COLLETTE'S WALK: PART ONE

This was it, the first day of Collette's 60 K two day walk to raise money for breast cancer research at Princess Margaret Hospital. Collette is walking with our niece Billie-Marie and her friend Thelma. Billie stayed at the house with us last night and she and Collette were off very early this morning. Or someone claims it was morning. It was still dark out. Apparently I was awake. I think I took this picture .... is it in focus or were eyes just blurry?

The Weekend Warriors then made their way down to Exhibition Place to meet up with thousands of other walkers who would make their way some 35 Klicks up to Downsview Parc in North York.

Here are Billie and Thelma cued up at the Ex, way too perky for that time of day.

The girls started out walking in some fairly serious rain, but that soon gave way to sunny skies and pretty workable temp in the low 20's. The spirit of the event, considering its very serious nature, had a great atmosphere; as I stood at one of the "cheering stations" waiting for the girls to come by, I was treated to what you could only describe as a "variety" of walkers.

I really don't know what to say about this last photo ... I am just your intrepid reporter.

The walk .. tremendously well organized ... had set up cheering sites along the way. These were very well supported by the local neighbourhoods. Collette said that people came out to cheer them all along the route, often coming out with fruit and liquids. In the Weston area, a man brought out homemade zucchini bread. Someone was also handing out beer. I always knew I liked Weston.

Here are the Weekend Warriors at the second cheering station, roughly halfway through the walk .. they've just done over 15 klicks, why on earth are they smiling? Athletes .. they are just weird .. but there was free beer, maybe that was it.

At the Weston cheering station, I hooked up with Debbie. Debbie is Collette's co-worker and one of the people who helped us out so much with our two garage sales.

The support here was great. They had vans driving around that could pick up an exhausted walker and take them to the next "station" no questions asked. This is not a race. It is a fund raising effort. It is a community bonding to fight a common enemy. There were athletes on the walk of course (Billie and Thelma both run half marathons) but there were also just "average" people attempting something extraordinary to help prevent something evil.

Here are the Warriors with Debbie at the Weston cheering station ... you know the real reason I am never in these pictures? I've been up since 6 am. Don't believe for a second that I am smiling.

This was the last cheering station I went to before the girls made it to Downsview Parc. So, 35 klicks, 10 hours, Collette alone raising just over two thousand dollars to the cause. We can't thank enough all those who donated money, who donated items to sell at the garage sale, who gave us their support. That's what kept Collette going, I'm sure.

Billie-Marie decided to camp out at Downsview. Collette (wisely) chose to come back home before tackling another 25 K or so tomorrow. Of course I took video but I will wait till tomorrow is over before cutting it. I'll be going down to the Ex to see the girls bring it home, to cheer them on and, no doubt, capture some smiling images .... maybe even I will crack a grin.

CNE 1: THE AIR SHOW

So, the Canadian National Exhibition. Or the Big Assed Fair, whatever you want to call it. Around here it is a tradition. The end of summer, the start of a new school year, new stuffed animals to be won for Collette's classroom. This will be a multi part story, as we went twice, once to the see the Air Show and again, just to see the rest of the fair. So we start with the air show.

We love the air show. It runs over the last three days of the Ex and it is three hours of all kinds of aircraft, doing all kinds of things, over Lake Ontario. Military planes, acrobatic planes, vintage planes and as always, the Snowbirds at the end.

I'm not sure how many Air Shows Collette and I have seen, at least fifteen, maybe as many as twenty. A lot. Let's put it that way. The Snowbirds have always been the consistent thing. We've seen gliders, mock dogfights between WWI biplanes, parachuting teams, the Stealth bomber ... and yes, even a plane crash that took the life of the crew on board. A sad thing, a sad event, but the Air Show goes on, much like the Ex itself.

There is a lot to love about the airshow. My faves are the aerobatic pilots, reminiscent of barnstormers. Highly developed prop planes doing things that defy gravity ... and logic. This year we had Matt Chapman and the amazing Julie Clark.

There was also a demo of the waterbombers, planes and helicopter, used to fight bush fires in Ontario. Apparently these planes are very rare, there are only six in the world. At any rate, they were pretty impressive to watch, scooping water out of the inner harbour then dumping it over show center.

Then we had the Harbord Aerobatics team. Harbords are the prop driven training planes used by the Canadian forces back in the day. Oh, I love these planes. In the video, listen to the engines ... a very distinct whine that sends shivers up my spine. The team is good, flying a nice tight well co ordinated show.

