suggestions. Now I must study. Exam on Monday!

The Clever Pup's Christmas Gift Ideas - Kitcheny Things.

2011-12-16T10:19:00.004-05:00

You've really got to plan. In this day and age where you can find something as esoteric as pool cue chalk by clicking on Google Maps, there's little excuse for not finding the right gift. But I'm the first to admit that there are certain in-laws that leave me stymied, year after year.

Those who run to the mall and buy heartless loot for those on their lists are responsible for Christmas turning into the debt-spiralling potlatch that it has. As I absolutely loathe spending over $100 on any one thing, Christmas is pretty modest at my house. But there's lots of stuff to open and most of it's meaningful. I remember hours poring over a collection of old postcards I was given, or a map of the Holy Roman Empire. My husband enjoys the books I get him and as a family we've spent evenings playing the reproduction vintage board games I once found included in one. My son created a really cool battle game with a collection of plastic dinosaurs we bought him when he was in that stage.

That said, it's nine days to go to Christmas and I still have a list containing brothers-in-law, nephews and their girlfriends, great nieces and the son's of friends. If I have time over the next few days I'll post some ideas. Todays topic: Things for the kitchen. These are gifts I've received over the years, things I've given and things I'd like to receive. My Christmas list will languish in conditions of relative obscurity as my husband never reads my blog.

Anthropologie has really bright, cheery bowls that I'm covetous of.

I could do with a cake stand.

This wine rack is kind of funky and useful, especially if full.This was a great gift given by my sister-in-law.

I must use my enamel colander 10 times a week. Attractive and useful. The elements of good design.

I said I have a problem spending more than $100 on anything. Luckily, my husband doesn't. These larchwood chopping blocks are made in Canada. They're fantastic and unique. We got ours from the Thin Blue Line Cheesemongers on Roncesvalles.

On the lower end, these Cafe Au Lait bowls from Anthropologie are only $6 each.

But goodness, look what I just found on Anthropologie's website for $78. This anthropomorphic lovely is called the Beast's Feast Bowl. I received a similar tureen last year from my husband. No sense duplicating. You buy it.

Cool egg cups can't break the bank.

For those who like to name drop, these are $20.00 from Alessi

Le Creuset does have some items under $100. I really like their colour range. Their batter bowl and their jug are almost affordable.

I love my much-heralded tagine.

I have a collection of Portuguese terracotta. My jug and my teapot unfortunately add an "I've just eaten a flower pot" flavour to my juice and tea. This laaarge casserole is great. You have to soak it prior to initial use. It looks super.

"Get Back to the Presents"

2011-12-16T08:30:00.001-05:00

"Get back to the Presents."

"There were the Useful Presents: engulfing mufflers of the old coach days, and mittens made for giant sloths; zebra scarfs of a substance like silky gum that could be tug-o'-warred down to the galoshes; blinding tam-o'-shanters like patchwork tea cozies and bunny-suited busbies and balaclavas for victims of head-shrinking tribes; from aunts who always wore wool next to the skin there were mustached and rasping vests that made you wonder why the aunts had any skin left at all; and once I had a little crocheted nose bag from an aunt now, alas, no longer whinnying with us. And pictureless books in which small boys, though warned with quotations not to, would skate on Farmer Giles' pond and did and drowned; and books that told me everything about the wasp, except why."

Go on - the Useless Presents."

"Bags of moist and many-colored jelly babies and a folded flag and a false nose and a tram-conductor's cap and a machine that punched tickets and rang a bell; never a catapult; once, by mistake that no one could explain, a little hatchet; and a celluloid duck that made, when you pressed it, a most unducklike sound, a mewing moo that an ambitious cat might make who wished to be a cow; and a painting book in which I could make the grass, the trees, the sea and the animals any colour I pleased, and still the dazzling sky-blue sheep are grazing in the red field under the rainbow-billed and pea-green birds. Hardboileds, toffee, fudge and allsorts, crunches, cracknels, humbugs, glaciers, marzipan, and butterwelsh for the Welsh. And troops of bright tin soldiers who, if they could not fight, could always run. And Snakes-and-Families and Happy Ladders. And Easy Hobbi-Games for Little Engineers, complete with instructions. Oh, easy for Leonardo! And a whistle to make the dogs bark to wake up the old man next door to make him beat on the wall with his stick to shake our picture off the wall. And a packet of cigarettes: you put one in your mouth and you stood at the corner of the street and you waited for hours, in vain, for an old lady to scold you for smoking a cigarette, and then with a smirk you ate it. And then it was breakfast under the balloons."

That's what Christmas is all about, Dylan Thomas. Thanks

Hey, I Could Do That or Lemieux Breaks Record for Canadian Art

2011-11-25T11:21:00.000-05:00

1910 Remembered (1962) depicts artist Jean Paul Lemieux as a child, standing between his parents who were soon to separate. Looking out from the canvas between his two stern, statue-like parents, Lemieux seems both hopeful and sad. The light on the parents seems cloudy, unclear, perhaps reflecting their mood at the time. I'm joking when I said I could do that, but they do looking amazingly simple, don't they. Here are a few more examples of Lemieux. I love this one called Summer. Unfortunately the only repro I could find was on a postage stamp. I would definitely give this one house room.

Julie et l'Universe

The Evening Visitor

Lemieux (1904-1990) was a master of placing his subjects on the canvas. His stark horizons and his fields of snow or grass recreate a feeling of immensity I remember as a small child. Lemieux's work came from his imagination. He painted indoors without live models. To me his people are just another element of shape and colour. Although they do have such sweet faces.

I should be working on my other art paper today but my brother distracted me with the news that Nineteen Ten Remembered sold for $2.34 million, breaking a record for post-war,contemporary Canadian art sold at auction. Here are some details, pre-sale. Heffel.com has a listing of some of the other prices realized

Jean Paul Lemieux's northern views are an easy sell

By John Pohl, Montreal Gazette Visual Arts critic

November 18, 2011< MONTREAL - The auction sale last spring of a Jean Paul Lemieux painting, Les Moniales, for $1.02 million has brought a number of the artist's works off the walls of collectors' homes and onto the market. One of them is Nineteen Ten Remembered, a painting well known through reproductions. It shows the artist as a boy with his soon-to-be-split-up parents, who are placed on either edge of the painting. The scene is set in the cold, barren northern landscape, overhung with the grey sky that Lemieux made his own.

This painting and eight others by Lemieux will be sold by Heffel Fine Art Auction House in Toronto on Thursday. The estimated selling price of Nineteen Ten Remembered has not been divulged, but it is likely to be more than $1 million, meaning the only way it will ever find an honoured place in a public museum in Canada is if the buyer donates it.

As popular as Lemieux's paintings of landscapes and figures are in Quebec, it may be fitting for one of his greatest works to find a home outside Quebec, or even Canada. For Lemieux shunned his reputation for being a Québécois painter par excellence, as art historian François-Marc Gagnon pointed out in an interview and in a short essay he wrote for the Heffel catalogue. Lemieux wanted to be known as a painter of the "north," not as a painter of a certain locale, and was exhilarated by the recognition he won in Moscow and Prague when his paintings were exhibited there in 1974. It proved to Lemieux that his art was universal, Gagnon said.

At home, Lemieux was at odds with his contemporaries, the Automatistes. The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts collected the abstract paintings of the Automatistes, and the Musée nationale des beaux-arts du Québec collected Lemieux. Gagnon suggested that the museum in Quebec City or the National Gallery in Ottawa would be a more likely home for Nineteen Ten Remembered, should it ever make its way to a public institution.

But, of course, anyone willing to spend more than $1 million on a painting should be able to enjoy it in the privacy of his or her home, sitting on a sofa, as Gagnon said, "with tears in their eyes.

Riopelle Grande fête

Lemieux gave Nineteen Ten Remembered to his daughters, who sold it to a member of the Archambault family, who sold it to the neighbour who has consigned it to the auction. That collector is also putting a Riopelle on the market with an estimated value of $900,000 to $1.2 million. Grande fête is an abstract made of strokes of red-brown, blue and yellow organized by black and white lines. Riopelle painted it in 1952, when his reputation in Paris was beginning to take off, Gagnon wrote. Grande fête is one of six Riopelles in the auction.

More than 25 well-known Quebec artists are represented in the auction, accounting for almost half the 179 paintings. One group of 16 paintings came out of a bank vault in Old Montreal, the property of François Dupré, who owned Montreal's Ritz-Carlton Hotel until his death in 1966. Dupré collected works by Canadian Impressionists and displayed them in the hotel; they went into storage in 1987. David Heffel, president of the auction house, said a family member contacted Heffel about the paintings. "It was a great surprise," he said. "It was a nice call to get from Europe."

The Dupré collection includes paintings by Emily Carr, A.Y. Jackson, Cornelius Krieghoff, Maurice Cullen, Clarence Gagnon, Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté and James Wilson Morrice, whose Régates à Saint-Malo from 1904-05 is expected to fetch $200,000 to $300,000.Heffel said the estimates are conservative. The average sale price has been twice the low estimate, he said. The paintings were on display at Galerie Heffel on Sherbrooke St. last week. To see them now, in reproduction, go to heffel.com

Finders Keepers - A Winslow Homer on the Rubbish Tip

2011-11-22T13:56:00.003-05:00

This is such an interesting story. I hope I can do it justice. I originally saw it on BBC's "Fake or Fortune". As a genealogy and art history buff, some of the research gave me goosebumps.

Ok. Back in 1987, a fisherman, Tony Varney, found some art left lying around near the gate of a rubbish tip in the south of Ireland. Even though one of the pieces was signed Winslow Homer, Tony didn't know what he had. He didn't bother to research it at all and gave the painting to his daughter Selina who gave house room to other things her dotty old dad collected.

The small watercolour was of three white children wearing ethnic costume. Somehow in 2008, Tony and Selina got their wits together and took it to The Antiques Roadshow where it was confirmed by expert Philip Mould to be a work by Winslow Homer, one of America's most important 19th century artists and valued it at £30,000.

Philip Mould, art aficionado extraordinaire, cleverly knew that this painting would realize a higher price in US, where Winslow Homer is more highly esteemed. Mould had the painting packaged and sent off to Sotheby's in New York.

Phillip Mould's team of researchers went through the rest of the contents of Tony's cardboard portfolio. They found interesting things like a ticket to a costume ball at the Governor's Mansion in the Bahamas, a painting done by the Bahamian Governor's wife. They determined that Sir Henry Arthur Blake, the Governor of the Bahamas from 1884-1887, had his ancestral home in Ireland. Myrtle Grove, County Cork, was about three miles from the rubbish tip where Grandpa Tony found the painting.

Mould's lawyer was left to do due diligence and related to Mould, and the viewers, that the descendents who lived at Myrtle Grove were unaware of the painting and ignorant of the fact that they even owned it. They had never registered a burglary.

Philip Mould jetted off to the archives in the Bahamas where he found on microfilm newspaper details of the costume ball at the Governor's mansion. Who was in attendance? Mr. Homer. What were the children wearing? The same pseudo-Turkish costumes as in the painting. A later social notice said that Winslow Homer intended to paint the Blake children in their Turkish costumes. Eureka!

By this time, Sotheby's in New York had authenticated the watercolour and because of the provenance, had estimated that the picture would now reach at least $250,000 - about 5 times the original estimation.

So everyone back home in Coventry, England was very excited. The painting had been professionally cleaned and framed. It appeared in Sotheby's catalogue. Selina and her dad Tony went to New York for the sale. Twenty four hours before the sale, the Blake family in Ireland decided that "hey, that's our painting. We could use some of that lovely lolly to fix the roof of our ancestral home" (I'm paraphrasing).

Magnanimously, (I'm being sarcastic) they tell Selina she can go ahead and auction off the painting and she can keep 25% of the proceeds as a finder's fee OR auction it off and Sotheby's could hang onto the money until they could work out ownership later. Selina, rightly pissed off, said the sale should go on and ownership could be worked out later.

The next day, ten, ten minutes before her lot was going to come under the gavel, Blake's great-great grandson Simon Murray appeared in New York and said that Selina would have to take a 30% finders fee, but with out an agreement as to who owned the painting, he could not let the sale go on. Selina Varney rejected the revised offer and Sotheby's decided to withdraw the painting as they could not guarantee a good title to any potential buyer.

After this fracas at Sotheby's, the painting, now dubbed Children Under a Palm Tree, was placed on the Art Loss Register. Why, I don't know. Covering their behinds, methinks. They know where it is now - under lock and key in Sotheby's New York. The family believe it disappeared from Myrtle Grove after a series of robberies in the 1980s,although Philip Mould notes that there was no crime reported. According to Great Grandson Simon Murray, his family didn't know that the painting was stolen until it was put up for auction at Sotheby’s. Simon Murray conducted further research among his family's papers and found a letter which described in detail the circumstances under which the painting was produced. When the Fakes or Fortunes episode aired in June 2011 ownership was still the subject of a legal dispute.

"I think we would rather keep it," said Simon Murray, who, as a lawyer, is still representing his family's interests. "It is such a special picture. The colours are wonderful. It's a very significant part of my family's history and we really want it back." Riiight...

youghalonline.com

The Varney's had the painting in their possession for two decades with no claim on its ownership and no report of any burglary on the part of the Blake/Murrays. I say that unless they can prove that Grandpa Tony stole the painting then tough titty. I say Finders Keepers.

Open the Gate

2011-11-21T23:22:00.000-05:00

John Neville, a British-born Canadian stage and film actor has died in Toronto at the age of 86. He will always be Baron Munchausen to our family.

Revolution in the Air?

2011-11-17T11:17:00.004-05:00

I've been a lefty all my life; I believe in democracy and the social safety net. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is how I live. But I don't really understand how the Occupy movement works.

