cleaned up booze factory makes good

Today Mum suggested we go down for a walk near the old industrial area on the west side of the Don near Cherry St and I thought they'd done some kind of minor fix up, like maybe extending the bike path or something. 

When we ran the bike tours through the Don Valley we learned alot about all the possible projects that were coming up, and people often talked about reclaiming the industrial sections in that area, but the land was all pretty nastily polluted.  It's amazing what's been done, though, in just a few years.  I suppose it HAS been ten years ("Ten years, man!  Ten years!") since I was in the loop, but the whole lakeshore has been impressively revamped. 

What with the disappearance of the gross and scary and ugly expressway, the appearance of The Docks - which now has a drive in movie theatre - the building of some new grocery stores that aren't as cockroach-ridden as the old cherry street No Frills used to be, and all kinds of little tidyings-up in between it has really started to sparkle.  When we were doing the tours, we used to be these little convoys through the industrial section, sandwiched between monster trucks and flying concrete, but now there are heaps of rollerbladers and cute little families out and about.

But this place that Mum took us to tops all.  It's this complex that's been built in the Gooderham & Worts old distillery, just west of the Don river.  I was totally surprised by it. Sometimes it's cool living outside Canada and never reading about things in advance. I come back to town and it's like a surprise party just for me.

Essentially, they've taken this vast brick industrial complex from the turn of the century that has maybe 60 different buildings as part of it, they've tidied up all the buildings so they're raw but useable, re-cobbled the 'streets' between all the buildings with old stones, and then they've set up artists' studios, a brewery, a bakery, a few cafes and restaurants, some shops, and some stalls, all throughout the place.  It's really quite something. It's such a big place and the buildings look so consistent that you really feel like you've dropped into a unique landscape.  It may just be that I was extra impressed since I was expecting a bike path, but it's pretty cool.  We started off at the Balzac coffee shop, which is lovely and inexpensive with massively high ceilings and funky old factory stuff in it.  Then on to some little artists studios / shops where I marvelled at the atrocious prices for silk scarves and embroidered pillows (I figure if I could ship in about 15 wee vietnamese seamstresses and pack them into one of the rooms I could make millions). 

The galleries were neat because there were lots of varied and different ones so that the crappy art wasn't hard to bypass, and there were some interesting stand-outs amongst the crowd.  There was a spectacular glass gallery where they had everything from handblown 10-foot long curlicues amassed into a bizarre bouquet up to the ceiling to these freaky weird and evil corporate-art type of glass cubes with sharp bits of glass insterted into the middle.  Hard to describe but interesting to see. And the people watching!!!  Ah...this is something I LOVE about coming back to Canada:  being able to people-watch and make lots of semi-insightful assumptions immediately and also be able to eavesdrop on people's conversations. 

I had a hoot just sitting with Ji (who slept throughout the afternoon) watching the folks go by.  A strangely high number of lovely, tall young women with funny looking short men.  Some weird looking artsy types who probably should call Ash for funding.  A Sikh family.  Some cute guys who upon second glance were maybe 17 years old.  And babies everywhere. On top of all this, the brewery was giving out free cups of classy beer!  Mum and Dad picked up a lovely lemony draft and a strangely good coffee beer. [Toronto-28-July-2003]