Riverdale Farm

Walking down the sloping path, through the barns and around the goat and sheep pens to the butterfly garden, I marvelled at my surroundings. Tamed and untamed mingled and a farm within a park within a city emerged. I felt my childhood notions of what a farm is supposed to be spring to reality before my eyes. Old farm implements covered over by ivy scattered here and there, low stone walls, children running about, happy animals crowing and clucking and bleating. Effortlessly, I let myself slip back in time and into a nursery rhyme. There are many places within the city that allow for contact with the past, but the illusion of being somewhen else is rarely so complete or convincing as it is on Riverdale Farm.

There is an overwhelming feeling of harmony that penetrates everything about Riverdale Farm. When we think of agriculture in its modern incarnation, we likely do not picture cows relaxing in the open air at the edges of a wooded area, shaded by maples and pines. Yet nothing in that picture seems out of place or odd, or unnatural. On the contrary, through it is all too easy to feel isolated from nature or even indifferent to it, places like this one remind us that humanity and nature are not separate entities. Riverdale Farm reminds us that, especially in cities like Toronto, magic and wonder can crop up in the most unexpected of places.

I saw a goat being milked, found out that even chickens have personalities, and spotted tadpoles. I witnessed six little pigs shove and jostle their way to the feeding trough at lunch time and then out to take a mud bath. there were onions and rhubarb and herbs and forget-me-nots, duck eggs and dandelions and waterfalls. I shared my lunch with a green-eyed black cat and made friends with a skittish lamb.

Riverdale Farm is a treasure, one that I took a regrettably long time to discover. It inspired me, made me eager to re-connect with my childhood conceptions of the world and, as always, to explore and unearth the other hidden wonders in this city.

Here is their website:

http://www.friendsofriverdalefarm.com/index.htm. It has directions to the farm by both car and the TTC, contact info, lists of programs and events like the weekly farmers market as well as a rather lovely photo gallery.

And by the way, the gift shop is in need of volunteers.

By C.G. Mesa Guzzo

Dave Meslin: The antidote to apathy

A great, inspiring talk, not just for Torontonians, but for anyone and everyone. http://www.ted.com/talks/dave_meslin_the_antidote_to_apathy.html

Twitter

We now have a Twitter account (hurray!). Please follow us. http://twitter.com/TOTravelers#

Bloor West

by Emma Cava

More amazing things by Emma: http://maceavam.blogspot.com/

Hogtown Ballet

Hogtown Syncopators (http://www.myspace.com/hogtownjazz) live at The Rex(http://www.therex.ca/) Provided some great background music for the ballet that is Queen Street West on a Friday afternoon.

Shot Feb. 4th 2011. C.G. Mesa Guzzo

Ludy Dobri

Ludy Dobri (Good People) is a Lviv-based nu-folk band that collects and interprets traditional music from across Ukraine according to their eclectic tastes. Last summer they visited Toronto as part of the Organic Streetscape Project, a Canadian tour based around a collaboration between Canadian and Ukrainian musicians and artists that included exhibits and shows in several cities.

Stephanie Turenko had the opportunity to follow the band and document their experiences in Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto. The band loved playing in Kensingtom Market and was also able to play at the Gladstone hotel during Nuite Blanche and the Bloor Street West Ukrainian Festival.

http://www.myspace.com/ludydobriukrfolk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWyuU_ZvvZI&feature=player_embedded#

-Information and photos provided by Stephanie Turenko

Walk Through the Annex

The Annex yielded its secrets to me. It showed me how snow, melting and falling, could bring life to the world. How the silence of winter could serve to heighten the music of the city...
how blankness can embolden colour...

how the cold can beget warmth.

-C.G. Mesa Guzzo

the Grange

Veiw from Grange Park facing the AGO. May 1st 2010. By C.G. Mesa Guzzo

The Artist

Winter is a painter, working in light brush strokes to put finishing touches of glistening white over the world. Footprints are sketched in everywhere, erased and redrawn. It is a sculptor, forming the ice into a prismatic cascade that tumbles over the steeples and gabled roofs, and down the layers of branches. Winter is an author, the erratic tracks that crisscross blank fields, like letters stamped by a typewriter onto a page.

-W. Wedd

Guest Book!

We now have a guestbook! Please feel free to sign it. The more interest that is shown in this project, the better chance we have of getting a publisher's attention when the time comes.

Don't forget to submit!