| Lodestone Salvage |
Jointly we manage real estate holdings and build
with stone. We share an interest in the abandoned detritus of
urban
society and a commitment to the universe of ideas. Some of these joint
interests have converged in our architectural salvage activities. For
our philosophy of architectural salvage and images of our
restoration work, please visit Lodestone
Salvage .
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| Contributions to [murmur] Toronto |
In January 2006 we recorded narratives for the Kensington Market
location of the [murmur] Toronto
project. [murmur] is an archival audio project designed to record the
stories of urban neighbourhoods and make them available to others
encountering those same neighbourhoods. At each location where a
recording is made, a [murmur] signpost is installed listing a number
which visitors may call using a mobile phone in order to hear the
location's story while standing at the same spot. The recordings may
also be heard at the [murmur] website.
[murmur] has locations in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, and is the
creation of Shawn Micallef, James Roussel, and Gabe Sawhney. Recorded
contributions are the creations of their respective authors.
Our recordings will soon be available at the [murmur] Toronto website here and will also be
accessible by cellphone at a number to be released. The text is
available below.
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Peter's [murmur] narrative on the care and
feeding of stray cats
Location: 193 Augusta
Avenue
There’s stray cats in the market.
These aren’t hip cats. These aren’t cool cats. These cats
are strays.
Like a scream in the night. Like children in traffic.
But cats are like that. Don’t try to herd them.
Don’t try to fix them. Even people won’t always be
prisoned in shelters at your whim. Nevermind cats.
Don’t interfere. Let them do what comes natural.
Even if you can’t.
Most of all. More than anything else. Don’t be
offended. Ask yourself how many rats there are. How
many more. How many times more.
They’re doing what comes natural. They never fell
from the circle of being. They never fell from grace.
They define it.
Don’t interfere. Just take a bit of responsibility.
For it’s our traffic they’re children in. It’s in our
machine they become ghosts.
Find the cheapest cat food. Put a small bowl outside
at night. Like Jamie, that most excellent puppeteer
does at 193 Augusta.
There won’t be no population explosion if you do.
What there will be, in time, is a couple of strays
that recognize you. Even appreciate what you do.
And that, my friend, will remind you. If not who you
are then perhaps who you might yet be. Despite
everything.
You can’t buy grace any cheaper.
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Amy's [murmur] narrative 1
On bikes and bike theft
Location 1: Bellevue
Square Park
They say the real Kensington Market comes out at night. After the
daytime tourists and shoppers have retreated, and after the stall
shutters have rattled closed, it gets quiet, for a while. But if you
listen carefully, and are prepared to wait, another Kensington steals
out into the night. Otherwise, while you're asleep or your attention is
diverted, it might steal your bike.
Stolen bicycles in Kensington Market are like dark matter, exerting a
gravitational weight despite their invisibility. Signs of their absence
are everywhere, like missing tines in the Market's tuning fork.
Sometimes, though, the cosmos is merciful: sometimes it spews out whole
galaxies of bikes reappearing – albeit stripped of their identifying
details or rigged out with new ones – at certain bike shops in certain
parts of the city. Sometimes you wake up in time to intercept a shadow
prying at your wrought iron railing with a rusty crowbar. Or, if you're
like me, you get good at pouring concrete and think about taking up
welding.
Perhaps there's a kind of cosmic lesson here. Kensington Market exerts
its own gravity, repelling elements it finds incongruent and absorbing
those it likes. It's possible that if your expensive mountain bike is
stolen, it might be the local universe reasserting balance.
My name is Amy Lavender Harris, and my bike has never been stolen.
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Amy's [murmur] narrative 2
A story about Kensington
Market stories
Location 2: Augusta Avenue at Baldwin
Whole worlds come alive on these streets here, in places that quickly
become so familiar to us that we don't even notice them, places
simultaneously so strange that we can hardly conceive them. In Emerald
City, a book he wrote about Toronto, John Bentley Mays said that
"living fully and mindfully anyplace ... involves giving thought to all
the rhythms we move within ... [rhythms] preserved and recalled by the
artifacts [not only] of architecture and urban planning, [but also of]
art and writing and music." (1994: 2; 27) Another way of putting this
is to say that cities and the neighbourhoods within them unfold not
only in the building but in the telling of them.
Kensington Market is rich with stories. In Margaret Atwood's novel The
Robber Bride, a character describes Kensington Market as "Rome in the
second century, Constantinople in the tenth, Vienna in the nineteenth."
She says people come here to forget something, or perhaps to remember
it, and describes the memories and voices here as "music from
elsewhere.". Sarah Dearing's wonderful novel Courage My Love renames
Kensington Market streets according to their main function: Baldwin
becomes Fish Street, Kensington Avenue becomes Clothes Street, and
Augusta is Vegetable Avenue. She says, "How much easier life could be
if all streets had such utilitarian names; a person would always know
precisely what to expect from an address." Tuyen, a character in Dionne
Brand's novel What We All Long For, collects lumber and found objects
to build into a lubaio, a Chinese signpost, to pin recorded longings
and desires to like prayers. And in Cory Doctorow's novel Someone Comes
To Town, Someone Leaves Town, a loose assemblage of locals builds a
free, guerilla wireless network intended to connect the entire city.
In all these narratives, both written and unrecorded, Kensington Market
is the sometimes festering, sometimes luminous heart of Toronto; it's
the core of our desires to forget, or remember, or be reborn in this
city. Here in Kensington Market, everybody has a story.
My name is Amy Lavender Harris, and I'm working on a project called
"Imagining Toronto".
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