toronto zoo

ready for fun


it's a butterfly!


a rhinocerous


gorillae


this, children, is a giraffe


pachyderm


this poor hyena looked kinda stir crazy; he kept taking a few steps across his enclosure then pacing back...


ein löwe


hippopot


not an offical zoo resident - just a chipmunk hanging out


a lovely owl


how rattlesnakes see us


fish + coral


tiny jellyfish


tiny marmosets



flamingo party


leopard nap


nap with a friend


tree kangaroo!


przewalski's horse: pronounced "psheh-valski", polish learners take note


non-specific antelope species


amusing myself in the gift shop


this is a lot of fun


why stop now?


the staff don't seem to mind


i can't afford any of this junk anyway

canada in pictures

cn tower friday 23rd may


view over toronto


looking west along lake ontario


the glass floor in the cn tower is strong enough to hold 14 rhinoceroses: i know this to be true because there really were 14 rhinos up there the day i visited


inside the awesome sonic boom!


honest ed's, as seen in scott pilgrim 3


the tranzac building hosts the toronto zine library and a number of other cultural organisations


the toronto zine library


more zines...


saturday at the yardsale: i couldn't buy this as it would've been a nightmare to travel with. but pandas! on a rock! in a little japanese glass display case!


today every fire hydrant in oshawa was being painted by a pair of teenage girls


maria hlady's playing piano installation at the robert mclaughlin art gallery, oshawa


an uncharacteristically pretty view of oshawa... sorry oshawa


kensington market, toronto on car free sunday


cute graffiti on queen st west


in the washroom at fresh


a sweet cat hanging out in kevin's apartment on monday morning


kevin's lps - 7"s, cds, cd-rs, cassettes not shown...


teresa reflected in the window of a little art gallery on queen st west


walking from the bus station to kensington market


crossing these wide roads requires your full concentration: it didn't help that i kept looking the wrong way for oncoming traffic


the beguiling rules!


girls browsing a clothes rail, standing by a mannequin


a playful mystery cat outside the beguiling


leaving toronto on the lakeside east train on monday night

canada three

monday night: back in oshawa. i'd had a great time in toronto and it was kind of depressing to find myself here again. i think i had resigned myself to it previously but that glimpse of another kind of life in toronto, and the yawning void between that, and this, was hard to ignore. i stayed up far too late writing to friends online, trying to find people to reach out to, to lessen my feelings of loneliness.

on tuesday we visited toronto zoo. it's vast, at 710 acres. they care for approximately 5000 animals here, of which 460 are separate species. we must have been there for four hours... a lot of walking! the zoo at toronto is modelled on the famous san diego zoo, to which i have never been - although it has a place in my heart thanks to the 6ths' song of the same name. yes, there sure were a lot of animals... animals are grrreat. there was a cool feature in one of the snake houses, with a camera that showed you how the world appears to a rattlesnake: a camera is trained on you and the image on screen, as my companion correctly pointed out, looks a lot like a bauhaus album cover.

one of my favourite animals at the zoo was the tree wallaby. i don't think i had ever come across one of those before. they were really cute with sleepy little eyes and big pink noses. it is a strange thing to see so many unusual animals in one day, and for that not to be a totally mind blowing experience. because you expect to see all these different animals - you're at the zoo, right? but - bears, tigers, gorillas, elephants? all in one day? that's crazy... it could never happen in other circumstances and if it did you would go nuts.

no great plans were made for wednesday, the last day of my visit - we were going to go into oshawa again, i was going to pick up that feelies record, maybe get gelato at last, and check back in at worlds collide. things didn't quite work out this way... i ended up going back into toronto by myself, to visit the royal ontario museum, which at $20 is rather expensive but it was my last day and i wanted to do something i'd enjoy and remember. i would have spent a lot more than that if i'd gone record shopping again anyway.

there were some entertaining displays on british history, it was interesting to see something so familiar to me viewed through foreign eyes. one interactive element sought to explain why we love tea so much. that was funny. the canadians i met were all amused to learn that i drank a lot of tea, for real - they thought maybe it was one of those obsolete cultural stereotypes, but no. the displays of british interiors they'd set up were peculiar, because they were comprised of the right elements, but in the wrong order somehow... objects that were juxtaposed here, that you would never have seen in the same room. also they made a big deal of british men getting together to drink punch. now, i know my historical education was kind of patchy (i studied the tudors and stuarts three times because of moving schools) but i've never seen any references to punch, anywhere. perhaps this requires further investigation...

