The Imagining Toronto Project This website offers news and commentary about the Imagining Toronto project and the Imagining Toronto book (Mansfield Press, Fall 2010).
Visit the Imagining Toronto Library for an extensive and regularly updated list of literary works engaging with Toronto.
The Imagining Toronto course syllabus, lecture notes and related materials are accessible by clicking here.
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January 27, 2010, at 12:00 pm
 In The Robber Bride, novelist Margaret Atwood refers to Toronto’s polyphonic gathering of voices as “music from elsewhere.” Walking up Spadina Avenue, a wide street vibrant with fruit venders, fish mongers, electronics importers and Sichuan restaurants, Atwood’s protagonist studies the diversity gathered around her and observes,
“She likes the mix on the street here, the mixed skins. Chinatown has taken over mostly, though there are still some Jewish delicatessens, and, further up and off to the side, the Portuguese and West Indian shops of the Kensington Market. Rome in the second century, Constantinople in the tenth, Vienna in the nineteenth. A crossroads. Those from other countries look as if they’re trying hard to forget something, those from here as if they’re trying hard to remember. Or maybe it’s the other way around.”
Author Dionne Brand seems to respond to this description in her Toronto novel, What We All Long For, suggesting that “as at any crossroads there are permutations of existence. People turn into other people imperceptibly, unconsciously.” She adds,
Lives in this city are doubled, tripled, conjugated – women and men all trying to handle their own chain of events, trying to keep the story straight in their own heads. At times they catch themselves in sensational lies, embellishing or avoiding a nasty secret here and there, juggling the lines of causality, and before you know it, it’s impossible to tell one thread from another.
These two characterizations of identity — one historical, the other invented – exemplify tensions among competing narratives of Toronto as a cultural crossroads. In Atwood’s Toronto, culture is nostalgic, wistful, unsettled but largely resigned to what it has gained or given up in a city described as little more than a palimpsest of other cities. Tellingly, her protagonist is a historian, an archaeologist of memory who sees herself as an observer of culture rather than a participant in it. In Brand’s Toronto, conversely, culture is hybrid and contested, engaged actively in the construction of its own memories and meanings. Brand’s protagonists take culture wherever they find it – in sweaty nightclubs, impromptu street parties, Kensington Market coffee shops, each other – and weave tradition, in-jokes and borrowed memories into a pastiche that simultaneously rejects and reclaims the concept of cultural identity. They make the story up as they go along, and as a result the city they create through narrative is continually shifting and often at odds with itself.
Despite their differences, Atwood and Brand have one vital thing in common: both writers describe culture as emerging from narrative, as erupting from acts of storytelling that alternately reconstruct and reimagine the city’s past and present. In doing so, they challenge the anthropological claim that culture consists primarily of fixed, measurable or neutral qualities. Indeed, if culture is rooted in the stories we tell, it must necessarily involve the possibility of contradiction, forgetting and outright fabrication. This creates urgent challenges in a city like Toronto where almost everybody has a story to tell, and where so many narratives compete for our attention. How do we navigate among them? Is a coherent narrative of the multicultural city even possible?
Slides for today’s class are available here.
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January 20, 2010, at 12:00 pm
 This week in the Imagining Toronto course we will explore Toronto’s literary cartographies. We will begin with the idea that the ravines are the repository of the city’s memory. Then we’ll move upward into Toronto’s streets and neighbourhoods as part of a discussion about the poetics of walking. Finally, we will step into to towers that ring the downtown core, in order to explore what perspectives they offer — and take away.
Lecture slides are available here. All course materials may be accessed by clicking on the Course tab.
Bloor Viaduct photograph taken by Amy Lavender Harris in 2006.
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January 13, 2010, at 12:00 pm
 Slides for Week 2 of the Imagining Toronto course are now available here. Two handouts — guidelines for the research essay and guidelines for the first reading response assignment — are also available to be downloaded.
