The city’s yummiest soft serve p. 85 Inside the float homes of Toronto p. 75 The best out-of-town restaurants p. 63 One family, three homicides: the murders on Pitch Pine Crescent p. 54
Don’t Hate Me because I’m 27 and own a house in Toronto
How a group of enterprising 20-somethings beat the odds and broke into real estate Safras Lafeer actually owns two houses, and bought both without help from the Bank of Mom and Dad
T H E O N E R I S E S TO T H E TO P AWA R D W I N N E R O F B E S T H I G H - R I S E B U I L D I N G D E S I G N We knew that The One had to be the Andy Warhol
intersection in Canada, where the confident spirit of
of highrises. It had to be bold. It had to represent a
North America’s fourth largest city expresses itself
completely new way of thinking; a new way of doing
at every turn - on the sidewalks; underground at the
things. Foster + Partners, one of the most innovative
busiest subway hub; in the romantic atmosphere of
architectural practices in the world, designed The One
restaurants and bars; the sleek interiors of luxury
as a hybrid exoskeleton/super structure that allows
flagship stores; and in the green serenity of a nearby
maximum exposure to the sunlight. Clad
park. At Mizrahi Developments, we also
in shimmering champagne metallic and
demanded innovation of ourselves out
illuminated at night with imbedded
of our passion for creating projects that
LED lighting, the tower is a beautiful
do justice to their specific locations.
sculpture of textures and patterns.
We study the marketplace in order to
But it is not just architecture that’s
exceed expectations. With award-winning
an art. The way hospitality services
projects from midrise boutique buildings
and amenities are designed is also
of old-world craftsmanship to The One, a
a thoughtful, creative vision. An
marvel of structural engineering that will
infinity pool on a garden in the sky.
be the tallest building in Canada, Mizrahi
A team of valet drivers so you never
Developments never stops to give you
have to park or retrieve your own
what you didn’t think was possible.
car. Restaurants that will deliver
We’re truly honoured that the Building
anywhere in the building. These
Industry and Land Development
are only some of the reasons that
Association (BILD) recognized the
residences at The One are over 75%
excellence of our vision at its annual
sold in 6 months. The location of
award ceremony. We invite you to visit
The One demanded something new.
our Presentation Gallery at 181 Davenport
Yonge and Bloor is the most popular
to find out more about living at The One.
There’s a fashionable, cinematic feel to the sleek interiors. We invite you to drop in for a cappuccino and a chance to understand the vision for THE ONE. Designed and built to the Mizrahi standards of artisanal craftsmanship, superior finishes and precise attention to detail, the Presentation Gallery features several beautiful rooms, including the kitchen, dining room, library and master bath.
With sophisticated, high-tech tools to help you see exactly where residences are located in the model of THE ONE and examine the variety of floor plans available, the Presentation Gallery also showcases our award-nominated video with the Foster + Partners team of architects and developer Sam Mizrahi.
MIZRAHI DEVELOPMENTS INVITES YOU TO VISIT THE PRESENTATION GALLERY, FOR ONE BLOOR STREET WEST. NOW OPEN DAILY FROM 10AM AT 181 DAVENPORT, YORKVILLE.
ONE BLOOR STREET WEST
Specifications and features subject to change without notice. E&OE illustration is artist’s concept.
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MONDAY–FRIDAY 10AM–7PM, SATURDAY 10AM–6PM, SUNDAY 10AM–6PM
INVENTING DESIRE. Thank you to BILD for the many awards. Thank you to our clients for having the courage to approve breakthrough creative. Thank you to our team of passionate poets, painters, playwrights, musicians, sculptors and filmographers.
S IN INUKTITUT, THAT’S WHAT TUNIRRUSIANGIT MEANS. Experience the gift of a unique perspective at the largest exhibition of Inuit art ever at the AGO.
TUNIRRUSIANGIT: KENOJUAK ASHEVAK AND TIM PITSIULAK JUN 16 - AUG 12 | VISIT AGO.CA
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ORGANIZED BY THE ART GALLERY OF ONTARIO IN PARTNERSHIP WITH MOBILIZING INUIT CULTURAL HERITAGE, WITH THE SUPPORT OF DORSET FINE ARTS, A DIVISION OF THE WEST BAFFIN ESKIMO CO-OPERATIVE.
Tim Pitsiulak, Swimming Bear (detail), 2016. Black ink and coloured pencil on paper, Overall: 74.9 x 105.4 cm. Purchased with funds donated by Greg Latremoille, 2017. © Estate of Tim Pitsiulak
The life aquatic: float homes at Bluffer’s Park, p. 75
july 2018 | vol. 52 no. 7
the conversation 16 | What you loved and loathed last issue editor’s letter 22 | The joys of summer day tripping this city 25 | The Moment It happened this month 26 | Q&A Real talk on pot’s looming legalization 28 | Ego Meter What’s making and shaking the city’s selfimage 30 | Camera The month’s best parties 34 | Cost of Living What Torontonians make and how they spend it 36 | The Audit A penny-bypenny reckoning of the month in money 38 | The Upstart Torontonians who are shaking up the tech sector 41 | Urban Diplomat Advice on how to be a civilized Torontonian
features
42 | The Young Buyers Club For Torontonians without a trust fund or the stomach for a three-hour commute, home ownership seems impossible. But some resourceful millennials are finding ways to beat the market and buy a house before the age of 30. We spoke to nine of them about how they did it Interviews by Ali Amad 54 | House of Horrors It started as a vicious custody battle and ended in a triple homicide—a dad, a mom and their son, all brutally, systematically killed in their Mississauga home. The inside story of the murders on Pitch Pine Crescent By Michael Lista 63 | Flavour Country Every day, another Toronto chef seems to be pulling up stakes to run a restaurant at a country inn, historic estate or secluded winery far from the city’s cramped kitchens. The upside: off-the-hook dining destinations for culinary road trips By Mark Pupo
on the cover: photograph by Dave Gillespie toronto life is published by toronto life publishing co. ltd. all rights reserved. contents may not be reprinted without written permission. mail registration no. 9189. publications mail agreement no. 42494512. canadian postmaster: send subscription orders, address change notices and undeliverable copies to toronto life, po box 825, stn. main, markham, on l3p 9z9.
navigator 75 | Great Spaces A peek inside Toronto’s only floating neighbourhood 82 | The Chase A cost-cutting Little Italy couple end up with a bigger house than the one they sold food & drink 85 | Flavour of the Month We’ve tried them all, and the verdicts are in: our picks for the creamiest, dreamiest, most pimped-out soft serve cones of the summer culture: summer road trip edition 93 | A day tripper’s guide to the top things to see, do and hear this month, from Robert Lepage’s Stratford debut to a killer music festival in Elora 100 | memoir I graduated high school with honours, found a job and got into university—all while living on the street By Share Ryan
July 2018 toronto life 9
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the conversation
Emergency Response Alison Motluk’s investigation into hospital overcrowding provoked much finger pointing (Andrea Horwath grilled Kathleen Wynne about it at Queen’s Park during Question Period), and also provoked candid debate about the root of the problem and how to fix it: “A focus on government ‘inefficiencies’ has forced hospital administrators to aim for roughly the same bed occupancy rates as that of Toronto’s homeless shelters—and we can see how that’s worked out. Rather than impose such slim margins of error, we should do as the private sector does: aim for overproduction. Corporate shareholders understand that it’s better to produce too many widgets than not enough. Ontario’s shareholders—the taxpayers—have even more reason to do so. After all, when demand outstrips supply, the result is more than just some unhappy customers. The result is dead customers.” —Jeremy Greenberg, Toronto “Ontario cannot keep adding condo developments to the city of Toronto and not expect a health care crisis! More condos and more people necessitate more hospitals! The politicians need to make the developers more accountable!” —Tina Edwards, Thornbury 16 toronto life July 2018
“As a Toronto and Hamilton area emergency physician, I was unsurprised at the stories in ‘Hallway Health Care.’ This is my life. Emergency medical staff are the MacGyvers of the health care system, constantly being asked to do more with less. The number of in-patient beds is cut? The emerg will deal with it. Family doctors are overtaxed? The emerg will deal with it. No shelter beds on a cold night? The emerg will deal with it. It was, ironically, a flood in the ER, during which all the in-patients had to be moved out of the department, that showed me how efficiently emergency docs and nurses can work when we are able to take care of just emergency patients and not in-patients as well. “I used to be proud of our health care system. Now it seems adrift, and politicians consider it political suicide to have frank conversations about how to fix it. Isn’t it time that, as a society, we have those difficult discussions? We are quickly running out of options to fund a system where everyone has rights but no one wants to pay for those rights. I’m no economist. I’m just a lowly front-line health worker. And despite everything, I truly love my job. Until I hear other wise, I will keep a smile on my face and continue to try to navigate a confusing system to the best
of my abilities so that my patients can get the care they need.” —John Sollazzo, St. Joseph’s Healthcare The vast majority of responses came in the form of readers sharing their own hospital horror stories: “Several years ago, my motherin-law fell and broke her elbow. Although she was treated at the hospital where she had been a nurse for years until retirement, the so-called fracture clinic was ‘closed’ for a week while they dealt with an ‘insect problem.’ As a result, her elbow never healed and her arm is now useless.” —Lou-Anne Balodis, Georgetown “My grandfather shattered his knee and was admitted in Toronto. Immediately we drove down from Hamilton to see him. We got there, and they told us he’d left and showed us some forms that ‘he signed’ as he was discharged. Meanwhile, he was texting saying he was still there and that he could not walk. I called 911 and the police came and found him in a back hallway on a stretcher. He was left there and forgotten about. We brought him back to Hamilton and went to the General here. He was in surgery the next day.” —starscr3amsgh0st, Reddit
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The ConversaTion
“The timing of this issue was ironic for me. In the first week of April, my father had a mild stroke, and I rushed him to the Rouge Valley Centenary hospital. While he was admitted that day, he remained in an observation section of the emergency department for two days, because there were no ward beds available. The observation section held 10 beds and was managed by two nurses. “In those two days, a woman on one side of my dad who’d had a bad reaction to marijuana spent her days vomiting and screaming for the nurses. The man on the other side of my father was bedridden and unable to get to the washroom, so every bodily function occurred where he lay, and he was very vocal about his anxiety over that fact. The nurses had to ignore some of the pleas for their attention.
“I stayed with my dad for those days and had to face the task of sponging him daily since no one else had time for that. “For the duration of his stay, I kept repeating to myself, please God, I never want to get sick, I never want to get sick.” —Roxanne Brown, Markham “I too spent a long time at Sunnybrook, waiting in the ER. I was there for 17 hours, without any real treatment. I chose to go there as many of my specialists are on staff there. I was not given any food or water, even though I am diabetic. Eventually, when I finally got some food, I was yelled at for eating in the main room. As I waited and waited, new patients arrived constantly, mainly knife wounds and traumas. Eventually I asked if the only way I would get treatment was to stab myself.” —Joel L. Hertz, Toronto
“Such an important and disturbing read. A family member of mine was discharged 48 hours after major brain surgery because there were no hospital beds, and the post-op care fell to me. If I hadn’t advocated and provided full-time care and navigation through the entire process, the outcome could have been very negative.” —Michelle Lea Kalman, Facebook “My wife just had colon surgery. We had booked a semi-private room, and right up to going into surgery we were told that she had that semi-private room. When she got out, she was taken to a surgical stay ward instead—with 10 to 15 other people moaning and throwing up all night. The room is designed for a one-night stay and closed on weekends, so instead of the two- to three-night stay we were told she would need, they released her in less than 48 hours.
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The ConversaTion We’re not sure who made that decision, but it was based on bed availability and not health care.” —Steven of Ontario, torontolife.com
Courtroom Drama When it comes to rape, the criminal justice system fails everyone. That was the main takeaway of “The Verdict,” Nicholas Hune-Brown’s story about two former York PhD students—Mandi Gray and Mustafa Ururyar—embroiled in a complicated sexual assault case. Readers were divided in their allegiances but unified in their frustration with the courts:
system. In particular, the reference to the ‘baroque mechanisms of the legal system—the elaborate rules, the silly gowns, the strict hierarchies and archaic language.’ “That legal system is one of the best in the world. Those elaborate rules are necessary. They help to provide structure and order. They allow judges, with the assistance of lawyers in those ‘silly gowns,’ to untangle complex and often emotionally draining disputes. “Every profession has its own glossary of words that define process. The ‘archaic language’ may at times confound the public, but spend a day in an operating theatre in a hospital and see how many words you can decipher.” —Gary Joseph, MacDonald and Partners LLP
“I had no idea he had appealed. That he got off with a peace bond is deeply disturbing.” —Zuzu Petals, Facebook “She ruined his life. He is innocent. Her life still goes on. Am I the first one to think, Pakistani guy vs. white woman.” —MB Wolfy, Facebook “This is a very nuanced look at the Mustafa Ururyar case and the limits of the justice system when it comes to sexual assault.” —@rhrussell, Twitter “ ‘The Verdict,’ if anything, convinces that it’s best for rapes to go unreported. I’ll have nightmares about that part with the lawyer asking a complainant about bowel movement pain after enduring brutal anal rape.” —@maidaceledonm, Twitter “ ‘The Verdict’ presents some of the many difficulties associated with prosecutions of sexual assault. I found many of the comments thought provoking, but I strongly take issue with some of the criticisms of our judicial 20 toronto life July 2018
Faith Healer In the May issue, Yonah Krakowsky wrote about how he squares his faith (he’s an Orthodox Jew) with his profession (he’s a gender-reassignment surgeon). Reaction ran along the lines of, “What a mensch!” “How cool is this guy??” and “He’s very handsome”… “Just read this really beautiful piece in the May issue of @torontolife and suggest you do too if you need a bit of faith today.” —@MsEveThomas, Twitter “I’m an Orthodox transgender Jew. Thank you for doing what you do. I wish surgery were affordable in the States. It’s going to be forever and a day before I have the money.” —@DanielleSATM, Twitter Please email your comments to letters@torontolife.com, or mail them to Letters, Toronto Life, 111 Queen St. E., Ste. 320, Toronto, Ont. M5C 1S2. All comments may be edited for accuracy, length and clarity.
EDITOR’S LETTER Get Out of Town
My favourite place to escape the city for a quick getaway is the Drake Devonshire in Prince Edward County. My husband and I were there in the winter and had a blast. At night, we had an excellent meal and a rowdy drunken game of Ping-Pong. In the morning, I took a yoga class. The inn is perched on a lovely spot up against the lake, but the vibe is decidedly urban (the room service menu even offers sex toys).
22 toronto life July 2018
century. The kids loved the deep fissures in the escarpment rock known as the Hole in the Wall and crawled deep into them, sometimes using rather precarious-looking old wooden ladders. They were in heaven. For day trippers who would rather plan their outings around art, our culture section this month (page 93) is devoted to theatre, galleries and concerts outside the city: a music festival in Elora, an exhibit of female artists in Kitchener-Waterloo, plus our recommendations for what to see at Stratford and Shaw. And sometimes, the best day trips are just across town. As a lifelong Torontonian, I’m embarrassed to say that last summer I paid my first visit to Bluffer’s Park Beach at the southern tip of Brimley Road in Scarborough, and it was a total revelation. It’s a legitimate bring-your-towel, stayfor-the-day beach that feels a million miles from the city. We flew a kite, ate watermelon and lazily read books on the sand. New this summer, the TTC will run buses every 15 minutes from Kennedy station on weekends and holidays, making the beach more accessible. In this issue, we spotlight a unique community of Torontonians who are well aware of the beauty of this stretch of the Scarborough lakeshore. They live right on the water’s edge, in so-called float homes (page 75): regular-looking houses that are built on concrete barges at Bluffer’s Park Marina. They’re a tightly knit bunch—quite literally. Their homes are 36 inches apart and tied together.
