Chapter 11: THE WILD TORONTO
by Shireen Jeejeebhoy
“Wake up Aban!”
El’s booming voice shoots her heart into pounding, and she almost chokes on the toothpaste foaming in her mouth. She grabs the bathroom sink to steady herself. She spits toothpaste into it, rinses her mouth, and slouches out the bathroom and down the stairs to where El is waiting.
“Come on Aban. Let us go into the backbones of Toronto,” he grins at her with the hearty air of boundless energy and joy.
“Whatever,” she mumbles.
El and Aban leave the stuffy house and wade into the muggy city air. They walk up Greenwood, toward the railway bridge. Aban looks up from the sidewalk and into the underside of the old bridge as it shakes under the moving weight of a train. As they walk uphill past the bridge, a large concrete yard criss-crossed with rails and holding a silent, still, silvery engineless train or two, rises on their left. She mindlessly looks through the heavy chain-link fence toward the train as her feet scuff along and as El keeps an eye on her for a moment and then continues on. She falls further and further behind. A lazy click-clack...click-clack soothes with its familiarity, and a train comes into view. She halts to watch idly for awhile, edging unthinkingly up to the fence. After a longer while, she turns her head to look along the sidewalk in the direction they had been walking. El is disappearing. Against her will, Aban begins to walk again. But El continues to disappear. She trots to catch up, the hot air stifling her breathing. She falls reluctantly into the faster rhythm of his walk.
The hill levels out, two-storey houses rise on each side of the four-lane road, and they reach the lights at a main intersection. Affixed to a post, a large rectangular blue sign with white letters declares that they’ve reached Danforth Ave.
Whatever.
They cross the wide road, walking up the hidden slope in the road that crests along the yellow centreline then down the slope toward the opposite sidewalk.
They continue on.
A large pointed grey-banded white sign declares that they are at Danforth Collegiate and Technical Institute. High school. She swallows and averts her gaze. El moves closer to her. Her gaze lands on the two-storey houses across the road. They sit silently with mere strips of brown lawn in front; the original front porches sit empty; and wide parched grass verges separate sidewalk and road. Trees grow everywhere, some young sticks, some reaching the sky and sheltering roofs from behind. She knows their names, and they idly scroll through her mind without effort: elm, maple, and chestnut.
Beside her, El keeps walking.
They reach a busy road. Two lanes of cars zip towards them, two lanes zip by in her direction. Aban cringes towards the neat bungalows behind their hedges and fences. El keeps walking.
Soon they’re at another major intersection. On one corner tall bright blue hoarding surrounds an angled crane with a wire hanging from its tip. “Coxwell Trunk Sewer Project,” the sign reads. She takes in the words, but they mean nothing to her.
El crosses the road first east and then north, and suddenly there is no traffic noise. They’re walking along a quiet street lined with brick bungalows with bow windows underscored by stonework, their roofs angling down to cover small enclosed garages. Two-storey houses punctuate the neat line of one-storey houses. Clipped green lawns edge up to the sidewalk, and majestic trees overhang the street here and there.
The road ends in a T-junction, and El and Aban step off the end of the sidewalk, cross the road, and enter a park. The screams of children erupt from the playground on the far right. The grass is brown and crisp; soil emerges here and there. Weeds creep a dark green pattern in the dead grass. Pine trees have let go of their needles, and the fallen needles scent the still, humid air. Aban’s T-shirt proclaiming “I Love Nature” sticks to her back; the same camouflage army pants she wore the day before cling to her thighs and drape over her smudged sneakers. Aban wants a drink, but she has no water, and her mouth doesn’t open to ask. El hands her a bottle from the bag slung over his shoulder. She grasps it, unscrews the cap, and gulps down the warm water. She screws the cap back on and hands it back to him. He regards her for a moment, but she continues to hold out the bottle, and he takes it.
El and Aban cross the expanse of stiff grass, passing by a solitary mature chestnut, and enter into the ring of trees and brush that edge the park on three sides. A sign, looking a bit lop-sided, stands beside a set of stairs.
El pauses and explains, “We’re almost there Aban. Come, follow me.”
