1 – arriving at Camera to start the day
2 – looking out at the street from behind the bar after the first screening has gone in – a moment of quiet
3 – ext. looking in just before the second screening
4 – a sweet ending

In 1912, the privately owned Toronto Rail Company (TRC) purchased the Scarborough Amusement Park and the Toronto Athletic Field. Its resident lacrosse team, The Toronto’s, was included in the sale. Located in the eastern outskirts of Toronto, the park was rundown and poorly attended. Immediately after the purchase, the transit company extended its tracks an additional mile to the park entrance. The TRC also invested substantial funds to improve the park grounds and rides. The lacrosse team even received new team uniforms. The entire facility had been improved to equal, or perhaps better its rival: Sunnyside Park.

The TRC operated the park until it closed in the 1920s. The newly created Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) had been actively acquiring and consolidating the city’s various private streetcar lines. While the TTC was eager to purchase the TRC streetcar lines and cars, they were not interested in owning the entertainment complex and sports team. The TRC sold the park property to the city, which in short order flipped the land to a developer.

A transit company investing in a failing amusement park, athletic field and sports team is unheard of in North America today. As the TTC believed in the 1920s, and as it is commonly held these days, business has no business in any business other than its own business.

Revenue generated by the park and sports team was not the primary business interest of the TRC. Rather, the purchase was a cunning move to boost ridership on their underused eastern line, especially during evenings and holidays. As the bulk of the city’s population lived west of the park, park patrons and sports fans would commute to the new and improved attraction by streetcar - the Toronto Rail Company’s own line! The park was a well-calculated instrument in the company’s plans to successfully operate streetcar lines in the eastside of Toronto.

This is a story that involves the business of two discrete and important amenities of the city – mass transportation and entertainment. If they did not recognize common business interests, each operation would have likely failed. Constructing and operating a streetcar line from downtown Toronto into a lightly populated the lightly populated area was not viable. Simply, there were not enough riders. The amusement park and sports complex, situated away from the city’s core population, could not compete with parks much closer to the city. Considered together, however, the entertainment complex and a streetcar line proved to be good bedfellows.
(Source: City of Toronto Archives)

“A guy got on the subway today”, Tom tells his wife Prim and a couple named Priti and David with whom they’re having dinner, “and he’s carrying this big white box, which clearly has a cake in it”.

“How did you know it was a cake?” Priti asks.

“It was a cake,” Tom says. “There’s a certain kind of bakery box, you know?”

“With bakery string”, adds Prim.

“Anyway, it’s rush hour and the car is packed and the guy is beginning to get pushed and jostled and is beginning to grow seriously defensive about his cake. He’s holding it as delicately ass he can, as if it’s a time bomb…”

“Or a baby”, says Prim.

“But people keep bumping into it, you know? At one point you can hear this dry ‘thunk!’ sound which was probably a chunk of the icing breaking off and falling to the bottom of the box…”

“One of those big, hard turquoise roses”, Prim suggests.

“Yeh, that’s what it sounded like”, Tom says. “And then, a minute or two later, there’s another cracking sound and now the box rattles when the guy takes it in his other hand, and just as he thinks he’s finally got it pretty well protected, a couple of teenage kids get on, shoving each other around and yelling and of course they smash right onto it, first denting the box and then knocking the thing completely out of his grasp and onto the floor of the subway car. And whatdyathink happens after that?” Tom asks his wife and their friends.

“He starts to cry?” Prim suggests.

“Nope, just the opposite!” says Tom, with something like triumph in his voice. “He stoops down and slowly picks up the box, looks around at all the other subway riders—who are staring at him now as if he’s a madman—raises the box over his head, and hurls it with all his might the full length of the car. Just as the box bounces to a stop, spilling out the remains of his cake onto the feet of the rush hour passengers and showering bits of icing all over everybody, the train pulls into a station. The guy backs towards the door and yells at everyone in the car, “Take it then! Take it!!” and backs onto the platform. And the doors close after him.”

“And that’s it?” Asks David, intensely engaged up until now with his Crème Caramel.

“Yeh, that’s it”, says Tom.

“Good story”, says David, spooning up the last of the caramelized sugar in his dish.

“I wish I’d been there”, says Prim wistfully. “Me too”, says David’s wife, Priti.

“Well, I was there”, says Tom, “and it was no picnic.”

889 steps. That’s the distance from our work/live house in the Lower Price Chopper village to J and M’s 3rd story walk-up on Dovercourt.

On this trail, I count the homes of at least 14 other artists, filmmakers, curators and editors - that I know of. The Lower Price Chopper Village is lousy with artists.