—Sarah Fulford Email: editor@torontolife.com Twitter: @sarah_ fulford
Coming up Torontonians who are making a killing on cryptocurrencies; a profile of physicsdefying speedster Andre De Grasse, by Malcolm Johnston; and the Best of the City, featuring the most amazing things to eat, drink, wear, see and do this summer. Stay in touch Sign up for our weekly newsletters at torontolife.com/newsletters The Hunt: The latest on the crazy real estate market Best Bets: Your cheat sheet to Toronto’s best events The Informer: Our roundup of the week’s top stories The Dish: The scoop on the hottest restaurants, bars and food shops The Goods: The city’s fashion trends, shop openings and more
Digital edition Print subscribers, your subscription includes free access to the monthly digital magazine. Download the app from your digital newsstand, locate “I have a print subscription” in-app, and follow the prompts. Nonsubscribers can purchase an annual digital subscription for $17.99. photograph by christopher wahl
The restaurant at the Drake Devonshire is one of several out-of-town spots our critic, Mark Pupo, recommends in this issue’s feature on destination dining (“Flavour Country,” page 63). In what surely must be the best assignment Toronto Life has given a writer this year, Mark travelled hundreds of kilometres to find places that are so satisfying they’re worth the drive. He picked spots in St. Catharines, Dundas, Jordan Station, Cambridge— places that make fun day trips on their own. I know this from experience. In the spring, my family and I took a magical walk through Ball’s Falls, a conservation area near St. Catharines on land settled by Jacob Ball, a Loyalist who built mills on the waterfalls of Twenty Mile Creek. Besides providing my 12-year-old son with lots of giggles (“Ball’s Falls!”), the area had giant rocks for the kids to climb and dramatic falls views. Next time I’ll leave the kids at home, follow Mark’s advice and eat at Pearl Morissette, which he calls “the most extraordinary new restaurant in the province, and perhaps the country.” The proximity to magnificent nature is one of the best things about living in Toronto. My husband and I are committed day trippers. He’s an avid birder, which means early morning road trips to chase down a northern hawk-owl or a prothonotary warbler. And lately he’s taken up the sport of butterfly catching (much to the embarrassment of our tween). He’ll capture one in his net, identify it with his Ontario butterfly book, show off his catch to passersby and let it go. We recently dragged our kids to the Limehouse Conservation Area on the Bruce Trail (just north of Milton), which still has lime kilns from the mid-19th
+
MAKE YOUR OTHER VACATIONS
JEALOUS
©2018 Visit San Antonio
Most vacations are centered around one thing – a beach, a big canyon, a few skyscrapers – you get the idea. But when you visit San Antonio and the Texas Hill Country, you’ll find a little bit of everything: roller coasters, 300-year-old missions, lavish resorts, scenic wineries and the largest outlet mall in the nation, not to mention a lot of other things ordinary vacations wish they had.
“My goal is amnesty for cannabis possession convictions”
Ego Meter ......... p. 28 Camera ............ p. 30 Cost of Living.... p. 34 The Audit ......... p. 36 The Upstart....... p. 38 The Urban Diplomat ........ p. 41
—Annamaria Enenajor, p. 26
photograph by nathan denette/cpimages
the moment
No-Wynne Situation The election, in a nutshell
Nasty, brutish and short. That pretty much sums up the four-week run for Ontario premier. We trudged through Donald and Hillary–calibre mudslinging, a $1.4-billion blunder, a tone-deaf #SorryNotSorry campaign, allegations of vote buying, allusions to extramarital sex, and attack ads galore. What we emerged with is a shiny new leader, and a lot of trepidation.
July 2018 toronto life 25
The Advocate
As pot becomes legal this month, Annamaria Enenajor, a criminal lawyer and partner at Clayton Ruby’s law firm, is fighting for the erasure of records for personal possession by c ou rt n e y s h e a You’re a passionate advocate of amnesty for Canadians with cannabis convictions. Do you think that everyone serving time for pot should earn a get out of jail card come July 1? There won’t be some mass jail exodus. Most convictions for possession don’t entail jail time anyway. We’re seeking an official pardon and an expungement of records, which means one’s name would no longer come up in criminal record searches or background checks. Would you like to see amnesty for all cannabis-related offences—trafficking, or selling to minors, for example? No. Just possession for personal use. If recreational cannabis is legal, it makes no sense for these people to continue to be plagued by the history of that sentence. And when you look at who, historically, has been most impacted by criminalization, it’s vulnerable, marginalized, racialized individuals. In Ontario, cannabis will be available through Ontario Cannabis Stores, which are operated by the LCBO. Can we expect police to treat pot the same way they treat booze? Not at all. If you get arrested for selling alcohol to a minor, you’ll probably get a reprimand or fine. For the same offence with cannabis, the maximum is 14 years. There’s a huge disparity, and not just in the law, but in the exercise of discretion by police officers. Why do you think that is? There’s a cultural stigma that goes back decades. The Opium Act, one of Canada’s earliest pieces of drug-enforcement legislation, was at least partially motivated by fear of Chinese migrants using opium to steal and corrupt white women. These puritanical, racist ideas underpin our drug policies, and breed hysteria and fear. 26 toronto life July 2018
If you were rewriting Bill C-45, how would you change it? When cannabis became legal in Oakland, California—a place with socioeconomic disparity that runs mostly along racial lines— the city reserved half of the cannabis vendor licences for people with cannabis convictions or for people from communities that were over-policed amid America’s war on drugs. I’d like to see that considered here. Isn’t it problematic to reward people who broke the law? I think it’s important not to mistake vengeance for justice. Do you buy Bill Blair’s argument that C-45 will curb organized crime? I’m suspicious. We know that if the government sets prices too high, it creates a black market.
So, to be clear, this is professional, not personal excitement. That’s right. I’ve tried pot twice, and both times were disastrous. One was at the Bob Marley Museum in Jamaica—if you’re going to do it, it might as well be there. I ate half a pot brownie, felt nothing, and ate the other half. Huge mistake. I have, however, started using CBD, which is a nonpsychoactive cannabinoid, for back pain and anxiety relief. Yoga has helped me find some equanimity, too. Would you describe yourself as intense? I can be. Once while I was at McGill, my friends were going out and I declined because I had to study. Later they posted a photo and wrote, “Annamaria, we missed you!” I replied: “Friends come and go, but a B will stay on your transcript forever.” Wow. I don’t think we would have been friends. I know! I think it’s kind of a character I play, though. I’m still friends with all of them. I think I’ve gotten less intense over the years.
If the Ontario Cannabis Store is selling weed for $2 and your friendly neighbourhood drug dealer is selling it for $1— —why would I go to the OCS? Hypothetically, of course.
You know what helps with intensity? Haha—I’ll think it over. Maybe once’s it legal.
This seems like the time to
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
photograph by erin leydon
Q&A
ask what got you into the cannabis cause. I love social justice advocacy, and have this nerdy desire to understand intricate regulation and legislation. The possibility that Canada would become a leader in the implementation of a compassionate and evidence-based drug policy excited me.
INTERIOR | EXTERIOR | KITCHENS | BATHROOMS | FULL HOME ARCHITECTURE | DESIGN
insideout architecture Yorkville Village | Toronto, 87 Avenue Road | 416 . 922 . 6620 | www.yorkvilledesigncentre.ca
Ego Meter
What’s making and shaking the city’s self-image
ego
boost
After performing with Choir! Choir! Choir!, ’80s pop star Rick Astley challenges the Foo Fighters to collaborate with Toronto’s biggest glee club—and the band accepts.
The Weeknd lands the cover of Time magazine’s Next Generation Leaders issue.
Activist Susan Gapka becomes the first trans person to receive the key to the city.
Appearances from David Furnish, Ben and Jessica Mulroney, and the cast of Suits make Harry and Meghan’s nuptials the Most Torontonian Royal Wedding Ever.
Toronto tops the first-ever ranking of Canada’s most youth-friendly cities…
+ Five days later, Casey is shortlisted for coach of the year. Chinatown restaurant Hong Shing makes international headlines after the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal orders it to pay $10,000 to a black customer who was asked to prepay for his meal.
Toronto is dubbed “LeBronto” after King James and the Cavs sweep the Raptors in the NBA playoffs, resulting in the firing of Raps coach Dwane Casey.
Toronto tech gets a double boost when the Silicon Valley Bank announces plans to set up shop in Canada, while the Collision conference names us its host city for 2019 to 2021.
…despite StatsCan reporting that millennials are leaving the city en masse in search of more affordable real estate.
Anthony Bourdain gets angry at the Globe and Mail for reporting that he got angry at the National Post for its coverage of the nowinfamous Newfoundland episode of Parts Unknown. Toronto drops from first to ninth on Christie’s list of hottest luxury housing markets in the world, while last year’s No. 2, Victoria, takes the top spot.
ego
bruise it happened last month: a loose chronology
28 toronto life July 2018
END
Drake engages in a diss-track war with rival rapper Pusha T...and loses.
photographs: grohl and astley, james, casey, gapka, wedding, bourdain, drake by getty images; bank courtesy of silicon valley bank
START
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TS A E S ALL
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$ Compagnie Hervé KOUBI (France)
OU NEWERST VENUE
Camera
The month’s best parties Screen queen Sarah Gadon
Writers Linwood Barclay and Uzma Jalaluddin
Biblio Bash 2018
April 26, Toronto Reference Library It’s not often that you see this country’s most esteemed authors rubbing shoulders with reality-TV stars and socialites. But the Toronto Public Library Foundation’s annual gala brought the literati and glitterati together for a cause they could all get behind: raising nearly $700,000 for the TPL’s youth programs. Following a meal prepped by Cory Vitiello, guests placed bids in a silent auction for prizes that included a bookclub dinner with Margaret Atwood. And if they didn’t win, they could still take Peggy home—thanks to the free bags of Atwood’s Blend coffee made by Balzac’s.
Exotic-animal lover Sylvia Mantella
Infotainer Lainey Lui
CanLit icon Thomas King
Snappy dressers Joe Mimran and Kimberley NewportMimran
...and fellow Dragon Arlene Dickinson
Fashionphiles Jenna Bitove Naumovich and Suzanne Rogers
Bon vivants Vanessa and Mark Mulroney
30 toronto life July 2018
Biblio Bash chair Victoria Webster
photographs by george pimentel photography
Dragons’ Den star Michele Romanow with Andrew D’Souza...
Every family has one. A little bit different, with a whole lot of character. Introducing Pommies Red Sangria. A perfect blend of Ontario wine, Ontario cider and natural juices. Family owned, locally made, naturally refreshing. Look for us in the LCBO and select grocery stores. Please enjoy responsibly.
Maverick Music Toronto Life and Empire Communities team up with Universal Music Canada for a showcase of next big things
On May 23, the Great Hall on Queen West played host to an invite-only concert curated by Universal Music Canada in partnership with Toronto Life and Empire Communities. The event marked the latest incarnation of the Maverick Social Club, the ever-evolving party series that’s building the buzz around Empire’s newest condo project on King West, the Maverick. With the venue’s hardwood floor emblazoned with a massive UMC Spotlight logo, an eclectic crowd that included CARAS CEO Allan Reid, Twitter Canada Head of Entertainment Michael Palombo and q host Tom Power gathered for a special early-evening showcase of the label’s latest signings and brightest hopes. Bars were set up on the venue’s two floors to serve beer by Great Lakes Brewery, wines from the Robert Mondavi Private Selection, and whiskey sours, the signature cocktail of the night. Oliver and Bonacini set up four food stations across the venue, serving pretzels, burgers, hot dogs, and more. The lineup featured Jazz Cartier, Locals Only Sound (with Blaise Moore), Pilla B, Surauchie, the Reklaws, Bülow and—the highlight of the night for many—Johnny Orlando. The 15-year-old wunderkind —touted to be the next Bieber—impressed the crowd with his confidence and poise. And as a bonus, Johnny was joined by friend Mackenzie Ziegler to sing their catchy new single, “What If.”
Paul Golini (EmPirE), KEn Hunt (ToronTo Life), SuE m acKay (EmPirE), JEffrEy rEmEdioS (univErSal muSic canada) and dan flomEn (EmPirE).
SuraucHiE
For more, visit: torontolife.com/culture/music/maverick EmpireMaverick.com photographs by kayla rocca
bülow, ziegler and orlando by jesse miln
tHE rEKlaWS
BüloW
JAzz cARTIER bLAISE mOORE WITH cuRTIS SmITH OF LOcALS OnLY SOunD
THE DIGITAL GRAFFITI WALL
mAckEnzIE zIEGLER AnD JOHnnY ORLAnDO
pILLA b
Cost of Living
What Torontonians make and how they spend it
“i admit i could spend less, but i love exploring new places in the city”
What She DoeS
Freelance event marketer
What She makeS
$85,000 a year
Where She liveS
A two-bedroom, 1,100-square-foot apartment in the Annex that she shares with a roommate
34 toronto life July 2018
RegulaR expenses
Rent $900 a month. “In the Annex, you get a lot of space, even if it’s in an older, weathered apartment.” inteRnet $40 a month. cellphone $250 a month. “I use it a lot for work and Instagram. I’m always going over my data limit.” tRansit $100 a month, for the TTC. savings $450 a month, into an RRSP. going out $400 a month, for meals and drinks at spots like Grey Gardens, Piano Piano and Bar Raval. “I admit I could spend less, but I love exploring and experiencing new places in the city.” gym $60 a month, at GoodLife. laundRy $50 a month, for a wash-and-fold service. “I know I could do it myself, but I value the time I save.”
Recent spluRges
condo $60,000, for a down payment on a $319,000 one-bedroom unit in Corktown that’s currently under construction. She plans to move in once it’s completed in September 2020. tRavel $4,500, for a month-long trip to Greece, Turkey and France last April. dJ lessons $120 per lesson. “I took them every two weeks for a few months.” cameRa lens $250, for her Sony A6000. “I have a blog, and I’m trying to get more Instagram followers, so I’ve been working on my photography.” computeR $2,400, for a 2017 MacBook Pro. aRt $250, to buy and frame a piece she found in Kensington Market. “I was waiting to get into Cold Tea and saw this cool print at the flea market next door.”
photograph by erin leydon. reporting by luc rinaldi
emily Zajac, 27
Stir up the party with Juniper’s Wit Gin Crafted in Prince Edward County Available at the LCBO or our farm distillery visit us • www.kinsip.ca
The Audit
steakhouse and seafood
An appraisal of the month in money
$10 New surcharge applied to parking tickets that are mailed to car owners who drive away before the officer can place the dreaded yellow slip on their windshield.
$235
Amount of each fine issued by the TTC to those two accordionwielding outlaws who’ve been subjecting unsuspecting subway riders to their squeeze-box rendition of “Despacito.” (Heads up: they’ve since added Camila Cabello’s “Havana” to their repertoire.)
Elegance. Grace. Passion. “Best group functions” “Best steak” -DINE.TO Best patio with live entertainment. Open lunch & dinner
2179 Dundas St. E. Mississauga 905.625.1137 www.lacastile.com
LaCastile_TL0614.COLLEENindd 1
$48,000
Salary a Torontonian must earn in order to comfortably afford the average rent of $1,242 in the city, according to a recent study by the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario. The same study noted that nearly half of Toronto renters earn less than $40,000 per year.
$330,037
Average price of a house last year in London, Ontario, where, a CMHC report confirms, nearly 10 per cent of homes were sold to buyers fleeing Toronto. (The average price in 2016 was $283,778.)
14-04-24 2:22 PM
$875,000
Asking and eventual sale price of a three-bedroom Upper Beach semi that was reserved for “a deserving young family who will benefit from the neighbourhood and preserve and enrich the community.” Bidders were required to make their case by submitting a short essay.
List price for 4 Birchmount Road, a 12,000-square-foot lakefront house with a basement basketball court and enough space for 16 cars. At the time of this writing, it was also dilapidated, full of mould and infested with wild animals.