What do you think I’ve been doing, she mutters under her breath. It’s hot and this city stinks, but here we are walking forever when normal people would be inside. Aban follows him anyway as he trots lightly down the concrete steps, not holding the double metal handrail on his right. The steps disappear steeply into a left-hand curve. The hill seems to be endless. Aban steps heavily down on each step, her hand sliding along the hot top rail next to her, down, down, down. A path of dried grey scree greets them at the bottom. Curved handles for another set of steps sit weirdly at the top of another hill seeming to lead a person into a forest canopy. Sumachs and brush surround and dominate the steps. Tall, wide grass bends towards them. Aban relaxes. It’s not her woods, but it’s not the dusty city either.
El does not continue down. Instead he turns right toward a beaten path of soil and thirsty grass. Rushes, cracking without moisture, grow at the beginning of the path. A tall tower with three rows of outstretched metal arms holding long lines and with cross braces rising up into its head, waits for them in the distance. Telephone poles, with their little crosses at the top and three strings of line, seem to march alongside the path they’re on.
El gestures for her to come up alongside him and waits for her until she does. He and she walk in silence, El slowing down to her pace. It is hushed in this space. No other person is in sight. It’s the two of them alone in the wild bones of Toronto.
El begins to speak. “When Toronto was formed, glaciers came along here. They packed the land and created Lake Algonquin, and great rivers sprung up to feed this giant lake. As the ice receded, the rocks and stones underneath the ice gouged out the land or dropped to form hills that sit here and there like strangers in the field. The land sprang back up after the weight of the glaciers had left. The great rivers shrank, leaving behind the steep hills of their banks, their fertile floors, and creeks and slim rivers as a remembrance of what they once were. These old river valleys are called “ravines.” Pockets of them rise up at the ends of streets as dark woods or parks where dogs can sniff and run around and the people can find respite. But the main ones run north and south from Lake Ontario into the country, branching off into neighbourhoods and disappearing under the streets.
“At one time, politicians kept these ravines tidy. Their idea of nature was to groom it. But a few years ago, people called upon the politicians to let their ravines be. Clipped grass gave way to nature growing as she saw fit. The Carolinian forest used to inhabit southern Ontario, even Toronto. Most of it is gone, but the people and the politicians decided to find out more about Toronto’s native plants, and they planted them. Slowly, the earth has rebounded and brought forth an abundance of growth. In the Fall, these native plants and trees will spring into their colours of red and purple and gold.”
Aban says, “I joined Greenpeace 'cause they really care about the environment, you know. I raised funds for when they attacked the Japanese for killing whales under that bogus science stuff. Humans are the worst species on earth. The earth can live better without us. Farley Mowat said so.” Aban falls silent.
El bends toward her, attentive, clasping his hands behind his back.
Aban says, “We need to live in harmony, but we just kill the planet, you know. I mean, we all know climate change is gonna kill us. But the politicians, they think it’s not happening. They say they need more proof. Yeah, proof, like it hasn’t rained all summer. That’s proof, you know. Then there’s our Boreal Forest. Greenpeace is helping keep that, you know. They're the only ones that care. If we cut down those trees, like, they won’t grow again.”
Aban speaks faster, “It’s time for politicians to recognize what's happening, do what Greenpeace says, and set aside intact areas of the Boreal Forest so our planet can breathe and our Native people can live in harmony with the land.” She falls silent again.
El turns his head to look full into her eyes and asks, “What about your own garden?”
She averts her gaze to the ground, “My garden?”
“Yes. Yours.”
Aban shrugs. She doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Yeah, she gardens, but it isn’t hers. It’s Mom’s.
El contemplates the back of her lowered head and continues to walk beside her, bent toward her, as she slouches along. Aban sees only the ground, while El hears her heart and listens to the sounds of the woods around them, locating without seeing them the noisy sparrows or shy Blue Jays in the trees, the squirrels in the dried-up bushes, the humming cicadas. Aban scuffs her feet along the path, hands jammed in her pockets, her head down.
El straightens up, letting his arms move loosely in rhythm with his languid steps. He speaks again. “Listen to what I say Aban.”
Aban hunches her shoulders.