We should increase the tax on the rich and put a cap on how much a CEO can pull in. Multinational corporations shouldn't be allowed to form and focus should be placed back on small businesses. Banking practices should be changed.

It seems to me that the Occupy movement should be focused on changing systems of taxation and banking regulations. But how can you shift the power away from the 1% without making changes at Federal level? On their own the banks and the bosses aren't going to say, 'Hey you're right, here's half a billion." There is no Bastille to storm.

I'm glad Occupy is out there making us aware of the inequalities. Undoubtedly Occupy has raised the awareness of those in the House of Commons too. The "underrepresented who represent the 99%" should get out and vote and be represented. Vote in Members of Parliament, or vote in representatives on all levels, who get bills passed to change banking regulations and taxation. Bills passed to forgive the debts of 3rd world countries.

Write a treatise. Get the NDP to present it in Parliament. Get the New Democrats to put forth a bill with your concerns. Again and again and again. Capitalism won't dissolve but it's worth a try. When the next election comes around, it'll be an issue, a plank in someone's platform. In Canada we live in a democracy but less than 60% of the eligible population bother to vote. Unfortunately voter apathy has left us with a majority Conservative government for at least 4 more years.

It seems the Occupy movement is turning into an "us versus them" movement of the marginalized or under-employed who seem more pissed at the cops right now than the banks. I have to say that the Occupy website says more about who they are than what they want. There is "music in the cafes and night and revolution in the air" it just seems to be better focused.

Clotilde's Adventures in Canada

2011-11-13T18:35:00.003-05:00

Yesterday, November 12, I had the pleasure of meeting Clotilde Dusoulier, creator of the Chocolate & Zucchini blog, while she was here in Toronto.

Usually Paris-based, Clotilde has just wrapped up two weeks here in Canada as the Gastronomic Writer in Residence at the Stratford Chef's School about 2 hours outside Toronto. Clotilde started Chocolate & Zucchini in 2003 and the lucky girl signed a book deal in '07. C&Z, along with the odious Sartorialist, were the first two blogs I followed when I finally entered the blogging universe.

The Cookbook Store at Yonge Street and Yorkville Avenue is where the book signing was held. Clotilde was there, promoting a book she has edited entitled The Art of French Baking originally written in the 1930s by Ginette Mathiot. I also took my copy of Clotilde's Edible Adventures in Paris for her to sign. I poured over that book before I went to Paris in 2010. I actually didn't follow too much of her advice, but with cross-referencing I got to know the Arrondissements a little better.

When I got to The Cookbook Store at the appointed time there was just the staff plus about five fans. I thought I was in for a very intimate meeting. I wish it had been so. Clotilde was delayed because of highway issues. After a 20-minute wait there were about 30 gathered in the tiny shop.

Clotilde is lovely, fresh and sounds just what I thought she would. At just 30 years old she has an amazing life ahead. Living in Montmartre, writing a blog about food, having that content put into book form, traveling the world. - I'm deeply envious. Here are some pictures I took.

French Soldiers of the Great War

2011-11-11T16:04:00.007-05:00

I bought these compelling photos at an auction about ten years ago as part of the "contents of a drawer". I return to them again and again. I've found very little information about them as the names are so hard to read. The rotund fellow from the 54th Artillerie is the focus of the photos. I've tried to get in touch with descendents who may have an interest but to no avail.

Still beautiful after 140 days on the campaign. December 12, 1914.

Just look at these guys! The stories they could tell. This one's titled After lunch at Bayonvillers, January 1915. Lignon Senior, far left is the father of Lignon Junior, far right. Joseph Marius Lignon died April 18th 1918, and was buried at the Locre Cemetery in Belgium.He is 23 at the time of this photo. The other man with the fine ears is called Moreau. Our fellow is called T.(or F.) Duroy or Duvoy. Bayonvillers is village east of Amiens, about 20km south of where the Battle of the Somme took place.

Taken Monday night the 18th of December, 1916 by the fellow on the far left in the picture below. Members of the 54th Artillerie and PAD 28 pay a visit to Madame and Mademoiselle de Labeniere and Mademoiselle de Finfe. Lignon Senior is seated at the left. Moreau is at the bureau behind him. Our soldier is at the vitrine behind Mlle. Finfe's head.

An interesting picture of a canal barge named Old Arras. Barthelmy, on the left, took the photo above this one.

A very gloomy shot of soldiers transporting guns. My cavalier is sitting high in the saddle on the left. There are explosions visible on the horizon.

A mysterious photo captioned Breakfast in l'acayuna. I've tried to find that word but I can't. If that rings a bell with anyone please let me know. I'm pretty sure they are in officers quarters in a trench or near the Front. Dr. Sasportas is the doctor of the group. ( Nov. 17th I just solved this mystery. dans la cayuna, is really dans la cagna, which in this case means "dugout")

Here's the reverse of this photo with my scribbling.

This one's captioned He sprawled a Bergere. Bergere, I think in this connotation refers to the chaise lounges the soldiers are recuperating on. I don't know if this is my soldier or not. The patients are being treated to a musical interlude.

I'd be greatly interested if anyone out there could add anything to these scenarios. I've been unwilling to share them until now because they are precious to me.

All photos are property of Hazel Smith. Please seek my permission before using.

John McCrae: In Flanders Fields

2011-11-11T02:30:00.001-05:00

John McCrae, a Canadian soldier, doctor and a poet is best remembered for his poem, "In Flanders Fields". Born in Guelph, Ontario in 1872, he was educated at Guelph Collegiate and the University of Toronto medical school.

As a youngster John joined the Highland Cadet Corps at the age of 14, and at 17 he joined the Militia Field Battery commanded by his father. By 1896 he achieved the rank of Lieutenant. In the meantime he was training to be a doctor at the University of Toronto. During this period he wrote poetry. Sixteen of his poems were published in various magazines.

In 1898, along with his degree in medicine, John received a gold medal from the University of Toronto for his high marks. When the South African War (Boer War) started in October 1899 John felt it was important to fight. He was commissioned to lead an army from Guelph. Though suffering from chronic asthma, he served in South Africa for a year. While stationed there, seeing the poor medical treatment of sick and wounded soldiers disturbed him.

After returning to Canada and resigning from the military, John picked up his life where he had left off. He resumed his studies and went on to become assistant pathologist at Montreal General Hospital. In 1905 he set up his own practice as well as continuing work at several hospitals.

When the Great War broke out in August 1914, John was among the first to enlist. He was appointed brigade surgeon to the First Brigade Canadian Forces Artillery. Just before he left, he wrote to a friend:

"It is a terrible state of affairs, and I am going because I think every bachelor, especially if he has experience of war, ought to go. I am really rather afraid, but more afraid to stay at home with my conscience."

John sailed for England with the First Contingent on Oct. 3, 1914. After spending four months on the Salisbury Plain, the First Contingent moved to France in early February 1915 and by the 10th of March, John would first experience the fighting of the Great War at Neuve Chapell. He had taken his favorite horse, Bonfire, with him to France, but had few riding opportunities for some time.

McCrae helped the wounded from the trenches near Ypres, Belgium. This area, which is traditionally called Flanders, was the sight of some of the heaviest fighting of the Great War. In April, the Germans launched their initial chlorine gas attack against French troops who were fighting next to the Canadians. The French collapsed as the gas overcame them and it was left to the Canadians to fill the gap and stop the advancing Germans.

On May 2nd Lieutenant Alex Helmer, a friend of John's, was killed in the fighting and buried beneath a simple wooden cross. John wrote his most famous poem the next day and it was Alex's death some say inspired John to write the poem that has become symbolic for the suffering and loss of the Great War. In Flanders' Fields was first published in the British magazine Punch in Dec 1915 and became the most popular poem of the War.

Soon after the poem was written John was transferred to No.3 Canadian Field Hospital in France as Chief of Medical Services. This move away from the front would spare John from some of the dangers of war but not the horror, for here John would treat thousands of the wounded evacuated from the trenches after battles such as the Somme, Vimy Ridge, Arras and Passchendaele.

During the summer of 1917 John was troubled by attacks of asthma and bronchitis possibly aggravated by the gas he inhaled at Ypres. His health deteriorated noticeably. He lost much of his enthusiasm, and took frequent solitary rides on Bonfire, accompanied by his spaniel , Bonneau, a stray rescued from the battlefield.

Just after receiving word he was appointed consulting surgeon to the British Army, the first Canadian to be so honoured, McCrae fell seriously ill with pneumonia. On January 28, 1918, six days after being admitted to hospital, McCrae died. He was 46 years old. He was buried with full military honours in Wimereaux Cemetery, near Boulogne, France. The large funeral was attended by hundreds of mourners, from generals to nurses and medical orderlies. His horse, Bonfire, led the burial procession, its master's boots reversed in the stirrups.

McCrae's burial site is commemorated by a large plaque at the main cemetery entrance and by a memorial seat built into a wall nearby. His family home at Guelph, Ontario, has been preserved as a museum, with a memorial cenotaph and garden of remembrance. It is "In Flanders Fields" that remains his most meaningful memorial, It was translated into many languages, and led to the poppy being adopted as the Flower of Remembrance for the war dead of Britain and the Commonwealth. To this day, John McCrae's poem is read aloud at Remembrance Day ceremonies held every November 11th throughout each nation of the British Commonwealth.

I originally wrote this post in 2003 for my son who was nine at the time.

Remembrance Day

2011-11-10T20:44:00.000-05:00

Remembering Toronto's Fallen from World War II

2011-11-10T08:00:00.000-05:00

Patrick Cain painstakingly mapped the homes listed as the next of kin addresses for 3,224 Toronto residents killed in World War II and marked each with a poppy. Please check out this poignant interactive tribute to Toronto's fallen by clicking here.

One at a time, the poppies are meaningful enough, a death on every corner - en masse they create a terrible bloody blot.

http://www.openfile.ca/remembrance_day

A repost from a year ago today.

Work - I Could Watch It All Day Long

2011-11-06T18:54:00.001-05:00

And so could essayist Thomas Carlyle. Carlyle promoted the nobleness of work in his 1843 essay Past and Present. Ever the critic, Carlyle can be seen sneering in the bottom right of Ford Madox Brown's Work, but I think he would have liked the result.

Madox Brown started Work in 1852 and finished it in 1863. It was the embodiment of the Protestant work ethic. Those in the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, despite their radical thinking in artistic matters, wanted to be seen as hardworking members of the middle-class, not bohemian layabouts. To Madox Brown, the navvies at the centre of the painting were the heroes of the time. At the top of the painting on horseback is a Member of Parliament. His work is deemed irrelevant compared to that of the Hampstead ditch diggers. He and his wife are relegated to the shadows.

This painting reminds me very much of one of the singing and dancing tableaux from the film Oliver! There is a hierarchy to the placement of people in Madox Brown's painting. The rich are at the top, the workers front and centre, women to the left. Carlyle and his colleague Rev. F.D. Maurice, the founder of the Working Man's College, represent the intellectuals. On the shady bank on the right, the unemployed sleep and picnic under a tree. To a modern eye, the people wearing sandwich boards in the far distance could represent strikers. There even seems to be a pecking order between the dogs in the foreground. The terrier with the the rope leash, a real ratter, seems to be ready to give the sweatered whippet "the what for".

There's an urchin in the foreground who looks no more than 12. She's wearing her mother's hand-me-down dress. She's not with the women on the left. She knows her place one day will be with someone like the labourers highlighted in the painting. She's perhaps getting a head start on her flirting.

The women on the left depict "women's work". The lady in the violet bonnet is distributing temperance brochures much to the chagrin of the man in the hole who's just had a leaflet drift by his face and the thirsty worker polishing off a pint.

The woman with the parasol manages to avoid work. And the flower seller at the front of the procession, well she's another piece of 'work'. Upon a closer look she is a he and the shifty eyes reveal that he has shirked the labour that Madox Brown idealizes. He is the antithesis of the hardworking navvies.

Ohh! Rococo!

2011-11-03T10:18:00.001-04:00

Even the cherubs look dismayed.

Baron de St. Julien asked Fragonard to depict him in the foreground of his 1766 painting, where he could "see the legs of this charming girl, and more, if you want to enliven your picture still further." The Baron was the Receiver General of the French Clergy; a tax collector. He is seen in the shrubbery by the rake, whereas his mistress's clueless husband, plays the cuckold, swinging his wife ever higher.

Fragonard's The Swing stands for the values of the time. Infidelity was a privilege of the 18th century French aristocracy. This promiscuity stood for how courtly life was perceived. The idle rich running about sexually rampant seemed decadent. And it was corrupt, decadent and decaying. Rococo style would soon be replaced by the more moralizing Neoclassicism. Shimmering boudoirs gave way to solidity. Rococo curlicues smoothed into bold flat planes of colour.

The rising middle class in France preferred Neoclassicism and the moral enlightenment it was pointing toward. In a generation many of Rococo's patrons would have a date with Madame Guillotine.

Pumpkins Past

2011-11-02T10:10:00.001-04:00

Photos: Pumpkin parade

This annual event is magical. It happens one minute from my back gate. Please click and take a look.

True Halloween Love

2011-10-31T09:34:00.000-04:00

My son, suffering through a mild case of lycanthropy, and my dog Jersey circa 2008.

Napoleon

2011-10-28T20:15:00.002-04:00

Napoleon crops up a lot in my Art History and Paris Salon classes. The 19th-century French exalted him and then seemed cringingly embarrassed by him. Hindsight is 20/20. Byron seemed to prefer that Napoleon just fall on his sword, so distraught was he that Napoleon had been defeated and sent into exile. Despite the death of millions of Europeans after 17 years of war, Napoleon manages to remain a cultural icon. Many towns, streets and ships, even a pastry are named after Napoleon and his victories. Napoleon was just under 5 ft 7. (1.686m) Nelson was known to be 5 ft 6 and regarded as average in height. Heck, the average Frenchmen today is just 5'8". What gives?