I arrived late at the show (don't ask, I won't tell you) but thankfully Collette caught some stills of a special flyby with a CF-18 Hornet and a WWII Spitfire. I've seen this show before. The skill of both pilots, considering the amazing difference in engine power and speed, to keep these two planes in tandem is pretty impressive. And you can see the differences in design, between the bullet-like elegance of the Spitfire with its smooth lines and bubble canopy, to the purely functional look of the Hornet.

Speaking of jets, the Americans sent us the Viper. Oh, she is a loud beast, is this jet. Here her on the video. What you don't hear are the comments of way too many men "Now that's what I'm talking bout!! Now we have some noise!! Whooohooooo!!! Loud noise!! Wow, that is awesome!!! It's really loud and pointless!!!! I don't care about design and pilot skill let's just hear some noise, maybe it will drown out the self doubt I have about myself and I don't have to think about what a meaningless jackass I am!!! Whoohooo!!" Um... here's the Viper.

So now we come to the dilemma I have about the Airshow. I love the aerobatic planes. The water bombers were cool. I love the vintage fighters, bits of the past that you can admire for their style and their abilities. Then we come to the contemporary warplanes. The jets. The flying guns. That is what they are. Weapon delivery platforms. High tech, well made, flown by pilots of undeniable skill .. but weapons nonetheless. I like weapons. I love swords and I can even admire certain firearms for the skill and sometimes artistry with which they were made. Handle a genuine Kentucky rifle, with its tigerwood stock and brass fittings and you can't help but view it as thing of beauty. A katanna is a weapon designed to kill with an economic efficiency but hold one, feel the balance, the beauty of the temper lines on the blade ... it is breath taking.

I feel the same way about a lot of the vintage prop fighter planes. In particular the Spitfire and the Mustang .. these are just beautiful machines. Take away their guns and their bombs and as pieces of design, they are just beautiful. Yes, they were weapons, but so far removed from their wars, it is easy now to admire them.

I don't find many jet fighters beautiful in an aesthetic sense. I know many would argue with me and I am sure there is a jet or two that are exceptions but, as a rule, I find them prosaic and functional. They are function over form, the shape of the wings, the canopy, everything is designed for maximum efficiency. They are weapons and what weapons they are, capable of delivering death at a rate so stunning you have to wonder what the designers were thinking: You really need to kill that many people at once?

I take nothing away from their pilots. Watching these jets at the airshow, how the pilot can control all that raw power, you can't help but admire him. I support the Airshow but I don't support our need to spend millions and millions of dollars to build these flying guns just to kill people faster than ever before.

Then we come to the Snowbirds. Ok, their planes are trainers. They are not flying guns, they are not war planes. But it is a military flying team ... but my god, how beautiful they are to watch ..

So, here is the Airshow video, just a short trailer sort of vid, highlights if you will, three hours compressed into four minutes. Yes, the flying guns are included and yes, they are pretty cool. Music is Machine Head by Bush. The Snowbirds end the vid as they ended the show. Pretty pretty snowbirds.

CNE Airshow from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

BUSKERFEST 3:SQUID

This is like a timewarp blog. We have already been to the CNE (Canadian National Exhibition) twice, which included the airshow, a rodeo, an escape artist, an aerial/acrobatic show ... And I'm still slogging through our one day at Buskerfest a couple weeks ago. I don't know if I'll do any more posts on it, but there will be at least two more videos, the Pogo Dudes and the Toronto Aerial Dance company (you don't want to miss the latter for sure) and if nothing else I'll post those to Vimeo, and leave links here.

But let's talk Squid. We saw these guys at the Kingson Buskerfest a couple years ago. Sort of an extreme drum corps with a piper. The description does not do them justice. The drummers can well ... drum. Precision, showmanship, flare, rhythm ... they rock.

Squid also features a piper who not only knows his instrument but is the front man, has a wry sense of humour, and has some true physical abilities. The combination of bag pipes and drum corps sounds great. I didn't include their version of Sleepy Maggie in the video for the sake of time, but it definitely rocked.

The video is a straight up performance video, no special effects required from me. For sake of time/file size I kept it to two numbers. The first song is a Stomp-like rocker where the three drummers have some fun with bar stools. As Squid said: "We know are our way around a bar stool"

The second number was their closer. Piper said: "Hang around and you'll see me do something unusual and potentially dangerous while piping" I'll let you judge. It was pretty cool.

So here is the Squid video, hope you enjoy it, and if you get a chance to see them anywhere in Canada, toss some coinage into their hat.

