Ghosthunters

 

Ghosthunters

Today we went in search of the ghosts that inhabit the older buildings that are part of Toronto’s history.

We joined around 40 others who were guided by Stephan Peta to search out the hidden history of Toronto’s ghost signs and advertising relics that ‘reveal how early Canadian commerce used imagery, typography, and emotion to persuade purchases and influence a national identity’. 

We learnt where they are and in so doing have become anointed ghosthunters of cities we live in and visit. He made special mention of both USA and Australia where he said many ghosts hang out! 

Stephan is an award-winning publicist and Heritage Toronto Award-winning writer. He was enthusiastic and passionate about the ghosts of the past though preferred those that had been restored than those in their faded state. 

I personally preferred the less decipherable and not those that have been painted up in order to market an apartment or distillery or a cafe!

 Stephan has documented such signs worldwide on his Instagram @GhostsOfCanada from Canada to Greece, France, Sweden and more. 

 

He certainly loves a walk and talk and we were taken on a ramble through a former industrial area of Toronto. 

He also enjoys discovering something new but old in Toronto! And though he was often lost in the foliage or the building surrounds it all added to our role as ghosthunters! 

Contemporary Art Museum - Toronto

 Alex Da Corte @ MOCA



Alex Da Corte is on at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto. Da Corte is a Venezuelan American conceptual artist who uses a range of media including painting, sculpture, installation, performance plus video to create his installations and films. 

His works at MOCA are immersive. Shoe coverings  are required to be slipped on for entry to ensure I suspect  that the tactile floor and sound is not at odds with the dreamlike and sometimes spooky and foreboding works.

Da Corte’s film works are shown on a series of screens contained within large boxes scattered across the space. They are a reflection on popular culture, sexuality, violence, cinema and art history. 

Yes this is a nostalgic trip with an overlay of menace.

It’s stunning. The films reveal the extraordinary ability and creativity of both artist and his band of creators to provide such a captivating experience. 

Da Corte acts out a range of roles in the films that include My Rogers, Sleeping Beauty, Wicked Witch, the Statue of Liberty, Frankenstein and Marcel Duchamp. 

Those plus others drawn from Disney cartoon characters give the performances a nostalgia that is imaginative and magical. 

He is a powerful and engaging performer. He seeks to explore the personalities of his characters from within to reveal aspects of their influence on him. 

His ‘Moving Image’ display inside a dark structure reveals the mementos, props, and models that he has collected from his childhood and provide him with a source of inspiration and reflection. It is filmic in its presentation and is according to Da Corte ‘life as a moving image’.

Jack’s got your back!

 

In 1989 I travelled to Toronto to meet with Toronto City councillor, Jack Layton. As a Melbourne City Councillor, despite the hype surrounding Melbourne’s bid for the 1996 Olympic Games, I was concerned at the impact of the Olympic Games on the city. 

I therefore argued for the need to undertake a social and environmental impact of the Olympics on the city. It fell on deaf ears.  

 I was very much in a minority as the wheels of political and business support were well and truly in motion. 

Jack had linked up with an anti poverty group called Bread not Circuses and I was interested in knowing their campaigning methods and the issues they were wanting to bring to the attention of Torontonians. 

I met Jack several times at City Hall and spent time going over the campaign he was heavily involved. We agreed to continue our conversation and cooperation. 

Following my visit to Toronto I visited Atlanta the city that was ultimately chosen for the Olympics against Athens the sentimental favourite. 

 Unlike Melbourne Atalanta was a city that was host to many international companies many of whom had  extending and strong connections to the world of business and especially in Africa.  Atlanta was also very much an Afro American city.

CNN was headquartered in Atlanta and its media and commercial interests were significant in the winning bid. It should be added that Melbourne’s  bid was hampered by a view amongst some heavily involved in both the Olympics and business that Sydney who had been unsuccessful in being the Australian bidding city, was being ‘groomed’ for the 2000 bid! 

 I again met Jack in 2009 in Copenhagen at the COP on climate change.  Once again I found his presence and his unquestionable commitment to social and environmental justice overwhelming and inspiring. 

Jack died of cancer in 2011 but his legacy in Toronto lives on. He took the city and the country to new and progressive heights and led the New Democratic Party to the status of the offical opposition. 

He was truly a man who turned a mission into actions that made a difference.

The street where I live - Toronto

 

’Authentic’ has become a buzzword! What does it mean when it comes to a street on which you live! The shopping street in our neighbourhood is long and active. It’s where you expect to buy broken biscuits and mixed lollies. But that’s nostalgia! 

The street has no brand names and no evident franchises. But it has a strong day time economy that also provides also for the night time. It’s residential first and foremost given It is a very residential neighbourhood. You almost expect to wander past Mister Rogers.  It feels authentic and nostalgic for something now missing in many of our shopping strips. 

It has bakeries, cafes, restaurants, groceries, fruit and vege stalls and flower shops, butchers, fish market, book shops, pharmacies, bric a bac, a clairvoyant, a church, a cinema, hairdressers and of course numerous drug stores. It has lots of children and prams, young couples older people and lots of well behaved dogs and owners. 

It is supported by residential side streets with homes of many makes and sizes and there are an increasing number of medium rise apartments up or planned. 

 It has 30kph speed limits on residential and 40kph on the more major roads. It has street cars with step off platforms, bicycle lanes, and minimal traffic. 

It feels authentic, nostalgic and is certainly very friendly! 

Research and Education or Appropriation? - Museum of Anthropolgy - Vancouver

 

The Museum of Anthropology (MOA) holds a collection on behalf of the University of British Columbia that could be seen as a significant appropriation of indigenous cultural histories. 