$577,000,000
Unpaid fines currently owed to the city for infractions ranging from speeding to trespassing to bylaw violations.
$3,200,000,000
Amount that Aurora Cannabis is shelling out to scoop up its biggest rival, Markham-based pot grower MedReleaf Corp. 36 toronto life July 2018
photographs: ticket by getty images; pot by istock
$3,800,000
REFLECTIONS OF WARTIME JUL 12–AUG 4, 2018
Borodin Quartet L’Histoire du Soldat Ben Heppner - O Happy Day Kinan Azmeh City Band New Orford String Quartet and MUCH MORE!
TICKETS ON SALE NOW! TORONTOSUMMERMUSIC.COM 416-408-0208 an Ontario government agency un organisme du gouvernement de lÕOntario
2018 Collaborative Artistic Partners:
The Upstart Toronto’s boldest innovators on what they’re making and how it works
how iT works: “Think of it as a FitBit for your screen time, where we’re measuring the time you spend away from your phone. The user sets the amount of downtime they want, and then Flipd digitally locks their phone until the countdown timer is up.”
CRISTIAN VILLAMARIN Co-founder and CEO of Flipd, an app that promotes IRL mindfulness by encouraging you to spend less time on your smartphone. COMPANY HQ: richmond and peter fOuNded: 2016 eMPlOYees: 6 users: over 300,000
eureka momenT: “I’m Colombian, and family is very important in our culture. My little brother is 11 years younger than me, but we’re really close. When he turned 13, I gave him his first smartphone, and it really freaked me out how quickly his behaviour changed. It actually affected our relationship. I realized how technology is changing all of us.” Tech jargon you use Too much:
your Turning poinT: “We got $50,000 in grants from places like MaRS and the University of Waterloo’s AC JumpStart program. That allowed us to hire some staff, find an office space and bring the whole team together.”
“Definitely ‘KPI’—key performance indicators.” Tech jargon you haTe:
“ ‘Growth hacking,’ because in reality, that just means marketing.” your go-To office aTTire “A plain T-shirt, jeans or chinos, and Nikes. I’m training for an Iron Man, so I run to work and back.”
your big-Time backers: “Techstars; Ryerson Futures; Figure 1 founders Gregory Levey, Richard Penner and Joshua Landy; and Candice Faktor of Faktory Ventures.”
The besT advice you’ve received:
“Think bigger.”
The worsT advice you’ve received: “ ‘Take money from anyone who’s willing to give it to you.’ A start-up doesn’t only need money; there needs to be strategy behind it.”
38 toronto life July 2018
if you weren’T running a sTarT-up: “I’d be running a taqueria selling super-expensive tacos. I lived in Mexico for a bit, so I know my tacos!”
coolesT Thing in your office: “We have these phone booths, so you can take private calls, or hide in there with a laptop and not be distracted." app you can’T live wiThouT: “Mint. I need to know where my money is going, and I like getting reports each month. ”
your Tech role model: “I don’t have one. I like to be the captain of my own ship; I’m not trying to be someone else.”
photographs: headshot courtesy of flipd; t-shirt, tacos by istock
how much you spenT iniTially: “The company started with three of us working from our homes—our CTO, Andres Moreno; our CMO, Alanna Harvey; and me. It was all sweat equity. We just put in as much of our free time as we could. There was no income; we all worked side gigs to pay the bills.”
Thank You!
A big shout-out to all of our guests for dancing up a storm at The River Ball on May 10, 2018. Thanks to you, we raised over $670,000 net to support the Mental Health & Addictions Program at Humber River Hospital. Your contributions will help change the lives of people in our community. Special thanks to our organizing committee led by Mary Mauti and Diana De Fulviis, our emcee Michael “Pinball” Clemons and Diane Clemons, hockey great Wendel Clark, and of course, everyone who supported the event! We look forward to doing it all again at The River Ball 2019! Revelry Sponsors
Merriment Sponsors
Specialty Pharmaceuticals
www.hrhfoundation.ca
Urban Diplomat A few members of my condo board read about that King West building’s plan to institute a $15 monthly fee for residents with dogs (to cover extra cleaning costs, supposedly), and now they’re floating the idea of putting one in place in our building. The dozen or so dogs that live here—including my own—have never made any trouble or caused any messes. This seems like a blatant cash grab. What can we do about it? —Barking Mad, Corktown I may be biased (full disclosure: yours truly has a shih tzu named Adonis), but what your condo board is considering is ludicrous. Whether they’re human or canine, condo residents are bound to cause wear and tear—and singling out one group to pay an extra maintenance fee smacks of calculated opportunism. Should your building post an official notice announcing the rule, you and the rest of the pro-pooch lobby will have 30 days to ask for a meeting and challenge the fee. If your powers of persuasion fail to sway the board—or your building’s management—it may be time to get a condo lawyer involved. The new revenue stream will seem less seductive when they’re facing a costly legal battle.
Dear Urban Diplomat, My friend became a dad six months ago, and every time I suggest a get-together, he insists on doing something babyfriendly. Last week, the three of us went to a Jays game; my friend assured me his son would nap in the Bjorn for the duration and we’d have plenty of time to catch up. But we barely saw each other—he had to keep getting up for walks around the stadium, because the kid wouldn’t quit screaming. I miss the good old days when there was no infant tagging along. How do I get my pal to ditch Junior every once in a while? —Two Men and a Baby, Bloorcourt First of all: wow. How old are you? I assume, since you can read and write, you’re not a preschooler, so stop behaving like you just dropped your ice cream
cone. Parenting means making sacrifices, and of course your pal will prioritize the needs of his tiny, fragile child over yours. Is the sound of infantile wailing grating? Sure. Could and should your friend take a night off from parenting every so often? Absolutely (for his sake, not yours). But this is a short-term problem: the baby will eventually mature out of his crying fits. You, I’m not so sure.
Dear Urban Diplomat, After waiting months for a reservation, my wife and I snagged a table at a popular upscale restaurant downtown. The meal was scrumptious, but I could barely savour it because our server’s vocal fry was a constant source of irritation. Seriously, she sounded like a defective carburetor. I think that quality establishments should be more rigorous when selecting front-of-house staff. Should I lodge a formal complaint? —Resto-ranter, Leaside Wait staff are already policed on just about everything: their hair, their clothes, their weight, not to mention the words that come out of their mouths. Thinking you have some say in the timbre of those words makes you part of the problem. If you really can’t stand the minor annoyances that arise from interacting with people, do yourself (and your potential future servers) a favour and order in. Send your questions to the Urban Diplomat at urbandiplomat@torontolife.com July 2018 toronto life 41
The Young Buyers Club
For Toront onians without a trust fund or the st omach for a three-hour commut e, home ow nership is b ecoming a pip e dream. But these nine ent erprising millennials all found a way t o b eat the market and bu y a home b efore the age of 30. H ere’s how they did it Interviews by Ali Amad Photography by Dave Gillespie
42 toronto life July 2018
The Penny Savers Kevin Wallace and Grace McClure kept a student lifestyle on adult incomes, and wound up with the perfect fixer-upper
The Backstory
In 2015, Kevin and I had both finished university and found full-time jobs, making a combined $150,000 a year, but were still accustomed to a student lifestyle—waiting for the discount night at Pizza Pizza, that sort of thing. GraCe:
Kevin: We lived in a basic one-bedroom at College
The Owners Kevin Wallace, 29, sales manager at a start-up, and Grace McClure, 28, content marketer at a start-up The Place A 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom row house at Geary and Delaware North The Price $802,000 The Closing Date December 4, 2017
and Crawford. Our rent was $1,675 a month. We never upgraded to a nicer apartment or bought a car, so we ended up saving a lot. GraCe: We never thought we’d be able to afford a
house. Then, in 2016, I saw a listing for a rundown place at Queen and Shaw for $499,000. We didn’t want it, but the price made us realize we could maybe do this, and we started searching for real. We drew up a lofty wish list: west end, garage, fireplace, not a condo, and with a basement apartment to rent out. We set a budget of $500,000 but realized that was hardly enough for a closet, so we stretched it to the low $900,000s. Kevin:
The Buy GraCe: Last November, we found a three-bedroom
on Delaware near Dupont, listed at $699,000. It was 105 years old but in good shape, and it had a basement apartment. Luckily, the listing photos were dark and blurry, and there was no open house, so we figured it wouldn’t attract much interest. We offered $103,000 over asking and won. We dipped into our savings, and I took out $25,000 from my RRSP for the down payment. By putting 20 per cent down, we avoided CMHC loan insurance. We got a 30-year mortgage through an alternative lender, not a bank, at a rate of 2.69 per cent. We moved in this past December and started renting out the basement in February, for $1,100 a month, which makes a nice dent in our $2,600 mortgage payments. We’re paying less now per month than we did as renters. Kevin: We’ve retiled floors, replaced cabinets and
appliances, and updated the staircase. We’re doing it ourselves with the help of family, so it’s been slow, but we’re just happy to be here. Things are still in deconstruction mode, but we’re chipping away to create the charm we wanted. We’re fine with the slow pace—we have no intention of moving for a long time. GraCe:
July 2018 toronto life 43
Pierre Barneto in the living room of his parents’ house
Young, restless Pierre Barneto didn’t see his friends for six months while he worked two jobs. It paid off: he moves into his townhouse this fall
The Backstory
I was studying kinesiology at York, but I wanted to do something more hands-on, so at 19, I dropped out to study to become a heating technician. I got a job as an insertion operator working from 3 p.m. to 11 p.m., five days a week, plus the occasional six-hour shift on Saturdays, making $14 per hour. It was hard work—I’d sleep for four hours and wake up with a headache from the lack of sleep. I worked a second job, too, at a rental equipment company, and saved by living with my parents, but I wanted my own place. There were other sacrifices. At one point, my friends went to Montreal, but I couldn’t get time off. It happened again when they planned a weekend camping trip. I went without seeing them for six months at one point, and when I did, it was for 15 minutes at a Tim Hortons, because I had to rush to my shift. Eventually, they started making plans without me. By late 2016, I had saved $55,000, so I quit one of my jobs so I could see my friends again, and I started looking for a place. I own a golden retriever, Mitzi, and wanted something pet-friendly, with at least two bedrooms and two 44 toronto life July 2018
bathrooms, in case I decide to rent the extra space. I set my budget at $440,000, and looked in Milton, Brampton and Hamilton. The Buy
The Owner Pierre Barneto, 24, HVAC technician The Place A 2-bedroom, 2-bathroom pre-construction townhouse in Stoney Creek The Price $434,900 The Closing Date November 20, 2019
This past February, I came across a three-storey pre-construction townhouse in Stoney Creek for $434,900. It met all my requirements, and there was an off-leash dog park down the road. I realized that a decent house in this market won’t wait. A buyer will always come along. So when I went to the sales office, I signed on the spot. I wanted to put down more than 20 per cent to avoid CMHC, so I cashed in my savings and borrowed from my RRSP and TFSA. Recently, I got promoted—I now make $65,000— so I’ll add another lump sum before the deal closes in 2019 to bring the down payment to $100,000. At my current rate, my 25-year mortgage comes to $2,200 a month. I’m going to continue living with my parents until then. In three years, I’ll renovate and rent out the basement. Getting here wasn’t easy, but I own a house! And now I see my friends twice a week and can keep up to date with their lives.
The Hustler Safras Lafeer chose burgers over steaks, saved his cash and managed to buy three properties over eight years
The Backstory
I’ve wanted to own a house ever since Grade 9. While I was studying finance at Ryerson, I lived at home and worked full-time hours doing tech support and sales for Rogers. My parents didn’t ask me to pay rent, but I’d still give them $300 to $500 a month. I kept other expenses low. When I would go out, I’d tell my friends I had only $5 to spend. They still tease me about that. I never did the things people typically do in their 20s: I didn’t party or own a car—though I’d always coveted a Mercedes—and I certainly didn’t go out for steak dinners. My friends and I would grab two Junior Chicken sandwiches from McDonald’s instead. I never thought of it as a sacrifice. I just thought, “This is what I want, and this is how I’m going to achieve it.” I believe in investing my money and using debt to leverage my assets. That’s why I’ve never opened a savings account. At 19, I bought a $260,000 pre-construction condo at Don Mills and Eglinton. I was committed to putting 20 per cent down by the time it was completed four years later, which would give me time to earn the funds.
I was in school for almost six years, during which I rarely had a weekend off, between work and classes. I operated on five hours of sleep and napped whenever I had the chance. By the time I graduated, I’d paid off the condo. The Buy
The Owner
Safras Lafeer, 27, real estate agent The Place A three-bedroom, two-bathroom semi at Danforth and Donlands The Price $571,000 The Closing Date September 4, 2014
I was working as a salesman for Pearson, an education company, so I bought a three-bedroom semi in East York, where I grew up. I used $30,000 in cash, two credit cards and a student line of credit to cover the 10 per cent down payment. I was making good money, but I could only qualify for a 30-year mortgage through alternative financing, at 3.99 per cent. I moved into the semi in late 2014, then sold my condo for $341,000, which paid off all my debts. Then I bought a bungalow in East York—a four-bedroom for $745,000—and rented out its two units, for a total of $3,400 a month. I’m now paying off two mortgages, for the semi and the bungalow, which total $5,000 a month. My income is north of $200,000, so I can comfortably cover the payments. After so many years of sacrifice, I treated myself: I bought a Mercedes C-300. July 2018 toronto life 45
The Good Son Scott Symington put away 10 per cent of every paycheque, limited his vacations and eventually bought a four-bedroom detached
The Backstory
Near the end of high school, I read The Wealthy Barber and began putting aside 10 per cent of my earnings. I never viewed it as a sacrifice, because I had a long-term plan in mind. I would see people blow cash on unnecessary things like a second pair of shoes, just because they were nice. I never did that. I kept my spending low and rarely went on trips. My only major expenses were $750 to help fix the shingles on my parents’ roof and $2,000 for a used GMC Sierra. Mind you, I still went out to eat on occasion and even travelled to Las Vegas with my family. After high school, I continued living with my parents in Whitby while I studied to become a maintenance technician. I graduated in 2014 at 19 and got a full-time job at a water plant in Pickering. I decided that when I moved out, it would be into a place I owned rather than to help pay off someone else’s mortgage. I wasn’t in a rush, but when the market started to cool last summer, it felt like a good time to buy. I enlisted a family friend who is a real estate agent. I had more than $65,000 saved up by June 2017— enough for a decent-sized down payment and 46 toronto life July 2018
some buffer room in case finances got tight—and my budget was $400,000. I wanted something close to work, ideally in Durham where prices are lower than anything closer to Toronto. I lived in a townhouse until I was nine years old and could always hear the neighbours, so I was set on a detached. A second bathroom was another item on my list, because it increases resale value. The Owner Scott Symington, 23, maintenance operator The Place A 4-bedroom, 2-bathroom detached bungalow in Oshawa The Price $378,000 The Closing Date September 29, 2017
The Buy
I looked at a few houses every week and eventually came across a four-bedroom bungalow a 25-minute drive from work. The sellers had dropped their asking price from $430,000 to $380,000, and they told me they had just bought another house, so I knew they were motivated to sell. I was approved for a 25-year mortgage at 2.54 per cent, offered $370,000 and, after a bit of negotiating, got it. I moved in last September. It was a big change from living with my parents to paying for everything, including $1,700 a month for the mortgage, but I haven’t had to renovate, so my expenses are low. I plan on staying long-term. The extra space means I can stay put if I start a family.
Navigate here just east of Toronto.