the egyptian rooms were very good and while i was there i got to listen in on a few talks being given to primary school-age children, which is always both enlightening and very sweet, hearing what the kids think about all this stuff. the museum also houses strong collections of african, south east asian and chinese artefacts. the canadian and first peoples rooms were interesting and a highlight for me as these are two cultures whose histories i know little about and contained exhibits i'd be unlikely to see here in the uk. in a back room they were showing some beautiful old documentary footage of an inuit family going out to hunt seals, it was very moving, and reminded me of how strange our modern existence is.

after that i got some lunch at the kensington natural bakery vegetarian café, and went to look for something to give my endlessly kind and generous hosts to thank them for looking after me over the last week. by the time i was done it was getting late: time to head back to oshawa. the family i was staying with had planned for us to go out for dinner on my last night and that was really enjoyable, although a little sad for me as i knew this was pretty much the end of my adventure. my 9am flight the next morning meant another early start. i started to pack and realised the small flightcase i'd brought was not going to accomodate all the cds and comics i'd acquired during my stay so i had to borrow another bag for my clothes. i got my carry on luggage ready with my walkman, tapes, spare batteries, things to read, things to draw with - drawing seems to be a more effective way of filling time than reading, maybe because it's more active... of course, you can get absorbed in a book, but i find it easier to block out other distractions if i'm concentrating on a drawing.

as usual feeling lonely in the evening i wasted too much time on the internet and hadn't even finished packing at 2am when i decided it was time to try and get some sleep. up three hours later to drive to the airport - i was feeling quite anxious about it this time, with none of the excitement of the first flight to buoy me up. but with the help of my hosts i found the check in, and i had plenty of time so i bought everyone a coffee and a donut for breakfast with my left-over currency. it came to just over $5 for three people, while in the uk three coffees and three pastries would be at least £8, or $16. how do they do it?

so, this time i didn't take any of the valium tablets, as i wasn't sure that the others hadn't made the whole thing seem longer and weirder than necessary. although it meant missing out on whale-spotting. i didn't feel that worried as we took off anyway, planes are taking off all over the world all the time and hardly ever crash. and at that particular moment i was feeling rather fatalistic and just thought "if i die, i die"; but then i looked at some of the lovely babies on board and decided that was a sick attitude: plane crashes are bad, end of story.

as we came into london, and it was dark, and raining, i really felt miserable. i really did not want to be back here, in heathrow, or to have to return my parent's house, or the reality of a life that never seems to get off the ground.

canada two: ice cream special

wow i nearly forgot to tell you the best part about friday - the toronto zine library! located in the tranzac building, 292 brunswick avenue, south of bloor, this is a tiny room of discovery with a really inspiring and comprehensive selection of zines. i felt honoured to leave a copy of my zine here and to know that i was going to become a part of something so awesome! my host and companion very kindly bought me a cute blue tzl button badge, of which i am very proud, and a surprise package of zines, which included copies of wavelength and the assassin and the whiner and quite possibly some other things too...

saturday - my fifth full day in canada - was special for one important reason. that reason is the phenomenon of the YARDSALE. they were *everywhere*. i was in heaven. the only criticism i have relates to signage, but that's a minor grievance and maybe part of the fun... it's this way! oh no - it's over there! oh, it's back there! dang! so by the time you finally locate the yardsale (or perhaps you stumble across a different one), it's a thrill.

we rummaged through a few yardsales whilst walking into oshawa on saturday morning. the sun was strong and i wished i'd been wearing sunscreen and not 60 denier hosiery. i ate a bagel along the way. it was enormous and the cream cheese was incredibly creamy. actually i couldn't finish it. now this is the point where i should have returned to star records to buy the feelies lp i had prevaricated over earlier in the week. it was only $10; i should have just taken a chance on it. the one that got away... sigh.

