My Toronto Includes Anna Bowness
Anna Bowness , Writer
Taking an evening strolling in Cabbagetown at Parliament and Carleton.
What is your most favourite place in the city? 1. Riverdale Farm 2. Parliament Street
What is it that you like about this location? 1. It’s funny and confusing that there are cows and chickens so close to the DVP. 2. It’s the most demographically confusing street in town.
Where is the best place to eat in the city? I’m pregnant, so everywhere.
What do you like about living in Toronto? It’s optimistic and awkward at the same time, like a teenager. It feels like it wants everybody to help it grow up.
What do you hate about living in Toronto? It’s almost impossible to get out — the traffic is like a Berlin Wall.
Where would I find you on a lazy Sunday afternoon in the city? In Riverdale Park West — this last Sunday there was a bulldog convention there, so I watched Cabbagetown’s prize bulldogs drool on and try to mate with each other.
Who is your favourite Local Celebrity? Friends of mine, and the mayor.
Car, Bike or Transit? Normally: bike. Pregnant: transit.
Favorite personal story or commentary on the city I went to the island, one Sunday, with two boys I know. I think we were all hung over. We went to Hanlan’s Point and swam in the cold lake and skipped stones and tried not to critique people’s genetalia, and on our way back we ran into an enormous Hare Krishna recruitment picnic. They gave us free vegetarian food and kool-aid in paper cups (!) and we helped them dismantle a multi-mannequin display representing Hare Krishnas throughout the ages.
My Toronto includes cows, chickens, glowing, bright-white optimistic architecture, fetid Spadina bustle, sad, crashing ice-waves on the Spit in winter, the Neville Park loop, Hogg’s Hollow, tragic wall murals in Flemingdon Park, the bright shock of city when the subway crosses the Don, tacky drinks at the Mendoza, wet Regent Park children under the brutalist water feature, BCE Place, ferry lineups, trees, ravines at night, hills, straight lines, irate psychopaths, Dundas Square, Parliament Street, squirrels, the blue sky of my parents’ 1970s Crombie-era city when the CN Tower was still a shaft without a bulb and hippies lived in Yorkville.