Today’s discussion will revolve around the idea of the city as text.
We’ll begin discussing Dionne Brand’s novel Toronto Book Award winning novel, What We All Long For (Knopf, 2005), and will refer primarily to two articles about imagined cities: Gary Bridge and Sophie Watson’s “City Imaginaries,” from A Companion to the City (Blackwell, 2000> and Stephen Cain’s essay, “Annexing a space for poetry in the new Toronto,” published in The State of the Arts: Living with Culture in Toronto (Coach House, 2006).
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January 6, 2010, at 12:00 pm
In the winter 2009-2010 term, the Imagining Toronto course (listed as GEOG 4280 3.0) will be held on Wednesdays, 4:00 to 7:00 pm in Vari Hall room 1018.
The syllabus and reading list are available here; a copy of the syllabus may be downloaded by clicking here.
Lecture slides, handouts and other materials will be uploaded weekly; these items are available here.
The Imagining Toronto course is currently full, but a few additional students may be accommodated if classroom space permits. If you are interested in taking the Imagining Toronto course, please contact Amy Lavender Harris at alharris [at] yorku [dot] ca. Students enrolling in the course should hold fourth year standing in the Geography Department at York University.
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September 28, 2009, at 12:00 pm
 Earlier this month I took Spacing Radio producer Mieke Anderson on a literary walking tour of Toronto’s Kensington Market. We strolled through the Market on a beautiful sunny Saturday morning — beginning, of course, outside This Ain’t the Rosedale Library on Nassau and ending up near the bottom of Kensington Avenue — and chatted about literature, community, culture and urban design.
The literary walking tour, which incorporates literary references from Margaret Atwood, John Bentley Mays, Lynn Crosbie and Sarah Dearing, and plenty of extemporaneous commentary, is accompanied by a background soundtrack of Kensington Market ambiance.
Here’s a description of the complete episode, which also features Davy Rothbart of Found Magazine and urban designer Joe Berridge:
Episode 008 of Spacing Radio examines the idea of haphazardness in a city. Spacing magazine contributing editor Amy Lavender Harris takes producer Mieke Anderson and listeners on a literary tour of Toronto’s Kensington Market that explores the neighbourhood’s unique character. Spacing’s Todd Harrison sits down with Davy Rothbart, the creator of Found magazine and books, to discuss the world of lost objects found in the public realm of our cities. And we eavesdrop on urban designer Joe Berridge during a recent panel discussion at the IPAC conference here in Toronto. The music of The D’Urburvilles can be found throughout the episode (songs “Dragnet” and “Hot Tips”).
You can listen to Spacing Radio Episode 008, The Haphazard City, by clicking here.
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September 16, 2009, at 12:00 pm
 Years ago [can it really have been only two?] Library & Archives Canada commissioned me to write a short essay on Toronto literature for a new web exhibition called Canada: A Literary Tour intended to showcase LAC’s prodigious holdings of literary works, images, recordings and other materials representing Canadian cities and regions.
Yesterday, at long last, Canada: A Literary Tour went live. You can read my contribution here. At 350 words it’s very brief, but I managed to squeeze in references to as many Toronto writers as possible, including Michael Ondaatje, Gwendolyn MacEwen, Anne Michaels, Nalo Hopkinson, Morley Callaghan, Hugh Garner, Phyllis Brett Young, Austin Clarke, Dennis Lee, Margaret Atwood and Dionne Brand. As an overview of Toronto literature it’s manifestly incomplete, but I wanted to inventory some of the writers who have most profoundly shaped Toronto’s literary landscape.
The exhibition separates literary landscapes and literary cities, an unfortunate distinction perhaps, but an understandable one given the enormous range and diversity of Canadian literature. It also includes a number of literary maps, efforts to plot literary references to place.
