2025: The days of your

SURVIVING A CRASH COURSE: The bike story could have had a far worse ending.

My daughter Ria asked what my favourite moment of 2025 was.

My first response?

"Walking away from a motorcycle crash was pretty awesome. How many people get to do that?"

Publishing a very warmly received book of stories wasn't bad either.

Neither was enjoying my day job and the people I work with all week.

I'm alive and healthy in one of the most comfortable societies in the world in the absolute best time in history. With an insanely fun family.

Is this barfy enough for you yet? I'm not done.

2025 was a standout year for me.

But a favourite moment? That had to be Saturday., Dec. 13, at 1:30 in the afternoon. 

THE LIKE BUG: The only car that makes
people smile and punch one another.

My wife Helena and I were in our 2016 Beetle travelling from Toronto to my hometown of Sudbury for a Christmas dinner hosted by my sister Bertholde. 

Of course it was snowing and except for a few overconfident types in 4x4s, traffic was just creeping along. But welcome to central Ontario in mid winter.

Helena and I were discussing the words "you're" and "your".

 

Helena has a masters degree in speech and language pathology from the University of Toronto so she knows a thing or two about articulation and hearing. She suggested that even though one might think the words "you're" and "your" are pronounced the same, there's actually a difference and that we can detect the distinction if we listen closely enough.

I didn't agree.

 

So we tried an experiment.

Her idea, folks.

I'm paraphrasing but it went something like this. Helena: "I'm going to think a sentence containing either 'your' or 'you're,' but I'm only going to say that word out loud. And then you guess which one I'm using."

Are you still with me?

 

I barely know how to transcribe what happened next. Bear with me.

Helena: "Silence silence silence silence your [or you're] silence silence. Which one was it?" 

Peter: "You are?"

H: "You're right."

DATING OURSELVES: Me and Helena
in our pre-broken-oven days.

P: "You are."

H: "What?"

M: "You said 'you're."

H: "Okay your turn."

P: "Your."

We probably covered 60 kilometres with this important experiment. And it's way harder than you think to just "think" most of  a sentence but say only one of the words out loud.  

Turns out Helena was (duh!) right. There is a teensy weensy difference in tone between you're and your. 

We then tried a few similar words and only stopped when

I told Helena about the lady in the delivery room who was shouting "Don't! Won't! Can't!" and the doctor said "Not to worry. Those are just contractions." 

Best moment of the year? Why not?

We weren't talking about why our three grown children Ewa, Ria and Michel have all taken to living in the boonies; Ewa on Vancouver Island, Ria on Manitoulin and Michel 15 minutes north of Weber's Burgers. We weren't discussing the rising cost of cheese and apples; we weren't talking about the food trap epidemic that makes us nervous when we're running out of toothpicks; we weren't describing aches or medicine or steps we should be taking to replace our aging Bosch oven that has a cracked burner. 

We were having the serendipitous kind of baggage-free conversation people enjoy when they're dating. 

If you don't understand why such a moment could be the highlight of a year, you haven't been married  long enough.

I hope you're enjoying the first week of 2026 as much as yours truly is.

 

Mining your pease and qeues

JOINED AT THE WORDLE:
Rose Rice and the author,
back before Wordle or colours were invented.  

"Ask your friend Tracy."

The speaker was my cousin Roseanne Rice. (I know. Her name Rose Rice sounds like the fancy car, the one that's known for not making any sound! Haha.) 

Roseanne was referring to Tracy Bennett, the Wordle Editor at the New York Times. I'd asked Rose if she thought today was the first time in Wordle history that the word started with .. oh never mind...but that's when Roseanne advised I consult Ms Bennett.

Tracy Bennett's not really my friend. 

We've never met. For all I know, by the time I post this, she might have been promoted. Maybe now Tracy Bennett oversees six-letter words. Haha. 

That's a very good joke. Tracy Bennett works at the New York Times; arguably the finest newspaper on the planet. Motto: "No slouches need apply." Thinking about Ms Bennett's skill level brings to mind the expression, "she has probably forgotten more about editing than you'll ever know. Peter."

Imagine how many people benefit from Bennett's deft Wordle work. Two years ago I was in the All That Jazz coffee shop near my house. I turned to the woman behind me, whom I had never seen before and without any introduction, asked, "Get your Wordle this morning?"

As if she'd been expecting the question, the stranger immediately started in about how close that morning's answer was to her go-to opening word. 

Me, I don't use a standard opening word. I have no "system." In any part of my life.

But every day, around North America, more than 10 million people stare at their phones and then punch in five starting letters, hoping they will be---out of the more than 165,000 five-letter words there are in English (I looked it up)--right.

So, you, Tracy Bennett, for doing your part in making this daily ritual a life-affirming event for everyone, deserve a high five. (Five? Get it?) 

Same as all those other anonymously working editors out there: Wordy craftspeople who do precisely what you might have assumed your grandma believed you did when you told her you worked as an editor. 