GETAWAYS FESTIVALS
44.2928° N, 77.8008° W Ranney Gorge Suspension Bridge, Campbellford
ADVENTURE
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Mr. Thrifty Martin Willemsma gave up nights out at the bar, lived with his parents and purchased a three-bedroom with a rentable basement
The Backstory
After finishing my mechanical engineering degree in 2012, I was lucky to get a job in my field, eventually making between $70,000 and $80,000 per year. I paid my parents $500 a month to live in their Brampton basement and saved much of my salary for a down payment. I used to go out with my friends a lot, hitting the bars downtown and dropping $8 or more per beer. But as the years wore on, my friends started staying home more often, and it became easier to save. My older sister and her husband own three detached houses across the GTA, and I figured I’d try to follow their lead. At the end of 2017, the market dipped slightly, so I made my move. Based on my savings, I was eligible for a mortgage in the $300,000 to $350,000 range, but if my dad co-signed, I could afford at least $575,000. A must-have for me was a basement apartment I could rent out. My agent and I looked at six houses in Brampton. I really liked a three-bedroom that was only a two-minute walk from the Heart Lake Conservation Area. Because I’m a mechanical 48 toronto life July 2018
engineer, I look at the structure and bones of houses, and I could tell this one didn’t have any major problems. The Buy
The Owner Martin Willemsma, 27, mechanical engineer The Place A three-bedroom, one-bathroom house in Brampton The Price $565,000 The Closing Date November 27, 2017
I scrounged up the $38,000 down payment by combining my savings and $25,000 I got from drawing on my RRSP. I was approved for a five-year fixed term on a 25-year mortgage, which will cost me $2,700 a month. I made an offer, conditional on inspection, of $7,000 under asking, which the seller accepted. I moved in the day after closing. After all the fees and expenses, I had about $9,000 in my account, so I have to be extra conscious about my spending. I’ve added a second bathroom, and I’m putting a few thousand into renovating the basement so I can rent it out. I’m doing the work myself on the weekends and aim to have it all done in the next month or so. After that, I should have more disposable income. I’ve taken a leap of faith that nothing bad will happen until I get the basement to a rentable state. My fingers are crossed.
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The Long view Sean Cooper worked three jobs, swore off lavish trips, bought a bungalow and paid it off in three years
The Backstory
I grew up in the Beaches, and during university, I lived in my mother’s house rent-free. I had three part-time jobs while studying, so I was able to graduate debt-free in 2009 with money in the bank and start paying my mom $600 a month for rent. In 2010, I got a full-time job at a pension consulting firm downtown, and on weekends I worked at No Frills. I was busy all the time, but I viewed the sacrifice as short-term pain for long-term gain. In December 2014, for instance, I made almost $14,000 as a freelance finance writer, but the workload nearly killed me. Including my other jobs, I worked 100 hours a week and completed more than 70 assignments. I even missed my family’s holiday party. Meanwhile, I rarely ate out or bought clothes, and when I’d travel, it would be to Niagara Falls instead of somewhere exotic. The Buy
I started searching for a house after graduating. I looked for a detached house with a finished basement that I could rent out. I also wanted something close to transit. I’m not very handy, 50 toronto life July 2018
The Owner Sean Cooper, 33, mortgage agent The Place A 4-bedroom, 3-bathroom detached house at Kingston and Danforth The Price $425,000 The Closing Date August 1, 2012
so I avoided fixer-uppers. I made a bunch of offers and lost each one, and was ready to give up when I found a place at Kingston and Danforth that had everything I wanted. The seller was holding back bids until an offer date, so I made a bully offer of $25,000 over asking, and the seller accepted. I had $170,000 saved, enough for 40 per cent down, which made my five-year mortgage very manageable. My mortgage payment is $3,400 a month. I moved into the basement and rented out the main floor, which fetches $1,600 a month in rent. I kept working long hours and took advantage of all possible prepayment privileges, and after three years, I had paid off the house. I held a mortgageburning party. I’ve had the same tenants for three years and have only had to do minor repairs, so things have gone very smoothly. My long-term goal is to attain a net worth of $1 million by the time I’m 35 and retire early. I guess I could have had more fun if I had taken longer to pay off my mortgage, but now I can enjoy financial freedom and travel while I’m still young. This summer, I plan to travel across western Europe. My fun had to wait, but it was worth it.
Here’s what we think we know about millennials:
They cannot afford a all of their money on
because they spend and
But, here are the facts:
They give to more charities, including arts organizations, than any other generation.
To learn more about the impact this generation is having on the future of arts and culture in Canada, visit:
www.businessandarts.org/culturetrack
Power Couple Amanda Diep and Steven Trieu wanted to own a house before age 25. In six years, they’ll have fully paid off their east-end bungalow
The Backstory
The Buy
STeven: In 2010, a year after Amanda and I met at
STeven:
By the middle of 2015, we’d paid off all our student loans and had $175,000 saved up. We set a budget of $600,000 to $700,000 and started going to showings that summer. All told, we made seven offers but were always outbid. We must have spent more than $2,000 on home inspections alone.
aManDa: Our family and friends didn’t believe we’d
be able to do it, and that motivated us. We both lived with our parents, which allowed us to pay off our student loans. I worked up to 20 hours a week at the Ryerson MBA office while taking a full course load. STeven: I worked, by turns, as a bank teller, a TA,
an accounting intern and a landscaper. After we graduated in 2014, Amanda got a job with the City of Toronto, and I worked a couple of part-time jobs. We worked so much, we didn’t have time to spend. We avoided credit cards and saved half of every paycheque. We still had some fun. We set aside three per cent of each paycheque, and travelled to Vegas, Cuba and Cancun. aManDa:
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The Owners Amanda Diep, 26, program development officer with the City of Toronto, and Steven Trieu, 26, budget analysis supervisor in the city’s finance department The Place A 2-bedroom, 2-bathroom detached bungalow at Birchmount and St. Clair The Price $650,000 The Closing Date June 24, 2016
Eventually, we found a two-bedroom bungalow minutes from Warden station, completely renovated, with a large backyard and a rentable basement. The asking price was $599,000. We offered $650,000 and got it. Our 30-year mortgage means we pay a very manageable $2,000 a month at the current rate. aManDa:
STeven: We moved in a month after the purchase,
by which time I’d found a full-time job. We’re actually paying more than our minimum right now—between $5,000 and $6,000 monthly, so we’re on pace to have the house paid off in six years. Our family and friends don’t think we can do that either!
photograph by daniel neuhaus
Ryerson, we read about how difficult buying a house would be for new university graduates. We joked about how we could buck the trend and buy a house before age 25. Then it became our goal.
Join us for
GARDEN
PARTY 2018 On Wednesday, July 18, Toronto Life will once again bring together music, food and the gorgeous outdoors in our popular fourth annual Garden Party event. Eat your way through the top catering in the city while sipping signature beverages. Your ticket price includes access to all indoor and outdoor activities, cocktail reception, standing dinner as well as an exclusive garden tour by Toronto Botanical Garden.
Toronto Botanical Garden Wednesday, July 18 6:00 p.m. - 9:30 p.m. Tickets: $69 per ticket $120 per pair (Must be 19+ to attend)
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House of Horrors It started as a vicious custody battle and ended in a triple homicide—a father, a mother and their son, all brutally, systematically killed in their Mississauga home. The inside story of the murders on Pitch Pine Crescent b y m i c h a e l l i s ta
photographs: house by peter j. thompson/national post; couple by jeff heuchert/ metroland file photo
In the fall of 2000, fresh out of high school, Melissa
Melissa Merritt and Christopher Fattore decided to kill her ex-husband’s family when they threatened to seize custody of her kids
Merritt started working at My Favourite Doll, a massive retailer in Mississauga festooned floor-to-ceiling with Barbies encased in plastic capsules. Melissa was pleasant and smiley, even a little naïve. Not long after she started her job, she fell in love with Caleb Harrison, a handsome young man who worked in the warehouse. Caleb had a kind, mischievous smile, thick dark hair and an almost shy, guileless quality to his eyes. He was smart and sweet, a hard worker with a soft spot for pretty girls like Melissa. Once they got together, they were inseparable. Caleb would drive Melissa to and from work, and their co-workers would catch the couple making out in his car before and after their shifts. They took their lunches together, and Melissa would cook dinner for him every night. At 27, he was still boyish and playful, and he would tease her by farting in the lunchroom and holding her close while she squirmed. That winter, there was a death in the Harrison family, and Melissa wanted to go to the funeral with Caleb, to support him and meet his relatives. It would mean that she’d need to take a day off work, and she was worried that her manager at My Favourite Doll would balk. So instead of asking for permission, she banked on forgiveness and left a message on her manager’s voicemail, telling her she would have to miss a day for the funeral. When the couple returned, Melissa was fired. She burst into tears, surrounded by Barbies. Caleb was furious and quit in solidarity. Within a couple of years, they were married and had two children, a boy and a girl. Caleb was a devoted dad and even tattooed his kids’ names on his right shoulder. But his marriage to Melissa was a rocky one that soon dissolved into acrimony and violence. During an argument in 2005, Caleb hit her, and after spending three nights in jail was released on his own recognizance. The couple split, and he moved back home with his parents. In July 2005, Caleb was invited to a keg party in Milton. He wasn’t going to drink—one of the conditions of his release was that he couldn’t consume alcohol. He had borrowed his mother’s Mercedes, and he told the three friends he was with that he’d be their designated driver. But Caleb liked to drink. He was working construction then, and after his shift he’d often unwind at the bar before going home to his parents’ house. He could usually handle his beer. Hard liquor, though, changed him. As the crickets sang into an empty suburban summer night, he allowed himself one drink. Then another. Then another. By the time he was ready to leave, he’d consumed nearly three times the legal limit. Caleb poured himself into his mother’s Mercedes. His friends realized he was too drunk to drive. They refused to get into the car and began walking home. Caleb was alone, driving down Derry Road. Heading home in the other direction were four young men in a cab driven by Michael Rayment, a Milton taxi driver. As their headlights set upon each other, Caleb crossed the centre line and drifted into Rayment’s lane, colliding head-on with the taxi at 100 kilometres per hour. Rayment was killed. Tom Falinski, in the back seat, broke an arm and a leg, and fractured his spine from his L2 to his L4 vertebrae. Tim Corbett flew forward from the rear passenger seat face-first into the turnbuckle between the front and back doors, shearing his scalp cleanly off his skull from his eyebrow to his ear.
July 2018 toronto life 55
Both cars burst into flames. The other two passengers climbed out of the flaming taxi and into a ditch. As they stared back, their friends looked dead to them, slumped in the back seat with the fire closing in. Neighbours along Derry Road raced out at the sound of the accident, and pulled Corbett and Falinski from the taxi. And Caleb’s friends, who were just up the street and witnessed the crash, ran down Derry and pulled him from the very car they’d had the good sense to avoid. Caleb’s leg was broken and he suffered a few bumps and bruises, but those injuries were minor compared to the ones he’d inflicted on others. He’d killed a man and brutally wounded two more. As the flames climbed above the wreckage, he couldn’t have known that by taking that first drink, he’d set into motion the events that would destroy his life, scattering his family like embers in the updraft.
Caleb Harrison was arrested, and charged with
impaired driving causing death and bodily harm. He made bail, the strict conditions of which included house arrest at the family home on Pitch Pine Crescent in Mississauga, where his parents, Bridget and Bill Harrison, had lived for over 30 years. It was an airy six-bedroom modernist home with cathedral ceilings and high windows. His mother, Bridget, was born in London, Ontario, in 1946. Stylish, adventurous and passionate, as a young woman she had been an accomplished actress, appearing on the London TV show Act Fast, as well as in plays at the Stratford Festival. It was backstage there in the early 1960s that she met her future husband, Bill, a Stratford native who worked in the costume department. Bill was athletic and handsome, with a magnetic smile and a taste for car racing and jazz. When they married in 1969, they moved to Mississauga. Bridget worked as a teacher, then as a principal, eventually serving on the Peel school board, and was beloved by her students and colleagues. Bill was an executive for Sobeys, and volunteered as a Big Brother and a Little League baseball coach. He had a green thumb and was the family gardener. The couple couldn’t have kids naturally, so they adopted Caleb in 1973, when he was six months old. Bill always called his son his best friend. After Caleb’s accident, justice proceeded slowly, as it typically does in Ontario. His defence lawyer was unavailable to represent him at trial for a number of months, and then the judge presiding over the case fell ill. The trial was put off for another year, and then Caleb’s lawyer was again unavailable. When the preliminary hearing finally commenced, the Crown realized it hadn’t sent out summonses to a number of witnesses, and the case was postponed yet again. After a three-year delay, Caleb’s lawyer argued that his client’s Charter right to a speedy trial had been violated and that his case should be dropped. A judge dismissed the motion. Melissa Merritt was outraged by Caleb’s car crash, taking it as proof that he was an unsuitable father. She became fiercely protective of her two kids. As both sides awaited the decision in the drunk-driving case, another judge had ruled that Caleb and Melissa would share custody of the children. Meanwhile, they had both fallen in love with people they’d met online. Caleb was dating Corinda McEwen, who had two children of her own. The Harrison family embraced her as one of them, and she became especially close with Bridget. She considered Caleb an excellent father—attentive, tender and always interested in talking things through with his kids.
56 toronto life July 2018
the father april 16, 2009: Bill Harrison, a 64-year-old retired Sobeys executive, is found dead in the bathroom of his house
Melissa, meanwhile, had started a relationship with Christopher Fattore, who worked as an occasional security guard. A Green Bay Packers fan, he was built like a linebacker himself. He was doting and protective, deeply loving toward Melissa and her children, and filled with loathing for Caleb Harrison. From his left elbow to his wrist, he had a tattoo that read, “Only the strong survive.” Melissa and Caleb never formally divorced, but she and Chris still held a ceremony of their own, Melissa in a white gown and Chris in a kilt and jacket. They plunged a knife together into a cake adorned with his-and-hers crowns, their hands entwined on the hilt. Chris later inked a wedding band around his ring finger, punctuating his arm like a period. Several months after the ceremony, Melissa and Chris welcomed their first child, a girl. In the spirit of the icy Darwinian slogan on his forearm, Chris had taken it upon himself to create a Facebook page rallying for the stiffest possible sentence for Caleb. “This is Caleb Harrison,” Chris wrote, “the dick that killed someone drinking and driving. He’s, unfortunately, also my wife’s ex-husband.” He posted a doctored photo of Caleb with devil horns and menacing teeth, and a speech bubble coming out of his mouth that read: “Give me a beer and the keys to mommy’s Mercedes.” He saw Caleb Harrison as a dangerous, drunken rich kid who was imperilling the lives of the children Chris was now helping to raise. He was soliciting 100,000 signatures and asked people to forward the page to everyone they knew. “This man has gotten away with too much already in his life,” Chris wrote. “It can’t keep happening.” As the impaired-driving trial dragged on, the acrimony between the two families crept to a crescendo. Melissa filed a number of complaints with both the Children’s Aid Society and the police about Caleb’s supposed ill-treatment of their children. Few of those allegations could be substantiated. A judge presiding over their custody dispute suggested that Melissa and Caleb
on e fa M I ly, T H r e e v IC T I M s
illustrations by chloe cushman
the mother april 21, 2010: Bridget Harrison, Bill’s wife, is discovered at the bottom of her staircase with a broken neck
communicate only in writing, to keep things civil, and so she became a prodigious letter writer. Bill and Bridget were actively involved in raising the kids, which irked Melissa. She accused the Harrisons of neglecting her daughter, which she called disgusting. She complained that she had to accommodate not just Caleb’s work schedule, but his parents’ as well, even though the children were supposed to be his responsibility. And she said when Caleb couldn’t care for his children, he’d dump them into the laps of other caregivers—their grandparents—which served only to estrange them from their own mother. The battle started to get sinister when Melissa accused Bridget of writing Caleb’s letters for him and told her to butt out of their business. She accused the Harrisons of slapping her son and took it upon herself to withhold the children from the family, convinced she was doing her motherly duty by keeping them safe from a dangerous man and his enablers. But a judge intervened and upheld the shared custody ruling, adding a clause stating that the police should be notified if the Harrisons were denied access again. During Caleb’s trial, Melissa and Chris would sit at the back of the courtroom and whisper to each other. On at least one occasion, they made faces at the Harrisons. As court adjourned, Melissa and Chris were scrummed in the hall by reporters and happily dished to the press. In the parking lot, the couple pulled their car in front of the Harrisons, sticking their tongues out. Caleb refused to engage with their histrionics, but Bridget was troubled by it all. On March 9, 2009, Caleb was convicted of one count of impaired driving causing death and three counts of impaired driving causing bodily harm. The judge sentenced him to 18 months at Maplehurst. But if Melissa and Chris were hoping their custody battle was over now that Caleb was incarcerated, they were about to be sorely disabused. Bill and Bridget filed a motion to
the son august 22, 2013: Caleb Harrison, the couple’s son, is strangled to death in his bedroom
transfer Caleb’s custody rights to them while he was in prison. Less than two weeks after the sentencing, a judge granted the motion, writing that where Caleb’s name had been, Bill and Bridget Harrison’s would now appear. Almost a month later, on April 16, Bridget came home late, around 9 p.m., from a school board meeting. The house was silent and dark, and Bill didn’t answer as she called his name. Minutes later, she found her husband. He was in the main-floor bathroom, with the lights off, dead. Bridget called 911. “He’s not breathing,” she said to the dispatcher. “He’s not breathing. Oh my god.” He appeared to have removed his wedding ring and crucifix necklace, taken out his Swiss Army knife, and brought blood pressure and pain medication with him into the bathroom. One of the officers at the scene, a rookie in his second year, wrote in his notebook: “Sudden death, doesn’t appear to be any foul play.” It so happened that in the days leading up to Bill Harrison’s death, his grandchildren, unbeknownst to him or anyone else in the Harrison family, had told their teachers that they were going on a trip. On the very same day that Bill died, in contravention of a custody order, Chris and Melissa packed up their home, dyed their kids’ hair, unplugged from the grid and disappeared.