Overall, the exhibition, which is geared toward a general audience, seems to be an excellent entry point for anyone interested in discovering Canada’s literary heritage and its writers’ preoccupations with place. This is wonderful as far as it goes, given that many of the books inventoried can be found in bookstores and libraries across the country. At the same time, however, the exhibition highlights a critical limitation of Library & Archives Canada: that so few of its holdings (including copies of books long out of print, original manuscripts, maps such as the ones reference d above, writers’ fonds and personal documents donated for posterity) may be accessed electronically. The vast bulk of Canada’s literary heritage is warehoused in Ottawa, far out of reach of most Canadians and many researchers.
A week ago the Federal government announced plans to “modernize” Library & Archives Canada. The announcement garnered media attention, mainly because of its anticipated impacts on the National Portrait Gallery. But really, the issue that should be galvanizing Canadians is when and how we can expect to gain better access — particularly via the web — to the country’s literary archives. Exhibitions like Canada: A Literary Tour are wonderful as far as they go, but at best they can be considered a first, halting step.
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August 15, 2009, at 12:00 pm
 Whenever I visit Kensington Market — approximately weekly for both business and pleasure — I always make a point of stopping by This Ain’t the Rosedale Library. This Ain’t is a legendary independent Toronto bookstore that relocated to Kensington Market in 2008 after having been a fixture for three decades in the Queen East and Church Street neighbourhoods. It’s located in the heart of the Market at 86 Nassau Street, half a block west of Augusta, surrounded by coffee houses with bustling summertime patios.
I have to confess not having spent much time at This Ain’t before the move to Kensington Market; as a west-ender, my travels do not generally carry me very far east of Spadina. But in the past year or so I have made the bookstore part of my regular rounds when hunting for Toronto literature, and have never emerged disappointed.
In addition to its large selection of general fiction, cultural studies, music, architecture and biography, This Ain’t specializes in local writers, independent presses and chapbooks, and I’ve managed to pick up numerous works by Toronto writers: Austin Clarke’s More (Thomas Allen, 2008), Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer’s Perfecting (Goose Lane, 2009), Stuart Ross’ Buying Cigarettes for the Dog (Freehand, 2009), Philip Quinn’s The Subway (Bookthug, 2008) and Kyle Buckley’s The Laundromat Essay (Coach House, 2008), for example. I’ve also picked up a wide variety of non-fiction, including Mark Kingwell’s Concrete Reveries: Consciousness and the City (Viking Canada, 2008), and Toronto-focused children’s books like Allan Moak’s A Big City ABC (Tundra, reissued 2002). Earlier this past spring I picked up a curious little book called Jokes of Toronto, put out by Off Cut Press, an imprint that publishes books on paper that would otherwise be discarded by printers. And just this past weekend I bought Ronna Bloom’s Permiso (Pedlar Press, 2009) and Sky Gilbert’s outrageous and well-written memoir, Ejaculations from the Charm Factory (ECW, 2000).
Whenever the weather’s good This Ain’t also has rolling bookcases in its book garden out front, where passersby and customers at neighbouring coffeehouses may browse backstock offered at reduced prices, and this is where I picked up a signed copy of Yashin Blake’s Titanium Punch (ECW, 2001) and Camilla Gibb’s Toronto Book Award winning first novel, Mouthing the Words (Pedlar Press, 1999).
This Ain’t maintains close ties with Toronto’s literary community, hosting regular readings, launches, discussions and musical events. The store is run by Charlie Huisken with his son Jesse (Partner Emeritus Dan Bazuin has retired to focus on his art), both who seem infinitely knowledgeable about music and musicology, culture and counter-culture and the world of independent publishing and bookselling, both local and international. They’re always happy to recommend something in the store I’ve not read  before, and can easily order in anything I’m looking for but don’t find on the shelves (although preferring instant gratification, I’m more likely to buy on sight rather than wait).