GAMED AND CONFUSED: Often, my
Wordle chart looks eerily like Tetris.

They smooth out the language; assure (or is it ensure?) accuracy and mostly, keep writers from sounding dorky.

Jen Lauriault is one such. She's the copy editor at the publication I work at, Law360 Canada. I'm not saying nice stuff about Jen solely because she was a high school student at Elliot Lake Secondary School when my nephew Hugh and nieces Norma and Jennifer were there. Or because she met her husband Marc when they played on the same hockey team. That scenario alone conjures up a heartwarming Netflix holiday feature.

In the few months I've worked with Jen, she has edited my choice of words and politely suggested the equivalent of, "Peter if you say that, you'll not only sound like a jerk you might bring this whole place down." 

An extraordinary editor doesn't merely make sure words and colons and stuff are in the right places, they guard against tone deafness. When we're all exactly three clicks away from being cancelled, tone deafness can be fatal.

Back at Chatelaine I wrote a lot of headlines, including for gardening stories. One day, I thought I'd cleverly incorporate a popular Oprah Winfrey saying; i.e., "You go, girl!" Our story was about hoeing. Do you see where I'm going with this? Can you believe I thought "You hoe girl!" would make a great attention-grabbing headline?  

More times than I want to admit, people like Jen, the Chatelaine editors and Tracy Bennett keep the world safe other people's klutziness.  

In doing so, they make all our lives better. 

Which brings me to a something I've noticed and wondered about Wordle. 

Am I the only one who thinks Wordle words are always sorta positive? 

As far as I can tell, Wordle never sparks anxiety. They're always, well, nice. Has anybody been "triggered" by a Wordle answer? My guess is no. 

Which, even if it does cut the number of opening-word possibilities down to, say, a piddling 100 grand, is more scientific proof why all skilful editors go to heaven.

Benchmark strolls in the park, featuring love, kisses and beer

BENCH PRESSING, ED STYLE: Finally, an exercise
my brother would proudly lean into.

After my brother Ed passed away in January 2022, my sister Norma petitioned (a.k.a., paid) the City of Toronto Parks department to install a memorial plaque in Ed's memory on a park bench somewhere in the city. 

After Norma's oldest son Paul passed away far too early in August 2023, my sister Charlene did the same thing in Paul's honour. 

Miraculously--and I mean that--Ed's and Paul's benches somehow ended up in Toronto's spectacular High Park, five city blocks west of our house. (You can ask that a plaque appear in a specific Toronto park but the City of Toronto is quick to point out they can't accommodate everybody's request and there are more than 1,000 parks in the city.) 

More astounding? Paul's bench is about 75 steps away from Ed's. 

Visiting those benches is one of my favourite things to do. Magic happens each time out.

A week ago, for instance, I set out for the benches but before I reached the  entrance, I ran into a friend I've known since 1983. 

It was sunny out, about 2 in the afternoon, and as hard as it is to believe, neither of us had anywhere else we had to be. We talked for about 40 minutes.

The last time I'd had such a long conversation with the guy was a year earlier when he was in a rehab centre recovering from Guillian-Barre syndrome and wondering if he'd ever walk again.

ILLEGAL SMILE: Another Ed-
approved bench activity

Here he was a year later and not only was he healthy, he was riding his bike. We stood on the sidewalk, discussed music--why some people think Wynton Marsalis can't swing--geopolitics--what life must have been like for regular people in Germany and Poland in the leadup to Second World War--and, coincidentally, both our Europe-born partners. We agreed the world was moving forward in a positive way and then just before we hugged and parted ways laughing, he said, "Why do I get the feeling that after all this sunny optimistic talk one of us is going to get whacked by a car on the way home today?" 

Both Paul and Ed would have approved. 

And yesterday's trip? 

Once I got to the park, I followed a different path than I'd ever taken before and realized that even though we've lived near High Park since 1987, there's still parts of the 400-property park I hadn't seen before. 

I walked towards Ed's bench. 

It was being put to its best possible use. A young couple was smooching. 

They probably wouldn't have been thrilled if I interrupted their fun with "Hey wait'll I tell you about my dead brother." 

So I walked the 75 steps northeast to Paul's. 

This next part you have to keep secret: I sometimes have a beer when I visit. When John George Howard bequeathed the property to the City of Toronto in 1873, he did so on several conditions; that he and the missus could spend the rest of their days on the property; that they'd be buried on site, that the park always be free to visit; and finally, no alcohol be consumed with its borders. 

Ed and I still laugh about that.

JOHN GEORGE HOWARD: He sorta
 resembled the whiskered guy I met
yesterday.

When I was at Paul's bench yesterday, I asked a dog-walking passerby to snap a photo so I could send it off to Paul's mom. The guy read the plaque and said, "Paul was a musician? And he taught music? I do, too." And thus I made a new friend, Jeff.

Jeff was with his grade-school-aged son Rio, who, Jeff affirmed, is a very skilful drummer. 