Years ago, back in the days when I used to have fun, I was at a meeting of the Ontario Archaeological Society. The speaker was promoting the idea that Napoleon had been poisoned by arsenic which was evidenced, apparently, in his hair. So I was able to hold a ziploc bag of Napoleon's reddish-brown hair in my hands. Talk about six-degrees of separation.

Note the differences in the pictures below.

Napoleon Crossing the Alps J.L David, 1800.


Bonaparte Crossing the Alps, Delaroche, 1850


Napoleon on His Imperial Throne, Ingres 1806


Napoleon on His Imperial Throne, OOOPS, Napoleon at Fontainebleau, Delaroche, 1840

Here's one I couldn't resist. He must be Napoleon Bone-Apart.

corgiaddict.com

and


frenchpastrychef.com

There's a very enjoyable 2001 film called The Emperor's New Clothes starring Ian Holm as Napoleon. During Napoleon's exile on St. Helena, loyalists hire a doppelganger to swap places with him. While the imposter lives in luxury on the island, the real Napoleon returns to Paris in order to retake the throne. During Napoleon's journey back to France, the imposter dies. When Napoleon, Ian Holm, sets foot on French soil France is in mourning for him but he can't make anybody believe he is the real Napoleon. Antics ensue. Napoleon lodges with a widowed pumpkin seller and shows her little boy magic lantern slides of his exploits. I recommend this film if you have the chance.

Why is life worth living? It's a very good question. Um... Well, There are certain things I guess that make it worthwhile. uh...

2011-10-28T04:46:00.002-04:00

like what... okay... um... For me, uh... ooh... I would say... what, Groucho Marx, to name one thing... uh... um... and Willie Mays... and um... the 2nd movement of the Jupiter Symphony... and um... Louis Armstrong, recording of Potato Head Blues... um... Swedish movies, naturally... Sentimental Education by Flaubert... uh... Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra... um... those incredible Apples and Pears by Cezanne... uh... the crabs at Sam Wo's... uh... Tracy's face...

I should come up with my own list. I know that it would include my husband's eyelashes.

On Rue Descartes

2011-10-27T12:03:00.002-04:00

photo: copyright Hazel Smith 2010

Photo copyright Hazel Smith 2010


Photo: copyright Hazel Smith 2010

The gist of this poem by Yves Bonnefoy is that although we pass a dirty city tree and look right through it, this is might be enough to remind us that it's still a part of nature, along with the sky, the birds and the wind. The poet asks the philosopher if he has looked at this tree on his street, if he did his thoughts will be freer.

Tempus Fugit

2011-10-25T13:34:00.001-04:00

I can't believe it's been a more than a year. Before winter falls, here are some more pictures of Giverny.

Jacques-Louis David, The Tennis Court Oath [1791]

2011-10-18T22:18:00.003-04:00

This pen and ink sketch by David was a precursor to a large scale painting that was left unfinished. It was to be painted on the basis of subscription and not enough subscriptions were sold to finish the work.

This is one of the most famous works of the French Revolution. A group forming an early sort of representative government had been locked out of France's General Assembly. On June 20th, 1789, this group, dubbed the National Assembly, found their chamber door locked. They congregated at the nearby tennis court at Versailles and made an oath not to disband until the constitution of the France was settled. The oath signified the first time that French citizens formally stood in oppostion to Louis XVI.

The winds of change are blowing throw the window on the left. In the background and ominous bolt of lightning hits Versailles.

This fervid event may have been an overreaction as it was found that the doors to the Salle des Etats were closed because the King was still in mourning over the death of the Dauphin two weeks earlier. Hmmm. Riiight.... The Tennis Court Oath definitely greased the wheels on the road to the French Revolution.

The Oath was signed by 576 out of 577 members. In the bottom right of David's sketch one can see the lone dissenter, Joseph Martin-Dauch with his arms crossed and his head bowed.

Jacques-Louis David, The Oath of the Horatii [1774]

2011-10-18T10:10:00.001-04:00

Another attempt to get names and dates firmly entrenched before my mid-term. I'm starting to dislike this uber-masculine painting; too much like Charleton Heston.

Jacques-Louis David's The Oath of the Horatii is regarded as a paradigm of neoclassical art. The details are much sparser than those of Rococo painting and it is as if we have been transported back to 7th century Rome.

At the urging of their father, stoic sons swear an oath on their swords to defend their city at the cost of their own lives. David is beginning to depict political desires leading to the French Revolution and reaches back into classical history for a theme to represent a new ideal of politics; in this case, a scene from a Roman legend where sons from one of two warring cities agree to end the dispute by fighting the other.

The canvas is divided between men and women. The limp wives and children of the Horatii are on the right of the canvas. They are distraught, disbelieving. Their posture reveals them to be private, sentimental, maybe even hysterical. A boy is being cradled by his mother. Maybe she is trying to plug his ears against what the men are pledging. The boy, however, is interested; making eye contact with the men who make the oath.The men are erect, the women meltingly weak.

David's world would have been peopled by men. His friends, pupils and teachers were all male. He married late. To him, women were excluded from the virtues of bravery. Considering David was a big proponent for social change, his idea of woman was somewhat backward.

Jacques-Louis David, Belisarius Receiving Alms [1781]

2011-10-16T03:46:00.001-04:00

While I don't like Neo-Classicism at all, "small R" republicans ate this stuff up in Revolutionary France.

Here is Jacques-Louis David in full Neo-Classicism. The people of late 18th century France loved Neo-Classicism. Through coded allegories these paintings were an attack on the French Monarchy. Here Belisaurius, a victorious Byzantine general, is depicted by David. Belisaurius was falsely accused of treason and was blinded by Emperor Justinian. Belisaurius fell from grace, was banished and reduced to begging. David uses an ancient or antique visual style in order to summon up Greek or Roman heroic themes. In the painting he is recognized by one of his former soldiers who is shocked to see him in such a position. The woman embodies mercy.

Around 1781 a similar scenario happened to a count who had a dispute with the monarchy. I've forgotten the Compte's name but instead of being blinded and banished he was executed. People of the day would have known exactly was David was trying to say in his painting. David was a radical Jacobin and a member of the Committee of Public Safety, another way of saying he was a republican. He voted for the death of King Louis XVI which caused his monarchist wife to divorce him.

François Boucher, The Chinese Fishing Party [1742]

2011-10-15T02:52:00.000-04:00

Boucher's painting, The Chinese Fishing Party, represents the exotic East and the luxury objects that were associated with it. In the 18th century Chinese silk, porcelain, spices and tea were objects of desire. They were an indication of one's social standing.

François Boucher had a limited, superficial knowledge of Chinese culture. He has applied his ideals of Chinese iconography to a pre-existing mode of painting.

Papillons

2011-10-14T17:12:00.001-04:00

Click

Found on Le Divan Fumoir Bohemian
Papillons de Fanny Brawne capturés dans le carnet de Caroline

François Boucher, Toilet of Venus [1751]

2011-10-14T14:41:00.001-04:00

I've got to memorize 50 paintings for my Art History mid-term. I may as well kill two birds with one stone and feature my study notes here.

François Boucher was the epitome of Rococo painters. Rococo was the ornate style of courtly decoration in 18th Century France. Paintings like Boucher's would have been displayed as one among many. The court considered paintings as part of the luxury trade and were regarded as an artisanal product along with luxurious furnishings and decorative artifacts Not segregated away in a gallery; Rococo paintings were displayed in the luxurious rooms found in 18th century chateaus.

Here François Boucher's Toilet of Venus depicts the standard mythological scene of Venus. Boucher was fond of paiting erotic pastoral scenes with rosy female nudes. In this painting, jewels, silks and ornaments tumble over the edge of the stage and into our visual space as if they are being offered or on display. These objects bursting forth also represent the luxury which the patron or member of the court could afford.

This painting was commissioned by King Louis XV's mistress, Madame de Pompadour. She once had fun playing the title role of Venus at Versailles. Madame de Pompadour was Boucher's patroness and he painted under her wing. Boucher painted the Madame de Pompadour several times. Their names were synonymous with the Rococo style.

Rococo died out by the time of the French Revolution. The frippery of the Rococo era was replaced with the order and the seriousness of Neo-Classicism whose subjects began to reflect the republican values of the masses.

Raymore Drive: The Street that Disappeared

2011-08-27T09:10:00.001-04:00

Since I'm getting a huge number of hits for this story I originally posted in January of 2009, I thought I'd repost it.

During the night of October 15, 1954 Hurricane Hazel pelted Toronto with rain and killed 81 people.

Toronto residents were getting used to rain and wind. It had been raining heavily for a few days and the ground was sodden. Although the previous day’s news had included information about a hurricane named Hazel moving northward across the United States, most residents were unworried.

Hurricanes usually died-out before reaching as far inland as Toronto and the local weather office issued only a mild warning about the storm. Residents of Toronto carried on with their lives as usual, spending the rainy night at home.

But Hazel did not die out. Instead, the storm combined with a heavy, rainy weather that was moving east across the prairies. Here the storm picked up extra moisture and zigzagged crazily across the continent, making it the most erratic hurricane in history.

Three hundred million tons of water fell as Hurricane Hazel swept through Toronto. During the day and night of October 15, some areas of the city received a record amount of rain: eight inches (that’s wider than this page) or one hundred eighty millimetres fell in twenty-four hours. This rainfall, added to the already soaked ground, caused the most severe flooding recorded in Canadian history.

By the time the rains stopped, 81 people had lost their lives to the flooding. Many people were stranded as highways and bridges around the Toronto area washed out. Traffic was completely blocked for days.
The most dramatic results of the storm occurred along the Humber River and Etobicoke Creek, in Toronto's west-end. On one street alone, Raymore Drive, 35 neighbours were drowned.

Raymore Drive was a pleasant suburban street of one and two-storey cottages nestled along the river. Although the river often flooded in the springtime, there had never been a fall flood. But during Hurricane Hazel everything changed.

Water moved down the Humber River with such force that several bridges were torn from their moorings. These bridges dammed the normal flow of water and diverted the river across the floodplain close to Raymore Drive.

The floodwaters tore some houses from their pillars and swirled ever-higher around those with basements already filled with water. An eyewitness, recalls,"the homes were literally lifted off their foundations and swept away. You could hear the people screaming. Many of them were standing on top of roofs. In many cases the screaming just stopped; the homes just disintegrated, and that was the end of it."

The problem with Raymore Drive was that the houses had been built on a floodplain. The floodplain is flat low-lying land next to a river that sometimes experiences floods. Although some of the residents had seen some flooding, many didn't understand how much danger they were in.

They were faced with a split-second decision to climb onto their roofs or stay indoors. For the residents of Raymore Drive that night, that choice made an incredible difference. Thirty-two people lost their lives on their street and sixty families were left homeless.

In an effort never to repeat this tragedy, the city of Toronto turned most of its floodplain land into parks.

The Best Prime Minister Canada Never Had

2011-08-26T11:40:00.003-04:00

Jack Layton, leader of Canada's New Democratic Party and leader of the official opposition succumbed to cancer early Monday morning.

On May 2 he brought about an incredible victory for Canada's social-democratic party turning the 4th place party into a 2nd place one, leaping from 37 seats to 102.

Jack Layton came from a political family worthy of a Can-lit novel. Layton's great-granduncle William Steeves was a Father of (Canadian) Confederation. His great-grandfather was a blind organist who founded Montreal's Association for the Blind. Philip Layton was also the senior partner in Layton Brother's Pianos. He composed The Dominion March which played on the carillon during Jack's lying-in-state in Ottawa. Jack's grandfather Gilbert Layton was a cabinet member in Duplessis' Unione Nationale government, who split with the party during the Conscription crisis. Jack's own dad Robert, once a Liberal, was a Conservative cabinet minister in the 1980s.

Raised in Hudson, Quebec, his high school year book predicted he would become a politician. Jack studied Political Science at Montreal's McGill. In his early 30s, while working as a professor at Toronto's Ryerson University, "Dr" Jack Layton received his PhD in Poli-Sci from York University. Before he went on to become a Toronto Councillor in 1982, some of my friends had him as a prof in Social Work.

In 1985 after his 14 year marriage had dissolved, Jack Layton met the love of his life, Olivia Chow. The two have been inseparable since they first met. They both served as Councillors at Toronto's City Hall and once Jack became NDP Party Leader, Olivia struggled and won a seat as a Member of Parliament.

Jack Layton was always present at whatever demonstration I was at. Whether it was No-Nukes or Pro-Choice, Jack was always there, with his bike on one side and his girlfriend Olivia on the other. Jack and Olivia were married in 1988 on Toronto's Algonquin Island, where Olivia arrived on a balloon-festooned barge from the mainland.

Jack Layton was always involved in social justice issues. While a Toronto Councillor Jack was one of the first advocates for the rights of AIDS patients. He founded the White Ribbon campaign, now an international effort organized by men and boys to end violence towards women, which has spread to about 100 countries world-wide.

An amazing array of chalk-written tributes at Toronto's City Hall. Photo Jackman Chiu via Flickr

The Eco-friendly Layton was a huge cycling advocate and the bike lanes and bike racks around Toronto sprung up because of his activism. He was a proponent of "deep lake water cooling" and today my husband's office tower is cooled from water deep in Lake Ontario. Jack's own house is an environmental marvel - his electrical consumption meter actually goes in reverse as it gives back to the grid. Here's a Rick Mercer clip of his cool house.

Jack and Olivia and Olivia's mother lived in a 120-year old semi-detached house in downtown Toronto, where the University of Toronto meets Chinatown. I can just see their semi-detached from the streetcar as I go by. His number was in the phone book and my brother phoned their number to pass on a "Get Well Soon" message. Although he reached a recorded Olivia, stating that they spent most of their time in Ottawa these days, he was invited to leave a message.

