Pemberton Music Festival and Sparky: Chapter Twelve

From July 18 to 20, Bruce and I attended the Pemberton Music Festival where I ran into this crowd of young men in Tom Sellick masks.

I would say attending my first music festival ever was like being at a three-day-long birthday party for an eight-year-old, complete with toys, a water slide, a ball pit, face painting, fun costumes, bubble wands and lots and lots of beachwear - except everyone was in their twenties.

Also, it was very loud.


Sparky's Funtime Summertime Murder Mystery
Chapter Twelve 

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

Two other people I know from working at the Gardens have helped me piece together Gerry Ringbold's likely fate. 

Well, one of these people I really only know of as opposed to know personally. Cornwall Dubbins - who everyone calls "Dubs" - is the Chief Arborist for the Thompson Gardens. He used to work for the city in the Parks Department but joined the Thompson Garden staff about a year before the grand opening.

Dubs is in early middle age, tall, skinny and looks like he’ll carry a full head of hair with him to his grave. He is crazy about trees and he loves the Thompson Gardens. So maybe I don't need to tell you that the person Dubs hated most in the world was Gerry Ringbold.

The feeling was mutual. Dubs' six-figure salary was a matter of public record so of course Gerry took aim and fired repeatedly. But there was more to Gerry's animus than just the money. He put motions forward at Council demanding Dubs' resignation. One of these motions alleged, with no facts as usual, that Dubs was running a drug business out of the Thompson Gardens, supporting the habit of all the low life scum Gerry saw everywhere he looked. 

Bob Harrison, the reporter who followed Gerry obsessively, wondered if Dubs would sue Ringbold for libel, but Dubs just kept his head down. The Foundation for its part sent a letter to Council pointing to its solid record of support for local  programs helping neighbourhood people get off drugs.

The day after Gerry's corpse was found, the rumour mill said Dubs was the prime suspect. Jennifer of course said she knew someone who saw Dubs kill Gerry. Later she said she was standing by the gardener's shed when it happened and she heard Dubs kill Gerry.  

In the world outside of rumour and falsehood, the police did ask Dubs and just about every other Garden employee to answer some questions, but Dubs was never a person of interest. 

His alibi was his girlfriend, Carol. They were miles away from the Gardens on June 21 2013.

Carol was also my friend. She worked at the Gardens and always stopped by to chat with me just before she went home for the day. She's the other person has helped me piece together Gerry's fate.

Carol's about ten years older than me. She manages the crew that takes care of the wild variety of plants in the palm house. She has degrees in forestry and plant biology. She first learned about the Gardens when she led for a private sector consultant the project to assess the impacts on indigenous plants of the construction of the public washroom.

"That was a pretty pointless project, but I really liked the Gardens, so I applied for a job" she said. "There aren't too many places around here where you can hang around all day with hundred year old palm trees."

Carol was the one who told me about how grass lawns will transition to more diverse and hardy mixtures if left untended. She also knew lots about all the other things growing in the Gardens. I asked her once about some strange-looking trees. They were forty feet high, had shaggy red bark, a very straight trunk and weird, feathery leaves.

Carol said right away that they were dawn redwoods -Metasequoia glyptostroboides - an ancient species -- older than the giant red sequoias in California -- that originated in Szechuan province in China. The Thompson Gardens redwoods, Carol said, were a gift from the People’s Republic of China arranged about twenty years ago through the local Chinese community to celebrate the city’s one hundred and fiftieth birthday. 

It was none of my business who Carol was dating, but one day, about a week or two before Gerry's death, I saw her and Dubs kiss in parting just before she came into the washroom.

She seemed pretty happy, so I asked her about it. She smiled and asked me how my day was going. I read her what I'd managed to transcribe of Marriba's screed that day: 

In the car culture, normal people live in the suburbs. Rich normals live in the suburbs built fifty to seventy years ago within five kilometres of the downtown core and with big trees on the lot. Normals who are not rich live in the far suburbs, the ones built in the last ten to thirty years (or months) fifty kilometres from downtown with sick little saplings on the lawn and the lines still showing in the turf where they laid the sod. People move to the suburbs so they can procreate and spend the next twenty years driving their kids to dance class and hockey games. People who live in the suburbs are all the same and have the same conversations. They talk about where they have driven recently, what they have bought that day or where they have driven their children to buy something that day. 

Carol laughed. "That's hilarious," she said, "You're quite the writer."

Carol and Dubs accounted for their whereabouts on the night Gerry died to the satisfaction of the local police. From what I know now, they could have had a hand in Gerry's demise without being anywhere near the scene. And if anyone knows where that cute little gardening truck with the balloon tires went, it's them.

You can read Chapter Thirteen here.

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.

