Category: Photography

Ever since a friend introduced us to the northern beauty of Elliot Lake and its surrounding forests two years ago, my husband and I have taken several trips there. After our first visit, I even wrote a blog post about Elliot Lake’s library situated in the Algo Centre Mall.

On June 23, 2012, part of the Algo Centre’s roof collapsed, crashing through two floors of the mall and killing two women. The news shocked and disturbed me, especially when I considered how often we had shopped in this building and how my friend used to spend countless hours in the food court working on her laptop. Before the mall collapsed, my faith in the safety of structures like the Algo Centre was intact, but now that conviction feels shaky.

Earlier this year, my husband and I had discussed another visit to Elliot Lake at the end of the summer. After the tragedy, we weren’t sure if we still wanted to go, but in the end we stuck to our original plan in hopes that our tourist dollars would help the community.

On a hot afternoon last Saturday, Stewart and I lunched at Jane’s Tea Garden, a cafe and gift shop that faces the fenced-off hill that marks the edge of the Algo Centre’s property. As I ate my soup and salad, I saw at least eight people, some with large cameras, climb up the stone steps that stopped abruptly at the tall fence bordering the mall and its parking lot.

After lunch, I bought a pair of sneakers from Tin Can Alley (a few doors down Ontario Avenue from Jane’s Tea Garden) and then walked up the stone steps that the other tourists had recently ascended. I stopped in front of the “Danger! No Trespassing” sign and looked beyond it to the ruin of the mall. It didn’t seem right to snap photos of such devastation, so I left my camera in my bag.

I felt a little queasy from the heat and the way the twisted metal and concrete debris reminded me of the fallen Twin Towers and pictures of Joplin, Missouri after last year’s tornado. Nevertheless, I wanted to get a clearer view of the collapsed mall entrance, so I walked a few paces west.

I tried to take in the scene in its entirety, but it was difficult. My eyes kept locking on stray details like the five shopping carts I could see in the foreground and closer to the entrance. It was like a grim game of I Spy:

I spy one of the carts fallen on its side and another one full of thick silver wires pulled from the rubble. Two more carts have been tossed into piles of debris in the parking lot, and the last one I see is upright and empty, a ghostly reminder that this place used to be a busy, normal site of commercial activity.

When I look at the carts, I remember buying a purple paisley blouse and two towels from the now silent Zellers two summers ago. I used one of the towels to pad an epic sprawling-on-a-dock session by a lovely lake, one of my favorite memories of northern Ontario. And the Foodland where we bought picnic supplies — apples, petite boursin, juice boxes — is now a reeking horror of rotten food that has had two months to putrefy.

From my position upwind of the grocery store, I was spared the revolting smell, but I still felt slightly nauseated and shaky. The disaster site put me off-kilter, and a vague sweaty headache pulled at my consciousness. In my gut, I sensed a pocket of emptiness in the shape of a fist. The fist was the color of hot rust, its knuckles outlined in red.

Although I didn’t personally know the two women who died in the collapse, the tragedy of their passing exposed my own grief over recent and past losses, for the presence of Death collapses identifying boundaries such as the cause of death, the location, the time elapsed, and social proximity to the victims. The people who lost Doloris Perizzolo and Lucie Aylwin two months ago at Elliot Lake are hurting like me when I lost Dad, Grandma, Jenny, and Eric.

Looking past the rubble to the mall itself, I was struck by the naked chaos of the twisted, ragged hole where the mall’s entrance used to be. I looked at it in disbelief and wondered if I should be witnessing a building in such an exposed condition. Maybe that was why I didn’t feel right taking pictures of the ruin. The mall looked vulnerable, literally stripped to its bare skeleton, showing square frames upholding nothing save a few exposed wires where solid walls once stood.

The entrance was a peeled and ragged maw of emptiness, a grimacing face on which silence rests because nobody knows what the hell to say. And behind that useless portal lay a crime scene, its rotting contents a nauseating metaphor for the neglect that led to the collapse. A traumatized and traumatizing building with memories of shock, fear, flight, injury, and death.

I think about the library on the second floor of the mall. It wasn’t far from the lottery booth where the two victims died. I remember the quilt on the wall, fishing rods for rent, a mural, and a large French collection. All part of the rubble now. (Elliot Lake plans to open a new library not far from the mall at White Mountain Academy).

For comfort, I turn away from the ruin and walk back down the hill to study the shrine. Although it sits in the shadow of destruction, decay, and collapse, the memorial display is an attempt to lovingly respond to senseless loss. The shrine’s candles, Inukshuks, teddy bears, flowers, and angels testify to a heartbroken town’s courage, community strength, and its refusal to forget. Elliot Lake, I’m holding you in my prayers as you wrestle with grief and seek the light of justice.

Although I arrived near the end of a 2011 reception in honour of Centennial College’s New Library and Academic Building (Progress Campus), neither the food nor the punch were entirely depleted.

A catering student urged remaining guests and random students in the Commons to finish off the food: “Come on everybody — grab a napkin and eat up these sandwiches!” He made large crowd-gathering motions with his arms and added, “I don’t want to see any of this food in the trash.” At least a dozen students rushed to his aid, carting off double handfuls of pastry and sandwiches to their tables.