"Drummers," I said to Rio, "get all the girls." Jeff said, "I used to think it was guitarists."

The older of the two musicians also politely turned down my offer of a cold Corona. "But if I were going to have a beer, it'd be a Corona," he added before they headed off.

I sat and talked to Paul a few more minutes. Around 3:30 I started home.  

At the park's gate, a panhandler with long scraggly white hair and matching tangled beard asked if I had any spare change. 

"I got no cash," I said, "but how about a beer" and handed him a tall boy.

"Whoo-hoo," he said, adding, "Happy Thanksgiving!" 

I'm already looking forward to my next visit.

 

Harley har har

Here's the joke Ian the paramedic told while we were heading to St. Mike's hospital emerg after I crashed my beautiful Harley Sportster on a downtown Toronto street last Friday. 

IT ONLY HURT WHEN I LAUGHED: The neck
brace was just temporary and kept me from doing more harm to myself. 
You know, like those collars vets put on cats.

"A guy comes home from a visit to Mexico and says to his brother, 'We should start a bungee jumping business down there. I saw tons of rich tourists but no bungee jumping.' His brother agrees. They buy gear, head to Mexico and set up. The older brother says 'Let's do a test jump. You go first.'  The kid brother harnesses up and leaps. 

A few seconds later be bounces back, but when he comes back up, his brother notices that he has a few cuts and scratches. Big brother tries to catch him but can't reach and the first guy goes down again. Happens twice more and each time, he's got more injuries. His brother finally catches him, pulls him to safety and asks,'What happened? Did you hit the ground? Was the cord too long?' 

The kid says 'No, the cord was fine. But what the heck's a pinata?'" 

That superb story was just one of the many wonderful things to come out my accident.

Another?

Food. I think my siblings competed to see who could get their sick-bay brother to eat more. At one point, sushi got delivered to my house just moments before a pile of Indian food showed up. 

Before that, a charcuterie board like I've never seen and afterwards, pizza. My kitchen was like I imagine the one at the UN is.

Friends arrived with beer! And more jokes. 

NOT SO MUCH AN ACCIDENT AS A
Provender bender

I told our neighbour Calvin that just two days before the incident I had purchased a fancy full face helmet and this was its first trip. I also mentioned that it saved my teeth but now had to be discarded. Calvin said, "So it went down on its maiden voyage. Like the Titanic." 

And get this: Monday after the crash, I was hobbling down the street, thinking I looked like one of my favourite TV characters, Frasier Crane's dad Marty. 

Another neighbour, Austin, caught up to me, which of course wasn't too difficult, and asked about the accident. He wondered if I'd be going to court. I told him no, I'm hoping to keep the legal stuff to a minimum. 

DICAPRIO AND I ARE IDENTICAL
when wearing our Titanic helmets.

Austin said, "I see. Just like your dad. At the bus station."

Austin had read Storyworthy And you don't get to the part about my father being thrown through the picture window until about half through the book!

What a nuclear-fuelled compliment that was!  Austin actually paid attention to my memoir and he thought I was like my father! That alone was worth the sore bones.

For the record, (your honour, ha-ha) I was southbound on a downtown street mid-afternoon last Friday, going pretty slowly, when a driver in the adjacent lane veered right, knocking my bike down and me into St. Mike's emerg, where I got bandaged, x-rayed and, thankfully, sent home from. No broken bones; just a busted ego, and the bike was damaged a bit, too.

AUSTIN'S POWER: 
What a compliment!

How much worse could things have been? Lots.

For one thing, the accident happened at the beginning of the only rainy week of the summer. So I couldn't have been riding last week anyway!

And that extra helmet you see strapped to the back of my bike? My guardian angel's.

Finally, I have to agree with Dr. Rob Buckman who said, "Laughter is not the best medicine. Medicine is the best medicine. Laughter is the second-best medicine."

And the Canadian health care system? It might not be perfect but it's always been there when I needed it, bungee jokes and all.

Goin' up the country, got to get away

FAMILY PETS: Alex, Charlene Sput, Ed, and Nik.

When I was growing up in Sudbury, our family had lots and lots of pets

Fish. Dogs. Rabbits. Cats. We even had a chicken once. It could run around the backyard tethered to a rope linked to the clothesline. Turtles, too, though you didn't have to tether them.

And it's not as if we lived on a farm. We were in the middle of the city.  

So in addition to the 10 kids my mom gave birth to, various cousins and workers and strangers staying at our house, we always had animals around. 

I can name a few of the dogs. Sput and Nik were  twin pups that came to our house courtesy of a Russian guy named Nick Soulhani who worked for the bus company my dad and his brother Ed ran. The ingenious dogs' names were my father's idea, I think.

Others? Lucky; Jigs; a mutt called The Grump. "Mixed-breeds" weren't a thing. I believe my older brother Tom won The Grump in a poker game; Loonie; Casey the St. Barnard, and I know I'm forgetting some. 

The only cat's name I recall is Kitten Little.

