It’s an ill wind: Toronto Day 7 (29 April 2014)

Weather

Hmmm … We woke up this morning to, as forecast, rain and cold wind. So, we spent the morning pottering around, catching up after our long weekend away. We braved the outside a little before noon when it was still only 7°C. (Canberra’s record winter maximum which occurred last year was 7 or 8°C, but we didn’t go out walking in it!) The wind was so fierce it turned our umbrellas inside-out immediately, so we just had to put our heads down and make a run for it to the streetcar stop about a block and a half away. The shelter protected us reasonably well from the wind and rain, but not the cold, and the water was lapping at our shoes.

Everywhere we go (here and last weekend in Montreal), people complain about their worst winter ever and how they wish spring would come. They tell us how lovely and how much fun it is in summer! Yeah, right! Still, we are having a good time here. Toronto is a great city with friendly people.

Royal Ontario Museum

The day being what it was, we decided that a museum would be the thing to do. A streetcar and subway rides later we arrived at the Royal Ontario Museum. Museums here are pretty expensive, but I suppose we are spoilt in Canberra where they tend to be free. A general ticket to the ROM, as it is called, is CAD16, with an additional CAD11 to attend the special exhibition. However, as that was Chinese-focused and we’d come to learn about Canada, we declined the optional extra.

There were two main exhibitions devoted to Canada. The first one we chose was the First Nations exhibit. Given Canada is a settler nation like ours, it was interesting to see how they handle their history. This exhibit was largely themed around those who “collected” the history of the First Nation peoples, and the ongoing relationship between indigenous and non-indigenous people regarding this history. It was fascinating, particularly for Sue with her interest in museums and interpretation.

At the entrance to the exhibition was a board explaining that the museum used “6 Native Advisors” in curating their exhibits, which was good to know. The exhibit focused, to us anyhow, on exploring two main themes, which were that:

• in the mid-nineteenth century there was a wide belief that native traditions were dying so non-indigenous people started documenting traditions and collecting objects; and that
• the Aboriginal peoples in Canada see themselves as a living, progressive people, not exotic examples of the past, and this is how they wish to be represented in the museum.

Now is not the time for a complex discussion of the topic, so we’ll just share a few of our highlights.

Sue was tickled when she overhead a young woman explaining to her male partner the artwork at the entrance titled “Migration” (in our slideshow below”). “I went to a night class about this”, she said. “You start with the dark outline and then fill it in. It’s easy”. Hmm, perhaps for her, but it didn’t look easy to Sue!

Also near the beginning of the exhibit were art works by Paul Kane who was one of those who actively documented the “vanishing” native peoples and their traditions. His work, we read, was praised for its minutiae, or detail. Sue listened to part of a video in which a curator discussed how Kane worked. He apparently did sketches in the field and later used these to create his paintings. The speaker described a current project involving carefully comparing the sketches with the paintings. They’ve noticed that he sometimes changed things in the paintings, suggesting perhaps that the paintings are not quite so documentary. What fun it can be being a curator if you are given time to carry out (or oversee) such work!

One of the exhibits was on old fashioned diorama. You know the type, the ones showing native peoples in their so-called habitat acting out their traditions, such as grinding seeds to make flour, or hunting. Well, in this particular diorama, they’d left the people but replaced the original items like spears with a movie camera, a mobile phone and an electric drill. The label read:

You have a phrase called “golden age”. We do not want to be depicted the way we were when we were first discovered in North America. We do not want museums to continue to present us as something from the past. We believe we are very, very much here now, and we are going to be very important in the future.  (George Erasmus, 1992, Chief, Assembly of First Nations.)

There were many displays and quotes about the relationship between the Aboriginal people and settlers, in the past and now, but we’d better move on. It certainly felt as though, despite obvious challenges, the relationship had generally been more positive in Canada than ours in Australia with our indigenous people. At one point in the exhibition, a quote made in 1887 by pioneering anthropologist Franz Boas was displayed, “Civilisations are not absolute but relative”. Boas meant that what we believe is only true for our own civilisation and not necessarily for another, that we should not assess another civilisation by our own. We think it can also mean that individual civilisations are not static and that indigenous peoples, like all people, can and do change. They, like others, want to retain certain values and traditions while at the same time accept the change that is surely inevitable. That, we believe, was a major theme of the exhibition.

We then moved onto the other Canadian-focused exhibition which dealt more with its settler society. In this exhibition, there was a discussion of national symbols, noting that for Canada the prime ones are the maple leaf and the beaver. Sue reckons that for Australia too the emblems are flora and fauna – the gum leaf, the wattle and the kangaroo.

There were also displays about “place” and how it can have historical, cultural, psychological, aesthetic, and political meanings and implications; about the meaning of “artefacts” and how they can support an idea or belief about history and culture or can contradict held views. Sue was interested in the comment that through its commissioning of artisans to make religious objects of all sorts, the Catholic Church supported craft in a way not seen in other Christian denominations. There was a lot more, including displays of furniture, china, glassware and the role they’ve played in Canadian society and culture.

Finally, there was of course some interpretation of Canada’s military and political history regarding the English and the French, but we didn’t really have the time to take all this in fully. Canada’s history is complex, and Sue realises that her knowledge is somewhat disjointed. Time for a decent refresher!

There were many other exhibits, including Asian, Egyptian and Zoological, that we either skimmed over or didn’t have time to take in.  It’s a large museum, worthy of much more time than we invested.

A two-restaurant night

It’s not only at home that you can become overcommitted. It can also happen when you travel – and so we found ourselves with two social commitments on the one night, and we managed them both. First up was sharing a drink and appetisers with Merilee and Jamie whom Sue had met through on-line book groups. They were in the city for the opera and suggested we meet them to share a pre-theatre meal. The restaurant Merilee chose, Nota Bene, was wonderful and we spent a very pleasant hour or so having a good conversation – about books, opera, wine, and good eating among another things – and enjoying some tasty food. Sue’s Hamachi Ceviche flavoured with lime, jalapeño and coconut milk was just plain yum. Len felt the same about his Crisp Duck Salad flavoured with kaffir lime and coriander. We were sorry to say goodbye to our lovely companions, but …

Then it was off to Bent restaurant where we were to dine with Hannah and meet her house-mate Sarah after the cancellation of last week’s planned dinner. Bent is a modern style restaurant focusing on shared tapas style dishes – including several ceviche and sashimi options. Sounds weird really for such a cold night but the restaurant was rocking and the food here was also stunning. We can see why Hannah is so happy in her house, as Sarah is a lovely person. Again we had good conversation, this time about physiotherapy, which is Sarah’s profession, sights to see in Toronto, family, and of course food and wine. (We were amused to be served early in the evening by an Australian, whose accent rather stood out!)

The restaurant prides itself on having a wide selection of sake, but somehow in the end none of us had any: the younger two of the party went for cocktails, while the older stuck to beer and wine! Oh, and we should add that the restaurant is owned by top Canadian chef Susur Lee, and managed by him with his sons. Coincidentally the highly regarded chef at Nota Bene is David Lee, but the name and career is there the relation ends!

Thank goodness both restaurants’ menus were on the light side and nicely complemented each other, so that we ended the evening pleasantly sated but not uncomfortable.

The slideshow …

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And Len is a sucker for a tank of tropical fish found at the ROM …