With the sad news that Pages Books on Queen will close its doors on its 30th anniversary at the end of August (although it seems evident that proprietor Marc Glassman has future literary plans up his sleeve), This Ain’t will become the city’s main source for cultural studies and critical theory books (it has a significant and expanding selection of theorists ranging from Althusser to Zizek). This Ain’t will also become Toronto’s principal source for small press chapbooks and zines. As such, at a time when behemoth corporate booksellers dull the literary landscape by selling mass-produced literature, it’s even more important to support independent bookstores like This Ain’t the Rosedale Library, who serve as such vital linchpins in the city’s literary culture.
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July 23, 2009, at 12:00 pm
 Deep summer, the season soft and muted. Stillness falls upon the city, broken only by wind and the calling of crows and blue jays. It is a summer my father would have loved, the days vivid, the nights cool and conversational. This past week we made a short road trip to my parents’ home in the Thousand Islands for the first time since his funeral in February. My mother, a beautiful and brave woman who responds pragmatically to occasions for magical thinking, has been busy restoring the gardens and rebuilding steps and gates neglected while his health declined. The day we arrived roofers were busy high at the eaves and a symposium of stonemasons was recobbling the driveway. Inside the rooms remain largely unchanged although my father’s presence — always larger than life — has become ghostly, almost fictional. When no one was looking I lifted the tall polished box containing his ashes: it seemed surprisingly light.
The day before our trip I finished a short essay for Spacing magazine called “Suburban Gothic,” (to appear in the Summer 2009 issue) and upon returning I launched back into book writing. I am almost (almost) at the finishing push; the chapters are set out and largely written but remain monstrous and misshapen, lunging into arguments without adequate forethought and lurching from section to section. But at least all that remains is the wrestling match; I’m glad to have already lifted the heaviest weights.
A sure sign of impending completion is the secret store of non-Toronto-related books I’ve set aside to read when the book is done. At the moment high on the list are Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer‘s new novel Perfecting (Goose Lane Editions, 2009) and Our Lady of the Lost and Found, an older novel by Diane Schoemperlen that for some reason I’ve never previously read, although I’ve read and loved almost everything else she’s written (Schoemperlen is one of my favourite writers). I’ll also be catching up on very recent Toronto novels I’ve not had a chance to read while focusing on finishing the book, especially Robert Rotenberg’s Old City Hall (Simon &  Schuster, 2009). Not to mention older works by Toronto authors I’ve come to admire deeply and whose recent work does get plenty of mention in the Imagining Toronto book, including Maggie Helwig (author of Girls Fall Down, Coach House 2008) and Austin Clarke (author of More, Thomas Allen 2008).
Another sign of impending completion is that distant corners of my mind are already turning over next projects already emerging in nascent form: a follow-up book to Imagining Toronto focusing on representations of Toronto in film, music, visual art and television, a long story about scavenging and feral cats called Acts of Salvage, and two other projects I’m excited about but will save mentioning for later.
In the meantime, I’ll be spending the next few weeks finishing off the Imagining Toronto book and celebrating our daughter’s first birthday. It’s been a difficult year, between my father’s hospitalization and death and long, weekly car trips to eastern Ontario with an infant, a long strike at the University where Peter and I both teach, the enormous work of the book and the challenges of caring for a very young child, but we’ve also managed to accomplish a great deal. Katherine has thrived despite our lack of parenting expertise, Peter (who has taken up so much of the burden of care this past winter and spring) has begun to return to his own intellectual projects, and I’m happy and grateful to have had the opportunity to spend three years delving so deeply into Toronto literature.
As the book moves forward in production I’ll do my best to post here more regularly. Although I write compulsively at all hours of the day and night and have maintained a private diary since I was nine, I am a terrible, neglectful blogger. There is something liminal  about the medium — being neither quite personal nor quite formal — that makes me feel constricted. I’m tempted to put too little or too much thought in what gets posted, and to date have been unwilling to bear the consequences of either approach. At the same time, I’ve begun experimenting increasingly with different approaches to writing and it might be good practice to write extemporaneously in public in a way I haven’t done since writing weekly from 2006-2008 for the now-defunct Reading Toronto.
