Snow, Sleet, Repeat.
The neighbourhood we live in is conveniently sandwiched between Little Italy and Little Portugal, and is a short bike ride to Chinatown. The street is called Ossington Avenue, and the further south you go, the more interesting it gets. Saturday night we found ourselves stumbling across a packed out gallery called 134 Oz Studios; a couple of minutes and five dollars later, we were watching Michael Rault & The Taste play a lively set of garage/psyche rock whilst we sipped lukewarm Kronenbourg from a can.
After growing used to the bars and craft beers of America and Canada, being crammed into a shabby space, listening to very loud garage rock and buying cans of cheap ale from a makeshift bar almost felt like we were back in Britain, in the best way possible. It turns out Michael Rault was apparently putting on a super-secret last minute show, and we just happened to stumble across it.
A lot of bands these days seem to shuffle their way into the garage/alt/psyche/rock category by occasionally screaming incomprehensible lyrics into a distorted microphone, over equally tangled guitar sounds. These guys, however, had a much more comprehensible, clean and considered sound that rang true to their genre. Rather than let me explain it - give them a listen - I doubt very much that you’ll regret it.
Sunday morning we took a trip to the weekly antiques market in the Distillery District, or Old Toronto as it is also known. The phrase old is loosely used in this sense, seeing as Toronto only turned 180 last week. Ironically, many of the antiques I saw predated the city’s existence.
Kensington Market's indoor emporium of trinkets.
St. Lawrence Market is great for records, prints, books, crockery, watches, cameras and just about anything else imagineable. It took some time to work our way through the labyrinth of trinkets but I came out with LPs by Cat Stevens and Louis Armstrong, and a 1963 subway map of the Bloor/Ossington neighbourhood.
Jess perfectly executes the 'hold an Elton record in front of your face' stunt.
The Distillery District, as the name suggests, also houses an abundance of bars and restaurants in a relatively small neighbourhood. C’est What? is one of them; a spacious basement with pool tables, a live music space and an excellent selection of craft beers from Ontario and beyond.
Since leaving Sheffield, and my prior workplace at the all-star bakery Forge Bakehouse, I have been seeking out a replacement this side of the Atlantic.
Whilst my quest for a bakery with equal standards continues, I have been lucky enough to look around some excellent bakeries and meet the people who run them. Blackbird Baking Co is run by a lovely chap called Simon, who invited me last week to meet him in his current baking space, which is tucked away behind a chocolate shop on King Street West.
This week, I visited Clafouti’s Patisserie et Café, where I spent several hours working with Nadiya - a Ukrainian wonder in the kitchen. I helped prep sandwiches and bake pain au chocolat for Friday’s lunchtime rush. It was a great experience, and whilst they can’t offer me sufficient hours to pay the rent, it was great to be back in the kitchen and experience life in a different kind of bakery.
The job hunt has come to an end, however, with my full time employment at an Italian fine food emporium, where I’ll be working in their busy patisserie department. It’s been an interesting couple of weeks looking for work in such a huge, culturally diverse city but I’m excited to apply my skills in a place with such high standards.
Tuesday saw the highest temperatures we’ve seen since our arrival in this seemingly endless winter, with highs of eleven degrees.
The ongoing battle, with the sun finally showing it's ability to melt snow.
Whilst Britain has been experiencing a heatwave, this ascent into the double figures was certainly a welcome change in Toronto. We took to the streets and watched the snow melt on the baseball field in Trinity Bellwoods Park, drank coffee outside The Tampered Press on Dundas Street and then headed downtown to buy a board game with the knowledge that we’d have to hunker down that evening for the twenty one hours of continuous snowfall that was forecast.
The weather changes so rapidly here it’s hard to keep up. I wore trainers, a shirt and jeans one day, yet twenty four hours later we were struggling through a foot of snow, making the five minute stroll to the subway a twenty minute endeavour.
And then it snowed, again.
Fortunately, the board game we settled upon, was called Settlers of Catan, and if you’ve never played it you should - just be sure to set aside at least two hours and a good deal of supplies. I won’t bore you with the details of the game, although I assure you it’s riveting, instead here’s a photograph of the selection we had to choose from.
A board game store whose stock necessitates a panoramic photograph.
The weather is on the up again, hopefully for awhile, and St. Patricks day is nigh. With our close proximity to New York, and the plenteous Irish bars and pubs around Toronto, I’d like to hope this weekend will be sufficiently Irish, too.