I was likely kindergarten age when Lucky and Kitten Little were palling around like a pair of cartoon characters. Lucky taught Kitten Little everything. She didn't meow so much as she barked. 

Another thing about the Carter menagerie. Animals came and went with dispatch. Fact of life. And death. The gone-boy script was followed regularly. That was okay. We were Catholic. Mysteries are just something you live with.

So were minor miracles. Once,  I think it was The Grump who went AWOL. Young Carters postered the West End and recruited friends in the search party. Somebody finally called the Humane Society. Turns out the dog catcher had nabbed The Grump. My mom forked over the $15 or whatever it took to bail him out, and we learned a few years later that she was the one who called in the dog catcher in the first place. That, too, had cost her.

Why am I telling you this now?

Guilt. Good old guilt.

Stick with me here.

Recently, we packed our much-loved 17-year-old white heterochromic (two different coloured eyes) Iris off to a small house in the country to live with my son Michel. 

She didn't put in for the transfer. It just felt right. Still does. 

I visited a few weeks ago, and never mind that when she saw me on the deck, Iris took one look, twisted around, hoisted her tail and walked away, effectively giving me the feline finger. Otherwise, Iris fans will be glad to know she's healthy and calm.

Here's my guilt.

WHEN IRIS' EYES ARE SMILING:
The world is her litterbox.

Let's go with 10 years ago.

I was telling my wife Helena about how one day when I was a pre-schooler, our part-collie -part- something-else Lucky and Kitten Little went missing. Just like that. 

I asked my mom what she figured happened.

She knew. The furry friends, mom told me, decided to head to the nation's capital, about 300 miles east of Sudbury, because a day earlier, my dad and two older brothers, Alex and Ed, had driven to Ottawa to visit our grandmother.

Lucky loved Ed and Kitten Little loved Alex so much they followed. I don't remember the pets ever arriving.

When I told Helena this story--remember I was 57, she immediately said, "And you believed that, right?"  

She waited a moment and added, "You kinda still do, right?"

Right up until that moment, that is. 

Yes, I was a bit embarrassed. I had a very hard time with two things: Not only the thought that Kitten Little and Lucky met with some other kind of fate, but also, my mom had fibbed.

I've come around.

My mother wouldn't tell her baby boy a lie. Any more than I'm fibbing when I tell you Iris is happy living in the country with Michel. 

Helena was wrong. 

Kitten Little and Lucky did head down the highway, God bless their furry little ears. They're probably at Arnprior by now.

And Iris loves country life. Honest to Pete.

Meet Glad Lee the cross-eyed bear

"HEY CHATGPT": Would you please draw me
 a cross-eyed teddybear?

The following exchange happened a year and three weeks ago. I'm confident my version is accurate, because I've told the story so many times.  

Me, to the Pollock's Home Hardware cashier, whom I'd never seen before and who had a rather large bandage on her forearm that I was pointing at. These were the first words I said. No hello. No how are you. Just: "I am not going to ask you about that bandage."

Cashier, very calmly: "Negative capability."

Me. "What?"

C: "Negative capability. It's the ability to live comfortably with mystery."

Me: "I thought that came from growing up Catholic. Ha ha."

C: "Ha-ha. Negative capability is a Keats thing. He coined it."

Me: "Keats the poet?"

C: "Yes."

Me: "Why do you know this?"

Her: "I have three degrees in poetry." 

And I have the coolest Home Hardware store on the planet.

Negative capability. My newly discovered super power. And another of the secrets to happiness: You don't have to know everything.

A second conversation, a few weeks later. 

My daughter Ria: "Dad can I borrow the car tomorrow afternoon from about one til five?"

Me: "Yes."

Her: "Thank you." 

End of discussion.

Did I ask why she needs the car? I did not. Neither did I enquire who she was going with. Or where.

My life is no poorer for not knowing the answer to those and millions of other questions. 

You are reading a blog wrtten by the poster child of negative capability.

Yesterday, I figured out, in part, why. 

I was talking to my friend, a former Harrowsmith Country Life staff editor and author of more than 20 (!) books, Heather Grace Stewart. I mentioned that when I was a kid, one of the songs my very religious mom Huena used to sing was about accepting life's little burdens. 

The hymn focused on the idea of helping Jesus carry the cross up to Calvary to be crucified. Nice image, I  know.

Yet despite the gruesome picture, the song always brought a smile to my face. In fact it sort of cheered me up. 

The song? Gladly the Cross I'd Bear. 

Of course I thought it was about a vision-challenged animal named Glad Lee. Who wouldn't smile at the thought of a cross-eyed bear? 

Heather says "Have you blogged about this? Gosh you have to!"

So I fact checked Huena's song. 

Get this: No such hymn exists. 

My mom might have said something about Gladly the bear or even made a joke about the title, but Huena singing about Jesus and the cross? Couldn't have happened. 

I have no idea how Gladly the cross-eyed bear found his way into my brain.