The birth of modern forensic pathology in
Canada coincided with the death of Bill Harrison. Most of the developed world started training forensic pathologists in the 1960s and ’70s. It took Canada 40 more years to train our first. The only reason Ontario eventually modernized the discipline of forensic pathology was because of the catastrophic failings of one man who purported to practise it: Charles Smith. Tall and trim, bespectacled with prematurely graying hair that gave him an aura of authority, Smith was a pediatric pathologist at SickKids hospital in Toronto from 1981 to 2005. He had
July 2018 toronto life 57
no training or accreditation as a forensic pathologist, but by the 1990s he had come to be regarded as an expert in the field. What’s the difference between a pathologist and a forensic pathologist? The former studies the living, and the latter studies the dead. Forensic pathology has its own body of knowledge, professional training, medical journals, conferences, and more. And yet, in 1992, Smith was named director of the Ontario Pediatric Forensic Pathology Unit, not because of his qualifications—he had none—but because he was the only one willing to take the job. Smith had declared himself the leading mind in his discipline, and his authority went unchallenged for a quarter-century. He lectured extensively—to police, to coroners, to Crown prosecutors— about a science he didn’t understand. But his methods revealed his near-total ignorance of forensic pathology. He almost never visited the scene of the death he was investigating, the elementary first step. He would rarely collect germane medical information of the person whose autopsy he was performing, and the data he did bother to gather was disorganized. And he took great interest in the deceased’s so-called “social history”—the details of their personal lives that rarely had any scientific bearing. Though Smith was little more than an avid amateur at forensic pathology, his findings or testimony at trial often sealed the fate of a criminal defendant. In one horrifying case, Smith determined a man named William Mullins-Johnson had sexually assaulted and strangled his niece while babysitting her. He was convicted and served 12 years in prison before his wrongful conviction was overturned. In 2007, the Office of the Chief Coroner conducted a review of the homicides and criminally suspicious deaths that Smith had overseen, and found that in 20 of the 45 cases, his testimony or report was suspect. A dozen of those cases resulted in a criminal conviction. Smith’s career ended in abject disgrace. A public inquiry was commissioned in 2007 to survey the state of pediatric forensic pathology in Ontario, headed by Justice Stephen Goudge. His findings came to be known as the Goudge Inquiry. One of its key recommendations was the creation of the Ontario Forensic Pathology Service, an oversight body for forensic pathologists. The plan was set into motion mere months before Bill Harrison’s body was discovered locked in a darkened bathroom. He received “a non-forensic autopsy,” conducted by what’s called a “community-based pathologist,” with no specialty certification in advanced post-mortems. And even though Bill had a fractured sternum, and bruises on his head, face and neck, the pathologist nonetheless decided that he had died of a cardiac arrhythmia—that the heart of a hale, athletic 64-year-old man had suddenly stopped for no reason. He was cremated, and Bridget interred her beloved husband five days after he died, on April 22. With his body no longer available as evidence, Bill Harrison returned to dust.
The flowers didn’t bloom anymore at the Harrison house after Bill, the family gardener, died. For Bridget, the promise of spring still seemed a long way off. In the back of her mind, she couldn’t put to rest the sense that the police and the coroner were wrong about Bill’s death, and that Melissa’s disappearance the same day Bill died was more than just a coincidence. Caleb was still serving out his sentence, but Bridget’s grandchildren were missing. The day after her husband’s funeral, she went to court, and a judge granted her
58 toronto life July 2018
On the day of Bill Harrison’s death, Melissa and Chris packed up their home, dyed their kids’ hair and disappeared
temporary sole custody of them, wherever they may be. A month went by, and the police still had no trace of them. Another month came and went. On June 15, only three months into his 18-month sentence, Caleb was paroled and returned home. Meanwhile, Melissa and Chris had made a life for themselves and their three kids in the tiny village of Londonderry, Nova Scotia, a once-bustling steel town whose population crashed to little over 200 after the mills closed a hundred years ago. There, Melissa gave birth to her fourth child—her second with Chris. He’d assumed a new identity, and it was only when he accidentally delivered a rent cheque in his own name that police found them. Melissa was arrested on November 27, 2009, and charged with parental abduction. As a condition of her bail, she was barred from having any contact with Caleb or their two children. Not only did she lose the children she’d fought so hard to keep, but she’d also have to stand trial. On the couple’s computer, someone had been doing some alarming googling: “What if a grandparent has legal custody and they die?” “Legal custody and they die” “If a grandparent has custody of the children and they die, which of the parents get the kids?” “Bridget Harrison” “Bridget Harrison, Mississauga” They had even googled how long it took someone to die from being choked. On April 10, 2010, Caleb and Bridget spotted Melissa and Chris outside their house, a violation of her bail conditions. Again, she was arrested, and again she was released on bail. A few days later, on the anniversary of Bill’s death, friends and family gathered in the house on Pitch Pine Crescent to grieve and celebrate his life. Bridget was set to testify at Melissa Merritt’s parentalabduction trial on April 22. She had written a victim impact statement on the hellish year that had started with a hellish day—the death of her husband and the abduction of her grandchildren at virtually the same moment. “Some people believe in coincidences,” she wrote. “Some do not.” The day before the trial date, Bridget dropped off her grandchildren at school and Caleb at work. When her grandson returned home later that afternoon, he found her lifeless body at the bottom of the stairs, her skin waxy and discoloured, feet from where she’d found her husband just a year before. Her grandson raced across the street to a neighbour’s and called 911. A paramedic named Patrick Morin responded, and found Bridget’s body at
Chris Fattore and Melissa Merritt were arrested for the Harrison murders in January 2014
the foot of the stairs with her head resting on the bottom step, abrasions visible on her chin and ear. She was fully dressed, wearing a pair of Crocs, with her glasses and purse scattered before her. It looked like she’d been heading out the door. Bridget had a broken neck, several broken ribs and evidence of neck compression, which suggested she was asphyxiated. Police interviewed Caleb, and he asked them to look closely at Melissa and Chris. But the forensic pathologist who performed her autopsy was still completing the training that the Goudge Inquiry had recently recommended. Bridget Harrison’s death was ruled suspicious—as opposed to natural—but not a homicide.
Caleb was nearly broken by his mother’s
death, and he slipped into a depression. He separated from Corinda and started to drink again. But his love for his children buoyed him. Five days after his mother was found at the bottom of the stairs, he was awarded temporary sole custody. Melissa would be allowed to see them only during supervised visits. Melissa and Chris and their own growing family left Mississauga for Perth County, near London, Ontario, where they rented a farm, and Chris got a job at a poultry plant. They lived in a little brick house with a wooden screen door painted blue. They had two dogs, a guinea pig and a rabbit. They raised goats and pigs, which delighted Melissa, and from the milk they made cheese and lotions. They were obsessed with the idea of being self-sufficient, of producing everything they needed themselves. Melissa had a knack for crafts. She made taffy and candles at home, and crocheted bookmarks, bow ties and what she called apple cozies, which would protect apples from getting bruised. She sold them on her Etsy store, called The Good Ol’ Days. She started a blog, writing one day about a cold that swept through the house: “Two adults and five kids all laying around the house suffering from cold symptoms. We did nothing but whine and complain to each other comparing who felt worse. I still say it was me because sick or not mommy still needs to take care of everyone.” Their days weren’t entirely carefree. Every so often, they would search for news online about Bill and Bridget Harrison, and one of them used the computer to google: “how to tell if your phone is tapped.” Despite whatever suspicions Caleb may have had, he volunteered to give Melissa unsupervised access to their children. The kids would stay with Chris and Melissa and their half-siblings
in Perth for a week, then come back to the house in Mississauga for a week. The couple were doting and playful parents, taking the kids to water parks, Niagara Falls and restaurants. Melissa would do crafts with them all, and Chris even put together a “Harlem Shake” video of the blended clan. Early in the morning of March 1, 2012, when Melissa was five months pregnant with her sixth child, she and Chris awoke to rattling at their bedroom door and smoke pouring in underneath it. They grabbed the children from their beds and escaped out their bedroom window. The fire had started in the living room, and consumed their beloved little bungalow and all its contents, killing their dogs, the guinea pig and the rabbit. They moved into a hotel and started a GoFundMe page, which raised only about 10 per cent of the $50,000 they had hoped to recover. Making matters worse, the tenuous détente between Melissa and Caleb began to collapse. She and Chris had found a new place to live, back in Mississauga. But Caleb had decided that he no longer wanted Melissa to have unsupervised access to their children. August 22, 2013, was to be the family’s last night alone together. Video footage from that day shows Melissa and Chris going to Walmart to buy a pair of men’s sneakers. Caleb, meanwhile, was trying to be a good father. He was back with Corinda, and he had a steady job at CMC Electronics. He still couldn’t drive, but he’d arranged for a neighbour to take the kids, now 10 and 12, to and from school. He brought them to the park most days and even volunteered as their baseball coach, just as his own dad had done for him. He was doing the best he could, confiding to a friend that he was depressed, but not suicidal. On August 22, Caleb took the kids to their baseball game, then dropped them off with Melissa. Corinda was supposed to go to the game that night and then stay over, but she was behind on an online course she was taking and didn’t trust the spotty Internet at Caleb’s house. He called her that night around 11. He sounded drunk and said he was going to put on a movie. They fought over the phone, about money and the house. When they hung up, Caleb turned off his phone, as he did every night. He was a light sleeper. In the middle of the night, Christopher Fattore, wearing latex gloves and the shoes he’d bought the day before, arrived at Caleb’s house. He got inside using a key he’d stolen from Melissa’s eldest son. He crept past the bathroom where Bill Harrison had been found, then up the stairs where Bridget had lain, and arrived at Caleb’s bedroom. It was filthy—Caleb didn’t want his cleaning lady to tidy up the bedroom, and a layer of
July 2018 toronto life 59
The deaths of the Harrison family required a re-evaluation. one murder investigation had turned into three
dust and dog hair carpeted the floor. Standing over Caleb as he slept, the colossal man delivered a thunderous punch to his victim’s chest. Caleb shot up, and the two started to struggle. Caleb, drunk and tiny next to Chris, stood no chance. Chris threw him like a rag doll into the shelves beside his bed. In his final moments, Caleb begged for his life, offering his attacker money. But Chris didn’t say a word. Caleb clawed at him, to no effect. Chris clamped his hands around Caleb’s neck—just above where he’d tattooed his children’s names—and squeezed.
The cleaning lady had been at the house for hours
when Caleb’s colleague came by at around lunchtime, concerned that he had missed work without so much as a phone call. He figured that Caleb was still sleeping and knocked on the bedroom door. “I’m scared, I’m scared,” the housekeeper said. They let themselves in to find Caleb’s body in his bed. The co-worker kept repeating Caleb’s name, putting his fingers to his friend’s neck. It was as cold as clay. The cleaner asked over and over if he was okay. When the paramedics arrived, one of them was Patrick Morin, who thought: “I’ve been here before.” He was the same paramedic who had responded to the scene when Bridget Harrison died. Unlike Bill’s and Bridget’s deaths, Caleb’s was very quickly determined to be a homicide, by asphyxiation. And that was in no small part because, finally, a fully trained and certified forensic pathologist had performed the post-mortem on a member of the Harrison family. Suddenly, the three deaths of the three Harrisons, an entire nuclear family, required a wholesale re-evaluation. This was no longer an investigation of a single homicide, but two, and then three. The police began surveilling Melissa and Chris almost immediately. The DNA found under Caleb’s fingernails matched Christopher Fattore, and undercover officers tailed him as he ran errands, drinking from a cup of Tim Hortons coffee. When he discarded it, an officer surreptitiously retrieved it. Another cop, posing as a waste collector, rode the back of a garbage truck as it ran its route past the Fattore home in Mississauga. One of the trash bags contained the shoes that Chris had bought at Walmart, whose soles were covered in dog hair, and latex gloves that had Caleb’s DNA on the outside and Chris’s on the inside. At the house on Pitch Pine Crescent, investigators found the tempestuous correspondence between Melissa and the Harrisons. Melissa tried to go to Caleb’s wake, but was turned away by his family and friends. As the authorities built their case, she and her family planned to start over one last time. Now that Caleb was dead, the Harrison line of custody extinguished,
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Melissa had their children exclusively, and her family was complete. They moved back to Nova Scotia, near the sea. In November, as the winter finally threatened, the family went to a nearby beach famous for the sea glass that washes up, the cutting edges dulled by wave after wave after wave, made good by the awesome indifference of the ocean. This one looked like a spade from a playing card. That one looked like a heart. They collected all the broken pieces, put them in a Mason jar, and made what had been ruined beautiful again. A few months later, in January 2014, Detective Phil King from Peel Region flew to Nova Scotia and, with officers from the local RCMP dispatch, drove to the Fattore house on Isner Diversion Road. He had warrants to arrest both Melissa and Chris for Bridget and Caleb’s murders while the police continued to investigate Bill’s death. Chris walked out onto the porch as they arrived. He was arrested without a struggle, but he was so huge that they had to handcuff him using leg irons. Melissa too was arrested, and they were brought to the local station and put into separate interrogation rooms. In hers, Melissa doubled over and wept. Chris’s interrogation room was no bigger than a bathroom, eight feet by six, windowless, lit fluorescently from above, with concrete walls and a green floor, just big enough to fit him and his interrogator, Phil King, sitting knee-to-knee. After 13 full hours of interrogation, with a catch in his voice, Chris finally told the detective: “I didn’t like Caleb Harrison.” Trying one last time to save his wife, he said: “I’m telling you right now that Melissa Merritt did not know anything until after it was done.” “What did you do?” King asks. Video of the interrogation shows Chris staring down at his huge hands folded in front of him. He inhales, then sighs for what feels like forever, and doesn’t look up. Finally, to his interlocked fingers, he says: “I killed Bridget Harrison and Caleb Harrison.”
