Lit City

I try and record what is happening around me – and with that in mind I will talk about Lit City today. This is another of our City of Toronto organized happenings to generate enthusiasm for the places within its borders. Lit City promotes writers who find inspiration in Toronto and use the city as a setting in their work. There are author readings, literary walking tours, book launches, panel discussions, exhibits and more organized as part of this continuing event. Toronto has a large community of writers and of course it makes sense that many authors choose to set their stories in locations which can be identified as Torontonian.

Lit City kicked off with Toronto’s 175th anniversary party, held in early March. Hmm, don't know why that escaped mention on my blog!

The one attraction that I must get to visit before it finishes is the exhibit at the St. Lawrence Market at the The Market Gallery. The exhibit is titled “Lit City: Toronto Through the Eyes of Authors and Artists". According to the promo on their website: It merges the words of the Toronto authors and the works of the Toronto artists.

This show runs until June 13th. I am going to make sure that I get over to see it and will let you know all about it when I do.

Find out more about specific events being held as part of Lit City by going here: What's On @ Lit City.

Someone has put together a list of 57 books which are set in the City of Toronto. You can see the list here. There are some well known writers as well as some I have not heard of. Michael Ondaatje of course and Margret Atwood as well, but my favourite, Michael Redhill wrote Consolation which is a tremendous read and set in Toronto - in fact in two different times in history! I enjoyed reading Consolation last year when it was picked as Toronto's "one read" book during reading month. There are a lot of local Toronto places mentioned both in the 1960s and in the 1850s, the two time periods of the novel.

The Lit City Event runs until May 24th when the grand finale – the Doors Open tour is held. Doors Open connects these books to specific buildings all open to the public on that one weekend. I will talk about the Doors Open event on a subsequent blog as it deserves its own white space - there are a lot of buildings on to be open and I would like to talk about a few of them. In any event, you should mark it on your calendar if you are in Toronto that weekend.

Couch Potato Afternoon and Evening...

I did get out of the house this morning and had a great few hours at the St. Lawrence Market. 

St. Lawrence Market was the actual downtown centre and city hall location during the late 18th and entire 19th century. The original City Hall building burned down in the great fire of 1849 and was  the elegant St. Lawrence Hall was built in its place. 

I met a friend of mine, and we had a great time catching up on stuff since it had been a few months since we had last gotten together. Shopping for food at a place like the Market is a wonderful expedition! There are excellent things to be had which you can't get everywhere - and at least not in Brampton where my friend lives.

Aside from really great fish fillets, he bought a "fish roast" which was a hunka salmon wrapped around a hunka sea bass and wrapped in some kind of leaves and tied up with a string. It was a 2+ pound hunka fish. I am sure it will be delicious when it is eaten! We also both bought a boneless chicken roast which was stuffed and tied up in a package ready for the roasting pan. I will cook that next week.  I am planning a particularly tasty feast when a certain friend comes to dinner and this will fit the bill perfectly.

So that was the active part of my day. The rest of the day I spent pretty much organizing a picture gallery of my Vegas trip. If you want to view the entire album you can go here to see it. Otherwise, I will be hauling out selected photos in the next number of blogs and providing some commentary on the aspects of my trip illustrated by the selected photos.

I have a scrumptious piece of salmon in the oven with some roast veg ready to eat in about 20 minutes - so I will finish today's blog with just a bit more travelogue.





I mentioned in my last blog that the Canyon Tour I went on included a very nice breakfast spot. After Hoover dam, we travelled down in to Black Canyon, Willow Beach.   Apparently there is a fish hatchery somewhere near or so a sign announced.  The beach was located by a marina and there was a park and a few dozen palm trees, which we were told were about $15,000 each to acquire as they are not native to the area.  

There were also a few other shrubby trees and some wild flowers.  The weather was glorious.  Cold enough for a sweater, but the sky was blue and the sun was warm.  

There the tour guide set out a beautiful packed breakfast on a picnic table by the river. The table was well laid, with white table cloth and a good selection of cold breakfast items and hot beverages.   

We ate our feast surrounded by the most wonderful scenery imaginable!  Coffee, yogurt, sweet buns and fruit at 9:00  in the morning went down fast as we had been awake since about 5:30 to catch our 6:25 bus.  There seemed to be no one at this particular spot other than us travellers and we sat in awe as we ate and consumed both the food and view.  I felt so at peace.  

There was no rush to move on as we wandered around and shot photos and checked out the water.  Barb announced that it was absolutely frigid.  The Colorado river originates in the mountains and I am sure at this time of year it would be very cold.   The ducks didn't seem to mind the cold water, but they joined us while we ate and begged for the crumbs.