I'm just glad he's there.  

Negative capability: Sometimes, not knowing is way more fun.

Pete's Blog and Grille Canada Day 2025 A-to-Z Guide to Visiting Toronto

I love Toronto, and I love the thought of visitors returning to their homes with a better impression of the city than they arrived here with.  

It's Canada Day, 2025. 

I have a friend named Michelle Donovan who is coming to Toronto from Grand Falls-Windsor, Newfoundland, in September, so I thought I'd put together this A-to-Z guide of things she might want to do when she's here.

NEVER HEARD of Bonds of Love? Neither
has anybody else

Grand-Falls Windsor is also the birthplace of one of this country's most famous actors, the late Gordon Pinsent.  

Pinsent starred in countless productions, including the 1993 wholly forgettable TV movie called Bonds of Love, along with Kelly McGillis and Treat Williams. More importantly, Bonds of Love was both the screen debut and final Hollywood appearance of none other than Ewa Frances and Ria Bridget Carter, aged one and a few months.

Our daughters were cast as "Nena," the tiny niece of McGillis's character, who falls in love with Bobby, a mentally challenged dude played by Williams. The movie was filmed in Toronto's Mimico neighbourhood, which actually shows up later in this list of places Toronto visitors should go, and in the story I wrote about the Bonds of Love misadventure for the Toronto Parents of Multiple Births Association newsletter, there's a quote from my brother Ed who helped us onset, saying, "I bet you'll think twice before having twins again." 

Spoiler alert: That's not the last you'll be hearing from Ed in this guide. My Toronto wouldn't have be the same if Ed had not lived here most of his short life. One of Ed's and my favourite Toronto activities was asking each other, "Why would anybody want to live anywhere else?"

And here's 26 reasons why we kept asking that question.

HE'S SO FRIENDLY, his
project almost makes sense!

A is for Albino Carreira. In 1994, Albino, a Portuguese immigrant, got hurt on a construction site in downtown Toronto and to see himself through recovery, devoted his time to what some call his Wood Cake House, in Toronto's Annex neighbourhood. I've driven by the place dozens of times but only recently stopped to get a close look. The house, garage, yard and Albino's still-operational Plymouth minivan are covered with shells, glass marbles, tiny toys, and thousands of little wooden discs that are in fact slices of old pool cues that he gets from a pool cue manufacturer in Northwest Toronto. (Maybe the pool cue factory belongs on this list but I haven't been there so I can't include it.) Albino imports the shells from China. And they're not plastic! They were once live creatures. Albino's property's crawling with them. The best part of the visit, if you're lucky, you'll meet the man himself who talks so proudly about this work in progress that it almost sounds sensible. A lovely fellow. Not sure what the neighbours think.

B? Why Bibliomat of course. The Monkey's Paw bookshop on Bloor Street is within walking distance of Albino's. You give $5 to Stephen the very friendly owner, he gives you a token that you drop into the

BOOK'EM STEPHEN: No book 
under 35.

Bibliomat machine at the back of the store, and out pops a book! Any book. You have no idea what you'll get but Stephen says his store carries nothing published after 1980. I now own a hard-cover Complete Guide to Skin and Scuba Diving, copyrighted 1975. Toronto's home to dozens of quirky new and used bookstores. I'll try to keep them to a minimum on this list but I'm not making any promises. Monkey's Paw might well be the best.

C is for my big sister Charlene. I know she's not a tourist site, but still. Somehow, from her spectacularly scenic home on the north shore of Manitoulin Island in Lake Huron, my sister Charlene manages to keep on top of very important social, cultural, political and fun development in Ontario's capital city. To whit: a few summers back,  Toronto Harbour was suddenly home to a giant rubber duck but I hadn't heard.  I got the news from Charlene. So down we went, singing "Rubber Ducky I'm awfully fond of, Rubber Ducky I'd like a whole pond of you" there and back. She'll kill me for this but all visitors should be in touch with Charlene. She can tell you the coolest restaurants. Like Caren's Rosedale. Where they serve--I hope you're sitting down--fondue! I also had the extreme privilege of living with the 18- or 19-year-old version of Charlene when she was a nursing student at Humber College and I was an 11-year-old page boy. Every day for a few months in 1969, I commuted from the apartment she shared with her two beautiful roommates Barb and Cathy in Mimico (very close to where Gordon Pinsent held Ewa and/or Ria all those years later) to Queen's Park. Charlene is absolutely vital to my loving this city, and I know I'll consult Charlene some more before Michelle arrives. 

D: Dave. My neighbour: A few week’s back, my wife Helena and I were walking eastward on our street when we stopped in front of Dave’s place. He was standing on the third or fourth rung of a stepladder, doing something to a tree with odd-looking branches. The following exchange ensued.

I WARNED DAVE I'D DO THIS

“What kind of tree is that?" I asked. 