Buskerfest: Squid from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

BUSKERFEST: PART TWO

Another look at the Toronto Buskerfest that Collette and I attended last week. A big day with lots going on, many pictures taken, much video recorded and therefore this is coming in installments.



If I was a good inter net reporter I would know the name of each performer, where they were from, how long they had been busking ... but I'm not an internet (or any other kind) reporter at all, so deal with it. Having said that though, the video starts with Matt James from Australia. This guy combined a Didgeridoo with a National steel guitar; an unusual combination that worked. Hell, he used a slide on the guitar so that works for me in pretty much any context.

The next performer is basic wunderkind, a 9 year fiddler from PEI, Liam McGlashom by name. Child prodigies normally make me want to vomit; talented or not they generally have the sincerity of a right wing religious leader a the Bunny Ranch. Precocious is not cute. Precocious is "open the window I'm going to hurl" But I liked this kid. He just sat there on his chair, kind of in a corner, picking away, changing easily from one tune to the next, almost oblivious to the crowd, like he was back home in his kitchen, playing for himself. No feigned smile, no snappy patter, no glittering costumes. And he can play.

You're going to see a couple of jugglers in the video, both of them on elevated unicycles and I really don't know who they are. Juggling is ok. Juggling on a super tall unicycle is ok. Patter that demands the audience love you while poking fun at a Toronto audience's lack of spontaneity is just way too obvious. I would be pissed by this treatment but I am far too blase. I'm from Toronto.

I'm keeping the videos short to maintain the quality and because I don't want the viewer to fall asleep on me. Yes, I know you do. I can hear you. Snoring, drewl on your chin. Close your mouth .. no, seriously, wipe your chin and close your mouth. I'll wait ......

Welcome back. So each of the videos will have a "featured act" The first one is the Velvet Mat and Charlie show. What you see in the video is severely edited for time. These two really liked to perform ... a lot. It starts out a kind of clown show, with Velvet Mat as the principal performer and Charlie as a crew member.

Some jokes, a little physical comedy, and nobody really believing that Charlie was a dude. Their centerpiece was the German wheel, this huge metal hoop that someone goes inside of while it spins around. Mat is the performer, that is the shtick. He gets himself all "spangly", he gets some big dude from Buffalo to don a shower cap, a cape and panties (hey, that requires guts, big dudes from Buffalo are scary) and take a turn in the wheel. Mat dances around, preparing to take the wheel and its pretty funny.

The real gag is, of course, that Mat is not going to touch the wheel. Charlie sheds her crew member costume and voila, she is a German wheel acrobat. This was the shortest part of the act and that was a shame because it was a pretty impressive thing to see. Look at this girl, can she weigh 100 pounds? The wheel weighed at least that and she tossed the thing around like it was a hula hoop. Apparently she gave birth a couple weeks before you see her here which made it official ... every woman in the audience hated her .

Toronto Buskerfest Part One from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

Next installment will feature Squid. No, it's not seafood. Trust me, you will want to see this

TORONTO BUSKERFEST PART ONE

Just a short post and a tease of things to come. This Thursday Collette and I attended the annual Buskerfest here in town. (Get the idea that Toronto is a city of street fests? Wait until the snow starts flying, then no life will be seen on these streets) It is staged around St. Lawrence Market, and features dozens of street performers from all over the world ... interesting how many of them are from Montreal, even if their country of orgin was someplace else. Toronto is still seen, I think, as a kind of dowdy matron whereas Montreal is a bit more New York City-like in its acceptance of artists.

So there were stilt walkers and jugglers and ribbon dancers .... oh my! Of course, there was a patio and there was beer but what event would I attend that did not include those essential elements?

But there was also the Pogo Dudes, three young skate boardy type guys who did some amazing tricks on these amped up pogo sticks. Extreme pogo-ing. Really, why does everything have to be extreme? I saw a documentary on a guy who did what he called "extreme running" which basically entailed him tearing through the bush at break neck speed, smashing through branches, bouncing off of rocks and looking like there was a crazed posse on his tail .... But back to Buskerfest . . .

Besides these amazing flying pogo dudes we found us a musical Squid; a drum core/piping outfit that we have seen in the past. Again, this is like extreme drum corps/celtic music; a high energy outfit with a sense of humour and some really amazing precision drumming.

As I said, this is just a kind of teaser post. Collette shot hundreds of pics with her Nikon and I shot close to two hours of raw footage with the XL1 ... so we both have some editing to do. In the meantime I did slam together this little video trailer, with just some of the highlights of the day.

