The night was coming to an end.
I felt, more than saw, the beginning of the dawn as the light from outside become just a little more noticeable.
I resisted the urge to get up, rather staying in bed, half asleep, watching the emerging day arrive.
The sky was dark, but the ground was white with the snow from the last days of cold weather with occasional snow falls.
I looked out over the lake. It was frozen. Again, as every winter, it was criss-crossed by an ice breaker making paths for the ferries. Only two of the three were running now.
You have all heard of the man who took one million photographs of Mount Fuji, over a lifetime.
I, occasionally, take pictures of Lake Ontario from my perch high up in the high-rise apartment building. You can hardly believe how many faces of a lake and the surrounding areas you can get over a few years. They are all digital and hidden away, well categorized, in my computer. That is backed up four different ways and in different places. No electrical storm will be allowed to erase any of my, so far, 140,000 photographs.
The world is all too full of people who, somehow, lost their hard-drive and all the information on them. Is that a curse of modern life?
Most of my pictures have been taken on celluloid. They will stay good for viewing for at least 100 years. I still have some of the first photos my father took, dated 1912. They are just as good today as when they were first taken - but the people are all dead. Nobody knows them any more.
Today was a good day for weather. I took three photographs. One, using a long lens, was to pick out the details of how a lone, forgotten, sailboat had frozen into the ice. I looked at the picture, with snow on the deck, and had a quick memory flash on being on a sailboat, like that one, leisurely sailing on the lake below my window.
The most recent photographs were quickly transferred to the great big storage in the cloud. The electronic one, never seen, never quite understood, for future processing.
The day had begun.
My days were many by now. I could feel a certain resistance in my legs when walking far. The friends are many. Life in the city brings new connections, new acquaintances and, occasionally, new friends who enter your inner circle. Their lives, somehow, become part of yours.
Our children are long gone and don’t much care for the opinions of us, the oldies, any more. But, hand over heart, I wasn’t very diligent at listening to my parents either. We still party with our children and greatly enjoy their company, but the most common company is more of our age. We have many, in many walks of life.
The sun rose and broke through the clouds. Another cold and sunny winter day in Canada. Just what some, but not all, like.
The lonely widow, too rich and too intimidated was out shopping again. What could she need? After 15 years, surely there was time for you to open your heart again. “No, he may take my money.” What good is your money? You live alone in a house large enough for two families and drive one of the most expensive cars in the land?
Why?
Oh, what a terror to “have money”. Shared pleasure is double pleasure. You share, you gain. She goes
on the most fantastic first-class trips, mostly alone, to far-away places.
“How was the trip?”
“It was good.”
“Did you take any photographs?”
“Who for? My children take their own trips and don’t care for my pictures.”
At this early hour, my camera was lying with the uncovered lens looking at me from across the room. Was I born with a camera? Probably, there are many pictures of my friends that I remember taking as a little boy. I got the proverbial box-camera at age 9. It served me well. My father had had one of the early models, little newer than the 1888 version. It had a 100 exposure roll. My box camera only took eight pictures on a roll.
Every picture had to be carefully deliberated then. Was it a good moment, object, place, time and would the exposure be correct? All these calculations had to be made before you touched the release button. Pictures cost money. Then, when a little older, I learned to develop my own film.
I had a Russian made copy of a Leica camera with a terrible cassette mechanism, calling for some very careful loading, in total darkness. But, the the lens was superb and the camera took good pictures. It also travelled well.
You can only take a picture if you bring a camera. Yes, I know, everyone carries a better-than-ever camera in their mobile now. It is wonderful to see what is posted on social media today. All the drama, all the excitement, all instantly replayed on media screens everywhere.
Our friends were awake. Some had gone to work. Other, pensioners as we, were enjoying the day to the fullest.
All the things we only do when we feel like doing them. Driving in the city is one “joy” that I don’t regret giving up. My car gets dusty in the garage. I don’t have to show it off. Nobody cares about my material possessions.
We all have some.
What is far more important is to know where we are. What are our interests? What do we enjoy doing alone, or with others? Sure, I read the newspaper with great interest every day. What an old-fashioned way to get news, some say. But, you see the name of the author. That, with time, allows you to see the slant of the view or even to judge how accurate the article itself is.
As a boy I had to get up early, before 04:00, to start my newspaper deliveries in my Swedish home town.
A bonus, much appreciated, was the extra copy that invariably ended up on my mother's breakfast table. It was cold in the winter, to walk the streets long before sunrise.
I have never met my “newspaper boy” here, high up in the Toronto condo. I know it’s a person, but that’s all. Perhaps he/she is also cold in the winter and brings a free copy of The Star or Globe and Mail home to his/her family to read over breakfast.
The retired history professor has been writing into the wee hours. He’s still asleep and won’t stir much before noon. But, his writing is good and he still publishes a new book almost every year. Of course, you don’t have to hunt for a publisher much these days. Amazon will publish anything and print on demand. All that matters is that you are known and well liked. He is.
I am not well known outside my smaller circle. I did publish my memoirs recently, all of 108,000 words within almost 400 pages. The feeling is great, especially since the odd person sends me little comments on my stories now and then.
The day is maturing.
The streetcars appear a little more seldom and are not jam-packed any more.
We decide on a walk. We dress well. No umbrella needed today. It is a seldom used implement in Toronto. It rains so much less often here, compared to other world-class cities.
We live in a world-class city? Yes, life is here is comfortable and predictable. Services run well and people are, in general, easy to get along with.
