Black Roses

“Jesus Murphy Mary and Joseph”, he muttered, admonishing her. “Where do you think you’re going with that black eyeliner on? . . . The sight of you. . . . And those clothes. . . . You’re not leaving the house like that.”

     She threw on a sweater and washed her face. She tried to drum up an ounce of defiance but sank silently in the breaking waves of unremitting Irish shame. 

Shrunken, she rang her friend’s doorbell. “Come in, let’s do up our eyes like Benatar”, Jayne said gently. 

     They pulled out the Clairol lighted mirror and belted “we are strong, no one can tell us we’re wrong”.

Inspired by Pat Benatar and the Corpse’s recent posts. Original photo by Lynn Goldsmith. 

Murphy

“I thought things were going good,” she said. “No pressure. No commitments.”
     “But you practically make me hide when your friends come over!”

     “Can’t you just enjoy our time together?” she said. “Besides, you hate it when I ask you to dress nice, and you think my friends are stupid.”

     “I never said that.”
     “And you probably think I’m stupid, too.”

“That’s not it at all,” he said. “All I’m trying to say is that I don’t like being treated like a fucking Murphy bed.”
     “There you go,” she said. “I don’t even know what a fucking Murphy bed is.”

Inspired by I’m Speaking. Image from Detour (1945).

I’m Speaking.

Dumb as a rock, Donald calls me. Horrible and incompetent. Totally failed and insignificant. (Projecting much?) Crazy—“though not as crazy as Nancy Pelosi.” (You just can’t help yourself, can you, Motormouth? Maybe you are too old for the job.)
     His minions aren’t holding back. I’m not grateful enough. I’m just collecting a check. I’m a diversity hire. And they don’t like my laugh. You know what all their dog whistling’s about. This, from church-going, “family values” folk singing hallelujahs for rapture.
     They are losing their shit. You think they’re bothered now? Just wait till they see my running mate.

Inspired by Cooling Off. Image of Kamala Harris (in 2020) by Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty Images

Cooling Off

The kitchen table was so close to the fridge that, during family dinners, whenever she felt a hot flash coming on she’d pause in the middle of her diatribe about politics or global warming or ungrateful teenagers, and, without getting up, turn, open the bottom drawer and stick her head in the freezer. Instant relief. Everybody would laugh. But she didn’t mind. She figured it made menopause an everyday thing—not something to hide or never mention. Besides, those cooling-off pauses were useful for changing her words or the mood at the table. Perhaps politicians should adopt a similar practice.

Inspired by Hot & Heavy. Photo of Nancy’s fridge by Nancy.

Hot & Heavy

As we finished up our morning trek, I was about to internally ignite from the stifling humidity and my waning estrogen. I yanked down my zipped tank to air out the fiery biscuits when hubby shot out his arm in a Seinfeld stopped-short-move to shield the girls.

You know I can go topless I retorted, like that sweaty, middle-aged well-upholstered hairy guy that just ran by us.

     And I thought to myself, I wonder what it would be like to go about my business in this world, half-naked and confident with no fear of being objectified, debased or assaulted. 

Inspired by this week’s weather and Seinfeld. Image by eightonesix.

Pantone 124

One day the owners of Rambunctious Software got their hands on a colour chart and decided that their official corporate colour would be Pantone 124. And since, back then, they were still doing it all pretty much themselves, everything they purchased for the company going forward was chosen to match their new favourite colour, but not quite. All this, of course, would eventually end up driving the new graphic designer to distraction, because not only were the colours they’d chosen entirely inconsistent, the closest thing they all did match, to his jaundiced eye, was the distinctive colour of baby shit.

Inspired by Hugh Flung Poo. Image by the author, with some help from Mediamodifier.

Hugh Flung Poo

“Oh my God, it’s worse than I thought!” This from Dan’s co-worker, after he saw a picture of the tiles I bought for our bathroom reno. Porcelain white subways with a distressed, belle epoch-serre-lived-through-the-war treatment. Dan hated them, so called in a second opinion.

     I told him he’d been ruined by all the pablummy-greize rooms he’s worked on. 