I can't possibly remember everything that Jack Layton's done for Canada or Toronto. He was a principled man who really wanted Canada to be a better place for Canadians. He was an advocate for aboriginal issues. He lobbied for a Pride Day in Toronto and his advocacy for same-sex marriage is a feather in Canada's social equity cap. "Do unto others as you would have them to unto you" - I think the Golden Rule was part of Jack's philosophy. He showed us that Canadians could be a community of equals.

Keep on Rockin' in the Free World, Jack.

Grow - Leadwort "Blue Plumbago"

2011-08-25T02:44:00.000-04:00

This spreading ground-cover is about to bloom in my garden and about time too. It's half-past August and the flowers arrive on Leadwort "Blue Plumbago" in the late summer. It has lovely deep blue flowers and it's foliage (FOL-I-AGE, not foilage) turns a reddish bronze in the fall. It takes a long time to come into its own in the spring and I almost chucked it.I'm glad I didn't. I bought about $200-worth of plants at this time last year - coral bells, false indigo, lantana - all-professing to be perennial. This Leadwort is the only one that hasn't let me down.

Eat - Pear and Prosciutto Pizza

2011-08-24T01:58:00.000-04:00

picture thanks to hungrynovelist.wordpress.com

It was called the C't Mang and they offered it at Terroni, Toronto's duo of traditional southern Italian restaurants. I was disappointed to see they weren't serving it any longer. The sweet and savory C't Mang is easy enough to replicate at home. It's a white pizza with mozzarella, prosciutto, thin slices of pear, gorgonzola, walnuts and a drizzle off honey. Throw the ingredients artfully on some prepared pizza dough and bake for about 25 minutes at around 400 degrees. Slice of this pizza make a really interesting appetizer when you're having people over.

Go - Stephen Bulger Gallery

2011-08-23T12:43:00.000-04:00

Ruth Orkin

“I’m totally contained. I’m self-assured. I own the street. I’m walking in total confidence. I’m not in the least flustered or bothered or apprehensive.” That's what Ninalee Craig says. Although most would say her eyes betray a fear. But Ninalee Craig should know - 60 years ago she was known as Jinx Allen, the subject for Ruth Orkin's An American Girl in Italy.

Fernando Morales for the Globe and Mail

Ninalee Allen now lives in Toronto. In a recent Globe and Mail article she relays her feelings about Italy and her feelings towards the picture.

The Stephen Bulger Gallery in Toronto is presenting an exhibition of Ruth Orkin's work. Visitors can study Orkin's contact sheets and she how the Jinx Allen image fits in with other images of the celebrated American girl shopping, haggling, laughing about her oversized lira, and riding side-saddle on a scooter. Jinx Allen ran the gauntlet twice past the 15 mostly unemployed Italian men on August 22, 1951 to achieve the picture.

The exhibition, Ruth Orkin, American Girl in Italy- 60th Anniversary is at the Stephen Bulger Gallery, 1026 Queen Street W., Toronto, until Saturday at 6 pm, August 26th. I'd better hop on my scooter and get going!

with files from John Allemang/The Globe and Mail.

Partridge -no Pear Tree

2011-08-05T08:40:00.000-04:00

This is what was sitting on my fence Monday afternoon, just under the willow tree. It's a red-legged or chukar partridge. You know how fast things enter one's mind. At first I thought it was a run-away guinea fowl from the nearby High Park zoo. Then I thought it was a freakishly big mourning dove. Then I thought it was a quail.

It was still for a long time; at least 5 minutes. Maybe it was mesmerized by the barn owl I had painted.

Anyway Jersey yipped, the bird yeeped and flew away wheek, wheek into the neighbour's garden.

French Tip Tippi

2011-08-04T01:55:00.000-04:00

Now here's a piece of modern cultural anthropology. Do you know who was the catalyst for the emergence of the Asian mani-pedi salons throughout North America? If you recognize the Hitchcock blonde from the picture above you'll know it was Tippi Hedren. Yes, Tippi Hedren, star of The Birds and Marnie, and the mother of Melanie Griffith, is responsible for the spread of the nail-salons.

In 1975, Tippi Hedren was drawn by the plight of the Vietnamese boat people housed in the tent village of Hope City on the US West Coast. While visiting the relocation centre to see how she could help, the Vietnamese women were fascinated by Hedren's well-manicured nails. Next visit, she flew in her manicurist to teach the women the tools of the trade. Hedren's manicurist worked with a local beauty school to help the Vietnamese women find jobs. Twenty women, once teachers, government workers and business owners learned the trade. And an industry was born.

On Order

2011-08-03T10:08:00.000-04:00

I've ordered these dresses from the English company Boden. Their stuff is just quirky enough for me and it fits. It's so nice to be able to order a 16 or an 18 and still look fashionably smart and interesting. I've decided to order them now and not wait for the sale. Boden's fabric has a certain quality to it that I'm just not seeing at the "mall", and independent boutiques never carry my size (I'm top-heavy). I get many compliments on the dresses and tunics I've bought from them before so I have a good feeling about these two lovelies. When I was wearing a similar cord dress in Paris last autumn, someone chased me down thinking I was a friend. Nice to be mistaken for a Parisian.

I ordered this dress in purple.

Denial is not just a river in Egypt

2011-08-02T19:03:00.000-04:00

Contrary to popular belief, Americans are among the least-taxed citizens in the wealthy world. At the centre of the debt ceiling crisis lies the American antipathy toward taxation. Born free, taxed to death - I think not. Denmark has the highest tax in the developed world at 48.2% of GDP. Canada (or the Socialist Republic of Canuckistan) sits at 31.1%. The US sits at 24% tucked away between Turkey and Chile. Mexico bottoms the list at 17.5%.

But you don't have to believe me. Visit Barrie McKenna's article from the Globe and Mail. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/international-news/us/us-in-state-of-denial-over-taxes/article2114872/page1/

Georgian Bay July 2011/Memorial Bench

2011-07-28T11:23:00.000-04:00

My brother Steve and I decided to dedicate a park bench to our parents Ray and Joan Smith, who died in 2007 and 2009 respectively. An old railroad track has been converted into a pleasant trail along the Parry Sound waterfront with great views over what the locals call the North Channel and of Georgian Bay. In the woods just off the path is where we arranged for the bench to go.

Steve already has a great apartment on the hill behind the Town Beach. The location he chose for the bench is wonderful; about 200 paces from his front door. The bench is secluded and the view is amazing. My parents would have appreciated the serenity and the amazing sunsets. The drawback is that my brother, who is an avid hiker, biker and kayaker, gets sidetracked and spends too many minutes at the bench, delaying his daily physical activities.

We will soon have it painted or stained and a plaque with our parent's dates will be attached to the back. There is a little makeshift fire pit in front and I'm sure a great many beers will be consumed here after dark. Over time it will get marked up, but that's par for the course in my old home town. Here are some photos of the bench and others from my recent trip to the Parry Sound area.

Midnight in Paris

2011-07-27T10:31:00.002-04:00

"Talk about a fulfilling movie. That's the kind of movie I could sit through again immediately" That's the sort of remarkable thing my husband sometimes says and what he said to my son and me as we exited our local rep cinema after watching Woody Allen's latest foray, Midnight in Paris. Our west-end Toronto street-scape is more like the Wild West than the cobbled, curvy streets of Paris but we sauntered home, with romance in our eyes, expounding on the virtues of this great film.

We're on a bit of a Woody Allen bender at the moment; seeing Annie Hall on Friday and Manhattan on Saturday. My two men were expecting another witty, urbane rom-com and they got it. What they weren't expecting was a little time travel thrown in.

In Midnight in Paris, Owen Wilson plays a Hollywood screenwriter working on his first novel. He's totally besotted with Paris; its beauty and its foibles. Disenchanted with his life, he longs for the days of Hemingway and Fitzgerald. His fiance, exhibiting the worst xenophobic American traits, and his soon-to-be-in-laws are in tow, soaking up the best Paris has to offer but putting the city and the French down at the drop of a chapeau.

Wilson's character, Gil Pender, distances himself from his betrothed, her family and their new know-it-all friends. At the stroke of midnight he magically finds the portal that takes him to his favourite time period: Paris in the 20s.

He's startled to be hobnobbing with Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Zelda, and Cole Porter. No explanations are given for the time warp and Gil doesn't seem to want any. He just wants to go back again, and soon.

Actor Corey Stoll plays an excellent Hemingway; "Who wants to fight?". Marion Cotillard is Gil's 1920s lovely love interest. In another hiccup in time, Adriana (Cotillard) and Gil find themselves face to face with Toulouse-Lautrec, Degas and Gauguin.

Rachel McAdams plays Inez, Gil's fiance. Michael Sheen (whom I saw arm-in arm with McAdams on Toronto's Bloor Street, yay!) plays their pendantic friend. France's First Lady Carla Bruni has a cameo as a guide at the Rodin Museum.

When I saw Kathy Bates' name in the opening credits, I thought who could she be but Gertrude Stein. Check mark! The Surrealists had no problem at all with Gil's time travel. Adrien Brody's turn as Dali (Rhinoceros!) was so perfect I had to see it again. I told my husband I wanted to rent the film as soon as it came out. "Rent it," he said, "I want to buy it." Could there be a better endorsement?

Faraway, So Close

2011-07-25T09:34:00.000-04:00

Just the bang and the clatter
As an angel hits the ground...

photo - Simone Joyner/Getty Images Ltd.
lyrics: U2

Across the Road from Jack the Ripper?

2011-07-19T16:24:00.000-04:00

My family of Smiths is pretty messed up. My father was orphaned 2 days before Christmas 1936 and none of the multitude of available aunts and uncles took him in. He and his brother Ivan were sent to live in a "Children's Home", an orphanage, while his sisters were raised by their dead father's boss.

Back a further generation and my grandmother was shuffled off to be raised by her aunts while her birth mother and father went on to have more children. The 1901 English Census indicates that she was "deaf". I can only guess this is the reason they didn't keep her.

Not my Great-Grandfarther, but close - his brother Cecil

So my Dad grew up - and I grew up - knowing very little about his side of the family. Over the years I've dug about in Ancestry.com, following rumours and leads and confirming some of them. Smiths marrying Smiths, for example, a widowed daughter-in-law marrying her new step-father-in-law's unmarried son. The mind boggles. I did find out a couple of indisputable facts. My great-grandfather, Walter Alfred Thomas Penny Smith was a London bobby. In 1901 Constable Walter Smith lived at 55 Broadhurst Gardens in London's district of South Hampstead. I don't know how long he lived there, I just know from the 1901 Census that that's where he and his wife and one of my great-uncles lived.

The infamous artist Walter Sickert, prime suspect for the Jack the Ripper murders, once lived across the road at number 54 Broadhurst Gardens with his wife. From this article it looks as if he and his wife remained at 54 Broadhurst Gardens until they divorced in 1899 and he moved to Dieppe. My great-grandfather may have moved into Broadhurst Gardens after the Sickerts had moved away from the street, but boy oh boy, what a coup that would have been. I wish I could definitively prove that my ancestor, Walter Smith, twitched the curtains when Sickert walked by.

55 Broadhurst Gardens, found on Picasa, photographer unknown.

Whether Walter Sickert was Jack the Ripper or not, I don't know. I know that he did have a penchant, easily found on Google, for painting of bosomy nudes sprawled uncomfortably on iron-frame beds.You're free to make up you own mind.

Shabby Sheesh!

2011-07-15T09:01:00.001-04:00

We are finally getting around to stripping off this grimy wallpaper, much to our neighbour's chagrin. I'm sure the scritch, scritch is quite audible to the people living on the other side of the wall.

This 1970s French Provincial-style wallpaper covers the halls and stairwells on all three floors of our house. This summer removing it is a make-work job for my under-employed son. It's a daunting task.

When we first saw the house almost 14 years ago we noted the dated wallpaper but thought it added a shabby-chic touch. Now after a decade+ more of dirty hand-prints it's just shabby. We're finally getting around to removing it. And...the walls underneath aren't so bad.

Out Came the Sun and Dried Up All the Rain.

2011-07-14T08:56:00.000-04:00

The itsy-bitsy spider
Climbed up the water spout
Down came the rain
And washed the spider out
Out came the sun
And dried up all the rain
And the itsy-bitsy spider
Climbed up the spout again

Photos Copyright Hazel Smith

Daphne Dolores Moorhead

2011-06-24T22:27:00.000-04:00

My son pointed out that this strapping lady, the American authoress Daphne Dolores Moorhead, looked a little like Huguette Clark.

Could she be another eccentric heiress or ....

....just Jeeves, played by Stephen Fry, in drag.

Reclusive Heiress Bequeaths her "Monet".

2011-06-23T16:35:00.001-04:00

Huguette Clark, a reclusive heiress who died May 2011 in New York, has left a painting from Claude Monet’s “Water Lilies” series to Washington D.C's Corcoran Gallery of Art.

Clark, who had reached the ripe old age of 104, had an extensive art collection in her 42-room apartment on Fifth Avenue. But Huguette Clark hasn't lived in her apartment, Fifth Avenue's largest, for well over twenty years and has not been seen publicly for the same length of time. Living under the alias 'Harriet Chase', Clark has spent t the last 20 years in hospital despite reasonably good health. It has just been released that she had bequeathed 34 million to her nurse. She left 14 million to her goddaughter Wanda Styka and a million split between her spurious lawyer and accountant.

Works by Renoir and Sargent, as well as a Stradivarius and a collection of rare books, will be transferred to the Bellosguardo Foundation, which is named after Huguette Clark’s 24-acre estate in Santa Barbara, California. According to her will, Clark's entire collection of art will be housed at Bellosguardo. The Monet will be the only work separated from the heiress’s collection. In 1930 Huguette Clark purchased Monet’s 1907 canvas from his gallery in Paris.