Responding to the summons, I downed a lemon tart as I took in the busy scene of multiple study groups gathered in the open courtyard. Two floors above, glass-walled rooms devoted to communal study could be seen in the library: illuminated cross-sections of learning in action.

Much as I enjoyed the bustle of library activity and the sleek new building, the main attraction was this living wall. When I first saw it, I wanted to sit at its roots.

The wild elegance of an indoor vertical garden is a delight in itself, but this gorgeous bio-wall is more than a decorative feature. According to an explanatory leaflet, the wall-plants grow “in a synthetic rooting media . . . . Contaminated room air is drawn through the root zone of the plants, which acts as a biological filter, where pollutants are broken down by microbes into water and carbon dioxide.”

I celebrate this generous wall that gives back to its community, quietly transforming toxins into fresh air while students tap at their keyboards. May the new bio-wall inspire calm and learning with its hopeful green presence.

It was my turn to DJ our six-woman dance circle last month. When I arrived at the Dancemakers studio, I put a king-size purple sheet on the floor near the windows. The sheet became our canvas for the session’s theme: Dancing in Quiet Gratitude.

In my music set, I included a number of songs that held the light: “Thread the light” (Glen Hansard’s “This Low”), “There will be a light” (Ben Harper and the Blind Boys of Alabama), “There’s still a light that shines on me” (“Let it Be”), and Brian McMillan’s encouraging lyrics in “Let the Darkness Go.”

I invited my fellow dancers to decorate the purple sheet in response to the theme of gratitude. Wielding small bottles of neon fabric paint, the four of us filled the sheet with words and images of what makes us feel thankful: rivers, voice, movement, bosoms, silliness, mistakes, great-grandmothers, grandmothers, mothers, daughters, safe girls, spirit, breath, the forest, laughter, rocks, fierce winds, night, moon, kindness, creativity sheets, raindrops, flowers, hope, fire, goldfinches, fierce goddess, play, community, beauty, thunder, food, wild grasses, health, smiles, art, ocean, a tomato, You, a foot, refreshing tears, music, and lightning.

Over the course of the two-hour music set, the purple sheet’s function evolved. At the beginning, it operated like a picnic blanket on which to gather and discuss the theme of the session. When the music began, the sheet was a connecting fabric; all of us were lying on the floor with some part of us touching the sheet, whether it was only a head or an entire body curled up on it.

As the dance progressed, we crouched at the edges of the purple canvas each time we felt inspired to write or draw. Then we advanced to fill the centre as we moved more deeply into the set. Towards the end of our time in the studio, I started squirting fabric paint at random, and soon we were all squeezing the bottles and giggling as blobs of paint rained down on the sheet without restraint.

While we were collaborating on our modern art experiment, Brett Dennen was singing “Blessed is this life, and I’m going to celebrate being alive,” and we honored the spirit of his lyrics with our ecstatic paint-dance.

When the music ended, we formed closing circle with the painted sheet in the middle, and each of us named the images that caught our fancy (it was the tomato for me!). Then we ceremoniously folded up the sheet with the fabric paint still wet.

After I got home that night, I had to peel the sheet apart! There were plenty of smears and blobs, but most of the words and pictures remained clear. I hope you enjoy looking at the Purple Gratitude Sheet as much as we enjoyed making it!

Not far from the shores of Lake Simcoe, there’s a town where you can visit a small community library or make a banjo from a gourd.

Let me explain.

Last Tuesday I accompanied Stewart to Churchill (near Innisfil), where he was attending a banjo-making workshop run by Jeff Menzies. While Stewart was busy in Jeff’s studio, I spent the morning beside the lake and the afternoon at the Churchill branch of Innisfil Public Library.

One of four branches of the Innisfil Public Library system, Churchill’s small size, leafy setting, and friendly staff reminded me of the library in the small town where I grew up in the Midwest. And just as my mother used to take my brother and I on weekly library visits, several Churchill moms brought their kids to the local branch on that Tuesday afternoon. One mother-daughter pair arrived with bicycle helmets and awesome summer reading habits, for the mom talked her child into hurrying with the words: “Come on! We’ll be back tomorrow!”

I could see why Churchill patrons would want to be regulars at such a welcoming branch. The librarian had reading suggestions for the parents and stickers for the kids, all of whom she knew by name. In addition to a row of three computers with Internet access, there was a nook reserved for children who wanted to play computer games.

With limited space upstairs, the basement was devoted to children’s programs. The librarian told me it was a “work in progress,” but I liked the lower level’s simplicity. It resembled the Baptist church basements of my childhood where I ate potluck suppers on metal chairs and sang about Zacchaeus in a Sycamore Tree and Jesus having the Whole World in His Hands.

I returned to the main floor to see if there was a French or multilingual collection. Although I didn’t find any foreign language offerings, I did notice a feature that the Toronto Public Library system lacks: a Reacher.

In the Romance section, I further noticed a certain Lord Lightning. This rakish character needed no Reacher to gain access to an alluring shoulder (unlike his less sexy peers, Lord Smog Advisory or Lord Drizzle).

I wish to extend my thanks to Lord Lightning and the staff at Churchill branch for making my afternoon in their lakeside community so enjoyable!