My family keeps going back to Toronto…
Sybil Lily, Ursula, Bernie, Endla… what if they all knew each other?
I.
I hear the boom of this town
Gas leaking l, choking birds
A one horse town
The people are horses… Expendable for the products they produce
What if it’s five stories?
- Sybil Lily migrating to Toronto (Exhibition, west end)
- Endla migrating to Toronto (Kipling)
- Me migrating to Toronto (Eglinton)
- … what are the other two?
And what would we say if we could talk to each other?
What would happen if we hosted one another at our apartments? Went out for drinks with one another?
And why do we gravitate to Toronto?
Is it the economic opportunities? How it’s the opposite of a one-horse town?
Is it the diversity, and proliferation of several different identities? Ethnic, sexual?
Is it the waterfront? The ravines? The many rivers?
Is it a place where you can be forgotten, and remade? Where you can slip into crowds, and emerge as somebody else? Where you can navigate one subculture after another until you find your people?
Is it a place of refuge, or a place of oppression? Who are the oppressors of New Waterford, of Tartu, of Mississauga, of Toronto? What do they have in common? How are they unlike one another?
And why do we slingshot through Toronto to other parts of the world? Why did Endla move to Florida? Why did Bernie move out east? Why will I likely not stay here all my life?
What if we shared wisdom with one another? What if it was a neutral, but magical place, like a cafe? A speakeasy? What if the wisdom of the 1910s could interact as equals with the wisdom of the 2020s? How would we leave changed to address our oppression?
And what if I were an ancestor to yet another generation or two, who then have their own wisdom?
What if the oppressors had something in common between all our different timelines?
What if they walked away changed? Each starting their own tiny revolutions?
The world is on the verge of crisis, depending upon these ancestors from coming to know one another…
WHAT IF WE ALL BECOME ANTI-FASCIST TOGETHER AND FIGHT THE FASCISM OF OUR TIMES