Our drive back home last Tuesday from Toronto to Ottawa was not without suspense and drama. We left Toronto in what was at first a light rain but soon developed to a downpour. Driving through successive lashings of cloudbursts we found visibility greatly impaired. That there is never any lack of transport truck traffic presents as a real hazard under these conditions. There were times when visibility was so lacking we had cause for real concern. Which seemed later as comparatively ideal driving conditions when we drove into a rainstorm that was truly extraordinary, although Highway 401 often has these violent events blowing in off Lake Ontario.

This time, however, the situation became really grim with visibility reduced at times to sheets of opaque whiteness smothering the windshield, mostly splashed onto our vehicle by heedless transport trailers whose drivers sit sufficiently high enough not to be too bothered personally, and it's every driver to himself, no thought of courtesy under these conditions, when such niceties of the road are scarce enough at most times of highway travel. We really felt our lives to be in danger, a feeling that hasn't overcome us very often in our lifetime of highway driving. Eventually, the rain was reduced and finally halted, and we drove into a large rest spot for a few minutes' respite. Walking Riley along a green swath alongside the huge parking lot we came across a truck driver from Quebec who assailed us with stories of his own concerns that he might survive the event.

When we finally arrived home it was to the surprise discovery that the work crew that had been labouring for a month and more on our neighbours' property still weren't finished the job of re-landscaping. It would be another several days before we finally saw them depart, their job done. And the really interesting thing out of all of the noise and dust raised by the landscaping with the use of all manner of large mechanized specialized vehicles was that it was truly difficult to discern the difference between 'before' and 'after'.

It did, however, inspire my husband in succeeding days to hie himself out to the gardens and do some work there. Our grass at the front of the house is so poor, at least that contrast to the sod that the workers had put down was notable.

So my husband set about digging up our old sod, laying down new soil, although the soil that had come up with our pitiable sod was quite good, and then rolling out new grass that had been on sale locally.
 

Further inspired, though it took him many hours of hard work, he decided to focus on one of the garden beds, pulling out excess greenery (he hates the intrusive, thuggish nature of sweet little woodland violets that seek to integrate themselves in a colonizing effort even through the grass), tidying things up, and laying down mulch.

Our gardens are as beautiful in colour, form and texture as our grass is miserable. Although people tend to baby their lawns, we take pride in our garden beds and borders. It's just the way it is for us.

Last Tuesday morning we decided we'd leave Toronto that day. I had spoken with two of my teen-age girlfriends, making arrangements to meet. At their apartments, roughly a 15-minute-drive distance from each other, no pets were permitted entry. They had maintained contact with one another over the 50 years since our girlhood, and remained close friends. I had more recently connected with one of them over the Internet and we emailed occasionally.

We were not only girlhood friends from high school, but as we grew older and boys came into our lives and we eventually married and had the first of our children, we remained good friends, seeing one another occasionally before losing contact in the pell-mell of our lives. The husband we had known of one of them left her years ago for a much younger woman, and she had eventually re-married, to lose the second husband to widowhood. The other lost a son aged 14 in a dreadful car accident, her husband whom we'd known well, died at age 56, and now she is the sole remaining family member of her generation of five siblings.

After much discussion we felt the best possible place where we could meet up was a nearby public park and we settled on the large greenspace of Earl Bales Park off Bathurst Street. So, that morning, we took Riley out for the last time to the little parkette nearby the hotel we were prepared to check out of, and observed as Toronto was awakening to yet another overcast, humid day with ample moisture left over from rain the night before and more in the forecast.

On our way back to the hotel we stopped at a little Chinese bakery to pick up several fresh-baked containers of cookies as nominal gifts for our friends; one of almond cookies, the other buttercookies, and one for ourselves since my husband cannot resist such temptations.

As we drove up Bathurst we found traffic as heavy as expected; most however, driving in the direction opposite to ours which didn't make our direction much less crowded. We eventually reached the park, earlier than our assigned time, and enjoyed its morning greenery to walk about after parking. There was ample evidence this is a well-used park, a community centre was open and busy with people coming and going, sitting about chatting, strolling on the pathways. We awaited the car that would bring our two old friends to this meeting place, wondering would we recognize them? One, we would, since she had sent photographs.