“This is an Alpine something,” he said though he didn’t say “something” he used another word but I forget what. Doesn’t matter. The way the tree’s shaped is way more interesting than what the tree’s called. Fact is, Dave’s garden is one of the most intriguing little plots of land I’ve ever seen. He’s got tiny flowers and mossy stuff; a few plastic dinosaurs and hiding halfway behind a bush is smiling Buddha. The front of the garden is home to a huge rock that looks like he found it at the bottom of the ocean. 

“Your garden,” I told him, “should be in one of those guides showing all the best places to visit in Toronto!"

Dave agreed.

Tu-Duh!

Everybody should have at least one neighbour named Dave. 

PAUL 

E: Ed's and Paul's memorial benches in High Park. My brother Ed died too young in January, 2022. We're still not sure what of.  In August, 2023, my sister Norma's oldest son Paul passed away of cancer at 46. He was Ed's Godson and both men loved Toronto and both spent a heck of a lot of time around my house. (Okay. This part of my story is sad. But bear with me. It gets less sad.) The City of Toronto has a park bench program through which, for a donation, you can have a plaque affixed to a bench somewhere in the city, commemorating whatever or whoever you like. In separate applications, Norma applied for a bench for Ed, my sister Charlene did the same for Paul. Applicants can request a specific park but there's no guarantees. 

Get this: Toronto has more than 1,500 parks, ranging from small waterparks to big ones like High Park, which is really close to my house. The fact that both Paul's and Ed's benches wound up within hollering

ME, ALEX, ED, when we were younger.
Mitch Hedberg: "Every photo is of you when you 
were younger. I'd like to see the camera that
takes a picture of you when you were older."

distance of one another, right at the north entrance to High Park,  and both within a 30 minute walk of my front door, borders on the unbelievable. The City Parks people had no way of knowing these two men were related. Or that I--who had nothing to do with the applications--loved both men dearly and live so close to High Park. They had different surnames. So do my sisters. I don't know why or how it
happened. Paul could have wound up in Northern Scarborough and Eddie near Jane and Finch. Plus if you visit the benches, you can read about these two extraordinary men and take a shot of the QR code that my other brother, Alex, had installed on Ed's bench. That code will take you to an audio/video Ed history, including a clip of him telling me a joke about a sailor coming across a man stranded on a desert island. He goes to recue the guy and he sees three buildings. He asks what they're for. The guy points to the first and says 'that's my house.' He points to the second and says 'that's my church,' Then he points to the third and says 'that's the church I used to go to.'" 

F is for Fatima. Remember Albino back there with the pool cues and shells? He told me that his father had been a stonemason in a little town in Portugal  that until 1917, hardly anybody knew about. It was called Fatima. Given the marvelous circumstances surrounding the placement of my brother's and nephew's benches, keep eye on the north end of High Park is all I'm saying.

O'TUCKY MACLEAN: I swear!
He looks exactly like my friend
Kevin's brother.

H, as in Hippy. When I was six or seven, I remember my parents in Sudbury talking about some place in Toronto called Yorkville, which is where something called "hippies" hung out. Then one day after we visited some of mom's relatives in Niagara Falls we were returning to Sudbury and my folks decided to take a detour through Yorkville, to get a look at the hippies. I've always loved them for things like that.

That also might have been the first time I slept overnight in this city. My dad rented a hotel room; a suite, actually, in the King Edward Hotel and I went for my very first subway ride. The subway trains roared in and out of the station with such ferocity I found it a bit scary. And they also arrived every few minutes. Back home in Sudbury, the local buses rolled around on the half hour! I should know. Our family owned the bus company. But here in Toronto? The transit system was breathtaking. Believe it or not that first thrilling ride comes back to me almost every single time I walk down the stairs to the subway platform. As for the hippies, about 100 metres east of Paul's bench in High Park, stands a statue of some anonymous dude wearing a sports coat, sunglasses and a badge that says "LOVE." According to every source I checked, the statue's called The Hippy, and if you're visiting the miracle benches you might as well drop over and say peace.

SATURDAYS AT THE STEER: Shelley on left.

I is the Inter Steer: If somebody were to ask me if I had a "a local," I'd have to say it's a joint around the corner from my house weirdly named The Inter Steer. It'd be embarrassing for me to tell you how much money I've spent there over the years, but we did hold Ed's wake at the Steer. It's also the home of what I call Billy's Show every Saturday afternoon: the closest thing to a kitchen ceiledh that you'll find in this city.  I also just realized I've never written the word ceilidh before. If you're lucky, the Saturday you drop by will include the fiddling of my friend Shelley Coopersmith who warrants her own place on this list but "S" and "C" are both already used up. Sing along with Billy the Kidder.   

J is for John O'Callaghan. John and I have been friends since the early '70s. He, too, was a page boy in the Ontario Legislature and he, like Michelle, couldn't tell a boring story if you held a Glock to his head. I hope he and Michelle meet and if I'm there, I'll ask if he recalls the time he, Ed and I were in a pub on Yonge Street and somebody suggested we try something called John Courage Brown Ale. The beer arrived, Ed took a small sip, looked disgusted, held the bottle to his lips, chugged the contents, wiped his mouth with his sleeve and announced, "Waiter! This horse needs his kidneys checked!" 

