This is Post #100 and Sparky: Chapter Eleven

Umbrellas, sails and bicycles at Sugar Beach

This is the 100th post since I started this blog. For this meaningless milestone, I think I'll share my first experience of Sugar Beach. 

Bruce and I were wandering around the waterfront on the July 1 holiday three years ago. At what used to be the ugly end of Sherbourne Street, we found some appealing, but not quite completed public spaces, and a new promenade on the waterfront. The unfinished Sherbourne Common was deserted. Ditto the promenade. But then, drawn by the disorienting prospect of pink umbrellas, we came upon Sugar Beach. It was crammed with people. Every chair occupied. Every square inch of sand had a human on it. Everyone was happy. It was cottage country in plain sight of the CN Tower.

Since that day I have spoken of Sugar Beach as inspired urban renewal, illustrating the genius of welcoming public spaces. So of course Rob Ford hates it.

Sparky's Funtime Summertime Murder Mystery
Chapter Eleven 

Sparky here. This is Chapter Eleven of my story about how Gerry Ringbold met his untimely end. The story starts here.

The washroom attendants shifts during the summer of 2013 worked this way: Jennifer had the midnight to eight in the morning shift, Marriba the eight to four shift, and I had the four to midnight shift. We were hired on sixteen week contracts, May to August. We worked the same five days and took the same two days off. Workplace safety protocols required we give each other verbal reports of anything odd or let each other know if we'd ordered any repairs or anything like that.

Instead, we just talked. Well, they talked. I listened.

Here's what I know about Jennifer. She’s an aboriginal, post-surgery trannie. Aside from these details – that she shared with me immediately and which are obviously true – I can't say I know anything about her, not even her real name. She explained that she picked her name because it was the one she heard the most in everyday life. “There’s a lot of Jennifers out there,” she said, “so I thought it would help me blend in.” She’s six two, two hundred and twenty five pounds, with 12” biceps. Blend in is exactly what she does. Around here, anyway.

Jennifer told me that she grew up on the north side of Winnipeg, where she had three sisters and a couple of alcoholics for parents. She was raised by her oldest sister, who, while her parents were passed out somewhere, took care of all of them and made sure they went to school, did their homework and went to bed on time. Because of this, Jennifer completed high school and almost made it to university, but the struggle of the other spirit inside her made her rebel, got her involved in alcohol and drugs and then it was a ten-year downward spiral before she was saved by a street mission in Los Angeles.

Jennifer parceled out bits of this story over several days’ shift-change conversation. I was just starting to get curious about what had taken her to Los Angeles, when she said, “I should tell you about how I grew up."

“You told me that," I said. "You grew up in Winnipeg. Your oldest sister raised you…”

“No, that’s not it. I grew up in Edmonton. I had just one older sister. She got pregnant and had a baby when I was in high school and I took care of that little girl for almost five years. That's how I knew I had a woman inside of me.”

“But what about Winnipeg and Los Angeles?”

“I was just testing you out, to see if you were cool.”

I felt stupidly pleased that I had somehow passed a test. But the week after that, when she told me a third version, I just felt stupid. 

Jennifer explained how she got the attendant's job like Heath Ledger, as the Joker, explained how he got those scars. 

"I saved two kids trapped in a burning school bus."

"It's because of my work counselling first nation LGBT youth."

"I know some things about a Foundation Board member that no one wants me to tell."

I started every shift with a tirade from Marriba and ended every shift with a load of bullshit from Jennifer. This was great material and I wrote it all down.

What I did not expect, as I started my research on Gerry Ringbold, was that I would find connections between Marriba's ravings, Jennifer's bald-faced lies and details that could explain what happened to Gerry.

You can read Chapter 12 here.