When they did arrive, it was an exhilarating moment we all savoured, hugging and greeting one another with the joy of reacquaintance after so long a period of our lives. We sat talking for hours. We took photographs, and we laughed and we commiserated, we agonized and we celebrated, and we vowed we'd never let another such long lapse occur, without maintaining contact. The prospect of another fifty years' lapse leaving us in our 130th year of age, elicited further guffaws.

We all look our age, more or less. Their health is far more impacted with the ravages of old age than we might have hoped. One looked fairly hale, although her condition is the far more serious one. The other looks exceedingly frail, but both celebrate life and take from it whatever the kindness of fate proffers. It was a good meeting, a thoughtful and celebratory one, one that will give us pause for remembrance of youth and fraternity.

It was finally time, under the understanding that the rush for incoming University of Toronto students moving their required possessions to the residence our granddaughter was moving into had passed the day before, to deliver to her room the small refrigerator we had bought for her use while in residence in Toronto. Little did we know that the place would be as busy on Sunday as it had been on Saturday; so much for assumptions.

We were surprised when we arrived at the Chestnut Street residence to see that the presence of security personnel was even more evident than the numbers we had come across on Saturday. With them, this time, were uniformed men who were tasked with helping new residents still with their move-ins. And they took immediate control when we arrived with the refrigerator, moving it onto a dolly, transporting it into the residence, and leaving it in the care of those directing such traffic at the elevators.

One elevator in particular was dedicated to moving belongings to the upper floors, and it was manned by a giant of a man. Accompanying him upstairs to our granddaughter's floor, I was amazed to see him pluck the refrigerator off the floor of the elevator by the wrappings my husband had tied around its containing carton as though it was a five-pound bag of sugar. He brought it with ease into our granddaughter's bedroom, leaving us to our own devices.

Our granddaughter assured me she would have no trouble unwrapping and setting it up; she was, she said, used to this kind of thing, and I suppose she was, what with her familiarity with small appliances at home replacing older, malfunctioning ones, and the fact she had set up on her own for years the succession of computers and peripherals that had entered her family home.

So down we went to her waiting grandfather, sitting outside with Riley in our car, in deep conversation with several of the men stationed outside. And we speedily set off for our evening's destination, up Bathurst Street, north to what seemed once, so long ago, the distant reaches of Toronto where my sister and brother-in-law live for a family reunion and dinner.

Bathurst Street and its northern environs had barely changed from our recollections. We had always thought of it as a rather barren looking urban environment with stretches of store-front plazas and heavy traffic. It remains, with some modifications now what it had been then. It is a geographic area of Toronto where a large preponderance of the Jewish community now live. Many of whose families had started out life as immigrants to Canada settling in Toronto around Kensington Avenue.

It was moving to see everyone gathered there at my sister's home; my sister's two daughters and her granddaughter, my own granddaughter's second cousin removed. With them was also the daughter of my sister's new son-in-law. All three girls are roughly the same age. One is attending George Brown, the other Ryerson, and our granddaughter the University of Toronto. Meeting her extended family is a great comfort to a young girl on her own for the first time of her life, on the adventure of academic life, venturing toward a rewarding future.

In the hours that followed while the two older generations caught up mightily on family, social and other matters of great interest to us all, the three girls became companionably acquainted and it was clear that a bond was being forged, something that gave us great satisfaction, and we had little doubt held huge appeal and comfort for our granddaughter.

During his formative years as a child my husband's family lived in rented quarters, in half of a two-story house located on Kensington Street itself, in Kensington Market. My own family lived in similar circumstances, but on Manning Avenue, aeons ago. When, during our Toronto stay this past week, we decided to walk over to a park nearby the hotel we were staying at in Chinatown, we also decided we'd stroll through at least part of Kensington Market.

The area always looked run-down in our memory, both when we were young and later as the parents of two boys who attended University of Toronto, and who became accustomed to shopping at the market we'd known ourselves as youngsters. We would walk through the market with them as they bought fruit and vegetables, bread and cheese to take back to the apartment we'd rented for them, thirty years ago. At that time Kensington still largely resembled the place we had ourselves known.

Now it looks more tumbled-down, more decrepit, and its nature has changed. At one time it was largely an immigrant-Jewish enclave, and later on a succession of newly-arriving immigrants coming in as waves of new Canadians began to shoulder away the originals to represent the cuisine and customs of the countries and traditions they had left behind. Nothing now seems to be left of the many creameries, bakeries and other enterprises that Jewish Canadian immigrants had operated for a largely Jewish clientele. And as noisy, dirty, crowded and worn-out as it looked back then, it's just far more so now.