K.  As in OK. You probably guessed that I didn't just scribble this list down in alphabetical order all in one fell swoop. Some of the locations came more easily than others. And "K" had me snookered. Until. Just now. This Toronto location is what you would get if you took all these other places, stuck them in a blender until they were all mixed up together: Kensington Market. It never disappoints. Unless you don't like bargains, great food, beautiful people, reggae, the smell of pot and spending a restful colourful afternoon in a place that never loses its charm. I can't believe Kensington didn't occur to me first.

Little Canada. I challenge visitors from other parts of Canada--Michelle included-- to find their own homes on this ridiculously interesting miniature 3-d version of our country. 

M is the Mandarin. I'm writing this on Canada Day. And as I write, thousands of people in various parts

MILES OF MEALS AT THE MANDARIN

of Ontario are lining up at their nearest Mandarin Restaurants because on Canada's birthday, every year, the Mandarin lets people eat for free! True fact. But any day of the year, the Mandarin buffet is a tribute to human achievement. You like fresh hot pizza? Oysters? Salads? Roast beef with Yorkshire pudding just the way my mom tried to make it? Good old fashioned North American style Chinese foot? The Mandarin selection takes your breath away and you of course can eat as much as you want and the atmosphere is downright playful. And this part's not as important but for a number of years, my wife Helena and I have been on--get this--the Mandarin Restaurant's Menu testing panel. Every few months, the management invites 60 to 100 people to an evening of food (and drink!) testing where they try out new restaurant items and ask us to rate them. Like last time we went we had to determine whether one sort of shrimp sauce was better than a slightly different sort. Plus we a-b tested Bloody Caesars. But I'm not shilling for the Mandarin because they give me free food. I call BS on anybody who says Disneyland's the happiest place on earth. It's the Mandarin, hands down.  

N brings us back to Nena from Bonds of Love. Toronto has stood in for many many foreign cities over the years but my favourite was when our neighbourhood became Brooklyn for the John Travolta version of Hairspray. In the summer of 2010, I was at Ceasar's Palace in Vegas, shortly after the first Hangover movie came out, and the front desk clerk told me tourists love taking photos of themselves in the lobby. If you're in Toronto and want a photo of something you might have seen in a movie head to The Lakeview Diner on Dundas near Trinity Bellwoods Park. It, too, was in Hairspray and, more familiarly, Cocktail with Tom Cruise. I know. Cheap use of an N but there you go.

O is for O Noir, the downtown restaurant where guests dine in total darkness. Helena took me there on my birthday a number of years ago and I wrote about it for Today's Trucking magazine, which might be one of the reasons I don't work there anymore. Read "Where Beer is the new Black."

MOMMY MEETS THE  TWO-HEADED
CALF

P is for Prehistoria Museum. My daughter Ria's text: "Dad. You have to see this place!" She was right. A pay-what-you-can freakshow museum with the oddest assortment of antiques and memorabilia that you likely won't find anywhere else and as you exit through the gift shop (called the Skull store), you can actually purchase real dinosaur bones and fossils. Acting on Ria's advice, we visited and saw, for the first time in my life,  a real stuffed two-headed calf, a mummy, an honest-to-goodness shrunken head (it's yours for a measly $25k); and a whole bunch of  stone age artifacts that the museum operators somehow got their hands on legally and oddly. 

Q. The Queen Streetcar.  Wanna see Toronto? Take a ride on the what might be the longest most interesting streetcar line on the planet. The 501 Queen car starts at something called Long Branch (which is where I lived as a page with the three older women) and it travels along the Lakeshore (past Bonds of Love territory) then through various neighbourhoods sometimes so slowly it seems like it's going backwards but eventually clear across the city until it winds up at Neville Park. For the $3 and change it cost to ride, the Queen car provides the most comprehensive (and lazy) trip across one of the world's great cities. Plus you can hop on and off for brief breaks without having to pay extra.

R is for the Rebellion of 1837. You're like, whaaaa?? But wait. It started at the Montgomery Tavern which is now, simply a historical plaque near Yonge and Eglinton. But never mind that. Throughout the years, I have been accused by several freelance writers of coming up with utterly absurd story ideas that I made them do all the work on. Among them? Track down the surviving members of something called The Family Compact. Quick history lesson: In the early 1800s, this part of the world was known as Upper Canada and the most influential people around were devoted to the Crown and British traditions and they kept themselves and their friends in charge of the place. Rather haughty bunch, we all thought.  In 1837, a Scottish born journalist named Willian Lyon Mackenzie led a small armed rebellion and some Family Compact types shut him down pretty quick and threw his printing presses into Lake Ontario. If I really wanted to do research I could probably find out where at the bottom of the lake that stuff lays but really, I just wanted to say that when I was a teenager and young journalist, I idolized the rebellious Mackenzie; then years later, when I assigned a freelance writer to track down the surviving members of the Family Compact, I was the editor of a magazine called Metropolitan Toronto Business Journal, which was owned by the Board of Trade of Metro Toronto, which was, in fact, the 1992 version of the Family Compact.