William Andrews Clarke and Huguette

Huguette had close family ties to the Corcoran Gallery. Her father, William Andrews Clark, a copper, timber and railroad tycoon and former senator, gave his entire extensive art collection to the Corcoran in 1925. His holdings of European art and antiquities numbered 775 works, including 166 paintings.

William A. Clark, along with J.D. Rockefeller were considered two of America's richest men at the turn of the last century. He was a one term senator and apparently ruthless. He tried to buy his way into the Montana Legislature. In 1907, Mark Twain wrote of Clark: “He is as rotten a human being as can be found anywhere under the flag; he is a shame to the American nation, and no one has helped to send him to the Senate who did not know that his proper place was the penitentiary, with a ball and chain on his legs.”

Clark’s first wife, and the mother of five of his children, died in 1893. Soon after, a young 15-year old girl named Anna Eugenia La Chapelle became Clark’s ward!?! It sounds very sordid. The French-Canadian wannabe- actress may have been a gold-digger or maybe some sort of victim, but she ultimately became Clark’s lover. Ick! William Andrews Clark was born in 1839 and La Chapelle, 1878 - that's kind of a distasteful age gap of 39 years. Clark maintained that he and Anna were married in France in 1901, yet historians have still to find a marriage certificate. A daughter, Andree was born in 1902, followed by the birth of Huguette in 1906. Here's the 1910 Census in which Clark states his occupation near the bottom as "Capitalist". (it does enlarge)

Andree and Huguette were raised in an elaborate 121-room (what?) New York mansion that their father built in 1908. The ornate Victorian building, at 77^th Streeet and Fifth Avenue housed the priceless art collection and a 500-seat private theatre. The building stood for only 19 years and was demolished in 1926, one year after William Clark died.

Andree Clark died of meningitis in 1919 at age 16. Huguette just 13, may never have overcome this loss. She was well known throughout the 1920s as an eligible young heiress, and she did have a short-lived marriage to an investment banker named William Gower who once worked for her father, but divorced him in 1930. She retreated into her eccentric private world of dolls and doll houses. She had a distrust of outsiders and began conversing only in French with her mother, who lived until1963, to prevent others from understanding her conversations.

Bellosguardo

She had an estate in Connecticut that she had owned since 1952, but had never spent a night there. Then there's the Bellosguardo mansion in Santa Barbara, California that she hadn’t visited since the 1950s. Caretakers there had worked for decades without ever meeting who they were working for. And there was also the 42-room Manhattan apartment , but Huguette hadn’t been seen there since 1988.

Huguette Clark's estate was valued at nearly $400 million dollars.

sources - Jacqueline Trescott and Matt Shucel - the Washington Post.

for indepth information on the Clark family please visit Josh Conviser's article in the Santa Barbara Magazine http://sbmag.com/2010/08/the-house-on-the-hill/

Poppy

2011-06-17T13:30:00.000-04:00

While walking the dog, I found these poppies in a neighbour's garden. I was delighted at how these poppies were complemented by the maroon leaves of the smokebush and I had to return home for a camera.

Bee

2011-06-16T13:32:00.000-04:00

Here's a carpenter bee obviously bee-sotted by the scent of my climbing hydrangea. I've beeeen practicing with my son's camera.

I'm Too Sexy for My Pot

2011-06-15T10:42:00.000-04:00

Wow. I tried to take a picture of my newly-acquired Hibiscus but they all came out overly-turgid, if you know what I mean. Here's my sexy hibiscus bought from the corner store and a tiny corner of my patio.

A mirror I found in the garbage last week; a house plaque made in pottery class circa 1996; a street-sign that my brother swears he did not steal for me 39 years ago from a university town in southern Ontario; and in the top right - a cat skull. Sorry, the dog found it. It's fitting.

Smell-a-vision

2011-06-14T13:15:00.000-04:00

I wish I could share the smell of my Climbing Hydrangea. Right now it fills the garden with a yummy aroma which is a bit Rose Peony and a bit cucumber.

Hydrangea petiolaris is a great climber. It produces aerial roots and can glom on to just about anything and it produces these beautiful white flowers.

Mine was here when I moved in a dozen years ago. Apparently they can take up to three years to take off but are well worth waiting for. They don't really love the sun and are best planted with at least their roots in the shade. They can thrive even in a north-facing shady position. My hydrangea faces east and on the shady north side of my house.

Through a Glass Darkly

2011-06-10T14:21:00.000-04:00


Top point, black and tan dog, paw facing south

The human mind relies heavily on its ability to remember and recognize patterns. Sometimes we see patterns where there isn't one. Lying with the grass at our backs we see pictures in the clouds. I've seen Europe PLUS England at least 4 times in the clouds. France appears in my mashed potatoes. Faces are are readily recognizable pattern - that's why we often see two eyes, a nose and a mouth in the pile of a carpet.

A blogger's son, feeling a ghostly presence in his bedroom, flashed his camera into the darkness and the pixels neatly organized themselves to reveal the face of a young black maid.

Taking pictures of my garden through some old chandelier prisms I have dangling I have often seen faces and things.

See if you can see them too and what you think.

I see a Mennonite-like farmer in the middle third, tiny, small, profile, black hat, beard, tan shirt, black pants, but really it's just a 2 black streaks, surrounding a beige streak.


On the left side, I see a living room wall, with a fireplace, a doorframe and paintings on the wall


Top left, I see a partial creepy face - kind of like David Caruso

This one takes the cake. The ghostly white figure that looks like it's hanging Christmas ornaments is probably just the bare white space on the neighbour's garage. I see a black man that looks like Danny Glover staring at the "ghost". I also see a black child with his arm out to the left ( or is that a cat ? I don't have one). I also see a third black face, this one with a bit of pink nose looking to the left.

Bottom third on the far left - I see the profile of a guttersnipe

Late Bloomers

2011-06-10T10:26:00.000-04:00

Uggh. It's been such a cold, wet spring. Everything in my backyard is about 2 weeks behind. If the weather carries on this way it will be July 1st before I see any substantial colour in my garden. Since I wrote my final exam on Tuesday I've been toiling in the garden; transplanting from front yard to back yard, (that's lots of fun in a row house), dividing, moving, fertilizing, pruning and raking. Jersey, my Lab, ate a Jerusalem artichoke. I think I'm going to rename her Hoover as in "she will Hoover up anything".

It's nice today, but it's only 16 degrees Celcius or 60 F. Once we get past the predicted thunderstorm on Saturday, it should be a nice weekend, but temperatures are only going to reach 20 Celsius or 68F.

My husband decided he'd like some Celosia (Cockscomb) in the garden for some colour. Can "Dusty Miller" be far behind? I'll post more pictures of my garden as the weather warms.

My homage to Giverny, painted on an old patio table, is against the fence

Structure in the top right, affectionately known as the poop-deck, is a dog-sized litter box

Gordon Lightfoot

2011-05-27T08:34:00.000-04:00

I went to see Gordon Lightfoot last night at Toronto's Massey Hall. Lightfoot plays Massey Hall every spring and he's played there now over 150 times. Lightfoot is 72 now, gaunt and thin and from where I was sitting, resembles Riff Raff from The Rocky Horror Picture show - although not as bad I assure you. His voice is weak now and has lost its elasticity. But by the second set he was warmed up and in much better shape.

Among his new songs that I dubbed Robert Bateman songs - with lyrics that paid tribute to the loon on his lake, a clutch of brown snails etc - were some of Lightfoot's greatest numbers; Beautiful, Sundown, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, the Canadian Train Trilogy, Rainy Day People and Cotton Jenny. I didn't mean to cry during If You Could Read My Mind...

photo: The Globe and Mail

Happy 70th Birthday Bob Dylan

2011-05-24T11:39:00.000-04:00

Early one morning, the sun was shining, I was laying in bed... and the disc jockey's tribute to Bob Dylan's birthday today was to play Blowin' in the Wind. My husband and I groaned because he, - and by extension, I - are Bob Dylan afficiandos. Bob Dylan has 48 more years of songs under his belt. But it's his early stuff that gets played. Here's a song of Dylan's from 2006 called "When the Deal Goes Down". Bob Dylan's not in the video, but Scarlett Johansson is. Love her or leave her this video is enough to make you nostalgic for something, anything - real or imagined.

Bob Dylan - When The Deal Goes Down (Official Music Video). Watch more top selected videos about: Bob Dylan

A Time Capsule Unearthed in My Neighbourhood

2011-05-19T11:55:00.000-04:00

There's a Chinese place, the Ace Restaurant, on my high street that's been closed for years. It may have been open in the mid-80s when I originally moved into the neighbourhood but I don't remember it ever being open. It's definitely been closed since 1997 when I moved back to the neighbourhood. I'm going to hazard a guess and say it's been closed for over 20 years.

I wondered about the Ace. The windows were always covered in a thick, motled beige curtain, but I knew someone was within because of the live house plants pressed against the window. Was the restaurant a port key? Was it the gateway to the Ministry of Magic? Was it take-out only? Was it an opium den with mad games of Mah-Jong happening behind the curtains. Was it being used for storage? Had it simply been turned into a residence without anyone bothering to remove the restaurant's sign?

I saw the restaurant's door open once about 3 years ago.All I could gather was the strong smell of Pinesol emanating from within and the fact that it was still set up for business as a restaurant.

Then last weekend the drapes came down and what was revealed was a 30s-style diner almost perfectly preserved. The place is a dusty tomb. There's a cigarette rack, a soda fountain machine and vintage spinning stools. Even if the Ace had an electric sign out front from the 80s this was a diner straight out of a Norman Rockwell print. There is a thin veneer of a Chinese-style decor that was probably added in the 50s, but the place rivals other retro-renovated diners throughout Toronto like the Senator and notably, the Swan which I blogged about here.The building which also housed Venus Florists was sold in 2010. The restaurant, which hopefully will be restored, is up for rent for $3,500 per month.

Madness was involved. Apparently the place had been a Chinese restaurant since the 1950s, but was mothballed and used for storage because the younger generation didn't want to take over. According to a commentor on BlogTO's article about the Ace, who once had tried to purchase the place, the restaurant was not used as storage but lived in by a mentally ill family member who was a hoarder. That may explain why a sticker obvious in one of the pictures reads 1995. (if you take time to visit BlogTO comments you may also think others are mentally challenged!!!)

A jar of Coke syrup found within has been removed already and the juke boxes have been removed prior to the Ace going on the market.Comfy chairs found inside will make a nice vintage find for someone.

I'm hoping that, despite the complaints about the gentrification of my neighbourhood, that the Ace is historically renovated and opens soon as a fantastic authentic diner.

Here are pictures via BlogTO.

Museum Month

2011-05-18T10:04:00.001-04:00

Canadian Museum of Civilization

May is Museum Month in Canada's province of Ontario, in recognition of International Museum Day, which is celebrated worldwide on Wednesday May 18, 2011. International Museum Day was established in 1977 by the International Council of Museums. More than 30,000 museums in 100 countries worldwide will hold special activities to mark the day.

The theme for this year's International Museum Day is "Museum and Memory: Objects Tell Your Story" and Ontario museums are sharing the stories and ideas inspired by the collections of all Ontarians to spark our collective memory and our sense of place.

Art of Bollywood, Art Gallery of Mississauga

Ontario's 600+ museums, historic sites and art galleries cover a fascinating range of subjects; agriculture, medicine, shoes, cheese, broadcasting, mining, sports and science to name a few. So whether it's discovering The Art of Bollywood (Art Gallery of Mississauga, opening May 12), taking a walk with Asimo, the most advanced humanoid robot ever created (JAPAN: Tradition. Innovation. Canadian Museum of Civilization, beginning May 20), celebrating the history of the lowly toilet (Sitting Pretty: The History of the Toilet, opens May 21, St. Catharines Museum), getting heard at the First Annual Loud Day (Museum of Health Care, Kingston) or unraveling the mystery of the Masons (Freemasonry - A History Hidden in Plain Sight, Bruce County Museum and Cultural Centre, throughout May), there's something to interest residents and visitors to Ontario.

Asimo will be at "JAPAN: Tradition. Innovation".
Canadian Museum of Civilization,

Here's selected list of May museum activities. Please visit the Ontario Museum Association's (OMA) website at museumsontario.com for events listings or call 1-800-ONTARIO for more information.

Beginning May 1, every Sunday and Wednesday

ROM Walks – May 18: Heart of Toronto

Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

May 3 – September 4

Dramatically Dressed

Castle Kilbride NHS, Baden

May 6 - June 25

Canada on Canvas and New Mini Exhibits

West Parry Sound and District Museum - Yah, my hometown!

Opens May 12

The Art of Bollywood

Art Gallery of Mississauga

May 13 – August 29

Work Sights: The Photography of George Hunter

Workers Arts & Heritage Centre, Hamilton

May 14, 15

Tours free of charge

Currency Museum, Ottawa

Opening May 18

Magic Squares: The Patterned Imagination of Muslim Africa in Contemporary Culture

Textile Museum, Toronto

May 18

International Museum Day, 1/2 price admission

Guelph Civic Museum & McCrae House, Guelph

Free Admission on May 28

Forests: Our Living Treasure

and

From Dinosaurs to Mammals

Timber Lake Museum, Blind River

May 18

International Museums Day – free admission

Halton Region Museum

May 18, 19

What Museums Do

Canada Science & Technology Museum, Ottawa

May 18

First Annual Loud Day

Museum of Health Care, Kingston

May 21 – 23

Alice in Wonderland: The Family Experience!