“One day there was a gardener. It was spring time. It was time to plant. He took his bucket, filled it with seeds, and slung it over his shoulder. As he walked, he sowed the land. Some of the seed landed on the path and lay there. Soon birds came and pecked at this bounty, digesting the seed for their nourishment. Some landed where the soil sat shallowly amongst the sharp stones. The seed spread its roots out horizontally looking for water, but the sun came out and parched the thin soil and shallow roots. The young shoots withered and died. Some landed in the weeds, weeds like creeping charlie, Purslane, Lady’s Thumb, Green Pigweed, Garlic Mustard, Bird Rape, and White clover. They crowded out the seeds, their roots and stems entwining and choking off the seed’s shoots. But some landed on good soil. This soil had been enriched by the death of old plants. These plants when young and fruitful had fed the creatures of the earth and had in turn been nourished by plant-eating animals and by hidden sources of water. The seed grew up into grain in this good soil, feeding the people and feeding the land after harvest.”
El finishes. Silence stretches. He bends down and asks her gently, “Do you have ears to hear, Aban, the stories that I tell you?”
“Yeah.” Aban replies derisively. “But what’s that got to do with anything? Like, you know, conventional farmers have to use chemicals for anything to grow. They grow only one crop, and big chemical companies are taking over our food. The seed is all the same. The soil is all the same. Farmers are all the same. Mom has us buy organic food 'cause then we know how they were grown. It’s real food. It’s better for us and for the environment. Better than those mushy tomatoes they truck in from California. You know they had to divert a river to grow things down there. It’s all artificial, and animals don’t get the water they need any more from that river.”
El sighs at her obtuseness, “Can you hear me, Aban?”
“Yeah. I heard you. We’re losing diversity in our seeds, that's what the environmentalists say. It’s like those bananas. You know that if a disease gets in them, we won’t have any bananas to eat, 'cause like they’re all clones. They have no seeds. They’re gonna die out soon, you know. And like carrots all look the same. You know at one time they were like purple and yellow and stuff. Mom suggested we buy those kinds of organic carrot seed from this grower so we could have them in our vegetable garden, but the summer has been so hot and the township said we had to ration our water, so they kind of died. Politicians who say there’s no climate change should come out to our place. Like, hardly any vegetables grew this summer. The tomatoes are doing okay 'cause I’ve been babying them.” Aban frowns. “I hope Mom will look after them. They’ll die if she doesn’t. Anyway, I won’t be here long, so, like, they should be okay. Besides it’s really Mom’s garden.
“I like tomatoes from our garden or even the local farmer. As Mom said, if you can’t grow vegetables, then you gotta buy them from your local farmer. Support our farmers and save the environment.”
El shakes his head sadly and turns around. Aban keeps walking, having spoken to the beaten path all this time, not realizing for a minute or two that El is no longer beside her. She stops, looks up, searches around until she spots him going in the opposite direction.
“Hey!” Aban calls out, “We going back now? About time. I’m thirsty.”
He halts, pulls the bottle of water out of his bag, and waits until she catches up to hand it to her. She finishes it and holds it out to him, her eyes sliding away from his and down towards the brush. But he doesn’t take it. She keeps holding it out. He still doesn’t take it.
She lifts her chin at him, “You want I throw it on the ground?”
His eyes darken as he looks upon her, “Pay attention to what you hear Aban, for what you give is what you will get. It is yours. I gave it to you.”
Aban shrugs but lowers her am and holds on to the empty bottle. El’s anger vanishes as swiftly as it rose, and he guides her back to the steps they’d passed by earlier. But instead of going down them, they follow a path along its side. Tough black netting holds the scree in place, and they duck past a cloud of silent tiny insects zipping tiny distances then hovering in the air. They arrive onto a paved path. They can hear the constant hum of distant traffic here. Ahead, between the wilted trees a small creek meanders, its bank held in place with wooden slats. He turns right and takes her up to where the path crosses the creek. She slows, and her head droops under the suffocating heat. The path is barely wet. Although rocks churn the water on one side, the other side is sluggish and laps the edge of the path with little energy.
Aban doesn’t notice: she’s busy scuffing her sneaker on the grey concrete path, watching small stones roll away from her toes.
El speaks loudly to her hidden face, “There are many that are thirsty but don’t know it; there are many that are thirsty and look for water but cannot find it; and there are many whose thirst is quenched, for they can name it, the source. Which are you Aban?”
She shrugs at the path.
“Aban?”
“Whatever! I’m hot. Can we go somewhere where they have, like, juice?”