Music is "Neh neh neh" by Vaya Con Dios

Toronto Buskerfest 08 Highlights from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

OPAH! THE TASTE OF THE DANFORTH

Summer in Toronto is a seemingly endless stream of street festivals. This is a city of neighbourhoods and it seems that every four square blocks now has its own festival. The one that Collette and I always make a point of attending is Taste of the Danforth. Danforth Avenue is the heart of Toronto's Greek town so we are talking souvlaki, tazaki, ouzo and dancing .. so Opah!

This has been a crazy summer for weather in these parts. Any given day can go from warm and sunny, to hail, to funnel clouds, to pouring rain, to hot and humid. There have been tornadoes, there have been high winds and there have countless lightning strikes. The weather dudes on TV call this weather "unsettled" I call it: Build an ark and kiss your ass goodbye.

So that means when we got down to the Danforth it was pouring rain. Collette had brought her boyfriend (the D-80) and I had brought my Canon XL-1 ... a few grand worth of electronics that needed the tender protection of a covered patio .. the fact that there was souvlaki and beer is entirely coincidental.


The best thing about any street festival is that close off the street. The best thing about The Taste is that when you close off the Danforth it becomes magically lined with stalls selling souvlaki, spinach pies and baklava ... oh, it is a good thing there are many blocks to walk, you definitely need the exercise.




By the time we got off the patio the sun was coming out so we were able to wander around in comfort. This is a big festival. They close off something like eight blocks and you can have as many as half a million people milling around in there. The advantage of the weather was that it kept a lot of the crowds at home with the widescreen TVs and Kraft Dinner where they belong.

The nice thing about the Danforth, it is by no means exclusively Greek. There are some good Irish pubs there, a pretty snazzy Tex-Mex place and Allen's, home of the best burger in Toronto. But except for our escape from the rain, the whole point of this excursion was to wander down the center of the road, doing complex calculations that would put the maximum amount of food in our bellies in the shortest period of time.

We came across a dancing/singing troupe of young people from London Ontario ... which proves the brave if not foolhardy nature of the Greek people. I mean ... London .. on maps it says "Here there be people who got lost on their way to Toronto .."




They were pretty good, two girls doing the singing and the rest of them dancing, recreating a "tavernas" experience, which is when they would go out to taverns and sing and dance and flirt .. we call it clubbing .. often done with less clothing from what I can observe.




By the time these kids were finished their performance, the rain was back, reminding us that Toronto has somehow been transported to Rangoon .. and it's the rainy season. So that meant it was time to pack up the gear and go home.

Still, our bellies were full, our ears were filled with music and as the rain slashed down across Greek Town we knew we would be humming the Zorba theme and shouting opah! Only Collette reminded me that we really couldn't break any plates ...

Taste of the Danforth '08 from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

CRAZY LIKE A ... SAUSAGE

This is really Collette's post. This is her story. These are certainly her pictures (has anyone noticed that the number of photos on this blog has increased dramatically since Collette got her D-80?) and I tried to encourage her to write this but ... well, my name pops up somewhere on this blog so here we go . . .

Last weekend Collette went to visit her father, Nick, in the Parry Sound area. Nick's room mate, Fred, told her about a family of young foxes who had a den near a construction site he was working on. He graciously offered to take Collette out there so she packed up the Nikon and away they went.

The house Fred is building is near the Shawanga reserve. He has been working on site for a couple of months when he had noticed three young foxes in a den. No mother seemed to be around. The foxes here are perhaps six months old.

Over the time he has been working there, Fred had developed a kind of relationship with the foxes, mostly revolving around Italian sausage. With that as a lure, he began coaxing the foxes out of their den.

Here is the first fox being coaxed out of his den. He probably recognizes Fred, they were almost feeding from his hand at one point but now there is a stranger, and she has something in her hand but .. wait .. I smell sausage!

On second thought, this may require some careful consideration ...

. . . but gosh .. it's sausage!

Out for a quick snack then ...

.. back to the den with his prize.

Then out came this guy, definitely a male fox Collette dubbed "Blackfeet" for obvious reasons. He made a beeline for the prize.

This fellow was definitely more bold and seemed to treat Fred as his own personal house chef or something

"mmmm sausage"

He had a big appetite, Mr Blackfeet and was not shy about coming back for more ... are these Italian Canadian foxes?

Collette said this was a male because it was: Wham, grab, thank you ma'am ...

And there goes our black footed sausage connoisseur, fading into the sunset . . .