Now, among the fruiterers and bakeries there are new-age shops, therapists, herbalists, shmatah purveyors galore and the area has been transformed from one of familiar nostalgia to indifferent unfamiliarity, to us. Not much quaint about this new scene. It is interesting and sad to see a forlorn-looking old synagogue sitting hemmed in by ethnic commercial enterprises reflecting the oriental presence that once had a much smaller footprint, but is now engulfing a good portion of downtown. Times change.

Not only do times change, but so does the atmosphere, the actual breathing environment. Each time we ventured out of the hotel it was to perambulate along to some walking destination through crowds of people on similar ventures to our own, or just going about their daily routines. The air was suffocatingly tainted, and the results could be felt in my increased heartbeat and strangely and unaccustomed congested lungs making walking far more uncomfortable than it would normally be. I'm a great natural walker and accustomed to walking good enough lengths every day of my life. There, it became a bit of a struggle.

It was hugely alleviated when we were in High Park, the air filtered by the trees and immense greenspace, but it left me to wonder about the health prospects of all those people crammed into a relatively restricted geographic area in the city's downtown. The irony of it is that among the many assisted housing complexes, there are also high-rise condominiums, expensive to own or to rent where the with-it crowd celebrate themselves as cosmopolitan residents of a world-class city; both demographics breathing in the same hugely contaminated air.

We did revisit my husband's old haunts; the street where he once lived, the street where his public school was located, his chaider, the little shops that he and his friends would congregate at, or go out to run errands to pick up things their mothers tasked them with. And the park he recalled fondly spending so many days of his childhood, playing in. Battered, much-used as an inner-city park over

the decades, but recalled to memory.

Monday morning our daughter was first up to shower and make her way back to the residence where her daughter would be spending the university year as home-away-from-home. Meals weren't to be served until the following day, so they planned to go elsewhere for breakfast together. One other thing about that residence was that after it was converted from a hotel to a university residence, the chefs who worked for the hotel stayed on as cooks for the new residence. Former students who had been in residence there were fulsome in their praise for the food. Our granddaughter would be eating strictly vegetarian as her choice.

We took our time, getting Riley out to the little parkette behind the hotel before moseying back, noting that even at that time of the morning there were ample people about, this long-weekend Monday. Shops were not yet open, and the busy restaurants that had been packed with people the night before were closed up tight, neat and orderly within, lines of huge garbage bins lined up on the exterior.

The hotel puts on a rather lavish breakfast for its guests. Adjacent to the lobby there is a fair-sized room beyond which is a small serving area. In the room, open to the lobby and hallways are tables and chairs and a buffet breakfast offering fresh fruit, cereals, milk, various kinds of toasted bread and breakfast toppings, along with tea and coffee freshly brewed were there for the taking of guests. We had brought along our own fruit; oranges and bananas, cereal and banana muffins I'd baked the day before, since we couldn't very well trot Riley into the dining area and couldn't leave him alone, either. The small refrigerator and microwave, along with a coffee maker in our room made do, very nicely.

Afterward, we decided to walk over to a park my husband recalled well from the time he lived with his family as a child a short walk from the hotel. The streets by then were beginning to host hordes of people. It was overcast again, but very warm, a haze appearing on the city skyline, the faint outline of distant high-rises rising against the sky and the CN Tower barely to be made out. The first park we came across seemed familiar after all those years, but it was securely fenced in and a sign posted that it was private, no dogs allowed, part of a Chinese community centre. Just across from it was the park we accessed, again with giant Chestnut trees beginning to prepare for fall with dried, crumbling leaves tumbling to the grass below. Inner-city parks tend to be well-used and they look it, with a forlorn air of being plumb worn-out, and this one was no different, though the benches were robust and comfortable, and we sat there awhile.

And then decided we'd take the car and drive over to High Park, our most favoured greenspace hang-out when we were young. High Park is a huge public park abutting the lakeshore. One of my aunts and her husband owned a large three-story house on Indian Road, a block over from one of the park entrances and it was that part of the park we were most familiar with. But we drove along Bloor Street until we came to the northern entrance to the park, and entered as did countless other vehicles, all of us looking for an empty parking spot. We did eventually find one, and made our way down the first of the pathways, recalling details about the park and how, the last time we had been there, our two sons were young adults, with the photos to recall that time.