Signs of Pride and Sparky: Chapter Ten

Every year engineering students at the University of Toronto give the dome of the tiny, long-unused campus observatory a fresh coat of paint. This year's is especially festive in recognition of the World Pride event that turned my neighbourhood into a week-long street party.

As always, the celebrations observed all local by-laws, but Pride detritus - parade confetti, fallen bits of costumes, tickets, giveaways - distributed themselves far and wide over the area. How far? Monday morning after all the two million extra people had packed their bags and headed for the nearest transportation hub, I stepped out onto my third floor balcony overlooking the courtyard of the condo complex and there on the balcony surface where no parade reveller had stood, was a boa feather, dyed bright blue. 

Another remnant - quickly removed by City of Toronto Parks staff - was an impromptu tree cozy in the Allan Gardens.

Sparky's Funtime Summertime Murder Mystery
Chapter Ten 

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

Before I started my Gerry Ringbold project, I had been writing about my fellow washroom attendants. Most of us had some special reason for getting our jobs. I think this is just another facet of the Foundation's detail-obsessed philanthropy. 

For example, there's Marriba. She worked the shift before mine last year. Her family came to this country in 1974. She’s about forty years old and, she says, a deep disappointment to her family. She should have been a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer or a dentist. Instead, she had a bunch of incomplete degrees: criminology, psychology, biology and a general B.A. that she had tried to stitch together from the credits from all her other incompletes, but which she also could not complete. Marriba said she didn't handle stress well. 

“I have a mild personality disorder,” she explained matter-of-factly the first day we met, “it makes me impatient with people and things and I have trouble controlling my anger. I also have trouble finishing things.”

After her final refusal of her family’s demands that she get a degree, she got a job in retail at a large department store downtown and lost that when the retail empire that owned the store collapsed. She told me that she wouldn’t have lasted there much longer anyway. Next she tried the sandwich and burger franchises and coffee when the first two chains banned her for life. On the last day of her service industry career, she threw a cup of boiling water in the general direction of a customer who had pissed her off. No one was hurt but that was it. Marriba couldn't work anywhere.

Marriba’s family is well-connected. Their ungentle pressure on their daughter having failed completely, they went outside the family for help. Her dad knows someone on the Board of the Foundation. They offered Marriba a washroom shift and she was happy to take it. It’s a good job for a person who really is at her best when she’s all alone.

On the job, Marriba amused herself during the long inactive hours by fooling around with math problems. I would find the pieces of paper stashed in the drawers of the small desk in the washroom attendant’s booth. The scribbling looked insane.

Every day for the summer of 2013, Marriba's shift-change conversation with me consisted of ten minute screeds delivered at high volume and speed. The same as her math hobby, these were both awe-inspiring and troubling. I never got a word in. Aside from “hi” and “have a good day,” I don’t think I said 100 words to her. 

Marriba doesn't work at the Gardens anymore. According to Jennifer, who worked the midnight to 8 a.m. shift in 2013 and who now works Marriba's shift, late last year she flew into a rage and threatened a couple of teenaged girls who had mouthed her off. The girls complained and the workplace harassment policy required Marriba be disciplined. The penalty was two days suspension with pay, but Marriba never came back.

For reasons I'll get into, I know Jennifer cannot possibly be telling me the truth about Marriba, but I can't find any other explanation. All that workplace stuff is confidential and no one else seems to know. 

You can read Chapter Eleven here.

Gus Now and Then and Sparky: Chapter Nine

I took this picture of Gus, our pet xylaria polymorpha this morning:

I took this picture in 2012:

It's true. Things just aren't what they used to be.

Sparky's Funtime Summertime Murder Mystery
Chapter Nine 

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

I think we were all surprised - me, my beleaguered foster parents, my guilt-ridden and grieving aunt and uncle. None of us could have guessed how well I would take to retail.

2005 was the worst year of my life. I had all these people looking out for me and they all saw me going in the same direction. Straight down. 

What brought about my transformation was not a stroke of genius or even a last desperate attempt. Just one day my foster dad said I needed to come with him to the small electronics and appliance store he and my foster mom ran. They had been focused on keeping me at school and making new friends, so they had never got me involved in the store. But that day he needed me to go, so I went.

He showed me the files of product information he kept to help him make snappy sales pitches. They needed to be sorted and filed. After about an hour of him futzing around in the front of the store and me going over the documents in the back, I said, "You know, I could sell this stuff."

So began my brilliant career in retail. I stopped being the poor little thing who had lost her whole family in the Boxing Day Tsunami. I became the poised young woman who could tell anyone everything they needed to know about Samsung and Bissell ... and who could sell anything to anyone. 

I know it sounds kind of stupid, but helping consumers make informed decisions about vacuum cleaners and portable sound systems gave me a foothold. And it raised me some serious cash. 

