As a child, Toronto was first for me what a city

“As a child, Toronto was first for me what a city was: a skyline glimpsed from a
distance, what it promised and what it withheld, where the future took place.”
- Nino Ricci, “On Toronto Itself”
Greetings from Cormorant Books,
Over the centuries, our city has produced world-class authors who have written Toronto into their
fiction, essays, and poems. City of Words: Toronto Through Her Writers’ Eyes is an attempt to
bare the soul of the city as it has rarely been seen before, combining excerpts from works by writers
such as Margaret Atwood, Lawrence Hill, Nino Ricci, David Bezmozgis, Anne Michaels, and
Camilla Gibb, with stunning original photographs by Kevin Robbins.
As you browse through the following pages, you will become better acquainted with Sarah Elton,
the editor of City of Words and an unrivalled Toronto enthusiast whose writing has appeared in
numerous publications, including Chatelaine, The Globe and Mail, and Macleans. Inside this package,
you’ll find her original introduction to the collection as well an interview revealing her favourite
corners of the city.
We have also enclosed a star-studded table of contents that highlights both original and classic
poems, essays, and works of fiction. Finally, you’ll find a sampling of the photography by Kevin
Robbins that illustrate his unique way of capturing Toronto’s iconic landmarks and little known
hideouts.
We invite you to treasure the extraordinary writing that Toronto has inspired, and to help your
readers connect with Canada’s literary history.
To contact Sarah Elton or Kevin Robbins, or for further information about the book, please get in
touch with me at 416 929 4957, or [email protected].
I look forward to hearing from you!
Best,
Laura Houlihan
Publicist, Cormorant Books
Publication date • November 14, 2009
9" x 9" • 360 pages • $49 • Hardcover
ISBN 978-1-897151-49-5
A selection of confirmed pieces: The City Anne Michaels, There is no city that does not dream Dionne Brand, What We All Long For Downtown Howard Ackler, The City Man Mazo De la Roche, Ringing in the Changes Kensington/Chinatown Sarah Dearing, Courage My Love Shyam Selvadurai, Mister Canada College Street Gianna Patriarca, College Street, Toronto Nino Ricci, Where She Has Gone The Annex Katherine Govier, Memories of Brunswick Avenue Rosemary Sullivan, Elizabeth Smart: A presence in the Annex Yorkville Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye Juan Butler, Cabbagetown Diary: A documentary Rosedale Kim Moritsugu, Glenwood Treasure Hugh Hood, The Swing in the Garden Cabbagetown J.V. McAree, Cabbagetown Store Hugh Garner, Cabbagetown Don Valley Maggie Helwig, Knowing That I Could Walk Seventeen Miles Elizabeth Simcoe, Mrs Simcoe’s Diary Waterfront and Islands Michael Redhill, Consolation Helen Humphreys, Leaving Earth Toronto East Margaret Avison, Seen Mike Tanner, The House, The Home Toronto West Carole Corbeil, Christie Pitts Anand Mahadevan, Subzi Bazaar Queen West Marion Engle, Lunatic Villas Timothy Findley, A Gift of Mercy Uptown Timothy Findley, Stones Erin Moure, From the highest window of my house on Winnett Introduction Sarah Elton I fell in love with Toronto when I encountered it through the character of Patrick Lewis in Michael
Ondaatje’s beautiful novel, In the Skin of a Lion. Patrick, the adventuresome yet observant protagonist,
leads the reader through the story set in Toronto of the 1920s. Through the character of Patrick, Ondaatje
took me to the Thompson Grill on River Street where a tattooed waitress fried eggs and poured coffee;
then on to Eastern Avenue, where Macedonian shopkeepers sold bananas and called to each other, stallto-stall, a streetscape so different from the industrial one I pass along Eastern today. We visited the
Riverdale Library with its “high rafters and leaded windows that let in oceans of light” and, one night,
followed Queen Street to its most easterly point to watch workers perform with puppets on a makeshift
stage at the Waterworks. I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough. Through Patrick’s eyes I saw a mysterious
and romantic city rise up from the ordinary streets, bridges, bricks, and history of the Toronto I thought I
knew.