We first ventured toward the garden beds, where magnificent tree specimens presented themselves, among them a wonderful Camperdown Elm.

And then we came to the rockeries that cascade down the hill to Grenadier Pond. In the extended rockery, a stream runs from top to bottom, with small pools on the way down to the Pond.

It was somewhat more than a little nostalgic, to be there, to enjoy the wonderful landscape, and marvel at the plant specimens, including Aloe Vera, and cacti, Japanese maples, and other exotic species among the Japanese anemone and hostas that made such a wonderful garden out of the landscape.

Eventually we made our leisurely way back uphill toward another pathway that took us on a short descent on the opposite side, leading to the zoo. It's been there forever, that zoo. Not much of a zoo, and truth to tell, one whose presence would better be absent, than to see the sad-looking yaks, and mountain goats and sheep and bison, along with shrieking peacocks that refuse to display their colourful fans. And who can blame them?

When we reached the hotel lobby, we checked in to confirm our reservation, and were designated a room on the same floor, not too far from the elevators and the escalators leading to the tiers of shopping malls below. Vibrant colour and a complexity of shops below greeted our gaze, with shoppers thronging the aisles from the viewing stage above, on our floor. This was Sunday, a gathering place for the Chinese who live in the area, a lively and entertaining scene.

In our room however, quiet pervaded the atmosphere, to our relief. Once settled in, which took a brief moment, we put Riley's harness on, and set out for a bit of a walk-about. Walking up Spadina proved a physical challenge and a viewing cornucopia of people, commercial transactions, traffic, sound and spectacle. We maneuvered our way through, around and out of the more immediate area of shopping and soon enough threaded our way to the park whose presence we recalled behind the Art Gallery of Ontario, Grange Park. There, we encountered grass and trees, and others eager to escape the hurly-burly of the streetscape, sitting on benches, pushing strollers, walking dogs, sunning themselves. Not that we saw much of the sun; it peeked out now and again through the continuing overcast, but the day was hot and muggy. Perfect weather for the children who used the play facilities there.

Our daughter had driven down to Toronto from her home near White Lake, setting out about an hour earlier than we had. The time-frame given them for move-in activities to the residence was between 2:00 and 4:00 p.m.; the times staged to greatest efficiency with so many students moving into the residence on Sunday, move-in day. We had the little refrigerator we'd bought and brought along for our granddaughter's shared room, but were told it might be better to plan on delivering it the following day when, presumably, all the activity of move-in would be hugely reduced.

While we wandered within the confines of the small park, we had the anticipated call from our daughter who was walking over along Queen Street, to meet up with us, so off we went to meet her halfway. From there we walked back to the hotel to familiarize her with the area. Although she had lived in Toronto with us until she was twelve, she wasn't all that familiar with the area, as we had been in our own young years, living fairly close by.

And then we walked back to the residence, a converted hotel. While my husband sat outside the building with Riley, I went upstairs with my daughter, to view the room, and there was her daughter, unpacking all the items she had carefully packed. The room, shared with another student, had two double beds, two wardrobes, two well-designed desks, two chairs, two bed tables, a make-up counter adjacent the bathroom which also held a coat cupboard, the facilities well designed to meet the needs of students who would also be taking their meals in the building. The presence of security personnel inside and outside the complex was reassuring to a degree. Their concern and helpful friendliness exuded an aura of confidence and comfort. Many of the young men and women checking in were experiencing a new direction in their lives, far from home. Our daughter's room mate came directly from Russia.

We all set out back to Chinatown and the hotel, my daughter driving us in her vehicle so we could show her where to park. From there, since it was six o'clock, and they as vegetarians would be seeking a meal that conformed to their eating style, set out on their own, as we too set out up Spadina Avenue to find our take-out dinner. Obviously, with Riley, we were barred from entry to any restaurant. We selected a restaurant that also provided take-out, one that was crowded with Chinese families having their Sunday meal. That old adage, that one should look for authentic quality food by finding where Chinese themselves eat, resonated with us. We chose the special meal-for-two, walked about again in the dark, brightly lit by shopfront signage, for 15 minutes while it was being prepared, then retrieved the food and walked back to the hotel, tired and glad enough to wind up the day.