     But the coup de grâce was his: “Well, there’s a reason they don’t sell toilets with antiqued brown glazing.”

After that, I couldn’t unsee the ersatz shit smears, so we returned them, but kept a few to tut-tut my execrable misstep. 

Inspired by A Statement by the Artists Collectively Known as Barksy. Loft White Glazed 3x6″ Tiles from the Home Hardware Building Centre.

A Statement by the Artists Collectively Known as Barksy

I’ve come to consider what Duke and I do as performance art. Duke produces the initial piece; I handle installation. Duke is singular of purpose; I’m the one who thinks outside the bin. Our typical work (Panel 1) is conventional, though its street placement is controversial. Panel 2 showcases some of Duke’s solo work. Panel 3 is one of my favourites; I call it “Why knot?“ (And why indeed, when there’s so much open space in the neighbourhood?) Sometimes (Panel 4) we’re just two artists trying to collaborate, and the end result doesn’t come together. Allow us our artistic freedom. 

Libertarian pooformance art images captured by Ron Thompson. Inspired by Steamed Buns and stuff on my shoe.

Steamed Buns

Tail end of the night, I cheekily start shaking my booty on the dance floor with a cutie patootie, up to my keister in beautiful people way younger than me. This asshole butts in. Fundament-ally uncool, I say. 

“Stick it where the sun don’t shine!” he replies. 

I shove hard. He lands on his tuchus. Pretty derrieres flee the scene. The bouncer shoves us out the backdoor. Bummed and rump-led, our backsides hit the pavement. We laugh. 

“Peckish?” he asks. 

I shrug. “I could eat.” 

“I know this all-night Chinese take-out place." 

“Hell yes, I'd love some nice steamed buns.” 

Inspired by Some Butts.. Photo by JJ Wong.

Some Butts

Some butts are soft like butter
Some butts are hard as rock
Some butts are round and plump
Some butts are chiseled from a stump
Some butts are smooth as a baby’s
Some butts can scour a pot
Some butts are petit
Some butts are gros
Some butts are cool as cucumbers
Some butts warm your bed
Some butts roar like rockets
Some butts purr like kittens
Some butts are worth a million bucks
Some butts smell like socks
Some butts are a joke
Some butts are blown up with smoke
Some butts litter the sidewalks
Some butts become president

Inspired by A Number One Bites the Dust as well as the 2024 Presidential Debates. Compiled statues illustration by Fred Ni.

A Number One Bites the Dust

It finally happened. The robots took over military defense and accidentally launched nuclear weapons. A faulty chip failed to correct for colour-blindness and the robots pressed the red button instead of green. Three million years later, the new civilization arrived from another multi-verse, hoping to decipher what had destroyed planet earth. They unearthed a large blue foam replica of what looked like a hand with an enormous index digit. They surmised that this was a rudimentary proctology-type of equipment gone wrong resulting in the release of inordinate amounts of methane into the atmosphere which spontaneously combusted. Only the donkeys survived.

Inspired by Just So and Queen. Image from eBay.

Just So

“I don’t get it,” said Nick. “What the fuck just happened? Why would anyone do something like that?”

     “I don’t know,” said Atalanta. “It’s Jason. It’s just the way he is, I guess.”

     “So, you’re telling me I should’ve seen it coming?”

     “Didn’t your mother ever tell you about leopards and their spots?”

     “But how does someone even get that way?”

     “Who knows, but maybe you’ve something there—you know, like all those stories they used to tell us in kindergarten: How the Camel Got his Hump; How the Giraffe Got his Neck; . . . ”

     “Like, How the Ass Got his Hole?”

Inspired by Well, that levy went dry. Image by Microsoft Copilot.

Well, that levy went dry.

Earlier this week I contemplated penning a humour piece. At first, after dinner and half a bottle of wine, it sounded edgy and hilarious, and I hit the hay dreaming up puffy bits to stretch it out into a decent story. But as daylight chafed, it didn't fly and ran a real risk of offending. I won't elaborate on the content or for whom I wrote it, but the punch line involved Las Vegas, a vibrator and the full recitation of American Pie.
     “Why would you even WRITE THAT?” Rich said, appalled. True to form, it landed foul on the grass.