Black Creek Pioneer Village, Toronto

Opening May 21

Grossology

Bruce County Museum and Cultural Centre

Opening May 20

JAPAN: Tradition. Innovation with ASIMO robot

Canadian Museum of Civilization, Gatineau

Opening May 21

Sitting Pretty: The History of the Toilet

St. Catharines Museum

May 21 – June 19

Expressions 2011: School Art Exhibition

Glenhyrst Art Gallery, Brantford

May 21 – 23

Tulipomania

Currency Museum, Ottawa

May 21 – 23

Sheep-shearing festival

Agriculture Museum, Ottawa

May 27, 28

Relive the Talbot Settlement

Backus-Page House, Wallacetown

May 28, 29

Wings & Wheels Heritage Festival

Canadian Air & Space Museum, Toronto

May 29

Arabella's Pie Social, History Fair & Antique Road Show

Port Colborne Historical & Marine Museum

Throughout May

Freemasonry - A History Hidden in Plain Sight

Bruce County Museum, Southampton

Visit the OMA Website at www.museumsontario.com for more Museum events in May.

top photo: Narselim via panaramio

Tamara de Lempicka

2011-05-16T15:00:00.000-04:00

On this day, May 16, 1898, painter Tamara de Lempicka was born as Maria Górska in Warsaw. She was the first woman artist to be a glamour star and I think Lady Gaga channels her a little bit. Lempicka painted in the art deco style; creating some of the era's most recognizable graphic images. She died in Mexico in 1980.

Cardinalis Cardinalis

2011-05-16T09:53:00.000-04:00

To hear (and see) the Northern Cardinal in our city back yard is a treat that's happening more and more. Lying in bed in my attic bedroom and hearing their happy songs coming through the window is a nice way to start the day.

Mainly monogamous cardinals are great couples; they travel together, sing together before "nesting" and the male will feed his spouse while she's sitting on her clutch of eggs. If you see a lady cardinal in her olive drab, her bright red mate won't be far away.

Here's a clip from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology of the cardinal's song.

I also see more and more hawks overhead in my west-end Toronto neighbourhood. Watch out for your kitties.

top picture from wikipedia

William Blair Bruce - Landscape with Poppies.

2011-05-05T11:09:00.000-04:00

William Blair Bruce, Landscape with Poppies (1887) AGO

I saw this painting by William Blair Bruce (1859-1906) when I was at the Art Gallery of Ontario researching for my final paper. It's small, just 27 by 34 cm, but it's just as pretty as Monet's Poppies at Argenteuil (1873)

More about the handsome Blair Bruce and his trip to Paris later, but now I have to concentrate on my history paper discussing whether or not there is a distinct Canadian art other than the Group of Seven. See you in a week or so.

Election Day in Canada

2011-05-02T12:32:00.000-04:00

Old photos and clever anagrams. Too much time on my hands.

Can Talk Joy (Jackal Tony, oops I mean Jack Layton)

Hazel May Bite (Elizabeth May)

A Fine Gift (Ignatieff)

Panther Herpes (Stephen Harper)

Secede Plug Lip (Gilles Duceppe, so fitting for a separatist)

DON'T FORGET TO VOTE

Just an Illusion

2011-05-02T11:45:00.000-04:00

The picture below is not animated. It's an optical illusion. If you stare at one spot for a second the coils will stop moving. Do they market wallpaper like this I wonder? Could you imagine wallpaper like this and one too many tequilas?! Ai! Ai! Ai!

It's A Nice Day for a White Wedding

2011-04-29T10:19:00.000-04:00

1840 - Victoria

1863 - Alexandra

1893-Mary

1923- Elizabeth

1947 - Elizabeth

1981 - Diana

Kate - Today, 2011.

Thanks to all the photographers who took these photos.

Wow Meow!

2011-04-28T05:49:00.002-04:00

Toronto has an incredible street-style photographer and blogger named Nigel Hamid. His blog TorontoVerve features fashionable people on the streets of Toronto and he makes Toronto look gooood.

Although from Vancouver here's a couple of photos of Sam channeling her inner Cat Woman.The scale of prints and the monochrome of the leopard upon leopard upon leopard makes this ensemble work. She's mature and dresses with confidence and a sense of humour. I love this and I'm threatening to get my vintage 50s leopard coat from out of the cupboard.

Photos: Nigel Hamid/TorontoVerve

Courage My Love - Men's Style

2011-04-27T10:21:00.001-04:00

I’m a big proponent of men dressing better, with more creativity, more flair and more colour. Jimi Hendrix’ drum major’s coat fills me with delight. Bob Dylan’s polka-dotted shirts are spot-on.

Casual Friday doesn’t have to mean “dress” pants and golf shirts. That’s just gruesome. So when I read that portraits of Mick Jagger from the 1960s would be on display at London’s National Gallery, I just had to get on my bandwagon again.

The exhibition will include portraits of Jagger by Gered Mankowitz, which will highlight the effect of pop art and psychedelia on Jagger’s clothes. Gered Mankowitz (who was just 18 when he became the Rolling Stone’s official photographer) is also responsible for an iconic photo of Jimi Hendrix wearing the military jacket he bought at the boutique I Was Lord Kitchener’s Valet, in London’s mod Carnaby Street. The store specialized in movie costumes and military gear. The designer of the Beatles Sgt. Pepper’s album cover was inspired while walking past the shop.

Again the Beatles circa 1968 demonstrate a male style of dressing that exhibits originality, a sense of confidence and above all, a sense of humour. Known as The Mad Day Out, Don McCullin’s photo session of July 68 show the Beatles as colourful as the flowers surrounding them. Love it!

I see a profound lack of confidence and of humour in clothes both male and female now that I’m back at school. The thousands of university students I pass everyday are as colourless and uniform as a swarm of black ants.

So turn off your mind, relax and flow downstream. Add a little velvet to your life. Dress like the Beatles, not beetles. Start with striped socks, or a bow tie. You’ll feel better too.

Courage My Love, refers to a vintage shop in Toronto’s Kensington Market. Maybe one could pick up a nice striped waistcoat there.

Mick Jagger: Young in the 60s will be at London’s National Portrait Gallery starting May 3. npg.org.uk.

Photo 1 and 3: Gered Mankowitz
Photo 2: Colin Jones
Photo 4 and 5: Don McCullin

Beatrix Potter's Cottage

2011-04-23T05:29:00.000-04:00

Hilltop was one of the homes of children's author, Beatrix Potter. As requested in her will, the interior has been left as if she had just “gone out to the post" with a fire burning in the hearth, and cups and saucers at the ready for visitors. It’s a time capsule of Beatrix Potter’s full life. Every room contains a reference to a picture in a 'tale'. The lovely cottage garden is a delightful tumbledown mix of flowers, herbs, fruit and vegetables.

Beatrix Potter bought Hill Top in 1905 with the royalties from her first few books. She wrote her early books from her parents home in London, but they were inspired by her annual holiday visits to England’s Lake District. Although almost forty, she could not stay in her beloved new home because she was expected to take care of her parents in London. She visited it whenever she could. After her marriage to William Heelis in 1913 she was able to settle in the Lake District permanently. Beatrix wrote many of her famous children's stories in the small 17th century stone house. Characters such as Tom Kitten, Samuel Whiskers and Jemima Puddleduck were created here, and the books contain many pictures based on the house and garden.

Eventually Beatrix went on to own 15 farms and over 4,000 acres of land in the area. Beatrix loved animals and went on to be a farmer and a well-known breeder of sheep.

Hill Top

Near Sawrey, Hawkshead, Ambleside, Cumbria LA22 0LF
Telephone: 015394 36269 Fax: 015394 36811 Email: hilltop@nationaltrust.org.uk

top image: geograph.uk

2nd image: Stephen Robson for the National Trust Properties

Eggs

2011-04-21T05:33:00.007-04:00

While in Germany and Austria in the Spring of 2003 we were pleased to see the breakfast rooms of the pensions we stayed in were nicely decorated for Easter. Pink and yellow puffball chicks, rabbits with barrows and twig trees decked out with eggs made an Easter tableau in each window sill. Nothing could compare however to the shop window we saw in Salzburg. At the corner of Judengasse and Getreidegasse, probably less than a minute’s walk from Mozart’s birthplace, was a shop that sold only Easter eggs.

These weren’t chocolate Easter eggs (though I wish they had been) but dozens after dozens of perilously delicate eggs shells, each one hand-decorated to suit just about any taste.

The shop called Easter in Salzburg sold eggs for Halloween, eggs for Christmas, eggs for birthdays. Personalized eggs. Some were very elegant; others just for kids. The deceivingly large store showcased over a hundred thousand of these little oval beauties over two floors. An ostrich egg bearing a picture of Mozart cost €150, but a modestly decorated chicken’s egg was priced around €2. Despite the reasonable price, I had content myself with some photos. I wouldn’t have managed to get a single egg back to my hotel room.

Yo! Mama!

2011-04-20T17:54:00.000-04:00

500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art by Philip Scott Johnson

Steampunk meets Peter Rabbit - the Art of Stephen Appleby Barr

2011-04-19T09:24:00.000-04:00

Resembling a collision of Beatrix Potter and Steampunk, Toronto artist Stephen Appleby-Barr’s oil paintings are charming on the surface but after looking for a few seconds something is obviously quite rotten in the state of Denmark. It’s like realizing that your great grandfather was an opium addict.

Appleby-Barr’s paintings are rendered exquisitely in the style of Old Masters like Velazquez. His technique references the rich and luminous qualities found in 18^th Century artwork. Some of Appleby’s paintings are based on old found daguerreotypes and others he stages in the same tradition. He inserts people he knows and interweaves secret symbols to create a personal mythology.

He has also invented a hidden underworld called the Invisible College in which his paintings develop the imaginary histories of secret societies such as the Blind Oarsmen of Buchan. Appleby-Barr’s work is so very beautiful and interesting but also very unsettling.

Stephen-Appleby Barr is respresented by the Nicholas Metivier Gallery

More of his work can be seen here.

All artwork is copyright Stephen Appleby-Barr.

Canadian Painters - Ozias Leduc

2011-04-17T13:32:00.000-04:00

The Young Student, Ozias Leduc, 1894

Ozias Leduc (1864-1955) was born the son of an apple grower in the small Quebec village of St. Hilaire, about 40 kilometres from Montreal. Leduc lived there all his life. He built his own studio by hand and dedicated his life to painting and poetry. Apart from managing his father’s orchard, he painted church murals for his income and his easel work for his own personal pleasure. He chose simple everyday objects around him and people who were close to him. An aura of calm surrounds his subjects as does a feeling of dignity.

Leduc received many church commissions. Of the thirty churches he decorated , he is best known for his murals at the Notre-Dame-de-la-Présentation church in Shawinigan South, a project which took him thirteen years to complete.

Ozias Leduc learned his craft under an Italian artist, Luigi Capello was married to Leduc's cousin, and an artist from Bécancour, Adolphe Rho. Capello, who had studied at the Turin Academy, introduced Leduc to the great European works. Rho, an inventor and an artist helped him develop his technical and manual skills.

Leduc worked slowly and meticulously, with intense concentration. He was a man who was intellectually curious. He read many art journals, American, British, French, as well as those from Canada and Quebec. He had a large library and brought the world to his tiny village through his reading. He tried to surround himself with people who could stimulate him intellectually.

Boy With Bread, Ozias Leduc c.1892

Leduc made one trip to Paris in 1897 and although spending eight months there, he continued to paint according to his own personal vision upon his return to Quebec.

Portrait of Gertrude Leduc, Ozias Leduc 1940

mmmm…choooocolaaaaate

2011-04-15T11:30:00.000-04:00

Mmmmmm.

I walked part the way home today. It was the first day that really felt like Spring and the first day where the wind did not cut me in half. I treated myself at Magnolia Fine Foods, on College Street, as I hadn’t done anything nice for myself in several minutes. I picked up some onion compote and some peanut satay sauce and I bought two small chocolate bars.

The chocolates made by Dolfin were intriguing. They’re a Belgian company that prides themselves in their blends. Dolfin team the most unexpected flavours together. Today I had two liiiitle 30g.bars; a dark chocolate with white pepper and cardamom from Guatemala, and a milk chocolate bar with Konacha green tea from Japan. To quote a phrase, these chocolates “are like a mini-travel diary, capturing the atmosphere of far-off horizons….”. The pepper and cardomon chocolate was almost a delicious as my all-time favourite Dallmayr Weihnachts chocolate which is fragrant with anise, cloves, cinnamon and coriander plus a hint of vanilla.(I discovered that in the Christmas hamper provided by my husband's German-based employer.)

Other exotic spices, peels and essential oils are used in Dolfin’s chocolates. For example Dolfin makes milk chocolate with salted caramel and milk chocolate with Sri Lankan cinnamon; dark chocolate with lavender and dark chocolate tablets of with violet, rose or verbena.

Dolfin’s master chocolate makers are interested in the flavours of the world and so far I have to agree that the surprising combinations are quite harmonious.

You should check them out next time you’re in the gourmet section. You know you deserve it.

Here's a link to their English site.

The Lady with the Ermine

2011-04-13T10:09:00.000-04:00

Art conservators Janusz Czop, left, and Janusz Walek open a box containing the Leonardo da Vinci painting Lady with an Ermine during a press presentation at the Royal Castle in Warsaw, Poland, Tuesday, April 12, 2011.

AP Photo/Alik Keplicz.