The collection Is extensive and includes not only indigenous Canadian indigenous artefacts but those beyond its shores from the Pacific Islands, South America and to Asia. 

The Museum is governed by the University’s policy on repatriation and sees its role in both research and education. Whilst the collections are accessible to the public they feel captured in glass cabinets and many drawers. All are painstakingly catalogued and it is an impressive if not overwhelming collection. Researches would certainly have a field day! 

It has the feel and focus on ‘scientific’ research rather than a reflection on the interests and issues that indigenous communities around the world confront to ensure that their cultures and histories  are both recognised and told by them.  The MOA recognises the sensitivities surrounding the collection in their recognition of the cultural rights, values, knowledge and ideas that they have under their patronage. 

The MOA in recognising this dilemma invites and sponsors contemporary indigenous artists to  respond to the collection. These are contained in individual gallery spaces and pay respect to ‘the artists and the cultures from which this work comes’. 

It is a fine line however that museums around the world tread in the display of indigenous artefacts that have been acquired, sometimes taken and sold, and that require either repatriation or at least recognised for the role they play in contemporary indigenous communities.

Vancouver and Melbourne - liveable AND governable?

 

Vancouver and Melbourne each seek the title of The World’s Most Liveable City. Whilst not a fan of such a title given its proscriptive criteria for liveability based on  modelling that attracts business, it is bandied around back home as a badge of honour. It seems to me that both Vancouver and Melbourne  are victims of their own hype or branding and are failing to address the future now.  The commonality does not end there but extends to their British colonial past, their multicultural and diverse communities and their indigenous heritage that seeks recognition and compensation for the wrongs of the past.

 

A comparison of the two cities highlights the size of their respective city governments and the governance of the metropolitan region.

The City Vancouver is 2.5 times the population of City of Melbourne. Metro Vancouver is governed by a board representing and accountable to its 21 municipalises. 

Metropolitan Melbourne has 31 municipalities  and no governing body despite being 2 times the population of Metro Vancouver. 

City of Vancouver

Population 697,730

City of Melbourne 

Population 197,000

Metro Vancouver

Population 2.6m

21 municipalities, one electoral area, one treaty First Nation

Board of Directors  made up of elected officials (Mayor and councillors based on population and nominated by each council) elected officials from its members municipalities, First Nation representative. The chair is elected by the Board. 

Metropolitan Melbourne

 Population 5.5m

31 municipalities, no governance and

 no treaty

Vancouver - more affordable housing but at whose cost?

Vancouver is reputed to be one of the ‘World’s Most Liveable Cities’. But how to respond to the need for more housing and especially social and affordable housing is putting planning controls and developer interests under scrutiny with opposition growing to the re zoning solution. 

Here in the leafy and tree inner suburb of South Granville housing is dominated that has by large allotments with two and three storey timber houses that have often been infilled with laneway town houses. This together  with a mix of walk up three and four storey apartments has built the neighbourhood character. But this is now under threat. 

The answer proposed by the City Council pending a rezoning is to pulldown the medium rise affordable apartment housing and build high rise apartments between 15 and 25 storeys. It is proposed that 20% of the floor area will be allocated for affordable housing and rental. 

‘CityHallWatch is tracking Broadway Plan projects at all stages, from inquiry to development approval. 

The Broadway Plan was adopted in June 2022 and went into force on September 1, 2022, and has resulted in a flood of about 120 tower projects in the pipeline to date. 

The area affected, covers nearly 500 city blocks from 1st to 16th Avenues and Clark to Vine. Tens of thousands of residents are affected — from renters to strata condos, detached homes, duplexes and more. 

Many thousands of renters face possible demoviction and displacement’.

https://cityhallwatch.wordpress.com/broadway-plan/#:~:text=The%20Broadway%20Plan%20was%20adopted,Avenues%20and%20Clark%20to%20Vine.

Last stop London!

 Last stop London! Judy Chicago has been an influential feminist artist in our lives since 1979 when Maggie, Kes and I travelled to the USA via San Francisco and experienced the Dinner Party by Judy Chicago. 

It was a momentous 5 year undertaking and its result was so powerful and proved so antagonistic to powerful men and the art establishment that Chicago that the work spent time in the art wilderness. It was criticised for being pornographic and also received criticism from high ranking Congress legislators. 

However exhibitions of the Dinner Party were held in cities around the world including in Melbourne at the Royal Exhibition Building in 1988. It was rejected by the National Gallery of Victoria!

I was the Community Arts Network EO and was involved in bringing the Dinner Party to Melbourne and the CAN organised Dinner Parties across the State inviting women  to create their own dinner plates of important and influential women in their lives. 

Our next encounter with the Dinner Party was in Brooklyn NYC in where  it has after so many years in storage been given a permanent home and a rightful place in the lexicon of art. 

The Serpentine Gallery has a retrospective exhibition of Chicago’s work dating back to the ‘70’s to today. It is an inspiring, influential and brings to the fore an example of her collaborative work over several decades. It is a powerful reflection on the role of women that has been subjugated by men for centuries and still today. 

https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/judy-chicago-revelations/

Moderna Museet, Malmo

 Moderna Museet, Malmo has an exhibition currently titled ‘Unhealed’. It is an exhibition that explores the aftermath of the Arab Spring in 2010 that resulted in uprisings and revolutions across the Arab world.

Many refugees from these parts are now living in Sweden as a consequence so the artworks are personal, poignant and thought provoking. 

The exhibition ‘embodies a poetic narrative rather than strict historical accounts’. ‘It navigates through feelings of hope, confusion and despair beyond political analysis’. 

It is a timely reflection on the present and future that captures and shapes the lives of those living in Gaza.