In January 2018, a jury foreman stood in a Brampton
courtroom and read the verdicts in the Harrison murders. Christopher Fattore and Melissa Merritt were found guilty of the murder of Caleb Harrison. Chris was also found guilty of murdering Bridget Harrison. The jury could not come to a verdict on the first-degree murder charge Melissa faced in the death of Bridget Harrison, and so the court declared a mistrial. And in the death of Bill Harrison, Chris, who alone faced a second-degree murder charge, was found not guilty due to insufficient evidence. The children were sent to live with the Merritt family, and both Melissa and Chris received life sentences, with no chance of parole for 25 years; they say they’re planning to appeal. The Peel police are conducting an internal review of the case, to determine whether or not mistakes were made in the three investigations. But that doesn’t satisfy the surviving members of the Harrison family, who are calling for a public inquiry. In court, Chris and Melissa would stare at each other and give tender, even ironic smiles. They were clearly still very much in love. One day, the jury heard a recording taken just after their arrests, when they were being flown back to Ontario. Police put them in a room together that unbeknownst to them was bugged. “What did you tell them?” Melissa asked. “I’m taking the rap for it to get you a lesser—to give you accessory after the fact,” Chris said. “I told them I told you after.” “Why did you do that?” “Because I want you to get our children,” he said. ∫
CAMH Difference Makers National Chairs Sandi and Jim Treliving Photography: Miguel Jacob
CAMH Difference Makers united the country for mental health Thank you for sharing your stories, for helping us break down stigma and for igniting a national conversation on mental health. A special thank you to National Chairs Sandi and Jim Treliving for leading a movement of mental health champions in every corner of our country. We hope all Canadians will join them in carrying the mental health message forward! #MentalHealthIsHealth NOMINATING CO-CHAIRS Louise Bradley
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FLAVOUR COUNTRY Food-loving day trippers have a bumper crop of reasons to hit the road this summer. Here, our picks for the best restaurants outside Toronto right now by m a r k p u p o
p h o t o g r a p h y by dav e g i l l e s p i e
Pearl Morissette’s aged Berkshire pork with grilled greens, and a vinaigrette of salted wood nettle and grilled wild leek oil
it’s a rare chef today who doesn’t dream of greener pastures, literally: running a restaurant in the country, with small-scale organic farmers next door and heirloom tomatoes plucked from the back garden. That’s why the new prestige posting for many chefs is at a secluded winery, a picturesque inn or a historic estate surrounded by nature. Follow their trail and you just might encounter some of the best dining in the entire country.
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Fo r s o m e o F t h e Fi n e s t d i n i n g i n w i n e c o u n t ry (o r a n y w h e r e)
The Restaurant at Pearl Morissette where:
3953 Jordan Rd., Jordan Station driving time From toronto:
1.5 hours
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The vineyards in the Jordan Station– Vineland area of the Niagara Peninsula tend to be smaller operations centred around a family farmhouse. The widely admired small-batch producer Pearl Morissette—which takes its name from the owner, Toronto developer-investor Mel Pearl, and his winery’s classically trained vigneron, Francois Morissette— is down a dirt driveway, past a pen of sunning pigs and grazing cows. While there’s no wine shop or buses parked in front (tastings are by appointment only), there is an austere black building, built to resemble a barn, that houses the most
extraordinary new restaurant in the province, and perhaps the country. The co-chefs, Daniel Hadida and Eric Robertson, are bookish, ambitious and French-trained. Their cooking credits include the great kitchens of Edulis and Langdon Hall, plus prestigious postings in France and Belgium. Their kitchen and the lofty, gallery-like dining room, which opened in November, are on the barn’s second floor, with views of Lake Ontario and the Niagara Escarpment deepening to purple at dusk. Farm-to-table sounds too modest for Hadida and Robertson’s carte blanche photograph on previous page by daniel neuhaus
1. Scallop with salted apricot juice and prickly ash powder 2. Plum saison brewed at Toronto’s Burdock Brewery, with fruit from Pearl Morissette
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3. Chefs Daniel Hadida and Eric Robertson 4. Dry-aged grass-fed beef with grilled budding kale, radishes and sweet onion sauce
menu, which changes so frequently that they’ve taken to calling it “microseasonal.” Introductory bites might include momentarily grilled, quartersize Qualicum Bay scallops in a pool of butter and fermented peach juice; a few inches of a turnip, intensely sweet after being poached in chamomile-infused pear juice and wrapped in sheets of lardo and shavings of prickly pear; and a tiny bowl of oysters poached in pork broth made from salted, dried ham (those pigs do more than sun themselves). That’s followed by three savoury and two dessert courses, each delivered with a
quick explanation of kitchen wizardry so involved that the only reasonable response is “wow.” Consider the potato: first shaved into a long, paper-thin ribbon, it’s wrapped into a tight spiral with extra-peppery arugula, then pan-roasted with beer and whey, and finally draped, for good measure, with potato cream and pops of caramel-coloured pickerel roe. No less ingenious are coins of carrots, fermented in salt until they taste like a cross between candied apples and cedar, that accompany a fillet of line-caught Nova Scotia halibut steamed and dusted with a powder of dried sassafras leaf; the
rutabaga syrup used to glaze a chicken breast that has been slow-smoked and finished on the grill; and the clouds of parsnip mousse in a dessert of creamy oat ice cream and a streusel-like dusting of roasted chicory. Many diners are already fans of Morissette’s wines, available as pairings or by the bottle. I’m especially fond of the 2016 Cuvée Sputnik, a frothy riesling that seems to change profile with each sip. Like Hadida and Robertson’s cooking, it has personality to spare. Cost: $78 per person for a five-course dinner, plus optional wine pairings. July 2018 toronto life 65
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photograph by contributors name tk
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1. Devilled hen’s egg with rosemary and tangerine marigold flowers, bronze fennel, wood sorrel, nasturtium and mint 2. Seared venison roasted with duck fat, served with preserved wild berries, honeycrisp apple jam, braised red cabbage purée and crispy cabbage chips 3. Chef Jason Bangerter 4. Sea scallop with lemongrass velouté and ocean mist
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Fo r a n ov e r-t h e -to p ov e r n i g h t g e taway
Langdon Hall where:
1 Langdon Dr., Cambridge driving time From toronto:
One hour
The 116-year-old mansion, converted to a country hotel and spa in the late 1980s, seems like it was purpose-built for wedding photography—especially the 30 hectares of manicured gardens that also supply its kitchen with produce, herbs and honey. Jason Bangerter, who made
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his name running O&B’s Auberge du Pommier, took over as chef in 2013. The grand surroundings come with valet parking, a dress code (jeans are forbidden and men encouraged to bring suit jackets) and a classical pianist who might cut loose with a sleepy version of “Lady in Red.” If you’ve travelled this far for dinner, splurge on the seasonal tasting menu, which is equally polished, exquisite and eye-catching. Fried sunchokes are served on a slab of bark, B.C. caviar in an ornate glass vitrine atop a piece of porcelain shaped like a chicken foot, and the scallop with a lemongrass velouté in a deep stoneware bowl into which the server pours a flower tea that activates a rising mist of
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dry ice. The list of extravagances extends to a beef cheek blanketed in shavings of black truffle, a ruby slice of uncommonly tender seared venison glazed with duck fat, and an intensely creamy dark chocolate mousse jolted by salty flecks of crisp chicken skin. At some point in the evening, usually after the second bottle of wine, neighbouring tables start comparing notes on their dinners and discover that, oh, you’re from Toronto, too? Followed by talk of wine club memberships, the kids’ outrageous tuition costs and the perils of downtown commutes. Travel as far as you want; the city is never far behind. Cost: $165 per person for the tasting menu. Rooms from $340. July 2018 toronto life 67
Fo r a h i n t o F n a pa va l l e y i n n i aga r a
Backhouse where:
242 Mary St., Niagara-on-the-Lake driving time From toronto:
Two hours
There’s no shortage of charming gingerbread storefronts in Niagara-on-theLake. But this restaurant sits next to a Subway and a convenience store in a strip mall far removed from the town’s picturesque main street. It’s one of those unpromising locations that only
heightens the feeling of a special discovery. Chef Ryan Crawford—taking inspiration from an apprenticeship at Michael Stadtländer’s iconic Eigensinn Farm and a spell at the French Laundry, Thomas Keller’s Napa Valley landmark— practises what he grandly calls “integrated cool-climate cuisine,” borrowing a wine term to describe how almost everything he cooks hails from nearby, including from his own produce farm less than a kilometre away. He cures his own bresaola and brines his own breadand-butter pickles. He dresses a salad of just-picked greens with barely-there verjus and locally cold-pressed canola oil. The pork in a light ragoût for a bowl of hand-made rigatoni comes from
Berkshire pigs that roam freely on a neighbouring farm, dining on acorns and spent grains from the Oast House brewery. The dining room, filled with happy Shaw-goers, is spare and elegant, with oak logs stacked by the entry, a glassed-in wine cellar, and a view of an open kitchen where Crawford works a wood-fired brick oven and grill. I especially recommend the burger, which is flash-charred, and stacked with crisped pancetta, a funky aïoli made with local black garlic, pickles and melting slices of mimolette. It’s so good you might believe burgers are a local invention, too. Cost: $99 per person for the 12-course chef’s tasting menu. Wine pairings from $89.
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1. House-made speck, capicollo, duck liver mousse, apricot compote, bread-andbutter pickles, and wood-oven rye and whole wheat sourdough breads 2. Chef Ryan Crawford 3. Burger with black garlic aïoli, pancetta and mimolette cheese 4. House-made rigatoni bolognese
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1. Where the lounging, stargazing and beanbag toss happen 2. The crispy potato latke slathered with crème fraîche and topped with salt cod and sprigs of fresh dill 3. Chef Alexandra Feswick
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Fo r a s l i c e o F Q u e e n w e s t in the count y
Drake Devonshire where:
24 Wharf St., Wellington driving time From toronto:
2.5 hours
The marketing pics for the Drake’s Prince Edward County inn give the impression of countryside isolation and Hudson’s Bay blanket–wrapped stargazing around a campfire. Instead, it’s located smack in the middle of smalltown Wellington, a few steps from the 70 toronto life July 2018
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main street, where the big attraction is a Foodland that’s overrun on weekends with ice cream–seeking campers from nearby Sandbanks Provincial Park. What the inn lacks in seclusion it makes up for with signature Drakeness. It’s heavily art-directed, nostalgic and woodsy, like a Wes Anderson movie set in Ontario cottage country, with a Ping-Pong room, crannies stuffed with vintage Canadian bric-a-brac and surreal-ish contemporary art. The inn’s bar, serving P.E.C. wines and clever variations on classic cocktails, is the county’s most dependable nightlife destination—weekly open-mike nights often become sing-alongs. What’s not a surprise is the inn’s restaurant menu,
which shares DNA, and an emphasis on super-hearty fare, with the Drake’s three Toronto locations; the chef in charge is Alexandra Feswick, until recently the executive chef of the Queen West flagship. I’m fond of her crispy salt-cod latkes dipped in crème fraîche; a richly cheesy block of mushroom-and-taleggio lasagna; and roast chicken from a county supplier, its skin crisp and mahogany, with a side of enough root veg to see you through next winter. Some nights, she’ll roast those chickens over an outdoor firepit—the same one from the photos. Cost: $50–$75 per person for dinner. Rooms from $359 during the summer months and $209 in winter.
Celebrating a 10 year affair! 10th Anniversary Open House June 30 & July 1 Complimentary Tastings Winery Tours Tide & Vine Oyster House BBQ Live Music Located in the heart of Wine Country, Foreign Affair Winery is celebrating 10 years of delighting palates with big bold red wines, and elegant whites hand-crafted in the appassimento method.
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Fo r a c e l e b r ato ry d i n n e r with the thrill oF escape
Quatrefoil where:
16 Sydenham St., Dundas driving time From toronto:
One hour
If there’s ever a weekend traffic jam in the Hamilton suburb of Dundas, condocrammed Torontonians are a likely cause, drawn here by tales of affordable detached (detached!) houses on leafy streets, a main thoroughfare lined with cute boutiques and smart espresso bars run by disarmingly cheery millennials, and a commute that feels only slightly longer than the wait for a seat on a King West streetcar. All is true—and you can start planning your move over dinner. Quatrefoil’s co-owners, Fraser Macfarlane and Georgina Mitropoulos— he’s the chef; she’s a former chef who runs the front-of-house—trained under Scaramouche’s Keith Froggett and in some of Europe’s best restaurants. It shows in the crisp white linens, flickering votive candles, smooth wait staff, and cooking that’s elegantly French and occasionally trendy, but never intimidatingly far out—you’ll recognize everything on your plate. My most recent visit was on the first warm night of spring, and there was a distinct sense of celebration in the full house of partying colleagues pillaging the long, thoughtful wine list; date-night parents, phones at the ready for emergency response; and at least one proposal (we all clapped). I loved my peppery torchon of foie gras, dressed with three variations of carrots (pickled ribbons, a jam and a jelly); a tartare of ruby-red bison and overly generous shavings of black truffle, with a thick slice of house-made brioche; the rich coat of jus on short ribs, so tender they collapse at the gentlest touch; and the contrast of creamy, saffron-scented yogurt and toasted wheat berries hiding under a slab of perfectly seared Arctic char. Desserts tend toward the abstract, like a deconstructed pie of intensely sweet maple fudge, torched marshmallow and a drift of buttermilk sorbet. A word of warning: the proportions of everything—save the amuse-bouche and meal-ending passion fruit macaron— are as big as a Dundas backyard. Cost: $80–$100 per person for dinner. 72 toronto life July 2018
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1. Braised beef short rib with root vegetables, onion soubise and a shower of jus
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2. Quebec foie gras surrounded by carrot, orange, puffs of wild rice and moscato jelly, served with toasted brioche 3. Deconstructed maple fudge pie topped with toasted marshmallow and buttermilk sorbet 4. Chef and co-owner Fraser Macfarlane
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Waterworld
Inside Scarborough’s hidden community of floating homes by jonat h a n f or a n i
photography by derek shapton
A row of 24 “float homes” has existed at Bluffer’s Park Marina for nearly two decades
Turn The page for more
July 2018 toronto life 75
D
ocked among the sailboats of Bluffer’s Park Marina, on the Scarborough lakeshore, there’s a row of 24 floating homes. These aren’t soupedup yachts or houseboats. Their owners call them “float homes.” The odd, aquatic structures were built by a company called Ichor Marine between 1999 and 2001. Like regular houses, the float homes are stationary, with nine-foot ceilings, drywall, furnaces, air conditioning and gas fireplaces. Unlike regular houses, they float on concrete barges. They also sit on rented property: the marina is on city land, with a lease that expires in 2022. As a result, float homes aren’t the same kind of ironclad asset as a detached home or even a condo. And they can be tricky to finance, because many banks are reluctant to make loans on properties that are technically watercraft. Even so, float homes don’t come cheap. The last few sales ranged between $650,000 and $1 million. There are also monthly moorage fees of around $700; plus, owners pay a portion of the marina’s property tax— about $1,000 annually. And, unless owners want to empty their own septic tanks every month or two, there are $40 fees for that, too. Despite all the quirks and complications, the neighbourhood has attracted residents who cherish the cottage-like lifestyle the homes provide. “As long as there’s a marina there, the float homes will be there,” says Paul Peic, an ex–float home owner who now runs a website about the community and acts as a de facto real estate agent for owners. Here are some of the people who live on the water’s edge.