Inspired by Dance with Me. Don McLean’s suggestive thumb from the cover of American Pie. United Artists, 1971.

Courage

Jan Karski was an agent of the Polish underground during the Second World War. He infiltrated the Warsaw Ghetto to document conditions, disguised himself as a guard to investigate a concentration camp, was captured and tortured by the Gestapo. He escaped and, not once but three times, travelled across occupied Europe to France and Britain with details of Nazi atrocities in Poland. The detailed reports he carried to the Allies were dismissed. No one could believe the scale of the Nazi death machine.

      Touching his statue’s arm, rubbed shiny by countless hands, I wondered: would I have had such courage?

Inspired by Dance with Me, and death-defying courage. Photo of the statue of Jan Karski in Kazimierz, the old Jewish district of Krakow, by Ron Thompson. See the sequel post, Courage 2, here.

Dance with Me

Dance with me. You pull him to his feet.

He resists. Can’t. My boss is on my ass. I have 600 new emails in my inbox. The air is full of smoke. The news is full of war. I woke up with this pain that won’t go away no matter what I do. There’s so much crap around—everywhere I look. I don’t see the point anymore—of any of it—of life. Tell me, tell me, what’s the point?

This, you say, this is the point. A fast song comes on the radio and you pull him up.

Inspired by In his Chamber of Lust and Love. Image of a late 18-century print “Il Ballo” by Giuseppe Piatolli from the the Uffizi Gallery collections.

In His Chamber of Lust and Love

Jesus Jesus lying in the night
said, “Hold me tight, hold me tight.”
In his chamber of lust and love
a thousand candles whispered (yes) and burned
It was warm and bright
and she held him tight (yes) so tight
He closed his eyes and it was still so bright
All he felt was brightness, lightness, life
There was a breath against his breath
(yes)
There was a heart against his heart
(yes)
Burning and bright it was
The meaning of life it was
flowing through her blood to his;
hunger it was
flowing through her body to his
(yes)


Inspired by Angel of Harlem. Painting is The Kiss by Gustav Klimt.

Angel of Harlem

She hovers under the archway, Jesus keeping her company from his Cross. Fed by the neighbours like a starving stray dog, her face is reddened by the sharp winds of Winter and the scorching Summer sun. 

It’s easier to avert one’s gaze—objectify her in the garden of the religious paraphernalia. But she will look directly into you if you let her; a stoic living statue with piercing eyes.

Once a child playing and dreaming of her grown-up life, she’s shrinking day by day now. She’s soon to exit this world like we all will, alone and into the unknown. 

Inspired by In Local News and U2.  Image based on a photo by Patrick Asselin.

In Local News

Remember that clock radio next to your bed, and the half-awake news every morning? Especially the local stuff, like the story of the flasher, who for the past three years had been prowling the paths of High Park?

     A group of west-end women had given up on the police and gone to the press. It was the same guy, they knew, because of his particular routine of hiding in the bushes and whistling a birdsong to get their attention. They put up posters declaring “We know who you are and what you look like.”

     They called him the Whistling Pervert.

But in that funny-not-funny moment, we also learned that the guy had been getting more brazen, and that some women had talked about arming themselves.

     This and some casual threats of vigilante justice was all that it took—after years of complaints, and what the police had dared call an “intensive investigation”—to get them to actually start beating the bushes and maybe dress up some female constables to flush the guy out.

     And so it was, just one week later, that Toronto awoke to the news that the cops had arrested not one, not two, but four whistling perverts.

Inspired by The Good Doctor. Photo by the author.

7 For All Mankind Was My Business

A reel about our over-consumption plays on my social media feed: A woman rushes into an elevator, and like Jacob Marley and his accounting books, she drags a long chain of handbags tied to her ankle. She exchanges looks with a second woman wearing dozens of scarves. This week I decided to undertake a HUGE closet clean out. I do these regularly, but this was a deep dive. My clothes are mostly friend exchanges or thrifted, but I still culled four massive bags. Had I been in that PSA, my ass would have been encased in fifteen pairs of jeans.