I find Leonardo da Vinci’s Lady with an Ermine more beautiful and much more interesting than his Mona Lisa. The lady is Cecilia Gallerani, (1473-1536) a young woman who entered the court of Milan around 1490. She became the mistress of Duke Ludovico Sforza and bore him a son. Ludovico Sforza was one of the wealthiest and most powerful princes of Renaissance Italy. He commissioned Leonardo da Vinci to paint The Last Supper. Sforza also commissioned Leonardo to paint the portrait of his mistress. At the time of the portrait, Cecilia was about seventeen. She was born into a large family and her father served for a time at the Duke's court. Cecilia was renowned for her beauty, her intellect and her poetry-wrting. At around ten she was promised to a young nobleman of the house of Visconti but the marriage was called off. Cecilia then became the mistress of the Duke but, alas, Ludovico chose to marry a girl from a nobler family, Beatrice d’Este. Duke Ludovico received the insignia of the chivalric Order of the Ermine from the King of Naples in 1488, and was nicknamed Italico Morel bianco ermellino ("Italian Moor, white ermine") because he was sort of swarthy. The ermine became the heraldic animal of the Sforzo clan. The ermine in Cecilia’s arms represents the couple’s relationship. It is written of him that he was an “unscrupulous intriguer” Was he a weasel as well?

Here's a painting of Sforza from his family's altarpiece at the time of the relationhip.

Cecilia Gallerani lives on in posterity in the painting exhibited in the Czartoryski Museum in Krakow. The Polish Culture Ministry and a board of conservators will soon be deciding whether Leonardo da Vinci’s painting is fit to be out on a prolonged tour of Europe’s galleries. The Czartoryski Foundation, which owns the work, wants to show it at three major exhibitions – in Madrid, Berlin and London. But the plans for the painting to leave Poland have sparked anxiety among art conservationists According to the chief conservator of the National Museum in Kraków, the Lady with an Ermine should undergo further research studies and should not travel to foreign exhibitions. Art conservationists warn that plans to transport the painting might cause damage to Poland's most precious picture.

With files from the Associated Press and www.thenews.pl

Polka-Dots

2011-04-12T06:00:00.002-04:00

My husband likes Bob Dylan very much. I think he’s got everything ever recorded by him, legit or not. Together we’ve seen Dylan about 5 times.
Always one to break the mold, he asked me if I would keep my eye out for an iconic Bob Dylan-style polka-dot shirt for him. I looked for years but I’ve had no luck except to find 3 for myself.
In my neighbourhood lives a man who looks a little like Dylan; shortish with a mop of curly graying hair plus bushy sideburns and a predominant nose. He’s aware of the resemblance because every day he dresses like Dylan circa 1964 - wearing men’s boots with Spanish heels, the ubiquitous Ray-Bans, and tight little black blazers over top of a selection of Dylanesque polka-dot shirts. So that’s where all the polka-dot shirts went! He's been one step ahead of me all the way!
He’s always in costume. When he’s not in Dylan polka-dots, he and his girlfriend dress up like the cover of Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.

In the meantime, I’ve changed my mind about buying my husband a polka-dot shirt. After all, one can’t stay forever young.

Thanks to new-pony.com for the pictures.

Valmont vs Dangerous Liaisons

2011-04-10T11:24:00.005-04:00

My most-read post of all time. Thanks Colin!

Milos Forman’s film Valmont came out in 1989, the year after Steven Frears’ Dangerous Liaisons. Both are based on Chloderos Laclos' scandalous 1782 novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Both feature rich and bored aristocrats and are set in Baroque France prior to the guillotine.

A scheming widow, the Marquise de Merteuil, and her sometimes-lover Valmont make a bet regarding the corruption of a recently married and very pious woman. Valmont wagers that he can seduce the newlywed, even though she is very honourable. If he wins, the Marquise promises him one last night with her. However, in the process of seducing the married woman, Valmont falls in love.

I prefer Valmont to Dangerous Liaisons. Colin Firth as Valmont does the "wet puffy shirt" before Mr. Darcy strips off in 1995’s Pride and Prejudice. Firth is passion and charisma to John Malkovich’s reptilian cold-bloodedness. I know who I’d rather snog with.

This was the first role I saw Annette Bening play. She’s ripe, peachy and pretty and looks too nice to play Madame Merteuil but she’s just as evil as Glenn Close.

Pretty Meg Tilly played the pious Madame de Tourvel. Well and truly seduced, Firth moved to the forests of Canada to be with her.

Here’s a list of the major players in Valmont and their equals in Dangerous Liaisons.

Colin Firth – John Malkovich
Annette Bening – Glenn Close
Meg Tilly – Michelle Pfeiffer
Fairuza Balk – Uma Thurman
Henry Thomas ( Elliot from ET) - Keano Reeves.

And the 1989 trailer.

Recovery

2011-04-09T09:46:00.002-04:00

I saw a BBC drama yesterday called Recovery starring David Tennant (Dr. Who) who receives a personality-changing head injury that affects the lives of everyone around him. This portrayal, originally aired in 2007, was so similar to what happened to my father in 1979, that it felt as if it had been written by my mother.

My father was plowed into by a driver heading to our town to face dangerous driving charges. How about that for irony? It was the first snowy day in November and she skidded off the road only to drive straight into Dad’s lane upon correcting herself.

What happened in the TV dramatization was like reading a diary. It was like reliving those days at the end of '79.

The doctors saved my father's life but they didn’t save my “father”. After a coma that lasted three weeks, he was better and recovering but he had lost his “Raymond-ness". Dad was a librarian for a huge swath of northern Ontario. He was an active member of our small town’s cultural community. He was well-liked. People thought he was funny; his British sense of humour won over many.

But people thirty-years ago didn’t understand head-injuries very well. They didn’t “get” what had happened to Dad. There was no psychiatrist in our small town of 5,000; no therapist that could be objective. Despite the smallness of the community I grew up in, people seemed to forget that Dad had been injured. Six months later they expected him to be normal again and couldn’t understand when he didn’t recognize them on the street.

In the dramatization, when Tennant’s character Alan comes home he appears to be fit, but things don’t fall into place for him. He doesn’t understand how to unlock the car. He sets fire to the kitchen because he can’t remember how to use the toaster. Sentimental songs have no meaning for him any longer. He acts inappropriately and his sense of decorum is shot. He's suddenly furiously angry and doesn't understand how this affects those around him.

My father was unable to drive. He set fire to the lawn and had no idea how to put it out. Simple tasks like changing a light-bulb were beyond him from then on. People were backing off of committees he was on because of his sudden temper. He couldn't add much to a conversation. Jokes and puns were strange and esoteric. What he did want to talk about, and he did incessantly, were reminiscences of his life in England shortly World War II.

The thing that affected me most in the movie was the teenage boy. He was exactly the same age as I was when my dad was involved in the accident. Like me, he had enrolled in post-secondary education and couldn’t wait to get out of the tinder-box of tension at home. He was charged with looking after his Dad when his mother wasn’t at home. It's tough situation going from child to care-giver when you’re that age. It’s your Dad for heaven’s sake, he’s supposed to look after you.

Like Alan in the movie, my father could never make any attempt to help himself because he never understood he was different, despite trips to doctors, neurologists and worker’s compensation boards. Alan starts back to work to find that he can’t cope. My dad managed to work for another 4 years with others propping him up until he was given the golden handshake.

Alan’s wife Tricia, played by Sarah Parish, sounded just like my broken-record of a mother. My mother’s incessant cries of “It’s like I’ve been widowed already”, “I didn’t want a third child”, “The man I know is gone” were echoed throughout the film. He was a different, strange Raymond. They never shared a bed again.

Dad wasn’t the most emotional of men to begin with but we were left with someone who didn’t care. If someone was sick, or a long-discarded friend had died or if we had personal trouble, he didn’t flinch. When my mother fell down the stairs he barely looked up from his crossword. Alan in the film left us with the hope that he would try to be a better husband. That didn’t happen in our family. To carry on with this depressing theme, my house was filled with another thirty years of acrimony, cold-shoulders, dinner time arguments. My mother was the worst of all possible "nurses". She never gave up the notion that Dad was doing this to her deliberately.

If anything positive can come of this, I was thrilled to see that my story is out there being told so accurately by others and that I wasn't the only one who had suffered the effects of a brain-damaged relative.

Tim Mälzer – Germany’s Delicious Dish

2011-04-08T08:35:00.001-04:00

The first time I watched Tim Mälzer on Bavarian television I didn’t know if I was watching a chef or an ex-con. With his stubbly scalp and his rascally looks Tim Mälzer was no Jamie Oliver but while I watched, he prepared a 3-course meal in 30 minutes.

Mälzer was born in Hamburg in 1971. He is inevitably compared to his English friend Jamie Oliver as both are brash young celebrity chefs; Oliver - world-wide and Mälzer - Germany, but just for now…

Mälzer is probably Germany’s most influential chef. 1.5 million viewers tune in nightly to his show on Germany’s Vox network. Although I can only understand one word in 100, I can tell that he’s witty, hip and fast. He cooks meals in real time at break-neck speed. His popular, albeit, bad-boy image has derived from his devotion to Rock & Roll and customized pick-up trucks. On a DVD I have of Mälzer, he actually has the F-word on his tee-shirt. Oh, those crazy Europeans! His 3rd restaurant (in the works) is rumored to be in a former prison.

His avoidance of things “gourmet” has won him fans while critics steer clear. Mälzer’s motto is “fast, easy, delicious.” On his TV show, "Schmeckt Nicht, Gibt´s Nicht" (roughly translated: “We don’t do tasteless”) he favours simple dishes that can be cooked at home by anyone with the slightest interest in food. I hear that at one of Mälzer’s Hamburg restaurants, the lunch menu is only €8 because that’s what his customers can afford. At his most famous restaurant, The White House (Das Weiße Haus), he dispensed with a menu and prepared what he felt like.

He met Jamie Oliver in 1997 when the two of them worked at Carluccio’s Neal Street Restaurant in London. He spent 18 months in London which included a short stretch at the Ritz Hotel, which he says he quit the day after a badgering head chef caused a sous-chef to have a nervous breakdown. “I cannot stand bullies in the kitchen”, says Mälzer. Gordon Ramsay beware. You catch more flies with sugar.

A multiple award winner, Tim received the Golden Camera prize in 2006, as Germany’s most popular television chef. He’s sold millions of books and DVDs. The Rosenthal china company has developed a “Tim” collection of tableware called "Mahlzeit!". He is widely parodied on YouTube.

Today he’s grown his hair back and he’s really quite handsome in a gapped-tooth kind of way. I bought myself a DVD set from Amazon.de and every time I watch it, I learn a little more German. There is so much more to Germans than just beer and sausages.

Here’s a link to Tim Mälzer’s website. It’s in German only but I would recommend having a look. http://www.tim-maelzer.de/

schmeckt gut, Tim

Tschüss

photos were borrowed from http://www.tim-maelzer.de/ . Danke

Desperately Seeking Mona - Some Mysteries Should Remain Mysteries.

2011-04-06T12:10:00.002-04:00

Yesterday, Tuesday, April 5, 2011, Italian researchers unveiled a plan to dig up bones in a Florence convent in hopes of identifying the remains of a Renaissance woman believed to be the model for the Mona Lisa. The researchers, led by art historian Silvano Vinceti, hope that the project can answer the mysteries surrounding Leonardo da Vinci's painting, including whether the Florentine woman Lisa Gherardini, was the model. The excavations in the Convent of St. Ursula, in central Florence are scheduled to begin at the end of April.

Lisa Gherardini was the wife of a rich silk merchant named Francesco del Giocondo. Tradition has linked Gherardini to the painting, which is known in Italian as "La Gioconda" and in French as "La Joconde." Giorgio Vasari, a 16th-century biographer of Leonardo, wrote that da Vinci had painted a portrait of del Giocondo's wife.

Historian Silvano Vinceti cited documents showing that the Giocondo family made generous donations to the convent, and said the merchant’s will arranged for his wife's remains to be kept in the convent. Lisa's birthdate is known to be June 15, 1479. A few years ago, an amateur Italian historian apparently found a death certificate showing that Lisa Gherardini died on July 15, 1542, with her final resting place being the Convent of St. Ursula in central Florence.

Okay, enough said. It seems we know who the model for the Mona Lisa is and who paid for it. We know when she was born, when she died and where she’s buried. Vasari seals the connection. I’m content. But that’s not enough for Silvano Vincenti, the media-savvy art researcher is known as a bit of a showboater and he wants to take the research futher, much further.

Vinceti uses forensic methods in his art history. His group has already identified the bones of Italian poets Dante and Petrarch and those of Caravaggio, discovering a possible cause of death for the painter.

With poor old Mona Lisa, the researchers will first use ground-penetration radar to search for hidden tombs inside the convent. Then, they’ll search the bones to identify ones that are compatible with Signora Gherardini's; bones of a woman about 60.

If such bones are identified, up they come. Researchers will conduct carbon dating and try to extract DNA, to compare it with the bones of Gherardini's children, some of whom are buried in a basilica also in Florence ( I guess that means more exhumations). Finally, if well-preserved skull fragments are found, the researchers might attempt a facial reconstruction. Apparently this step will be crucial to ascertain whether Gherardini was the model for the Mona Lisa and thus the owner of that “famous smile.” Oh Mona Lisa, you cold and lonely, lovely work of art, it was your teeth, wasn’t it? My dentist believes Mona is keeping her lip buttoned because of decaying, yellow teeth. Everyone had decaying, yellow teeth back then. No Renaissance portrait shows a full set of choppers. Mona Lisa does have that enigmatic smile, but then again very many of Leo’s subjects have that cute little moue and we’re not busy surmising what secrets they’re keeping.

Vinceti contradicts himself. In January of this year he announced the theory that Gian Giacomo Caprotti, Da Vinci’s male apprentice and ambigious long-time companion was the main influence and the model for the Mona Lisa. (Please check out Caprotti as the model for John the Baptiste, and Angel Incarnate). Vinceti goes on to say that “The Mona Lisa must be read at various levels, not just as a portrait," and he has also said the artwork is likely not the physical portrait of one single model, but the result of several influences. So what is it that he’s trying to prove? And there is the theory that the Mona Lisa is really a secret self portrait of Leonardo himself.