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George and Glen host friends and family so frequently that the Murphy bed is rarely tucked away. 2 They keep a Mason jar filled with corn so they always have something to feed the ducks. 3 The two wooden paddles function as float home decor when the couple aren’t using them to cruise along the Bluffs in their red canoe. 1
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The Part-Timers George Aitken, a 50-year-old finance worker, and his partner, Glen DeFreitas, 51, also in finance
In 2014, George and Glen decided to invest in a cottage. But the thought of sitting in bumperto-bumper traffic all the way to Muskoka didn’t appeal to them. When they came across a listing for a float home, they biked down from their Cabbagetown row house for a look. The first one they saw seemed a bit too small. Two years later they tapped their home equity line of credit and bought a different one. The structure bobs on the water in windy weather, but, once they got their sea legs and figured out how to adjust their ropes with the changing seasons, they never looked back. They’ve learned to stock up on supplies so they don’t have to make frequent grocery trips. (The marina has a snack bar, a sports bar and a restaurant. That’s it for nearby amenities.) They still spend most weekdays at their Cabbagetown house, but they plan to start staying entire summers at the float home once they both retire. July 2018 toronto life 77
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The Collectors John Whyte, a 69-year-old retired lawyer, and his wife, Ingrid Whyte, a 64-year-old retired corporate fundraiser
Ingrid and John were retiring in 2015 when they bought their float home. Their plan was to use it like a cottage in the city for the first year, living in their family home in Scarborough, and only staying at the Bluffs on weekends and for holidays. But they were so entranced by the lifestyle that they ended up selling their home and moving into the float home full-time just a few months later. It didn’t take them long to figure out that space is at a premium. “Everything that you bring into the house, you have to think about,” Ingrid says. They have managed to keep a collection of nearly 1,000 books by adding additional ballast tanks underneath the house, which prevent it from sinking under the weight of all that paper. This year marks their third summer in the float home, which they’ve dubbed Swan’s Way, a reference both to Marcel Proust and to the trumpeter swans they enjoy watching from their deck. “They’ll probably have to carry us out,” Ingrid says. “We’re really happy down here.” 78 toronto life July 2018
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1 The previous owner installed artificial turf on the home’s deck. “Now instead of cutting grass,” Ingrid says, “I just have to vacuum it.” 2 The poles remind Ingrid and John of gondola posts in Venice. 3 Ingrid used to work in publishing, and John is a book collector. They originally had about 5,000 volumes. Books are squirrelled away throughout the home.
The mermaid weathervane was Linda’s decorative touch. 2 Tom acquired this shark from a former neighbour who didn’t know what to do with it. 3 All of their water equipment straps to the side of their house, making it simple for them to get into the lake. 1
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The Snowbirds Linda Elliott, a 67-year-old retired union organizer, and her husband, Tom Elliott, a 62-year-old sales worker
When Tom and Linda bought their float home in 2012, they knew immediately that it was perfect for them: it needed only minor upgrades, and it was smack in the middle of the row, protected from the sounds of the marina’s restaurant at one end and the boatyard at the other. Their tranquil new abode made their old neighbourhood in the Beaches seem hectic by comparison. There are drawbacks. “You live 36 inches away from your neighbours,” Tom says. “But the closeness develops a really good sense of community.” The float home complements their active lifestyle. (Tom is into competitive water sports, and Linda is a tennis player who was once nationally ranked.) When they kitesurf, they don’t need to strap their gear to the roof of a car. They just jump in. They’ve started spending the colder months in Mexico, where they have another property. When they return to Canada, the float home’s compact size and low-maintenance landscaping make it easy for them to slide back into their Toronto lives. July 2018 toronto life 79
1 Penny and Russell explore the lake with a Pelican paddleboat and a stand-up paddleboard. 2 Penny spent a year carving this Nova Scotia–style lighthouse. The wood is oak from the forest near their cottage. 3 The 1950s cedar-strip boat was no longer water-worthy, so they cut away a third of it and turned it into a kitchen counter. That’s a rose quartz boulder beneath the bow.
The Originals Penny Barr, a 63-year-old retired artist and designer, and her husband, Russell Low, a 64-year-old retired letter carrier
Penny and Russell bought their float home in 2001, as the community was being built. They had made trips around the world, from Vancouver to Amsterdam, to admire floating dwellings just like these. “I said, ‘Let’s buy it’ before we even saw it,” Penny says. They’re now the only remaining original owners. To save some money, they bought the place unfinished. At first, there was only drywall, roughed-in plumbing and wiring. They put in laminate flooring, railings and exterior decking, and installed a bathroom with cedar-strip walls. Learning to live in their new home was a literal balancing act. They had thousands of vinyl records, and they had to get rid of all but about 1,000 of them in order to shed excess weight. All the float-homers are conscious of overwhelming the flotation tanks under their homes with heavy possessions. Over the years, the couple have expanded their flotilla. Penny spends much of her time in a 33-foot Dutch-style riverboat docked separately nearby, which she has retrofitted into an art studio. 80 toronto life July 2018
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The Condo Convert Linda Sockett, a 62-year-old homemaker
In 2011, when Linda and her husband, Jim, were looking to downsize from their large family home in the Beaches, they assumed a condo was in their future. But their plans changed when they came across the Bluffer’s Park community. They used the proceeds from the sale of their house to make the purchase. Jim died two years ago, but Linda has found a supportive community in her fellow float-homers. “It’s quite different moving down here. You’re literally tied together,” she says of her neighbours. In warm weather, she and her friends often kayak around the lakeshore and host game nights. When rough weather hits, they band together, and in some cases suffer the consequences together. If they don’t make sure their lines are taut and adjusted for the changing winds throughout the year, their homes can bash into one another. Otherwise, the living is easy. Linda likes to spend her days sipping coffee on her deck, or sharing cocktails with a neighbour and watching the water. Now, the idea of moving into a condo is unfathomable.
When Linda and Jim bought the home, it was named Shorts, though none of their new neighbours knew why. They decided Lakehouse was a better moniker. 2 The octagonal porthole-style windows are a subtle nautical touch. 3 The small set of steps helps Linda’s 11-year-old pug, Bella, make it up onto the couch easily. 1
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The Chase
New House, No Mortgage
A couple sell their home for a small fortune and look for a cheaper one by gr a h a m s l augh t e r The buyers: Tiiu Remmel, a 42-year-old HR consultant, and Tarmo Remmel, a 43-year-old geography professor at York University. The sTory: Tiiu and Tarmo were living happily in a semi-detached home in
Little Italy when they noticed a spate of remarkable sales on their street. In one case, a house’s value jumped $600,000 within three years. They weren’t interested in buying a more extravagant place, but they started to consider doing the opposite: selling their existing house, which they were still paying off, then buying a less expensive one and living mortgage-free. They hoped to find a detached home close to the subway. Ideally, they’d have some cash left over to fund an RESP for their two-year-old daughter, Kalli.
Winona Drive (near Oakwood and St. Clair)
OPTION 2
DunDurn CresCent (near Oakwood and St. Clair)
THE BUY
Mavety street (near Annette and Keele)
Listed at $929,000
Listed at $1,099,000
Listed at $995,000
Sold for $1,142,000
Sold for $1,390,000
Sold for $1,271,000
Scanning the TTC map, Tarmo and Tiiu landed on Humewood as their ideal neighbourhood. This three-bedroom house was two minutes from St. Clair Avenue and within walking distance of Regal Road Junior Public School. The backyard was a little cramped, and the basement was worryingly damp, but the main level’s open floor plan was a big selling point. Although they hadn’t sold their existing home yet, they considered bidding $1,090,000. They got cold feet when they learned that there were a bunch of other bidders.
This four-bedroom house was just around the corner from the last place. It had a massive yard, and the detached garage had been converted into a lounge space, making it a perfect nook for relaxing or entertaining. By this point Tarmo and Tiiu had sold their Little Italy home for $1,665,000—nearly double what they bought it for in 2012—and set a firm budget of $1,300,000. There were 10 other bidders, so they came in strong with a first bid of $1,250,000, and tossed in an extra $30,000. When that wasn’t enough, they let the remaining bidders duke it out.
After the bidding brawls in Humewood, Tarmo and Tiiu started to scope out neighbourhoods along the BloorDanforth line. This six-bedroom near High Park, built in the early 1900s, still had plenty of its original features, including stained-glass windows. But the layout needed work: the kitchen was awkwardly divided. They bid $1,251,000, then threw in another $20,000 to get the place. In the process, they completely nullified their mortgage and, to their surprise, ended up in a bigger house than the one they started in.
82 toronto life July 2018
portrait by erin leydon
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Chilling Me Softly The creamiest, dreamiest, most over-the-top soft serve sensations of the summer
photographs by vicky lam. styling by carol dudar. ice cream tech by joe kelsey
by a l e x ba l di nge r a n d r e be c ca f l e m i ng
A Mythical Treat
cutie pie cupcakes
Unicorns aren’t real, as far as we know, but if they were, they’d nod their uni-horns at Cutie Pie Cupcakes’ kaleidoscopic Unicorn Cone. A tie-dyed waffle cone is filled with lavender ice cream, coated in a sweet champagne drizzle, and sprinkled with a rainbow of candy stars, dots and doodads. And because it’s from a bakeshop, it’s topped with your choice of miniature whoopie pie. $8. 235 Spadina Ave., 416-593-9323.
July 2018 toronto life 85
Turn The page for more
Loop-De-Loop
junked food co.
Follow your nose to this Queen West drunk-food counter, where their Fruit Loop Fever cerealinfused ice cream is served on a base of chocolate chip cookie dough and finished with a rainbow mohawk of Froot Loops. $4.95. 507 Queen St. W., 647-343-5326.
Red Rapture
sweet jesus
This relatively reserved creation (you should see some of their others) from the darling of the city’s cone-hounds has crumbled red velvet cake, a schmear of cream cheese icing, a raspberry drizzle and crunchy meringue shards over a twisting tower of vanilla. $7.50. Multiple locations.
Bumpy Ride
wooffles and cream
A freshly pressed Hong Kong egg waffle, either sweet or savoury, is wrapped like a fluffy robe around a twist of oft-changing flavours, including milk tea and ube. The trick is to break off a bubble or two and dip it into the ice cream. $7. 8360 Kennedy Rd., Markham, 647-281-0487.
Dark Star
iHalo kruncH
Claims of charcoal’s health benefits may be dubious, but pitch-black charcoal soft serve in a waffle cone of the same hue is peak Instagram fodder. Just don’t plan any photo shoots or public speaking engagements until after you brush your teeth. $6.50. 318 Queen St. W., 647-505-3777.
Secret ’Stache
tHe fix ice cream Bar
This cup of surprisingly creamy vegan peanut butter soft serve is finished with a chocolate crackle, a dusting of candied peanut powder, and your choice of curlicue, handlebar or bushy vegan chocolate ’stache. (They call it Like a Sir for a reason.) $6.50. 207 Queens Quay W., 647-977-2767.
Duck Fat Rules wvrst
Sweet up front and savoury in the back, Wvrst’s salted maple rosemary soft serve is the perfect herbaceous segue from dinner to dessert. While you’re at it, ask them to add some crunchy duck-fat fry bits. We shouldn’t have to tell you why. $6.50. 609 King St. W., 416-703-7775.
Visual Melt
la diperie
The opportunities for mix-andmatch combos at this Danforth dessert parlour are infinite, but we like the Kid at Heart, with its Yayoi Kusama–like technicolour sprinkles. (There’s dark fleur de sel chocolate, too, for kids with more mature palates.) $5.15. 372 Danforth Ave., 416-901-7130.
Tea Party
roselle desserts
For 50 cents extra, Corktown’s cute-as-abutton confectionery will take their earl grey soft serve to the next level by adding house-made lemon curd, crispy white chocolate bubbles and a mini–shortbread cookie. $5. 362 King St. E., 416-368-8188.
When You Dip, I Dip BooyaH
There’s something so perfectly summery about a straight-up dipped cone that we sometimes prefer to overlook the flashier fare. Here, soft serve goes for a brief plunge in a tub of Belgian chocolate and emerges with a smooth new coat. $4.70. 16 Vaughan Rd., 647-347-2001.
Minty Fresh
Bar ape gelato
The flavours change often at this small-batch-gelato window, but the fior di latte–style fresh mint is a perennial favourite. Made with nothing more than sweetened milk and fresh herbs, it has nothing in common with the neon-green stuff you’ll find in the back of a freezer. $4.42. 283 Rushton Rd., 647-223-4931.
Cookie Monster
cHocolats favoris
Covered in white chocolate that hides an avalanche of cookie crumbles, the Cookies and Cream cone is like an inside-out Oreo. Make it “kooky” by adding dark chocolate coulis and bitty cookie balls. (FYI, bibs are provided.) $7.98. 1440 Major Mackenzie Dr. W., Vaughan, 905-303-1616.
Meet Your Matcha Hollywood cone
Gilty Pleasure
eative film cafe
The city’s glitziest soft serve comes blanketed in a sheet of 24-karat gold. The precious metal itself is tasteless, but every lick of the stuff comes with a teeny metallic zing—a gentle reminder of how fancy you are. $12. 230 Augusta Ave., 416-890-9079.
It’s no surprise a place that uses whole doughnuts as toppings makes surreal soft serve. For this one, a mug rimmed with white chocolate shavings is filled to the brim with matcha soft serve, topped with a chimney of Kit Kats, and finished with whipped cream and a trio of Pocky sticks. $17.99. 1167 Queen St. W., 647-350-2663.
Over the Rainbow tom’s dairy freeze
Since 1969, Tom’s has enticed people to its Queensway corner for classic treats, and the colourful Rainbow Flavour Burst cones are hard to resist. Each stripe stands on its own: the orange tastes like orange, the strawberry tastes like strawberry, and the “blue goo,” well, that tastes like cotton candy. $5.75. 630 The Queensway, 416-259-1846.
Bread Winner
forno cultura
Bread is at the heart of everything this bakery makes—including gelato. Sourdough steeped in milk becomes the base, imparting the final product with a subtle toastiness. Toasted walnuts and burnt salted caramel make it one of the most gastronomic cones in town. $5. 609 King St. W., 416-603-8305.
Butter Up
piano piano
There’s a playfulness to Victor Barry’s Italian dining room that extends to the soft serve options, which have included strawberry Nesquik and rich chocolate Ovaltine. But it’s not all child’s play: the brown butter version is velvety and sweet with just a touch of savoury, and coated in brown-butter crumbles. $9. 88 Harbord St., 416-929-7788.
Cereal Killer
momofuku milk Bar
Christina Tosi, the confectionery queen behind Crack Pie, has some serious soft serve game. A frozen swirl of her ingeniously trademarked Cereal Milk creation, dipped in crunchy cornflake bits, tastes just like Saturday morning cartoons. $6. 190 University Ave., 2nd flr., 855-333-6455.
Sweet Stack
eva’s original cHimneys
This is no ordinary cone: it’s a chimney, a doughy Hungarian specialty, coated in sugar and served warm. The inside of the Dream Cone is coated with Nutella before the ice cream goes in, which is then topped with brownie, salted caramel streaks and toffee bits. $9.75. 454 Bloor St. W., 416-697-8884.
TONY aNd LINa GaGLIaNO, SaraH FULFOrd aNd KEN HUNT
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HEXaGON’S OCTOPUS TOSTada
What’s better than hitting one of Toronto’s best restaurants for dinner? Hitting 23 of them in a single night. That’s what happened in late April at Evergreen Brick Works, where more than 1,200 guests gathered to feast on some of the city’s best dishes and celebrate Toronto Life’s annual Where to Eat Now issue. Crowd favourites included General Assembly’s wood-fired pizzas, Estia’s perfectly grilled octopus with spicy ’nduja, Bacchanal’s luscious escargot agnolotti and miniature Paris-Brest pastries, and Café Cancan’s heaping foie gras parfaits on brioche with strawberry-rhubarb jam. Visit torontolife.com for full party coverage.
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ONE OF 14 PLAYS ON STAGE DURING THE 2018 SEASON.
