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Brazilian Pentecostal Church, Toronto, 2009 (Ruth Kaplan)

Q: How has working with these subjects informed your beliefs? Have they changed since you began the project?

A: Sometimes I’m very moved when I go to a service, and I can understand what people get out of a sermon and the community. Other times I just want to take a shower afterward [laughs]. There’s always a line I can’t cross, and that hasn’t changed.

Interviewed documentary photographer Ruth Kaplan last week for MONDO. Check it out here. Her show, Some Kind of Divine, is at Ryerson Gallery until June 5.

The ghost of Norman Knott

Back in my late teens, I worked for a local bigwig in his gift shop / gallery in the wizened heart of downtown Oshawa. We kept a small inventory of First Nations artwork, including a few pieces by Norman Knott, an Anishinaabe artist from Curve Lake. Our family cottage is part of the rez-owned land, and I know Knott's work had been at Whetung, a gallery in the village. (People drive from all over the Kawarthas to visit Whetung every summer.)

Around that time, a large, oddly-shaped structure appeared on the side of the road across from the Curve Lake dump. I have murky memories of a sign that said Teepee (or Tipi?), and I think it was Norman Knott's gallery / studio / home. Despite my curiosity, I don't remember us ever stopping the car to check out his wares.

Anyway, it's boarded and abandoned now -- Mr. Knott passed away back in 2003. Last Saturday I took a walk up the road to check out the building's remains.

Everything is appropriately decayed. There's a ton of creepy junk on the building's perimeter, especially near the back of the property: old mattress springs, a rusty child's bike, some broken windows, et cetera (photos here).

Clearly I wasn't the first person to discover this treasure. Smashed windows indicate previous infiltration, and beer bottles with semi-recent labels are littered across the property. However, what's cool is that the place is still filled with equipment and supplies -- even a few unfinished carvings*. One of the locks was broken, so I pushed the door and a cool, musty breeze hit my face. I peered inside at piles of clothes, books, papers and art supplies, all covered in a few years' worth of dust.

That quick look was enough to spook me. I chickened out and didn't explore what could have been the most fascinating part of my adventure. But it's still cool, right? Maybe next time I'll gather the nerve to go inside.

Montreal scrum + EC front page

Photo: Environment Canada © 2010.

Yours truly tries desperately to ask louder questions than seasoned journos last week in Montreal. Check out that hunk of a cassette recorder! When compared with the mainstream press, it becomes painfully clear that trade pub editors lack scrum experience -- I'll try to hone my battering environment ministers skills, I promise. Eventually managed to ask Minister Prentice about future plans for the Action Plan on Clean Water, and luckily received my (crummy, rehearsed) answer just before a mini anti-tar sands protest rally broke out and he hopped away up the stairs. Quick, like a bunny.

Lessons from LOE

1. How come I didn't know about eel ladders until this evening? The second in the TRCA's Lake Ontario Evenings series included a discussion on invasive species, and the MNR speaker touched briefly on this system, which allows endangered American eels to migrate from the Sargasso Sea into the upper St. Lawrence River and Lake Ontario. The passageway, including this shallow metal trough, facilitates the eels' passage over structures such as power dams.

2. Asian carp are scary beasts. They will totally cut you, and if they get into Lake Ontario, we're screwed. Or at least that's what Professor John Casselman told me (though not in so few words). Watch this horror show.

On the lower freek

Hey! Check it out: I wrote a review of Erick Lyle's collection On the Lower Frequencies: A Secret History of the City, and the famed (and lately much-lauded) NGM of Broken Pencil saw fit to publish it. Thanks, BP!

Here's the text:

In the introduction of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs recounts meeting with her city planner friend who, despite thinking Boston’s North End of­fered “wonderful, cheerful street life,” still believed it to be “the worst slum in the city.”

Erick Lyle’s beloved “slum”–the streets of San Francisco’s Mission neighbourhood–is the setting for the majority of Frequencies, a collection of articles from Lyle’s Turd-Filled Donut street newspaper, Scam magazine and other free publica­tions. The stories weave intricate tales of the neighbourhood and its “untouch­ables” (to borrow from India’s antiquated caste system), which include immigrants, punks, drug dealers, prostitutes and others that City Hall deems unsavory.

Despite this stigma, Lyle and his impassioned (and sometimes tragic) friends struggle against the cops and local government to work for a better life: building hope out of temporary art and community centres such as the previously abandoned 949 Market, advocating on behalf of the Mission’s homeless population, fighting mid-’90s gentrification and the dot-com explosion, and making good things hap­pen for free.

Both hindering and bolstering these dispatches is the book’s choppy organi­zation. The chronology is iffy and sometimes repetitive. However, the flow is also a literary embodiment of the way Lyle and his gang lives–from the security of their own homes, readers will have a simple un­derstanding of the chaos and uncertainty of idealism and street life.

More from Jacobs, angered by her friend’s comments: “It may be that we have become so feckless as a people that we no longer care how things do work, but only what kind of quick, easy out­er impression they give.” Fortunately for neighbourhoods, Lyle’s challenging love affair with (and fight for) the Mis­sion proves that some of us aren’t will­ing to give up hope for our communities.