we had a look around the art gallery; there was an interesting installation by Maria Hlady, of a piano that had been deconstructed to a degree and hooked up with some mechanical gear to make it plink plonk at intervals... it was great to come across this in a dark and unpopulated room, in the middle of oshawa.

by way of contrast this was followed by a trip to the mall for dairy queen ice creams... (isabella's gelato eluding me once more as they close early on saturdays during the summer). i had "strawberry cheesequake"... an interesting experience, not as good as haagen dazs strawberry cheesecake ice cream but fun and authentically junk foody. i couldn't eat all the biscuity bits. also it was a huge portion, and i got the smallest. it was served in a paper cup about the size in which you'd be given a normal take away coffee. i felt pretty full after that.
the walk into town was about an hour so we took a bus back home, i had a shower and a nap, then scrabble and tv to fill up the evening.

sunday was a very exciting day for me as this was when teresa and i had planned to meet! i got to know teresa after i contacted her about her band the haircuts, asking if she'd like to be interviewed for my zine, and we had been emailing each other nearly every day since. it seemed so amazing that we'd ever have the chance to meet, considering the distance between us. teresa arrived with her friend kevin hainey who lives in toronto and was letting us both stay over at his apartment so we'd get a reasonable amount of time to hang out, considering how i am usually in england...

we walked around kensington as it was "car free sunday"; a lot of people had turned out, it was sunny, they had street art and performances. we all got an icrecream - i chose a double cup of watermelon and coconut, the watermelon had chocolate coated oats to imitate pips and alltogether it was delicious and exotic. we visited a few record shops around queen st. west, including rotate this which had a pretty great selection of new vinyl as well as some second hand records (nothing special) and loads of cds that i didn't have the energy to peruse.

the other record shops were mainly second hand and while i'd normally be desperately keen to browse, i didn't want to find *too* much as i was already spending a lot and i was worried about how i'd get things home. so i tried to stick to buying stuff that i thought would be hard to get hold of at home, or that was a lot cheaper to buy here. kevin was trying to find a miles davis record to complete his collection of the years 1965-75 but he didn't have any luck with that. i was surprised to learn that teresa isn't really interested in record shopping! but it's understandable as the kind of things she likes would probably not turn up too often in these places.

working our way down queen st towards kevin's place, we stopped at fresh to eat dinner. i can recommend this chain of vegetarian restaurants (there are three in toronto) because the food was really tasty - well flavoured and cooked just right, healthy, and reasonably priced. the portions here were enormous too but when it's basically just tofu, vegetables and brown rice you don't feel so guilty about that!

staying at kevin's was great and i'm so pleased teresa decided to make it an overnight trip... just one afternoon together would have felt confusingly short... we had a lot to talk about! also, i felt pretty at home in that apartment as kevin has similar interests to a lot of people i know in brighton - he's in a noise band (disguises) and we shared a lot of cultural reference points. he had a record that one of my ex-boyfriends had played on, which made the world seem very tiny indeed, but then, he did have an awful lot of records...

the next morning kevin went to work and me and teresa went out to get breakfast and finish browsing rotate, before going back to the apartment to pick up our stuff and go to the bus station for teresa to catch her bus home. it was really sad saying goodbye after having such a brief but enjoyable time together but i've promised to come back and spend more time with her in the not too distant future.

after she left i didn't feel like going straight back to oshawa so i wandered off into toronto. toronto is amazingly easy to find your way around: i wanted to go back to the kensington market area for lunch and i found it on my first attempt. then i needed to travel up towards bloor and i found where i was going easily. my next destination was the beguiling, a famous comic shop at 601 markham st, they have a vast selection of self published comics which i am always interested to see, as well as everything else you might wish for in terms of manga, graphic novels, comics etc... truly a great shop. peter, the owner, was really friendly and helpful, he asked what i liked to read and suggested a few things i might find interesting.

the shop was quite hot and stuffy so after i left i went to find yet more ice cream. this time i happened upon a little kiosk on bathurst st, called sweet favourite i believe, and i chose new york cherry cheesecake flavour (yes, more cheesecake ice cream, i know, that was just the kind of mood i was in). sweet favourite is worth mentioning i feel, because that was the best ice cream i had while in canada.