If successful, Vinceti’s research may help ascertain the identity of the woman depicted in Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece but so what? I say this has little to add to my appreciation of the art. Leave her alone.

With files from AP
top photo AP/Francois Mori

There was a Crooked House

2011-04-02T00:03:00.001-04:00

One of the strangest buildings in the world is the Krzywy Domek an irregularly-shaped building in Sopot, Poland, that makes you feel as if you're passing through the hall of mirrors in a funhouse. Built in 2004 the Krzywy Domek, whose name translates into English as the "Crooked House" is 4,000 square metres in size and is part of Sopot's Rezydent shopping center.

It was designed by Szotyńscy & Zaleski who were inspired by illustrations found in fairytales. Here's link to the site.

Photo: Broca

April Fools!

2011-04-01T10:49:00.000-04:00

For those unfamiliar with Toronto, this truck bursting out of a wall can be found at the CTV (formerly CityTV) building 299 Queen Street West. To check it out on Google maps, it's on the left or east side of the neo-gothic building. This installation is meant to represent that CP24 is extremely anxious to deliver breaking news. Its wheels spin all the time.

Photo: copyright The Torontoist

Cucumber Guacamole - It's easy being green

2011-03-31T23:57:00.000-04:00

I make my fresh Guacamole with avocados and cucumber. I'm not crazy about tomatoes and the addition of English cucumber to the guacamole makes the dip even more refreshing, and more green.

Here's a fast and easy recipe for my extra-green "Guac"

2 avocados, not too hard, not too soft.
1/2 English cucumber, peeled and chopped into small pieces
Juice of half a lime
1 tablespoon chopped coriander
1/4 tsp garlic paste
pinch sea salt

Halve the avocados. Remove pits. Scrape avocado flesh away from its skin. Whirr all ingredients together in a food processor or with an emersion blender. Add more lime juice or salt or a dash of Tabasco if the guacamole isn't tangy enough. Try to enjoy it fresh. Adding the pit to the leftovers will stave off the inevitable browness.

photo: wikimedia

La Mosquee de Paris

2011-03-29T21:50:00.001-04:00

After posting the last couple of pictures of the Paris Mosque I got a couple of comments on The Clever Pup, "A mosque that's a restaurant?" and I realized I should have explained myself. La Mosquée de Paris is a mosque, but it also has a restaurant, a salon du thé, a hammam (spa or turkish bath) and a souk (market). I visited the Mosque early one morning in October but I was really to timid to do anything but take photos.

I'm going to paraphrase freely here from Wiki. The Great Mosque of Paris, la Grande Mosquée de Paris, is located in the 5th arrondissement at 39 rue Geoffrey St. Hillaire. It's the largest mosque in France and the third largest in Europe. It was founded after World War I as a tribute to the 100,000 Muslims in France's North African colonies who died fighting against the Germans. It was completed in 1926. During World War II it served as a refuge for those persecuted by the Axis powers and provided safe-shelter and passage and even fake Muslim birth certificates for Jewish children.

It really is a fascinating place. Anyone who's seen the film Paris Je t'aime has seen the Muslim girl and her grandfather leaving the restaurant.

Here's a link to the French site. and a slightly more irreverent bilingual site which romantically details the drool-worthy menu and describes the souk and the hammam. I know next time I go to Paris (when ,and not if) I'll try a lamb tagine with prunes, almonds and onions and maybe with my mint tea I'll have the Sheherazade icecream bowl; strawberry,coconut sorbet with almond milk and fruit salad. I can't recommend the spa, because I didn't indulge but it does sound intriguing.

Paris Mosque 2010

2011-03-29T18:58:00.000-04:00

Hooray for Hazel

2011-03-28T17:11:00.000-04:00

I have such a goofy, old-fashioned, maiden-aunt name that it's funny to me that Hazel hs been used in three songs. Oh and the lyrics are so spot-on in every case. Riiight!

http://www.bobdylan.com/sites/www.bobdylan.com/themes/dylan/player.php?song_nid=360&album_nid=6262

If your interested enough to hear some of the real Bob version, it's on Planetwaves or you can click here.

Baba ghanouj

2011-03-25T10:32:00.000-04:00

It's hard to take a good picture of baba ghanouj.
That's it on the bottom right. Photo copyright Hazel Smith.

Baba ghanouj is a Middle eastern eggplant spread. I love it. I like the smoky creaminess of it all. I also relish in the fact that it looks kind of disgusting. I have a penchant for eggplants. I buy them occasionally because they're so beautiful. I love that shiny, intense purple; the dolphin-like smoothness of them and the thunk you get when you tap them. Like lilac, violet and grape, eggplant purple has its own colour in the paint store - Aubergine. I bought myself a Murano glass eggplant so I'd stop wasting them.

thedailygreen.com

Before my beautiful eggplant goes to waste I end up making some of the dip. But usually I don't make baba ghanouj from scratch. There's a Toronto brand I really like from Sunflower Kitchen. It can be found in health food stores around Ontario and it contains only eggplants, tahini, filtered water, sunflower oil, garlic citric acid and sea salt.

By mistake I bought a tub of store-brand baba ghanouj from my grocer and the stuff was execrable. Not only did it contain sour cream, mayonnaise, and "mayonnaise-like" dressing but it was obviously seasoned with artificial smoke. Yuck. What's so hard about making it the right way?

Here's a recipe I use when I do make baba ghanouj from scratch.

2 medium eggplants halved
Juice of one lemon
2 garlic cloves crushed
3 tablespoons tahini
1/2 tsp ground cumin
salt, pepper

-Prick the skins of the halved eggplants with a fork.
-Rub the exposed sides with salt.
-Place them on a baking sheet and bake them for about 45 minutes at 400oF. The skins should be blistered and the flesh soft. Remove from oven.
-Plunge into cold water and remove. This helps with the peepling.
-Peel the eggplants, this is messy and because of all the seeds, it's kind of like skinning an octopus.
-Chop up the eggplant flesh and place the eggplant and all the other ingredients except the salt and pepper into a food processor and blend into a smooth puree. I use a hand-held immersion blender.
-Then add salt and pepper to taste and stir up.

-Pour the baba ghanouj into a bowl and garnish if you like with parsley or olives. 

Pita is the best accompaniment for baba ghanouj although sometimes I toss it with some pasta.

A restaurant that serves baba ghanouj just the way I like it, is the slightly down-at-heel Momo's at 196 Robert Street at the corner of Harbord. Just to the west of the University district, Momo's is a pretty, authentic Middle-Eastern restaurant. I gets prettier all the time and has developed a splendid patio. In the summer you can sit under their own grapes. I've been going there for years. They have great Turkish coffee.

Momo's 196 Robert St. Toronto. weblocal.ca

Sunflower Kitchen also has really good hummus and an extra spicy Zesto-Pesto made with coriander. Have I told you how much I love coriander?...

Chocolate Guinness - Goodness Gracious!

2011-03-18T09:43:00.004-04:00

I don't hold much with St. Patrick's Day. There are a lot of other Patron Saints out there (David, Andrew, George, speak up. I can't hear you); Saint Patrick must have a good P.R. man. I recently learned in my History class that a nation's identity can be partly defined by a country's struggle and by their heroes. So I really can't hold it against the Irish; they deserve a party. I don't partake in the green beer but I do like Guinness. After recently searching the web for Guinness recipes - you know there's "a steak in every can" - I stumbled upon a Guinness pudding. I altered it a bit, because I couldn't understand the chef's instructions. (ie. how can I tell if the beer and cream is bubbling around the edges, you just told me to whip it?)

Now what follows is extremely rich. The result is a chocolate pudding with a definite "stout" edge to it. I divided the recipe in half for my family of three. It was very popular among my guys, but none of us could finish it. So next year I think I'll serve it in shooter-sized glasses. Here goes.

8 egg yolks

1 cup sugar

1 can Guinness

3 cups whipping cream

7 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped into small chunks.

In a heavy-bottomed saucepan whisk together egg yolks and sugar. I used the whisk attachment on my hand-held mixer. 

Open the can of Guinness stout and pour it into a large glass measuring cup while trying to reduce the foam. 

In another heavy-bottomed saucepan pour exactly half the Guinness and 2 cups cream and whisk. Heat over a medium heat, until just below boiling. Remove from heat. Add the chocolate and whisk until smooth. 

Now slowly pour this Guinnessy-chocolate into the eggs whisking constantly to prevent curdling. Cook over medium (don't let it boil) and whisk with the electric mixer for a very time-consuming 10-15 minutes until the mixture has a pudding-like consistency, as thick as a bechamel. This was one of the messiest procedures ever. Chocolate was everywhere!

Pour into glasses. Don't use pint glasses or you'll go into a coma. Small glasses with "waists" would look best, but I don't know what to call them. Leave an inch on top of each. 

Cover with wrap and refrigerate until set. I'd say 3-4 hours. 

The last step. Pour the remaining Guinness into a a pan (you should still have 1 cup, hopefully) and bring to a boil, Reduce heat and let simmer until the beer is reduced to 1 tablespoon. Beat the remaining 1 cup of cream and add the syrupy Guinness reduction and fold together. Now top up the glasses with the cream and hopefully the whole thing looks like a glass of Guinness.  

I did say we couldn't finish it but that doesn't mean we threw it away. I intend on finishing my pudding when the sun's over the yardarm. Whatever that means! Enjoy!

Birthday Cake #17 - Strawberry

2011-03-09T22:11:00.001-05:00

I made this for my son's birthday. He wanted a strawberry cake and strawberry it was. This is a pretty simple recipe and easily found on the web. Now I know the secret of J.E.L.L.O the possibilities are endless. Could a grape cake be next..or lime?

I topped it off with Seven Minute Frosting and cooked the left-over frosting into little tiny meringues. Some sliced berries went between the layers.

Stawberry Cake

2 cups sugar
1 package strawberry Jello
1 cup soft butter
4 eggs
2 ¾ cups flour
2 ½ tsp baking powder
1 cup whole milk
1 tb vanilla
½ cup strawberry puree made from frozen strawberries.

Preheat oven to 350o.Butter and flour 2 9-inch round pans.

In a large bowl cream butter and sugar together with the Jello powder until unified and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time.

In another bowl, combine the flour and baking powder. Stir in the dry ingredients into the pink batter alternately with the milk. Blend in the vanilla and strawberry puree. Bake for 30 minutes.

When the Pieces Fall into Place

2011-03-09T09:50:00.003-05:00

I have to see this because I love this kind of art history mystery.

"Where I Was Born..."

A Photograph, A Clue and the Discovery of Abel Boulineau

March 5-August 21

Art Gallery of Ontario

Vanessa Fleet, a Museum Studies M.A. student at the University of Toronto (yay!) was taking her internship at the Art Gallery of Ontario last summer. While at the AGO, Fleet was charged with researching an anonymous collection of photographs of French regional life from the turn of the last century. The assistant curator of photography at the AGO asked for Vanessa's help in determining who the photographer of these works was because Vanessa could read French and she had previously written an essay about Eugene Atget, another French photographer.

Fleet began her investigations by carefully reading the inscriptions on the backs of the photos. She found people's names, addresses and even a birthdate. She contacted the parish responsible for the records of Auberive, a place name found on the back of one of the photos. They confirmed that the birthdate on the back of the photo was for Abel Boulineau, a recognized Paris-based painter.

There was nothing to actually connect Abel Boulineau with the photographs at the AGO until Fleet, nearing the end of her internship, came upon a picture that made her stop in her tracks. While going through the final binder, she found an image of women and children, doing their laundry in a river. It was Vanessa Fleet's "Aha!" moment as she found the photo very familiar. The photo was almost identical to a Boulineau painting had seen on-line two months earlier called "The Washerwomen", and she had found the key to the photo's attribution.

Boulineau is unknown to me but he is now in the league of 19th Century painters, like Degas, who used photography to create a source of material for painters.

Source: Looking for clues, bY Sara Angel March 03, 2011 Eyeweekly.com

Polly's Pig

2011-03-04T09:21:00.000-05:00

Artist and fellow blogger Polly Jackson has had her illustration of a little pig unwilling to get his feet wet used in the Huffington Post. So cool, Polly! Congratulations! Click here to read the article. And go visit Polly's website, pollyjackson.com . You will be amazed and delighted.

2011-03-03T11:20:00.001-05:00

Author Lynne Truss looks spookily like me in this picture. My husband jumped when he saw it. After some poking around on the internet I found that it's just a hair and nose thing.

Colin the Firth

2011-02-28T08:48:00.001-05:00

Long live King Colin the Firth.

The first time I saw Colin Firth was in 1986 on Masterpiece Theater in a mini-series called Lost Empires. He was playing a young man in the Great War era who had joined his uncle's magic act. "The Empire" was the name of the chain of music halls they visited in various towns around England. He was sad and serious but compelling nonetheless.
Then there was A Month in the Country, again sad and serious but caught my attention in an otherwise forgetful film.

And then Valmont, the Dangerous Liaison's story, where Colin Firth rocked the puffy shirt (and Meg Tilly's world) before Mr. Darcy.

A splice of life

2011-02-24T09:34:00.000-05:00

I found this on my son's Facebook page. I think its charming.

Yann Tiersen

2011-02-23T00:59:00.000-05:00

Snore.

Yann Tiersen's the guy responsible for the Amelie soundtrack and he was at the Phoenix, a Toronto concert hall. I guess I'm living in a fantasy world but I set out tonight expecting joyful, uplifting music. But I got a pile of boring crap. Tiersen played a theme from Amelie during the encore at double speed for about 12 seconds. I thought that was an insolent way to treat the material that made his name.

I was so looking forward to it but it almost wrecked my memories of the movie. He may be tired of constantly reprising the pieces from the film but that's what I wanted.