Inspired by It’s Just Weather. Image from Holé.

It’s Just Weather

He shifted in his chair and went “Hmmph.” Here was yet another woe-is-me climate report, some pointy-heads claiming that if we continue ‘business-as-usual,’ the world’s economy will be one-third smaller in 2100 than in 2024. That, with two billion more people in it. Ridiculous! That would mean everyone is poorer, and why? Because the world’s a little warmer? Winter’s too long anyway! Besides, if it ever heated up, it wouldn’t affect us. Not here.

      Jesus, he thought, even the Weather Network has gone woke. It’s all a hoax to raise taxes! Angrily, he flicked the channel back to Fox News.

Inspired by Biblical Times and “The Macroeconomic Impact of Climate Change: Global vs Local Temperature", the study by those pointy-heads. Image of the 2021 Abbotsford BC flood by Jonathan Hayward, Canadian Press.

Biblical Times

We make a run for it. We’d been packed for days—just the essentials of course, and Freddy, our Maine Coon cat, whining in his carrier. Hit the traffic jam on the road south. Horns honking. People driving up the sides—an exodus of Biblical proportions. But so is everything these days. Last year with the wildfires. The year before with the plague. When the flood closes in, we all abandon our cars. A human swarm scrambles to higher ground, ditching “essentials” along the way. We let Freddy loose. It’s up to him now whether he follows us or not.

Inspired by Raccoon. Image by Rawpixel.

Raccoon

While we wait for ice cream, a hundred fires burned all the days of summer. Racoon, still an infant, on its back, blank-faced towards the sky and there, a thousand starlings swarm in silence where once there were ten thousand, where next year there will be few dozens.

No entrails, no blood. Its paws are burnt and something looks broken. I pull the racoon off the road. Its body doesn't need to be desecrated by drivers who will swear at it for soiling their cars when they splash over it. Better use of it as meat for a hungry coyote.

Inspired by Walk the Line and and also The reality of Canada’s new season of fire. Illustration by Fred Ni.

Walk the Line

The men stood, lined up, single file. There were a few young children strewn about unchecked in their activities, looking uncomfortable with their parental arrangement. The men marched one by one into the place. Moving in a robotic and obedient fashion, like an altered version of an episode of The Handmaid’s Tale with Kate Bush’s This Woman’s Work playing in the background. The faces determined, eyes darting seeking camaraderie, and a hint of fear in the air. They disappeared into the place and reappeared with purchases, swiftly making their way home.

It was Mother’s Day morning at Cherry Bomb Coffee.

Inspired by last Sunday, and The Handmaid’s Tale. Photo by Wendy Whelan.

The Good Doctor

You hear him before you see him pushing his shopping cart. His kindly face and long beard and sturdy legs. One time, after a particularly robust round of exhortations he returned from No Frills with just two frozen pizzas. That night at a dinner party I recounted the event only to be schooled about food insecurity. This lent Larry David vibes to the second telling and the soubriquet Dr. Oetker to our hero. But this dear man walks by my house every morning, praying, preaching, sending us blessings and magical numbers. I think he’s holding the world together right now.

Inspired by Beyond. Image: Daily Blessing by Laurie.

Stumped

To drabble thus can be a chore

The goal, you see, is not to bore

But entertain with a few bon mots

Tell story smart and in the know

With crisp tight plot and punch line clever

No hanging threads, uncertainty, never

Sometimes though, nothing'll flow

Without idea or inspiration

Fuelled by angst and perspiration

I stare at page in search of words

And generate a gross of turds

I should’ve learned the trick by now

Not who or where or what, but how:

That at the point where you are stumped

Just grit your teeth and write some bumf

Inspired by writer’s block. Image by Elliott Park.