YOUR TOUR GUIDE AT 
Accordions Canada

S is for Squeezeboxes. Michelle is from Newfoundland. If she doesn't visit Accordions Canada on Eglinton Avenue in the heart of Little Jamaica. I'm telling on her.

T is for the Tranzac. More accordions. More cowbell. You name it. The Tranzac's on Brunswick Avenue. Not far from Albino's house, come to think of it. Something musically interesting is going on at the Tranzac, almost every day of the year. Somebody should write a book or make a documentary about the Tranzac. An undersung musical treasure. Musically undersung? See what I did there?

U is for us. Me and Helena. We love visitors. Plus, because we have been to every place on this list, we'll be happy to get you there. Including the entry for "V," because for "V," you will need a car. Oh wait. We haven't been to Fatima. Yet. If Helena's sore muscles don't soon get better I'm going to insist. Meantime, come visit our little library. Sit on the adjacent bench. Read a spell.

V is for the flea market downstairs the Dixie Value Mall, a few clicks west of downtown Toronto. When my sister Mary gave me a ticket to join her at a Shania Twain concert at the Scotia Centre last year, she needed some sparkly jeans, and come concert day we found a pair at the Value Mall. The flea market downstairs is not for the squeamish but for the curious? If Albino Carreira of the Wood Cake House ever went into sales, this is the kind of joint he'd run. 

W is for--and it's about time you asked--"Who is Michelle Donovan. And why are you writing this for her?" When I was the still editor of Today's Trucking magazine (before I wrote about the all-dark restaurant) I penned an editorial about trucking

MICHELLE IN GUIDE TO TORONTO:
Get it?

companies hiring foreign workers. When my dad and uncle Ed ran the bus company in Sudbury they had guys from all sorts of places on staff, but to me, the most foreign was a guy named Mike Donovan from a Newfoundland village called St. Brendan's Island. 

Mike (or Moik as he pronounced it) appeared out of nowhere looking for a job, got hired on and then, for the next few years, hung around and endeared his charming Newfoundland self to our family. When I did the story about 40 years later, I phoned the post office in St. Brendan's Island looking for him. Whoever answered said there were no Mike Donovans but he'd heard of  one in Grand-Falls Windsor. I called and got him. How'd I know I had the right guy? One of the first things he asked was, "Did your sister Norma ever get married?" A few years later, I got an email from somebody named Michelle who had been at her ailing father's bedside in Newfoundland, and in a drawer beside his bed, found my magazine column. Moik'd never told her about the story, but she contacted me to say we Carters might be interested in knowing that her much-loved dad was facing his last days, and that he had lots of fond memories of Sudbury. After exchanging a few emails, I commented that Michelle seemed to have a facility with language. I encouraged her to join a writing group that I participate in and turns out she's just as charming as her dad, she's a former elementary school teacher, and she has taken a real fancy to Toronto and writing but she's been to all the touristy tourist places and should now focus on the good ones. Everybody in the writing group loves when Michelle tells her stories. What is it about Newfoundlanders anyway?

X might as well be for "The Expositor," the beloved weekly newspaper that I still subscribe to and sometimes write for and two summers ago, I covered the opening, downtown Toronto, of the Lillian McGregor park, named for a former resident of the Whitefish River First Nation and if you're going to be downtown Toronto, you really might like to pay attention. Especially to the huge metal sculpted eagle feathers. The older I get, the more I understand that, if you just stop and look around you will never be bored in downtown Toronto. Or anywhere, for that matter.

Y as in YYZ; Toronto's airport code. I highly recommend hopping a ride on the Union Pearson Express (UPS) train that goes from downtown out to the airport and back. It's a quick fun trip that lets you see the backyards and unpublicized sides of the city. When the UPS first opened, Ed and I rode it out to the Airport, had a beer there and then returned downtown, and even though we'd lived here about 20 years already, we saw parts of our beloved city that we would have never otherwise passed through. Not coincidentally, one of the places the train goes alongside of is the Henderson Craft Brewery which brews a very tasty IPA named after the train: Pearson Express. And Henderson's a 15-minute walk from my house, is open every day of the year, including holidays like today. I'm probably headed there after this one last entry.

 Where zines can be seen

Z. The Toronto Zine library (obviously). Upstairs at the Tranzac Club. Did you even know there was such a thing as a zine library? Literary enterprises like the Toronto Zine library, showcasing younger writers' and creators' enthusiasm for the importance of reading and writing, fill me with optimism. Traditional media might be on the way out, but ingenuity and creativity are burning hotter than ever. Exhibit Z: The Toronto Zine library. As far as tourist spots go, it's the last word.