then i went to write and drink coffee at a bar i'd seen near the zine library, with seating outside... i got hungry and ordered fries (even though it was hard not to say chips) and when they arrived, well guess what, it was a bloody enormous portion. i wanted to try and share them with someone but couldn't think of a way of offering that wouldn't seem weird. they were great. so much nicer than chips at home.

after that it was getting late so i had to get back to oshawa... toronto was quite seductive in the evening and i entertained fantasies of staying out in bars and making new friends but it wasn't to be. end of part two!

canada one

hello world... would you like to know about my trip to canada? do you have a choice?

well. my flight was at 8:30 am from heathrow terminal 3. i was so nervous and excited i didn't sleep at all the previous night - and i had to leave the house at 3:30am anyway to be there for check in. i was so happy. aside from being slightly deranged through sleep deprivation i really felt good. going through security i had to take my shoes off and put them in the plastic tray to be xrayed and it felt funny walking around the airport in my socks. i tried to choose a bottle of whisky to give to my hosts but it was beyond me at 6am. i was delirious and happy and the three hours before departure passed pleasantly.

my excitement was tipping over into jitteriness when i strapped myself into my seat so i took a valium to stop my heart exploding when we finally went soaring up into the clouds. it was good, fuzzy and warm and i felt totally relaxed as i watched the ground fall away beneath me, fields and houses abstracting into the peculiar patchwork of the british isles. i love to see the clouds from above and i love to see the coast line too. i had a window seat... ice crystals formed on the glass outside as we gained altitude. but then there was nothing much to see for a long long time. it was dazzlingly bright and below was indecipherably blue... i took another valium as i'd noticed the first had nearly sent me to sleep and i hoped another would allow me to rest for a few hours... i slept intermittently and listened to my walkman. i am tempted to list the tracks of each tape but i won't... not yet at least. at one point i thought i could see whales swimming in the atlantic. i think this might be down to the brain addling properties of diazepam. i laughed at myself when i thought how far above the earth we were and how big the whales would have to be for me to see them at this distance.

this was my first long haul flight and i had underestimated the dullness of being sat on one's backside for 8 hours straight, even when drugged into oblivion. i was loathe to take any more of the tablets. and eventually, at 10:50am canada time, i touched down in toronto's lester b. pearson airport. i went to collect my bag and cut my finger open trying to help some else pull their bag from the carousel. it didn't hurt at first but then i noticed my finger felt wet... i was confused... then i saw the blood, always shocking, how bright red it is. there's a small scar on my right ring finger now.

i was collected by my hosts for the week, and slept in the back of their car most of the way back to their home in oshawa. i think i finally felt i could relax - i'd made it, i'd arrived. the next two days i saw two different small shopping centres on the outskirts of oshawa, possibly not the most uplifting itinerary. i was still feeling pretty disoriented - not jet-lagged, exactly; more coming down off of the high i was on when i arrived, coming down with a pretty big bump.

the third day we went into oshawa proper - and after the previous two days this was actually pretty exciting. we went to the comic shop, worlds collide, run by a friendly, nerdy guy called tim, and the record shop, star records, run by an unfriendly and probably also nerdy guy whose name i didn't have the pleasure of finding out. i had a tasty and cheap tomato soup with crackers at isabella's chocolate café... the gelato there looked out of this world but i never got the chance to try it, the weather was bad the day we were there. in fact the weather was pretty bad up until friday and i'm sure we would have gotten out and about more if it hadn't been so cold and windy.

on friday we went into toronto... wheeee! i went up the cn tower which was pretty high up (553m), it was fun standing on the glass floor and looking straight down below. the next destination was sonic boom 512 bloor st. west, a pretty awesome shop selling mainly second hand cds, and certainly the first record shop i've ever seen with a tullycraft section. i also got to see inside honest ed's 581 bloor st. west, a crazy store that features in scott pilgrim, a toronto-based comic i read while i was staying in oshawa, where it's described as a place likely to induce existential crises.... i kind of see what he's getting at. the sheer variety and unrelatedness of the articles for sale is quite mind boggling... really quite surreal.

and this is the end of amy in canada: part one. you'll be relieved to know that the most exciting parts are yet to come!