We had discovered the presence of a tiny community park just around the corner from the hotel, and it was there we would take Riley first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Throughout our stay in Toronto at the hotel, and whatever our activities happened to be, he was the perfect little dog, acquitting himself marvelously well; a great little companion, never complaining although he must have been discombobulated at the change in his environment, his only assurance that all was well, being that he was with us.

The food we brought back with us to the hotel was quite, quite awful, uncongenial to the nth degree to our tastes, definitely not the Szechuan type we were more familiar with. The chicken soup was fine, loaded with bits of chicken, egg noodles, green peas and chopped green onion, but the fried rice, also loaded with egg, had pork, not chicken as we thought we were getting, and the pork was high, and unpleasant, as it was also in the other dish with larger pieces and mixed vegetables, all steeped in a sweet-and-sour sauce that couldn't hide the high taste of the pork. Most of it ended up in a dumpster when we took Riley out for his last evacuation that night, after our daughter had arrived back at the hotel once she had walked our granddaughter back to the residence, then walked back to the hotel.

We all slept fairly soundly that night, exhausted from the drive and all the walking about, and the strain of the exercise of the initial introduction of our granddaughter to her new surroundings.

We looked for hotel accommodation in the downtown area to be as close as possible to the university residence our granddaughter would be living in during her first academic year at University of Toronto. Our additional goal was to find a venue that would accept the presence of pets. And the one we came across was indeed no more than a brisk 20-minute walk from the residence, evidently one of the newest hotels in the downtown area, smack in the middle of Chinatown, a stroll to Kensington Market, the Art Gallery of Ontario (opposite directions) and just what we were looking for.

Interior, Green Beanery

We perused its amenities online, mostly to find where we'd be parking while there. We packed what we thought would be needed for a few days' stay, and rose earlier than usual on Sunday morning with no appetite for breakfast, save for Riley who always has an appetite for any meal, the more and the more often, the better.

The drive was uneventful enough, under overcast skies that occasionally opened up to a shower and several times serious rain events, but nothing spectacular. Once on the 401 the amount of traffic in the opposite lane was unendingly full; in our lane, en route to Toronto, not so much, a phenomenon we attributed to the Labour Day long weekend when people were streaming out of Toronto and environs to take advantage of a three-day holiday, and the end of summer vacation opportunities for many.

We stopped briefly at a rest stop, to give Riley a break, not from the monotony, since that doesn't seem to bother him at his age, but so he could walk about on some grass briefly and well, do what he needed to. Although we too needed to stretch our legs, we still didn't feel like having anything ourselves to break the night fast, so resumed our drive sans breakfast. When we arrived at the outlying areas of the city it presented itself as a landscape of towering high rises, the Darlington nuclear plant, endless construction cranes, hotels, condominiums, all reaching toward the cloud-grey sky.

Traffic on the benighted Don Valley Parkway was atrocious; backed-up, packed, confusing and infuriating, but quintessentially 'big city'. We made our way to Bloor Street and tracked along past the viaduct and onward until we reached Bathurst Street, where we parked and crossed the street to get to the Green Beanery from which my husband had ordered twenty pounds of raw, organic, free-trade coffee online a few days earlier. It was being stored for pick-up by us at that location.

On our way there we viewed an endless line-up of high-priced boutique and luxury-goods shops. The streets were packed with people of all ages, with an emphasis on youth, style and entitlement. University students tended to walk in groups of girls, or mixed-gender, and many were on bicycles, weaving through the bumper-to-bumper traffic. They all looked confident, self-assured, youthfully bursting with life and opportunities, a treat for the eyes.

That done, we drove to Spadina Avenue, to our Lucky 8 hotel destination. Toronto, despite our long absence of at least fifteen years, looked familiar enough; we knew all the landmarks, and should, since we grew up there. We weren't thrilled at the aspect of the Royal Ontario Museum, its once-charming oriental courtyard covered over with a series of glazing representing glass pyramids. But then, we saw quite a few architectural changes, some of which seemed amusingly whimsical, (Art Gallery of Ontario case in point) others obsessively 'post-modern' in styles that left us unimpressed.

We drove down Grange Avenue to the parking for the hotel, and eventually made our way through a labyrinth of parking 'floors' to reach the one designated for the hotel. And it was then that I discovered, though my husband might have been aware, that the parking represented three levels underground, and there were several layers over that of shopping concourses, above which was located the hotel itself; from the atrium of the hotel you could look down on a crowded, busy, colourful landscape of tiered shops. Interesting during the day, spooky at night.