We chose to retire here, a few years ago, when newly married. Life had been hard on us both for a while. We both been previously married for many years. Both of our late spouses had cancer and ultimately passed away, all too young.
My wife tells that she had met a hundred “frogs” but not “kissed any” on the way. I, being a retired project manager, was far more organized in my approach. I met 17 ladies for coffee, didn’t kiss any, and soon decided that my search was over. I had given up. There was no woman in my future. I’d remain a “grumpy old man” for the rest of my life.
My soon-to-be wife was coffee date number 18. Our searches had ended. I proposed a couple of years
after we met. We had walked up the Eiffel Tower. The wind blew hard and ther rain wetted us.
Did she have strong enough legs?
She did and she said “yes”.
The apartment in the sky was ready for our wedding a few weeks later. Life started anew. The honeymoon trip took us north of the Arctic Circle in Norway.
We hiked on the permafrost and ran a half marathon under the midnight sun.
Another trip brought us to the driest place on earth, the Atacama desert in Chile. It was - 10 C at sunrise and 46 C mid-day.
We have been aging a bit over the years. A major back operation put my wife down for a year, then a
heart attack for me.
Life goes on. We still travel, but don’t plan to climb mountains or hike any permafrost now. So far, we have been married for 11 years and visited 22 countries together. The photographs, the stories…
Don’t fear, Canada is still the greatest. Portaging with a far too heavy canoe in Algonquin park or
sleeping outside in freezing weather in Yukon territory may be behind us, but, why not plan for another trip?
The camera will come along. It can lead you into trouble. On my first, ever, trip to Turkey, I decided to take some pictures of the locals and the city around me.
When in a different place, dress as a local. Clothing is always less costly than at home. I am always painfully aware of how much I stand out as a Westerner. I often start out on my first day, buying a new shirt, pants and shoes.
My camera? It looked too expensive and too intrusive. I did dabble with a Minox camera, years ago. Sure, it was super small. It fit in the palm of the hand but used a very small film format, too small for usable enlargements.
Why a Minox? They were the “camera par choice” of the spies. They would sneak into the locked office, use a copied key to open a desk, bring out secret files and photograph them, page by page.
I never got any copied keys and never got to photograph any letters that would change the path of humanity.
This time, my camera was in a plastic bag, one with a prominent logo from a local store in Istanbul, once called Constantinople and full of spies with Minox cameras. They all lit up Gitanes cigarettes in their days, the favourite smoke of all French spies.
I had no Minox and had never smoked Gitanes. The Minox was not good enough now and the Gitanes were gone. I had tried, but I never learned to smoke.
Oh, did I ever try. My mother found a crushed cigarette in my pocket. Her punishment, now long forgiven, made me lose all interest in tobacco.
I’m a lot older now, a world traveler, as I have always been from the day I put a map of my home province on the wall, adding pins as our school outings took me around. I traveled enough as a young man to wrap a string around the globe before my 20th birthday.
Toronto beckons. Walking out we are, again, pleasantly surprised at how most, but not all, drivers give right-of-way to pedestrians. There aren’t many cities where that is done.
Our most recent trip was to Saigon, Vietnam. The only way to cross the street, with or against the traffic light, is to be part of a hundred-person group charging into the traffic. It doesn’t stop the drivers but the flow divides so pedestrians can get across.
A quiet day calls for low level experiences. The Toronto underground path with its, forever undecipherable, maps and warren of weather-controlled walkways will, with a bit of luck, lead to the Eaton Centre.
Pensioners don’t spend big but the joys of window shopping never go away.
The buzz at the Apple store never seizes to amaze. What brings all the people in? Do they buy all these expensive gadgets there? Yes, they do.
The food court is, as always, impressive with the numerous “regional” offerings. The variety is far less than meets the eye. It is really just a few large food corporations who sell factory made fast food. We stick to coffee.
We take a quick look at Dundas Square. The walls around are lit up and playing their advertising messages incessantly. The square is quiet. The man calling out “Jesus” is still on the corner, though. Doesn’t he get cold or tired, ever? I take a carefully framed and focused picture of him from behind some people.
Nathan Phillips Square is full of skaters. I take another few pictures, trying to position the skaters perfectly in front of the Toronto-letters.
We had done our 10,000 steps for the day. My wife’s back-doctor and my heart-doctor would both be pleased over how well we had followed their instructions on how to get strong again.
It doesn’t matter how well you dress, parts of you are always cold when you come home. It is a wonderful feeling, it tells you that you are alive.
On our walk home, we looked in at a couple of restaurants and checked out their menus. We are always looking for the next nice place to dine with our friends. These restaurants are more and more difficult to find. Most new restaurants have no sound attenuation and the noise level will kill all attempts at any meaningful discussion. But, hope springs eternal, there must be some, somewhere in this large city.
I dutifully took my pictures to the computer, edited a few, and filed them in their correct category. Perhaps, one day, I will publish a photobook of “Toronto” scenes. It will also contain many photos of the oodles of not so bad graffiti that we are blessed with.
For dinner, we dove into the freezer. We buy in bulk at Costco, prepare and freeze a lot of meals.
We had a stuffed pork chop, cooked sous vide, with a glass of boxed red wine.
Another pleasant winter day in Toronto had drawn to an end.
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If you want to read my memors, "The seasons of Man", buy the book here:
https://www.amazon.ca/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=bengt+lindvall+the+seasons+of+a+man