I worked in the store after school and on weekends. After I finished high school, I worked for another year - after I had reached the age of majority and was no longer in need of foster parents - to earn my own living and save for university.

My money situation for all my retail success was still a bit precarious. My parents had planned on living to collect their pensions. The house was mortgaged to the max and they had a lot of credit card debt. My aunt was the executrix of my parents' estate and, after all the debts were paid, she put the left over money into a trust for me that I could have when I turned 18.

It wasn't a lot.  

So long as my former foster parents had their shop, I had a place to work. But, they sold the business in 2012, just when I'd finished J-school. All those people who had been looking out for me were still looking out for me. They made some calls and helped me get an interview for a summer job for 2013 as a washroom attendant at the Thompson Gardens.

The pay wasn't going to be as good as working on commission, but I was ready for a change.

I was a journalist after all, and my first big story was going to be about something ... I just didn't know what until that cop walked into the lady's washroom.

You can read Chapter Ten here.

Marauding Innocents and Sparky: Chapter Eight

I was getting ready to go to work on Monday morning when Bruce called me and said I should look in the back yard. I did. And I saw first one, and then two and then three raccoons, all young, all bumbling in my garden, all on their own. I turned the hose on them to not much effect (not enough water pressure) and then one of my neighbours came along with his little terrier. The dog encouraged them up the tree in the yard next door.

These young scallawags are the cause of all the damage in our yard. But here's the thing. They're too young to be out without adult supervision. They don't know what they can eat. They don't know how to stay out of trouble. Something must have happened to their mother.

On Tuesday, we saw that one of them had been hit by a car and killed on Gerrard Street.

Poor little guy.

Sparky's Funtime Summertime Murder Mystery
Chapter Eight 

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

Now that I've introduced you to Pea and Gerry, it’s time I told the tragic tale of how it came to be that I of all people landed this cushy summer job, getting paid $24 an hour to sit on my ass and watch people come in and out of the lady’s washroom at the Thompson Gardens.

Right up to the very moment when everything changed forever, I had a pretty normal life. I had two siblings. My brother was the eldest and my sister was the middle child. Mom and dad were both teachers. My childhood was an endless reel of fun family summers and trips for the Christmas holidays.

When I was sixteen years old, I roller skated my way to three broken ankle bones two days before we were scheduled to leave for what was going to be the best Christmas trip of our lives. It was 2004. We were going to Thailand.

The doctor said there was no way on earth I could travel. The pain I was in persuaded my parents that he was probably right. So, my folks arranged for me to stay with my mom’s sister, who lived in the east end of town. My aunt had always been a big part of my life, so, as disappointed as I was that I had to stay behind, it was OK to spend Christmas with her, my uncle and my cousins.

My mom had set up a Hotmail account. Just before she and the rest of my immediate family left for the airport, she promised me she would send a message from the hotel every day.

Her last e-mail came the day after Christmas. At 10:07 a.m. Thailand time, she wrote me and said everyone was going to take a quick dip in the pool and then head out on the water for some recreational boating.

The tsunami came a half hour later.

My family was staying at the Phi Phi Island Cabana resort. They were among the 96 people who died there that day. The wave cracked the pool in two.

Thailand’s almost half a day ahead. My aunt heard the news reports before I looked at my e-mail and for a few moments we both thought the e-mail meant my family was OK. Then we realized our mistake.

My aunt and uncle went into full crisis mode, phoning embassies and consulates, ministries and relief agencies. They wouldn’t let me watch the news. My cousins were not allowed to have friends over. We all shut down and waited.

Six days into the dark and terrible condition of not knowing anything, the phone rang. I heard my aunt’s voice, and then she came into the room I was sharing with my youngest cousin.

She didn’t have to tell me anything. And when she tried to speak she couldn’t. My uncle came in, saw us locked in our shared stunned silence and put his arms around us both. I remember the scratchy wool of his sweater sleeves and the softness of my aunt’s cheek against my forehead. We all cried. We were a three-part meat statue of misery.

I don’t remember the next six months well.

By the time I started being able to put memories together again sometime in mid 2005, I was officially orphaned, my aunt was my guardian, I had somehow managed to complete my school year and I was being put into a foster home. My aunt and uncle had given it their best try, but they didn’t have room in their house for a sixteen-year-old rage machine. Consultations with a child psychiatrist and ministrations from Children’s Aid led them to the conclusion that I was probably best off in a place where I wasn’t constantly reminded of my loss but supported so that I could take the shattered remnants of my life and start again.

My foster parents specialized in tough cases like me. They were members of an extended and devout religious community. These kind-hearted souls were going to get me back on my feet if it was the last thing they did. And, for the second half of 2005, I think I gave them every reason to believe that Hurricane Sparky would be their final project.

