The Elves and the Moccasins

Perhaps it began with The Elves and the Shoemaker (still one of my two favourite fairytales).

I’m no Imelda Marcos but when I was a child I did long for a pair of pointy red shoes. (I couldn’t believe my fortune when my cousin gave me her outgrown ones – the very pair that had seeded the yearning.)

When I was a teenager I made my own knee-high ugg boots. Mum sometimes tanned skins from our sheep and I snaffled a brown one of those. I bought leather thonging and spent evenings sewing by the fire. The boots were utilitarian rather than decorative and terrifically snugly. It didn’t bother me that they were not as tidy as other people’s store-bought ones.

There’s something very pleasing about meeting one’s own needs.

I Spy Toronto

Toronto is one of the most multi-cultural cities in the world with over 140 languages and dialects spoken. Here a street sign sports three – English, Chinese, graffiti/tag.

Toronto is hard to sum up. It’s not just any old city. In fact, it’s ‘not just’ anything, certainly not just noodles or condoms.

Toronto: Three Little Words

I began in a symposium in a huge, high-ceilinged room where academics presented ideas, questions and research data then responded to audience queries. Measured. Hushed. Thought-provoking.

Next, I followed an underground passage (a segment of the 29km ‘PATH’, the world’s largest underground shopping complex) to a shopping centre (Eaton) that stretched on and up in dizzying layers of commercialism…and curious reindeer. Bright. Buzzy. Busy.