Yonge-Dundas Square

I wrote this one a few years ago but decided to dust it off for TCL. You may recognize the lyrics of David Ruffin from The Temptations but the tune will probably not be so familiar. I believe the kids these days call this style Electro House.

476 Yonge Street

Yonge & Maitland

85 Yonge Street

It’s unseasonably cold, just found out I’m gonna need a root canal, and I still miss Ollie a lot. But at least some parts of the city are starting to look up.

Locations (in order):

214 Bay Street (planters in front of Walrus Pub)
255 Bay Street (planters in front of CIBC)
36 King Street West (planters in front of ScotiaBank)
23 King Street West (planter in front of BMO)

I’ve really been digging on Mister X comics lately and I guess the city’s psychetecture is having an effect.

Shortly after 3:30 p.m. on April 22, 2019, in the middle of a maddeningly, ironically blue, sunny, and warm Easter Monday, my good friend Oliver died.

You might remember him from some of these posts:

I’m sure there are more, but as you can see these posts go all the way to the beginning of Toronto City Life, because he was there. He was there a few years prior to the start of this blog, in fact.

And he was already a year or two old at the point where he wandered up to my back door one dark and blustery afternoon, begging to be let in to a perfect stranger’s home. He’d obviously been very recently abandoned by some asshole(s) who didn’t like his size and / or vociferousness and / or whatever. Either way, assholes.

Not long after, I got divorced, went to live in downtown Toronto. Ollie came with. There he helped me mark an era, spending his next 12-ish years calmly meditating, making friends, and contemplating life. He made friends with Sarah in microseconds while calmly enduring other animals I was house-sitting or playing guest to. And then there was the litany of people who traipsed through our house due to the MS.

He kept his composure even when living conditions were less than ideal and he had to eat food bank cat foot. He was called the “Buddha cat” by more than one keenly observant person.

Since the beginning I was profoundly aware, sometimes to the point of being melancholic, that I’d inherited a fragile creature that wouldn’t always be with me. Every second was borrowed time. Sure, some time down the road we would need to part ways, but not so early, not at that time.

But at least now I know I reminded him of my love as often as I could because I was aware of his mortality; dark, possibly, sad, always, but thinking about other’s deaths can be useful in that way. If they were to die tomorrow, how would you spend your last day with a loved one? It’s a question that needs to be asked regularly because tomorrow comes too fast.

* I’ll wait here while you go hug your pets and other loved ones *

I also knew that Ollie loved his food and genuinely enjoyed indoor athletics of the sort in which he didn’t have to participate. I made the decision early on that I wouldn’t ever deny him the pleasures of life in exchange for a few more years of it. He’d already been snipped (before I met him), and it seemed like infinite cruelty to inflict a life devoid of self-determinism, even if that manifested in hedonism. He may have lived a little longer, but would he have lived as well?

Although we were denying it most of the way, the end came gradually over a one-and-a-half week period.

We did the best with what we had, managed to scrounge together some money while discovering the kindness of strangers, but in the end his host of ailments won out. He went out mercifully quickly, peacefully, and pain free.

But so what?

His loss is utterly devastating. It’s shattering. It hurts in a real primal, painful place and you’re afraid that if you pull away you’ll be neglecting his memory and you can’t do that. Not yet. Not your good friend.

It’s just as devastating now as it was a week ago. I’m not sure at what point my heart will stop breaking. This is really fucking hard.

Today though, today, I can’t do nothing because it’s driving me up the wall, so I thought that maybe I could honour his memory with something he was publicly a part of: this blog.

You saw the links — Ollie’s an original, a founding partner.

But the blog has been ignored for a while and that seems very wrong. I think I should do better. For Ollie.

For starters, for me every Easter Monday will from now on be St. Ollie’s Day, a day in which we can observe our hirsute saint with libations and general enjoyment of life, as Ollie would undoubtedly want it. Keep in mind, Oliver really only preferred the three or five-year Parmesan, so keep it as classy, expensive, and peaceful as possible. Think “meditating gourmand”.

Beyond that, though, I’m thinking to blow the dust of this blog and see if I can get ‘er started again. I feel like I’ve said all I can about politics and the dangers of government, and don’t feel like banging my head against that wall anymore … Mr. Gorbatrump ain’t taking it down.

So I guess that leaves the original walking-around-and-snapping-pics-interspersed-with-some-writing thing I used to do with maybe a mix of some of the stuff I’m doing for CypherPoker.JS
(it's that link at the top of the right column)

I mean, that project is mostly responsible for causing me to forsake the blog in the first place but it is a product made 100% in Toronto so maybe it could provide some shareable out-takes.

Besides, the more people that read Toronto City Life the more Memories of Ollie will spread.

My little friend deserved no less.

I’ll miss you so much, dobos!

Love, your friend always,
Patrick and Sarah and Bitty

Earlier there were eight cruisers and an ambulance. No news trucks. I guess it’s become so common that it’s not worth reporting on. Always something going down in this neighbourhood.

Morning coffee, check. Toast, check. Weather report, on. News chopper, hovering. Sirens, blaring.

Another Thursday morning in the city.