Beyond

Beyond fast clothes bought and shed like dead skin by celebrities and those who follow
Beyond moneyed pursuits of influencers and those who follow, their need for all-things-shiny, cars and guns, mansions and jets, adulation and new pussy
Beyond genocidal war lust of singular men and those who follow, yearning for rape torture child-killing and other thrills of conquest
Beyond god
Beyond even our precious feelings
Here it is and here it comes
Bebop-de-doo-wop
With hard teeth and clenched red hands
Tra-la-la
And a big ol’ morningstar spiked hard-on
Fa-la-la
Climate is karma
La-di-da
Climate is karma
Blah blah blah

Inspired by Sour Cherries. Photograph by Fred Ni.

Sour Cherries

This past week the masses descended upon High Park for the annual Cherry Blossoms. Like so many traditions something has got lost in translation. No longer an immersion into the magnificence of nature but an event to be captured.

     Anticipating the high from Instagram, the throngs, excitable with their phones and selfie-sticks, swarmed the trees, dangled from the trees and struck unnatural poses with the trees. Propelled by the insatiable need for cyber belonging, multitudes of photos were taken, filtered, seemingly perfected and furiously posted with thumbs on crack.
     What I didn’t see was anyone actually looking at the trees.

Inspired by A Brief Survey. Photo by Wendy Whelan.

A Brief Survey

There’s the hill down to Grenadier Pond, where the signs prohibit tobogganing, but really stop no one at all. There’s the smaller one north that pulls in the sakura crowds. Hawk Hill, by the restaurant, is for the birders; and east is where I caught the last of the park’s soapbox derbies. Vomit Hill is Julie’s name for the end of Spring Road and the effect it has on some runners, and that stretch past the zoo was once called Half-mile Hill, though it’s barely a fraction that long. But, hey . . . you did ask why they call it High Park.

Inspired by the hill in The Parallel Eclipse. Photo of another hill in High Park from the City of Toronto Archives.

The Parallel Eclipse

The sky grew dusky as the eclipse approached, though we would not experience total blackness. To the south, a seething dark mass indicated the path of totality. It blossomed into pitch and the light where we were dimmed ominously—at which everyone gasped as one.

     I wonder about that moment of shared uncertainty, our collective vulnerability to forces beyond rational perception. An eclipse of sanity is upon us, a global psychosis embodied by neo-cZars, by autocrats, quislings, anti-truth denialists, and bulbous ballcaps. All eclipses pass, and so will this—unless we close our eyes.  Unless we blink into their madness.

Inspired by Moony Monday, our other eclipse pieces, and the zeitgeist of our times. Photo by the author.

Old Cardigan

Near the end, she was always cold. Her body fought so hard to keep her breathing; it had no energy left to keep her warm. Her last days were spent wearing her favourite cardigan and under mountains of blankets. A cold rot had taken root inside her, she told us. And with blinds open, she chased the sun around the room with her eyes, turning her face toward it. We would have moved her bed into its warmth if we could have. Now, as I write this, her cardigan is draped over my chair just in case the weather turns.

Inspired by Be In the Sun. Image by Bing.

To Be In Sun

Her afternoon was nearly done
Now on the chair
Comfort there
To be in sun
To be in sun
Remembering when
She was young
And just begun
As if this world
Were new again
As if the truth
Were years away
Almost there
Though alone
She was taken
Almost home

Remembering when
She was young
She had a plan
There was a woman
She was trying to be
There was a place
She was trying to see
But too far away
Too far alone
To be in sun
To be in sun
As if this world
Could be good again

Inspired by Moony Monday. Photograph by Fred Ni.

Moony Monday

So often, I talk myself out of doing things. It’s too far, too expensive, too much effort. But on Monday, we spontaneously found ourselves riding our bikes to Billy Bishop chasing a flight to Montreal for the path of totality.

When the bright moon entirely eclipsed the sun in the dark sky, what we beheld left us utterly speechless and humbled. We sat frozen, agape.

We had to jog back to the airport to make our flight home. Out of breath, we cantered along Boulevard Bouchard. 

We felt young and full of life, holding hands, and laughing about our adventure. 

Inspired by this week’s Corpses’ reflections. Image from Google Maps.

