On BLIZZARD

January 26th

On BLIZZARD

It snowed again today. The last two winters have been especially snowy. Living in Toronto, snow is more of an annoyance than a work of magic, although I still enjoy watching the cityscape consumed by white torrents, especially downtown. But it makes public transit erratic and driving near impossible. Whenever I go out to shovel the front walk, it’s guaranteed that I will observe someone parked across the street get stuck in the snow, and serenade me with squealing tires for about fifteen minutes. Sometimes I offer help, sometimes I turn around concernedly, but decide they have the situation under control. In previous years I would ignore them entirely, but I am trying to be friendly this year, it’s one of my new year’s resolutions, along with writing every day and confining myself to three meals a day (which is not a diet, it’s a strategy)
Our street, Benson Avenue, is about twenty-five houses long. These houses are all on the north side of the street, and we (my wife Krista, and I) live in the second floor of number 16. In number 14 lives a retired teacher, who often plays the guitar on the front porch, and his bitchy wife. I don’t know if I’ve ever spoken with the wife, but my wife has had a few bitchy encounters with her. I don’t remember why I know that he’s a retired teacher, and it’s a distinct possibility that he is not, and I am transplanting the memory of a teacher that lived beside me on Haddon Road in Hamilton. Or did he live across the street?
In number 16 lives Aaron Zimmerman, who wears a long beard and colouful painter’s caps, and is an artist. He lives with his girlfriend Izzy, and they are very nice. They have two dogs, one of which is named The Captain, and I forget the name of the other one.
When we moved in, on the south side of the street there were abandoned buildings, which used to be transit barns where streetcars would converge. In fact, the street perpendicular to Benson on the east side, Wychwood, has a streetcar track running down it that goes to nowhere, which I found quite exciting when I discovered it, long before we lived here, when I first moved to Toronto. Wychwood is such a small street, it seemed ridiculous that it would ever have a streetcar track.
Soon after we moved to Benson Avenue, the buildings became a construction site. It was very annoying to be woken up to jackhammering. I frequently joked that the seemingly endless construction would be completed the day we moved out of our house (which we inevitably will – our apartment is so small!), but lo and behold, two months ago the Green Arts Barns opened, with artist live/work areas, a ‘covered street’ that has farmers markets every Saturday, artistic offices, a playground, and who knows what else. Which means our sleepy little street has become quite a hot spot, with several articles written about the new project in major newspapers and arts mags.
Right now it means that parking is a sore spot amongst the locals, who also have sent out notices requesting that we petition the city for speed bumps, notices which featured a cartoon which Krista and I found quite funny. It is a picture of a very angry man driving his car, which is too small for him, and yelling at some children that he is about to run over, “CAN’T YOU SEE I’M ON THE PHONE!?!” In winter, Benson avenue becomes a one-lane street, which means that inevitably a car will stop, trying to park, and traffic will be held up behind them, resulting in honking and tire squealing and getting out of vehicles and exchanges of words, and the issue being blamed on the Arts Barns.