Our guide to the hottest summer events happening just outside the city
summer road trip E d i t i o n
1
A viral photo sensation’s IRL exhibit ARt | Vivian Maier: Street Photographer To Jan. 9, 2019, Art Gallery of Hamilton
hamilton
As a full-time nanny in Chicago, Vivian Maier kept her passion for photography a secret. But a few months after her death, in 2009 at the age of 83, her stunning black-and-white images were discovered in a storage locker, then surfaced online and quickly went viral. The Art Gallery of Hamilton’s career-spanning retrospective collects many of Maier’s most striking photographs of Chicago and New York street life in the ’50s and ’60s, along with images taken in Egypt, Bangkok, Italy and the American southwest. Collectively, these photos offer an impressionistic portrait of a secretive artistic mind. July 2018 toronto life 93
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elora
A music festival in paradise MUSIC | Riverfest Elora Aug. 17 to 19, Bissell Park, Elora Once a small-scale event that showcased regional roots music acts for a crowd of hundreds, Riverfest Elora has stepped up to compete in the summer concert big leagues. This year promises to be their most expansive edition yet, with Oklahoma psychedelic circus the Flaming Lips and B.C. pop queen Carly Rae Jepsen (pictured) topping the bill. Also on the lineup: Toronto indie phenoms July Talk, blue-collar troubadour Donovan Woods and, because no summer is complete without a drunken group sing-along of “Lost Together” under the southern Ontario skies, CanRock legends Blue Rodeo. Bonus: attendees can camp out for the weekend at the nearby Elora Gorge conservation area and take a dip in the province’s prettiest swimming hole.
theAtRe | The Tempest To Oct. 26, Festival Theatre, Stratford
It’s a brave new world at the Stratford Festival this summer, as some of its finest female actors are taking on some of Shakespeare’s most iconic male characters. Among them is the legendary Martha Henry, who stars as the powerful magician Prospero in The Tempest, directed here with a sci-fi flourish by Antoni Cimolino. The islandset fantasy of revenge and forgiveness is believed to be Shakespeare’s final work, and the role of Prospero is often considered to be a career culmination for actors. This production actually brings Henry’s Stratford career full circle—she made her festival debut in 1962 playing Prospero’s teenage daughter, Miranda. 94 toronto life July 2018
photographs: jepsen by getty images; tempest courtesy of stratford festival
stratford
3 A flip of the Bard
summer road trip E d i t i o n
windsor
blyth
4 A curling comedy theAtRe | The New Canadian Curling Club To Aug. 23, Blyth Memorial Community Hall, Blyth
5
A feast of Warhol
photographs: curling courtesy of blyth festival
ARt | Andy Warhol: Printed Food Matter
How do you welcome Syrian refugees to Canada? In Mark Crawford’s play The New Canadian Curling Club, one small town decides to offer free lessons in our country’s other favourite ice-based sport. A group of immigrants sign up to learn the game, only to have their ailing instructor replaced by the rink’s Zamboni driver—a curmudgeonly oldstock Canadian whose prejudices are as evident as his curling skills. More than just rocks collide as he sets out to turn his new trainees into a proper team.
To Sept. 30, Art Gallery of Windsor
The man who saw the beauty in Campbell’s tomato soup is at the centre of the Sandwich Project, the Art Gallery of Windsor’s ongoing exploration of how food impacts society. The show collects Warhol’s prints of fruit, soda, fish and beef from throughout the ’70s and ’80s, which probe the intersection of nature and commerce as only he could. The exhibit also includes Warhol’s 1964 experimental film Eat (in which artist Robert Indiana slowly consumes a single mushroom), plus other food-themed work by contemporary visionaries like Elizabeth Buset, Chloe Wise and Kari Cholnoky.
July 2018 toronto life 95
millbrook
theAtRe | Who Killed Snow White? Aug. 6 to 25, Winslow Farm, Millbrook
On the Winslow Farm in bucolic Millbrook, the 4th Line Theatre is celebrating its 27th season of presenting new plays by top Canadian playwrights in an outdoor setting. This summer, they’re staging the world premiere of Who Killed Snow White?, a hard-hitting drama by the alwaysprovocative Judith Thompson that tackles teenage cyberbullying and the culture of toxic masculinity. The ambitious play, featuring a cast of 26 actors, brings the #MeToo phenomenon to small-town Ontario with the story of 15-year-old Serena, whose harassment on social media has a devastating effect on both her and her rural community.
niagara-onthe-lake
7
A musical monument to an Indigenous icon CLASSICAL | Sounding Thunder: The Song of Francis Pegahmagabow July 22, Gambrel Barn, Elora
This multimedia performance uses film, dance, drumming and chamber music to present the remarkable story of an Ojibwa man who served as a sniper in World War I. Post-war, he became an ardent activist for Indigenous rights, serving two terms as chief of an early Aboriginal political organization. Set to music by Tim Corlis with text by Ojibwa poet Armand Garnet Ruffo, Sounding Thunder gives voice to a muchneglected Indigenous hero.
8 Narnia re-chronicled theAtRe | The Magician’s Nephew To Oct. 13, Shaw Festival Theatre, Niagara-on-the-Lake
In 2016, Shaw artistic director Tim Carroll worked box office magic with his Stratford version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Now, he brings Narnia to Niagara-on-the-Lake. C. S. Lewis’s prequel to his classic fantasy series finds young Digory and Polly plunged into multiple worlds when they are tricked by Digory’s uncle into using enchanted rings. In a fresh adaptation by Michael O’Brien, Carroll’s clever staging conjures a fantasy world from a jumble of cardboard boxes. 96 toronto life July 2018
photographs: millbrook by wayne eardley; pegahmagabow courtesy of canadian museum of history; narnia courtesy of shaw festival
6 A small-town #Metoo tale
elora
summer road trip E d i t i o n
9 elora
A tribute to Italy’s most scandalous composer
ClAssICAl | Gesualdo Six
| July 26, St. John’s Church, Elora
It takes ample bravado to name a vocal ensemble after the Renaissance’s most notorious composer. In 1590, Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, murdered his wife and her lover when he caught them in bed together, and in his later years kept a troupe of young men whose duty it was to beat him three times a day. These half-dozen young British singers celebrate the composer’s daring harmonies and pungent dissonances, part of a repertoire that includes both Renaissance polyphony and modern works.
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kitchener
A Canadian cannabis caper theAtre | Harvest
photographs: gesualdo six courtesy of gesualdo six; harvest courtesy of thousand islands playhouse; singers courtesy of elora singers
July 6 to 29, Firehall Theatre, Gananoque
What better time for a revival of Ken Cameron’s popular 2008 comedy, Harvest, than now? The Ontario-born playwright drew on his parents’ own ordeal for this tale of a retired couple who rent out their farm to a nice young man claiming to be an airline pilot. Little do they realize that he intends to turn their beloved homestead into a grow-op. Shape-shifting actors Sheldon Davis and Catherine Fitch play all the roles in this new production from Gananoque’s Thousand Islands Playhouse, combining big laughs with some keen observations on the plight of Canada’s family farms.
gananoque
12
elora
A night of orchestral enchantment
11
Girl power immortalized Art | Final Girl July 18 to Sept. 23, Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery In horror film parlance, the “final girl” is the only character who manages to survive and outsmart the killer. Curator Crystal Mowry considers this trope in relation to the gallery’s permanent collection, uncovering artwork that shows the strength and resilience of women. The exhibition includes powerful works like Joyce Wieland’s painting “Shawnadithit,” depicting a young Indigenous woman on colonized land, and Shary Boyle’s “ Looney Tunes” sculpture (above), which skewers the dichotomy of maidens and crones in traditional fairy tales.
ClAssICAl The Majesty of Handel and Mozart July 29, Gambrel Barn, Elora
The Elora Singers, the Festival Orchestra and a quartet of soloists are conducted here by interim music director Mark Vuorinen. They’ll perform Handel’s Te Deum, which praises the Lord with boisterous exuberance, giving full play to the composer’s trademark trumpet fanfares and contrapuntal choral writing. It’s paired with Mozart’s Great Mass in C Minor—an unfinished work, though it’s hardly lacking dramatic power and melodic invention. The achingly beautiful soprano solo, “Et incarnatus est,” gets radiant treatment from Claire de Sévigné. July 2018 toronto life 97
niagara-onthe-lake
13
A Chekhov classic with a Punjabi-Canadian twist
theAtRe | The Orchard (After Chekhov) To Sept. 1, Jackie Maxwell Studio Theatre, Niagara-on-the-Lake
Chekhov comes to the Okanagan Valley in this witty update of the Russian playwright’s bittersweet comedy The Cherry Orchard. Playwright-actor Sarena Parmar drew on her own experiences growing up in B.C. for this tale of a Punjabi Sikh immigrant family who’ve made a new life for themselves in the province’s fruit-growing region. But the orchard they own has fallen into debt and is now on the brink of foreclosure. Toronto theatre dynamo Ravi Jain (A Brimful of Asha, Salt-Water Moon) directs this world premiere at Shaw.
serving of 14 AFoster’s logger
ottawa
St. Catharines’ Foster Festival is back for a third summer to showcase comedies by Canada’s mostproduced playwright, Norm Foster. The 2018 festival boasts the world premiere of two new plays, beginning with this one about a logger from northern New Brunswick who goes down to Saint John to reunite with his lesbian niece, in what promises to be a funny, poignant perspective on family ties. It’s followed in August by Foster’s more raucous look at marriage and home improvements, Renovations for Six (Aug. 8 to 25).
15
A blues fest with all the rest MUSIC | RBC Bluesfest July 5 to 15, LeBreton Flats Park, Ottawa Now in its 25th year, this annual spectacle has expanded and evolved to the point where it’s become a blues festival in name only. The 11-day bonanza takes over Ottawa with an A-list roster that includes pop pin-ups (Shawn Mendes), alt-rock veterans (Foo Fighters, Beck), hip-hop royalty (Rae Sremmurd, Ghostface Killah), electro party starters (Chromeo), country kingpins (Sturgill Simpson) and classic-rock icons (Jethro Tull). The anything-goes lineup will keep the good vibes flowing against the picturesque backdrop of the Ottawa River at LeBreton Flats Park.
st.catharines 98 toronto life July 2018
photographs: orchard courtesy of shaw festival; foster by david vivian; beck by getty images
theAtRe | Come Down From Up River July 18 to Aug. 3, FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre, St. Catharines
summer road trip E d i t i o n
16
A Canadian theatre icon’s Stratford debut theAtRe | Coriolanus To Oct. 20, Avon Theatre, Stratford Canada’s most acclaimed theatre director and its most distinguished theatre festival have come together at last. Robert Lepage makes his long-awaited Stratford Festival debut with a production of Shakespeare’s timely tragedy about the perils of democracy. The mighty André Sills stars as Coriolanus, the brilliant Roman general whose disregard for the common people proves to be his downfall. The production displays Lepage’s signature technological dazzle as it transports the Bard’s classic into today’s era of out-of-touch politicians and social media–fuelled mobs.
photographs: coriolanus courtesy of stratford festival; julius courtesy of superfly records
sudbury
stratford
17
An eclectic and historic music fest MUSIC | Northern Lights Festival Boréal July 5 to 8, Bell Park, Sudbury
Canada’s longest-running music festival returns to Sudbury’s Bell Park with a wonderfully diverse lineup. Bill and Joel Plaskett, Lisa LeBlanc, and Iskwé headline the four-day event, alongside veteran and up-and-coming artists from across Canada and around the world. Among the highlights: Nigerian Afrobeat pioneer Orlando Julius (pictured), Anishinabe drummers Black Bull Moose Singers and Moncton indie-rock icon Julie Doiron with her current righteously raucous band, the Wrong Guys. July 2018 toronto life 99
memoir
Far From Home
I graduated high school with honours, found a job and got into university— all while living on the street by sh a r e rya n My childhood was happy, quiet and blissfully normal. I grew up a classmate passed along some leftover shepherd’s pie in a Becel in Scarborough with my parents and older brother. My mom was container. But for the most part, my peers ignored me. I was the an administrator for the TDSB and later worked the floor in a homeless girl who smelled bad. factory. My dad took a job as a janitor while putting himself When I turned 18, I went to a shelter for young women. If I’d through business school. In the evenings, my brother and I would shown up earlier, the staff would have had to inform my parents. sit on his lap while he pored over his textbooks. At the shelter, the girls were four to a room, sleeping in tidy bunk Everything changed when I hit puberty. In Sri Lankan culture, beds. Some of my shelter-mates had drug dependencies; others when a girl starts menstruating, her family holds a ceremony were sex workers. One girl revealed that she was fleeing an to mark the occasion. The day of my party, I wore a beaded pink arranged marriage. The shelter provided for us as best they could, sari, and sat patiently while guests recited blessings and poured but their resources were stretched. On warmer nights, when I milk over my head—a ritual meant to bless me with fertility. My could fend for myself, I’d leave, opening space for someone else. parents started treating me differently after that day. They were School was my only path off the street. The teachers let me terrified that I’d get a boyfriend and have preuse the library computers after hours, and the marital sex. If I wasn’t at school, I had to be shelter gave me my own room so I could stay home—at all times. They barred me from attendup late to study. By the end of the school year, ing school trips or concerts. Sometimes teachers I’d completed all of my credits. Before graduwould phone home and try to change their ation, one of the shelter staff took me to Dress minds. To avoid further questioning, my parents for Success, an organization that provides free would pull me out and transfer me. By the time professional attire to women in need. There, I I was 17, I’d attended three high schools. zeroed in on a bright red suit. Trying it on, I One day, during the summer before Grade 12, felt like Hillary Clinton—powerful, confident. my parents snooped through my inbox and I looked at my reflection and started to laugh. I wore the same It was like seeing an old friend. I wore the suit found an email from a boy I’d met in a chat room. They freaked out. I tried to explain that he was outfit every day to an interview at McDonald’s and got the job. just a friend, but they wouldn’t listen. That day, For a year, I saved money, taking home as and washed I realized any decision I made for myself would much free food as I could. I probably ate huninfuriate them. I couldn’t live like that. So I ran dreds of Big Macs. When I’d saved enough, I my clothes in away, and, without my parents’ knowledge, I moved into community housing and got into gas station went to live with my aunt in Ottawa while I McMaster’s biochemistry program. There, I bathrooms finished school. But a month after I moved in, fell into a gruelling schedule: class by day, my dad called the house. When my aunt said then off to my McDonald’s night shift. During he was coming for me, I grabbed my backpack and ran. I didn’t university, I finally reconciled with my parents. We talked think to bring much of anything with me, not even a change of on the phone, tentatively at first. When I graduated from McMaster, they attended the ceremony. Soon after that, I met clothes. All I had were my textbooks. That first night on the street, I wandered for hours. Eventu- my future husband. He was endlessly patient while I worked ally, I dozed off on a bench. As I got used to my life as a homeless through my traumatic past. person, I took to scrounging for food in dumpsters. On good After studying science, I was fascinated by how storytelling days I’d score unfinished meals from a Chinese restaurant, or affects the brain’s neural activity, and I pursued a diploma in wolf down half-eaten bagels from the trash at Tim Hortons. I advertising at Seneca. Today, I work at an agency. In 2017, I had no other choice. I’d gone from one trap to another. organized a clothing drive at my office for Dress for Success Most nights, I slept on sidewalks downtown. When the cold Toronto and revealed my history to my co-workers for the first became unbearable, I’d break into parked cars using a hanger time. I needed them to understand that homeless teens aren’t and take refuge for the night. The key was to doze sitting upright— necessarily lazy or rebellious or dangerous. I hope that at least the last thing you want is to fall into a deep sleep and get caught one of the suits we donated ends up with another homeless in someone’s back seat. Sometimes I went to school, and sometimes teen. That she can wear it to an interview of her own and start I was too embarrassed. I wore the same outfit every day: a lime- a new life for herself. green Aeropostale sweatshirt and a pair of jeans. I never showered, and I washed my clothes in gas station sinks. Because they couldn’t Share Ryan is a customer relations manager at the advertising startdry out fully, they developed an overpowering musty odour. Once, up StackAdapt. Email submissions to memoir@torontolife.com 100 toronto life July 2018
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