Forget Déjà Vu

Want proof that we’re living in an elaborate simulation? Look no further than the Moon.

     For a start, if it really did form at the same time as our planet, it’s much bigger than it has any right to be. Furthermore, they say, it once orbited way closer than it does today, and is moving away at a rate of 3.78cm per year. And yet, here we all are, living in that thin slice of time where twice every year, the Moon precisely eclipses the Sun and, this is the important part . . .

     They tell us not to look too closely.

Inspire by 100% FOMO. Image from The Matrix.

100% FOMO

My astronomer-pal Steve tells me that viewing the eclipse in Toronto will be underwhelming, even at 99.8% coverage, but we choose to stay home. Because we like to stay home. Instead, we will find a quiet place to witness odd shadows and the weirdness of discombobulated animals, and watch the sun disappear over us. Will it be total twilight? No. Is missing the Big Event just another step in the slow march of my B+ life? Possibly. Will we be happy to just listen to the birds and frogs, rather than marinate on the QEW with the others? You betcha.

Image courtesy of Xavier Jubier.

The CanLit Premise Generator

Yes, there’s such a thing, which produces such surefire Giller-winning plotlines as:

• A group of writers learn to salt cod despite an absent father.
• Two dogs cannot finish their novel after an awkwardly verbose prologue.
• One of the Eatons tersely contemplates their provincial identity, after being blinded by wildfire smoke.
• An old woman tries acid at a concert but in a Little Mosque on the Prairie kind of way.
• A lonely widower smuggles rum in an RV, barely escaping the weather.
• A wife journeys to the center of Algonquin Park despite an absent father.

Perhaps we are a too-predictable nation.

Inspired (or frightened) by the rollout of AI. Image (and generator) at the CanLit Premise Generator site.

Bugs

Early spring Monday morning, listening to the news,
trying to expand my knowledge
when I see an Asian lady beetle
striding along my window ledge.
Pretending to be a ladybug but it’s not
Just another non-native infestation
The red army’s at the ready
having spent all winter in preparation.

If there’s one scratching on your face
you know there will be a thousand soon.
Crawling behind walls, on curtains,
beneath dustbins they loom.
Be kind, do better, touch grass
and more platitudes from the on-line preacher.
Sure, in a minute, but right now
it’s time to feed the vacuum cleaner.

Inspired by Spring Rituals. Photograph by Fred Ni.

Letter to the Editor

I walked by St. Casimir’s yesterday and was reminded of Palm Sunday. In my early 20s, I denounced my Catholic upbringing. My ultra-liberal mind uniformly decided Catholicism was bad for women. Few things in life however are that black and white; most are grey with a ton of nuance. Religion can provide structure and settle an inner unease. It is rich with parables of reflection and wisdom, even richer when not infused with a sting of shame. Those congregating on Roncy after Mass always look entirely jovial. But maybe it is just because Mass is over; how I remember it.

Inspired by the Corpse’s recent newspaper theme. Photo by Wendy Whelan

Pack 33 Cubs Enjoy Hike

FANWOOD—June 1970—My mother sent me off on an afternoon hike in the Watchung Mountains with a bunch of other scouts from Pack 33. It was a big enough deal that I might just remember a little of it, but not nearly as big of a deal as getting my name in the paper, which I do not remember at all.

     That it was even reported is remarkable enough. That we can now search these archives online still amazes me. But the most astonishing thing of all really warrants its own headline:
     Newspapers.com Junkie Discovers His Name Spelled Correctly!

Inspired by Birds my Mother Knew. Clipping from the Scotch Plains/Fanwood Times—July 9, 1970.

Birds my Mother Knew

In the continuing effort to unearth Lauretta’s gangster moll past, I revisited her wedding. She’d married Presbyterian on a Tuesday and to an empty chapel. Just Barney and her, and two people I’d never heard about: John Cismus and Jean Johnston. Once I started digging, I hit sketchy straightaway. The Best Man, a 23-year old petty criminal, had a string of crimes including theft, smuggling, and assault. But it was when he was arrested for running a brothel that we meet someone named Jean. She was the whorehouse’s Weather Eye. She was the Lookout, alright, just not for my mom.