You can read Chapter Nine here.

Arms Up! and Sparky: Chapter Seven

Readers know I enjoy the visual arts, both establishment and guerrilla. Here are two examples, showing a mix of both schools, found just south of Carlton Street and across Church Street from one another. 

The bottom one - which I call "The Drag Queen Did It" - commemorates the bath house raids in the early 80's in Toronto. The one on top is the artist's view from a rain puddle of a helmeted woman throwing her umbrella at an unseen assailant who has just stolen her pants. 

Sparky's Funtime Summertime Murder Mystery
Chapter Seven 

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

The ink on the final judgment throwing Gerry's frivolous lawsuit out of court had barely dried when Gerry put his name forward for election as a city councillor. Municipal politics is just the place for a guy like Gerry. Ringbold's was the only recognizable name on the ballot in a ward where 17% of eligible voters showed up at the polls. He began his career as a city councillor with a jaw dropping 764 votes.

Ringbold wasn't representing his clients anymore, but he was still at war with Pea. From his seat on council he fought everything that had anything to do with the Peony MacDonald Chester Foundation for the Public Enjoyment of the Thompson Gardens. When council had to consider the nominations of members of the Foundation board, Bob Harrison - the reporter who followed Ringbold like a stalker - quoted Ringbold verbatim in the news: “Taxpayers throughout this great city should shudder at the waste, the excess, and the needless appointment of these parasites to this useless board.”

When the parks department submitted a joint report to council proposing a long term management plan for the trees in the gardens, Gerry said: "Ice storms and wind storms turn trees into instruments of destruction. Cut them down and save the taxpayer the costs that are guaranteed to come from these trees." 

You might be able to guess what Gerry had to say about the children's playground.

Some people ate this stuff up. There were letters to the editor, tweets, some guy even had a "Stuff Gerry Says" blog for a while, all rooting for Ringbold as the champion of the little guy. 

Gerry's fans got a special treat when their gladiator took up the battle over the public washrooms. Pea insisted in the conditions of the endowment that proper washrooms be made available 24/7 in the park. All that needed to happen was for someone to find a spot to put them.

This time, Ringbold wasn't alone. If you read all the deputations made to the parks committee you would think that there was not a single square inch of the park that was not sacred, historic or endangered in some way and no building, least of all a public washroom, could possibly be built there. 

Lots of people warned that public washrooms would lure the homeless and other undesirable elements to a location already too heavily populated with the scum of the earth. 

Here’s an excerpt from Ringbold's contribution to the debate, his speech before the committee when deputations had already been heard for more than eight hours:

“The despotic heirs of the MacDonald Chester estate have conspired to bring a blight upon the face of this fair city. They will not rest, with the creation of this foundation and the evil that it stands for, until every vermin on two legs has found a nesting space in the Thompson Gardens. People who should be in jail; people who should be forcibly put to work, will find comfort and accommodation in the corrupt, vile, rotten vision of the future as imagined by the MacDonald Chester consortium.”

This speech went on for almost an hour. 

Gerry never won any of these battles, by the way. His poor grasp of the facts -- made obvious in the battle for the will -- always came back to bite him on the ass. For example, his constant harping about taxpayer's dollars was just dumb. No taxpayer money was ever involved in any of the Thompson Garden projects brought to council. The park was still public property, so the Foundation had to share its plans with council, but the city never paid for any of them. It’s a testament to the appeal of performance artists like Ringbold that his ardent fans were as unconcerned about the facts as he was.

True to form, Gerry was the only combatant who was completely ignored in the battle of the washroom. Just about everybody else got their wish. For the environmentalists, the Foundation agreed to build the washrooms to something called LEED Platinum standards. For the historians, archeologists swooped into the first cut holes to check for artifacts. Hydrogeologists inspected for ground water. Entomologists from universities and the local museum peered at ants, sow bugs, spiders, worms, wasps, bees, earwigs and millipedes in case there was something undiscovered that might be lost forever with the laid foundation of the washroom. 

The facade from the crappy old asbestos-ridden former public washroom - unusable because of the asbestos and the fact that it was not wheelchair accessible - was lovingly preserved as a "rare example of late nineteenth century public architecture" as the rest of the building was demolished.

You can imagine how much time all this took. Between Gerry's tactics at council - where he never stopped anything but delayed just about everything - and the painstaking attention to every conceivable detail by the Foundation, building the public washroom took almost five years.

The last concession made to the dozens of deputations to come into play was that there would be attendants in the washroom 24/7. 

And this is about where I came in. I started my first summer on the job just after construction was complete and after about a hundred and fifty people, including a fat, puffy and obviously enraged Gerry Ringbold, witnessed the opening ceremonies to the beautifully restored Thompson Gardens.

You can read Chapter Eight here.