In his novel, Ondaatje writes, “... before the real city could be seen it had to be imagined, the way
rumours and tall tales were a kind of charting.” He was writing about me: Before I could see my city for
what it is, I had to experience it through its tales, stories, and characters. I had to experience the imagined
city, the way the writer sees it, before I could fully appreciate the urban centre I called home.
After In the Skin of a Lion came many more literary works to continue mythologizing here, this
place, the Toronto of my imagination—Dionne Brand’s What We All Long For, Margaret Atwood’s
Cat’s Eye, David Bezmozgis’s Natasha, Barbara Gowdy’s The Romantic, Austin Clarke’s Toronto
trilogy — to name a few. With every poem or story or novel set in Toronto that I read, this city becomes
more and more like Italo Calvino’s Venice in Invisible Cities; it is a shimmering created by literature. My
own literary map complements the street grid. In the Annex, I nod to Margaret Atwood’s Tony who sits
in her turret in The Robber Bride. I see the First World War soldiers milling about St. Paul’s, the church
near Bloor and Church streets, just as Timothy Findley described in The Wars. Along Queen Street West,
I keep an eye out for Findley’s Minna Joyce and Stuart Bragg embracing in front of a streetcar stop as
they do in his short story “Stones.” I can’t enter cloistered Rosedale without picturing the family in
Wayne Johnston’s Human Amusements driving through the winding streets, peering at the big homes. Or
Austin Clarke’s creation, Jefferson Theophillis Belle, whose midnight stroll to the Sherbourne Street
house he planned to buy landed him, mistakenly, in the back of a police car. Then, westbound on the
Gardiner, past the flash of Grenadier pond.
Sometimes, in the late summer, driving south down the Bayview Extension at night, the Bloor
Street Viaduct stretches before me, its awesome structure lit by a constellation of streetlights. And among
those lights I see the shadow of a nun, falling, only to be caught by the strong arms of Nicholas
Temelcoff.
Why did I not grow up steeped in the mythology of Toronto? Any child in London or New York
is nourished on the legends and myths of their cities. It’s true that Toronto is not Paris or Prague — but
that’s just the point. We’re Toronto, we have our own culture and with it our own city’s literary canon.
There is a widespread misconception that the literature of Canada is largely set in rural areas, that
cities aren’t deemed appropriate settings for stories and poetry. Specifically, Toronto can’t be found in the
literature of our country because our authors aren’t inspired by the alleyways of Chinatown, by the red
streetcars creaking and moaning through the downtown, by the ravines, the lake, its beaches and bluffs.
But writers have been engaging with this city for a very long time, from the moment in 1793 when Mrs.
Simcoe wrote about life here, before it was called “Toronto.”
We need to read the literature of this place. Our children need to be reminded, every time they
pass over the viaduct, that this is the bridge where Nicholas Temelcoff caught the falling nun — just as in
Paris, I would tell my daughters that Jean Valjean stood here, on this very bridge, staring at the Seine. Or
in Dublin, where Stephen Daedalus stood on a bridge over the Liffey River and shook his first at the
heavens. Our schools need to celebrate the poems of Raymond Souster so that the next time the child
crosses to Hanlan’s Point, she can recite his verse.
The historian Lewis Mumford writes that the city is, along with language, humanity’s greatest work of
art. “Mind takes form in the city; and in turn, urban forms condition the mind.” Here, every aspect of life
is concentrated and methods of expression are multiplied.
Authors are, among others, the record-keepers of this process. Literature reflects what they see,
what they experience, and, most importantly, what they imagine of their city. What Mumford calls
humanity’s two greatest works of art — the city and language — come together in the form of the urban
cannon.
While as a larger community of readers and thinkers, we haven’t yet celebrated or, likely, even
discovered Toronto’s body of work, this city has its own remarkable reading list. This project introduced
me to an astounding breadth of writing skill: from the grittiness of Juan Butler to the sexy stories of Elise
Levine to the hilarious Sesanarine Persaud and to the lyrical work of a young Dorothy Livesay.
In City of Words, you will encounter the imaginary Toronto, the city as it is seen through the
writers’ eyes. You will see what aspects of urban life here have captured the writer’s fancy, and in turn,
how the writer has captured the city.
There are things I learned about Toronto while putting this together: the waterfront, stretching
from the Bluffs in the east to the Humber in the west, represents for many writers a place of escape.