Inspired by Spring Rituals. Clipping from The Windsor Star, March 15, 1946.

Spring Rituals

I knew I was in the wrong job when a month into my (very short) stint as an editor with Chatelaine, I heard a colleague talk about Spring rituals. Her mind went to pedicures. Mine went to birdwatching. In fact, soon, we’ll drive two hours to Long Point, on Lake Erie. And we’ll park at the edge of a farmer’s field, stand out in the wind, and watch at a very long distance through binoculars a white blur of tundra swans, pit-stopping their way north for the summer. They look majestic. They honk majestically. It wouldn’t be Spring without them.

Inspired by Spring. Photo by Nancy Kay Clark.

A Bright and Future Home

Songs of a bright and future home settle in
Are these shores reachable beyond the beckoning of war drums and convulsions of paroxysmal gods?
May we not be sullied by malignant stains nor reach for transient temptations
This time may we accept grace
May we anchor in safe harbour
Here, pain is tempered; we are healed
Here, we lay our foundations down
Here, here and here are where we grow, let our roots entangle, branches entwine
Every spring is a spring to relearn the lesson
Hate buries the hater
We only rise through love
And everything that rises will converge

Inspired by Be Still. Photograph by Fred Ni.

Be Still

In her four walls, mortality whispers in her ear. Moments are ever fleeting. The child she was is gone. The young woman from oh so long ago, she still wants to be. The regrets swirl. It is her own private torture chamber. But then, she steps outside into the early March morning. Frosty white roof tops steaming, robins whistling. Air cool and fresh.

The sun is peeking through the semi-barren trees, warming her eyes. She walks, into the woods, and inhales the intoxicating smell of new muddy earth. The four walls of her mind collapse around her. Presence is everything. 

Inspired by March Approaches. Photo by Andi Edwards.

Mrs. Eva Doughty

In 1908, Eva and James Doughty, purchased a brand-new house in Parkdale, just off Roncesvalles Avenue—$2850, $800 down. They moved in with James’s son, Howard (from James’s first marriage) and their two-year-old daughter, Melba.
      Although the family followed James south in 1915, to a new job in Cleveland, it seems Eva never really gave up on Toronto, because, by 1939, after renting it out to a string of year-by-year tenants, she was back in the house, her house now, listed in the City Directory as the widow of James, even though he was very much alive and living downtown.

In the years that followed, she would open that house to her far-flung family and uncountable lodgers—her only child, her dear darling Melba, after the second divorce—her elderly mother, Emma, when running her own household became just too much—her granddaughter, Barbara, when she was busy getting her own family started.
      Mrs. Eva Doughty lived to 101. There’s a picture of her in the Toronto Star, celebrating her 100th birthday. She lived in that house 50 years.
      Eva and I aren’t related, but I wish we were. Our only connection is that I now live in her house.

Inspired by Les 18 (1898-2024). Photo of Eva (left) with her 100-year-old friend, Nellie Sims by Mike Slaughter.

Les 18 (1898-2024)

Les deux Marguerites, vieilles belles sœurs 

Les deux Thérèses, plein de bonheurs 

Léocadie sauvegarde à nos racines 

Suzanne prend bien soins à sa poitrine 

Ma Tante Alice, en plein aire 

Était devenu la bonne chasseuse 

Ma Tante Eileen, la malheur si proche 

Vécu en vie de grandes douceurs 

Ma Tante Marie, Mère secondaire 

Ma Tante Simone, tenait ma Cœur 

Rolande, Fernande qui prient toujours 

Envoient le Seigneur ses laine nounours 

Gentille Madeleine, la femme qui rompe 

Bluffant Lillian, la femme de trompe 

Jeanne, Yvonne, les peu connues 

Yvette, si jeune pour sa perdue 

Finalement Anne-Marie, rossignole-ardu 

Toutes Mes Tantes ont disparu

Inspired by Anne Marie Leclair Armstrong, 1935-2024.
Photo: Mes deux grand-mères, 1954.