So there. An update. Perhaps I’ll try to repeat these weekly or thereabouts, if it’s possible to do so without using energy needed for the main work. In the meantime, back to the book.
P.S. I have a short piece — “Five Iconic but Obscue Novels About Toronto” — in a cute new city guide called The Toronto Book of Everything (MacIntyre Purcell, 2009). If you’re new to the city, visiting, or like to amass trivia and obscure facts, this small book is worth a look.
P.P.S. I wrote another short piece called “The Imagined City” — a teaser for the book, really — for the July Mansfield Revue. You can read the piece here.
P.P.S. I am very happy to announce that the Imagining Toronto course, a senior undergraduate course in the Department of Geography at York University, will be offered once again in the winter 2009-10 term. Course code is GEOG 4280 3.0. I haven’t yet integrated the course materials into the new Imagining Toronto website, so please contact me directly or in the comments if you’re interested in the course. A new syllabus will be updated sometime during the fall.
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June 2, 2009, at 12:00 pm
 This coming Saturday, 6 June 2009, I will be coordinating a session called “Putting Print in its Place: The Importance of the Local in a World of Globalized Words” at Bookcamp Toronto.
Here’s the session description:
Is there still a place for the local in a globalized literary landscape? Whither small presses, independent booksellers, local reading series, community book fairs and books engaging imaginatively with local places? In a world dominated increasingly by Amazon, big box bookstores, multinational publishers and digital print, how do we maintain a place for local literature? This session will explore how Toronto functions as a hub of literary innovation whose continued success will depend on how well it makes room for the local.
Bookcamp Toronto is billed as “a conversation about the future of books, writing, publishing, and the book business in the digital age” — critical questions at a time when text shambles toward its next rebirth in what begins to look like a truly post Gutenberg era.
At the same time, digital media do not make text less relevant — they make it more important than ever. The challenge is to maintain some continuity in the meaning of words in environments where they may be endlessly replicated, commodified and removed from their origins. I’m concerned about what digital print does to local stories, situated cultures, indigenous languages, narrative traditions and oral histories. At its worst, digital print reduces text to a pastiche of blurred photocopies, a simulacrum of meanings whose connection to local places and local cultures has long since been forgotten and blown away.
In the session I’m hoping we can address some of the implications of these shifts, as well as explore ways of keeping print in its place.
The session will run from 3:15 to 3:55 pm on the third floor of the Faculty of Information (iSchool) at the University of Toronto, 140 St. George Street (beside Robarts Library).
The day will be packed with discussions about books, publishing and digital culture; click here for the full schedule.
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May 22, 2009, at 12:00 pm
 I’ll be reading from Imagining Toronto at the Doors Open Toronto gala at the ROM tonight. The evening, hosted by CBC Radio One impresario Mary Ito, will also feature readings by Toronto authors Dionne Brand, Paul Quarrington and Barry Callaghan. This event is the official kick-off for Doors Open Toronto 2009 and is the culmination of three months of Lit City: Toronto Stories, Toronto Settings.
Admission to the ROM will be free throughout the evening as well, so if you come for the readings and panel discussion about Toronto literature, be sure to stick around for Paul Quarrington’s band, Porkbelly Futures, and tour the ROM’s exhibits afterward.
The tenth annual Doors Open event coincides with Toronto’s 175th anniversary, and to celebrate, an unprecedented 175 Toronto buildings will be open to the public during the weekend, all free of charge. Dozens of prominent Toronto writers, including Lillian Allen, Pat Capponi, Barry Callaghan, Austin Clark, Anthony De Sa, Katherine Govier, Maggie Helwig, Maureen Jennings, Vincent Lam, Vivian Meyer, Andrew Moodie, Paul Quarrington, Robert Rotenberg, Russell Smith, Veronica Tennant and numerous others, will read from their work at locations across the city.
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