Morley Callaghan’s Stanley and Vera in Strange Fugitive head down Kingston Road and then over the
tracks and into the woods on the edge of the lake for a picnic, some privacy. They aren’t the only ones to
look to the lake’s edge for quiet. As Harry Bruce tells us, we also make love on the city’s beaches, hiding
in the crags of rocks and the darkness of a summer night. Romance is found in the reflection of light on
Lake Ontario’s water in Hugh Hood’s Reservoir Ravine. The Don Valley continues to exist as a place of
wilderness surrounded by the city itself. In contrast, the bleak high rise buildings at Bathurst and Finch
and the CN Tower, much farther south, move David Bezmozgis and Pier Giorgio di Cicco to pick up their
pens. For many others, the source of artistic and literary inspiration are the populated areas: the Annex,
Kensington Market, College Street with its coffee shops, Greek Town on the Danforth.
I found that once I became set on seeing Toronto as a literary city, no place was safe. The
imaginary world collided with reality at every turn: west on Bloor Street I saw Matt Cohen’s bookseller.
Driving along the Don Valley Parkway there, on the other side of the median, was Charles Sauriol
tending to his apple acreage, or a First Nations family, as described by Mrs. Simcoe, travelling peacefully
by canoe down the Don River, unaware of the din of the highway. In Kensington Market, I swear that
Sarah Dearing’s Nova walked by.
It’s an exciting city, Toronto, when you see her through her writers’ eyes.
For Sarah Elton, putting together an anthology of literary work celebrating Toronto was
her tribute to the city. Born and raised in Toronto, Elton immersed herself in this city’s literature,
devouring poems, short stories, novels and essays that captured aspects of life here. The result is a
star-studded love letter to Toronto — City of Words: Toronto through Her Writers’ Eyes. Here, Sarah
outlines a few of her favourite things about the city.
Favourite Toronto library: I depend on the Riverdale branch on a weekly basis. Without the
library I wouldn’t be able to work as a writer. The TPL system that allows you to order books from
other libraries is fantastic and Riverdale is my depot - I also love that this library features in both
Ondaatje’s In the Skin of a Lion and in the famous depression-era novel Cabbagetown. I always imagine
the characters in the library when I pass the reading room that overlooks Gerrard Street.
Choice coffee shop to curl up with a book in: I dream of a life in which I go to Bonjour Brioche
on Queen Street East at 8 a.m. to sit quietly and read. The reality is that we get take-out and eat it
with the kids back home. I once read that Camilla Gibb used to live above Bonjour Brioche.
Best place to take your kids on a Saturday afternoon: Favourite Saturday activities include:
Ashbridges Bay, Cherry Beach, Withrow Park and my in-law’s backyard in Scarborough. When we
drive out to Scarborough, I always think of Morley Callaghan’s characters from Strange Fugitive
travelling out to the bluffs on a Kingston Road streetcar.
Favourite local boutique: Erietta on Danforth.
Best place to get dessert: This is a challenging question for me. The dessert that stands out for me
is Jamie Kennedy’s Ontario strawberry tart with cream on top sold at Gilead Café.
Best kept secret about Toronto: The literature! Seriously. Until I worked on this book, even I
didn’t realize how wide and good our canon was.
Best local band: K'Naan because his lyrics are like poems and he has the craziest rhymes (closah
with samosa, for example).
Best local festival: Tie between Hot Docs and the Toronto Outdoor Art exhibit to see artists like
Mike Parsons painting Toronto and Peter Harris.
Top tourist attraction that shouldn’t be overlooked by locals: Experiencing life along Queen
Street, up into the old Ward (around Beverley and Baldwin) and then up into Kensington Market
because it is so full of history and culture.
Best park in the city: The Riverdale Farm (a prime location in Nalo Hopkinson’s Brown Girl in the
Ring) and Withrow Park.
Finally, best weekend trip when you need a break from all of the excitement in the city:
A weekend away at my parents’ farm where I can read. Click on a dot to view a photo
Don Valley
Brickworks
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Dundas St
and
Spadina Ave
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Harbourfront
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Museum
Station
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CNE
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Russell
Carhouse
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Ireland Park
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Regatta Rd
and
Unwin Ave
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Cherry Beach
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Étienne Brûlé
Park
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Queen St
and
St. Patrick St
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