Making Progress

The first indoor party we've been to in more than two years:
Rick and Bernie Brown celebrate 40 years of marriage.

One day about twelve years ago, when I worked at the Ministry of the Environment building at Avenue Road and St. Clair, a man walked into my office with a sample board of roofing shingles. A security guard accompanied him. I was in a meeting with staff. 

As the guard and my staff watched and waited, the man asked me which colour shingles I wanted to go on the roofs of the front row of townhouses in my condo complex. He needed my decision right away.

I asked which colour was most like what was on the roof already. The man pointed to a dark grey tile.

"Fine," I said, "that's the one I want." He thanked me and left, taking the security guard with him.

I had to make that decision then, that day, that way, because I was the Vice-President of Maintenance on our self-managed condo board. I think that was the first time it crossed my mind, as I explained to my staff what had just happened, that being on the board of a self-managed condo was insane.

The insanity is almost over. Watch this space for more news in coming weeks.

Marty

Joining Dianne Saxe's Friday afternoon door-knocking crew this week was Marty, a friend of Dianne's since first year law school. He's about six four and maybe 280 pounds. He said he'd be our security detail, which seemed plausible until I saw how much trouble Marty, a sweet, garrulous man in his 70s, had getting up and down even short flights of stairs. 

Marty's special gift was accosting passersby on the sidewalk while Dianne and I took the stairs up to houses all along Beverly Street. One fellow, at Marty's prompting, dodged the traffic just south of College so he could stand on the sidewalk with Dianne, look her in the eye and tell her he'd be glad to vote for her. 

Our stomping grounds this week were smack dab in the middle of the student ghetto south of University of Toronto. There are few apartment buildings, and almost every house is subdivided into tiny rooms. It doesn't seem to matter where we go, though, on the Friday afternoon canvass. We always gather about five or six sign requests and distribute about 200 flyers. Half a dozen or so people are thrilled to meet Dianne; about the same number are dismissive or hostile. Everyone else is noncommitally pleasant or not interested.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen 

Vanishing

The one remaining payphone in Union station. 

January and February dumped a lot of snow on Toronto, so spring's arrival is more of a visual show than normal. Huge snow banks laboriously built with shovels shrink in the warm sun, vanishing by some fixed arrangement with the laws of physics.

Melted snow banks made it easier to get around on this Friday's bout of campaigning with Dianne Saxe. We were canvassing College Street and Montrose, the heart of Little Italy.   

There was only one purpose-built multi-unit building on our route, and the rest were houses, either home to the people who had lived there for fifty years, or home to seven people who wouldn’t stay there a year, or home to more recent owners who had finally found a house they could afford in Toronto.

To sum up our afternoon:

Making her way up the shared driveway, Dianne said hello to a woman, whom I'm guessing was in her 80's, in a fur coat and hat, standing in her back yard, talking to herself in (I'm going to say...) Greek. This caught the attention of the dog next store whose barking caught the attention of a young man, in jeans and a sleeveless t-shirt, with "cupping" bruises on his right shoulder, who came out of his garage and asked what was going on. Dianne was busy, so I explained who we were and what we were doing. He clearly could not have cared less, said goodbye and turned his back. Dianne did about as well with the old woman. 

At the end of every canvas run, Dianne asks me which was my favourite encounter. This was it.

Thanks for reading!

Have great week!

Karen 

A Precarious Balance

MARCH 10, 1989: Jack Russell terrier Brown-Eyed Susie 

wonders what else she can do to get Strega, a Neapolitan 

mastiff, to notice her. Sportsmen’s Show, Exhibition Place. 

Copyright The Toronto Star.

At the same time that I'm helping Dianne Saxe find supporters in her run for the Green Party in the provincial election, I'm working with other members of my condo Board to find a management company for our townhouse complex. 

In between door knocks, Dianne and I talk about lots of different things, including the strange rituals associated with democracy ... like two women too warmly dressed for the indoors tramping through apartment block hallways hoping to beat the impossible odds that someone will be home, able to talk, able to vote in the next election, prepared to discuss the issues on their minds, inclined to vote Green and willing to volunteer and/or put up a sign. 

We knocked on more than 200 doors yesterday, found a dozen people willing to talk, less than a dozen willing to vote Green, and three willing put up a sign once the writ has dropped. 

Once when we were between doors, I made a perhaps too pointed observation about the myriad failures of government. Dianne took exception to my remark and asked me who I trusted, meaning, if not a democratically elected government, then who? I averred that the institution of democratic governance was one of the best human ideas ever, but, I said, "so much relies on the people inside the institution."

Same thing with condo management companies. We asked ten companies for quotes, got responses from four, and for the past month have been interviewing three companies and their references. We feel good about the odds that we will find a suitable company. But, what matters most will be who's got the hands-on job of managing condo maintenance and repair. The property manager him or herself is the keystone of success.

I thought that my one bout of canvassing last week would be it for me and Dianne's campaign, but I've decided that I will help her with going door to door every Friday afternoon from now until the election on June 2. 

Because institutions work best with the right person in the job.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Long tail duck, Leslie Street Spit, Dec 2020

My Hero

My pandemic bellwether: Filmores sounds the all clear.

Dianne Saxe, the Ontario Green Party candidate for University/ Rosedale, sits on a portable folding stool in the hallway of a luxury condo on Brunswick Avenue in Toronto. 

Socially distanced from her, a 70-something man, naked from the waist up, stands in his own doorway, showing off a trim physique and an old pacemaker scar. 

A short distance down the hallway the man's wife leans comfortably against the wall. Her grocery bags, full from the errands she's just run, are on the floor by her feet. 

The couple's honey-coloured mutt takes a shine to Dianne, and embarrasses her owners by sniffing the candidate in places a better behaved dog would not. 

Unfazed by the dog, or the shirtless man, and on the topic of the war in Ukraine, Dianne observes that petro-states threaten the world in every imaginable way. The man assures her, despite any superficial points in common, he does not support Putin.

Dianne gives them a flyer, thanks them for taking the time to talk and she and I move on to the next door down the hall.

"Mark them as leaning Green" Dianne tells me. I enter the information on an iPad.

The Ontario election is three months away, but Dianne's campaigning as if it were next week. She says she doesn't have any choice. She's up against the machines of much bigger, better funded political parties. 

Dianne is the living definition of "indefatigable." She's the Energizer bunny of seventy-year-old Jewish grandmas. Yesterday, in two hours, with me and a couple of other volunteers, she canvassed forty homes and 100 apartments. It was hard work. Six days a week, from now until June 2, she'll do the same in every poll in her riding. 

It's impossible to watch Dianne and be cynical about politics. If you can't vote for her, and you're a resident of Ontario, you could think about supporting her campaign. 

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Postscript - Dirty Little Secrets - Kitchen Edition

What my guests see: tidy, organized cupboards:

What only I see: my kitchen equipment drawer: