Durham, 1990s, Mural being painted, 105 Garafraxa Road North, Durham, Ontario

105 Garafraxa Road North, Durham, Ontario, sometime in the 1990s, probably 1994. There is a mural still there, I don't know if it's the same one.

 

Durham, 1990s, Hastie's Tobacco

Hastie's Tobacco Shop and Billiards, 144 Garafraxa Road North, Durham, Ontario. Owned and operated by Graham Hastie for 46 years! I took the picture because it looked like it was a local 'hub'. Stedmans V&S is a chain of small discount department stores. Neither place is still there, but the Hastie's is still a billiards hall, The Harvest Table, and the Stedmans is Goodchilds, a used goods store.

 

Whirlpool by weir, Grand River, Fergus, Ontario

I *think* this is Fergus. This is from film that I just got developed that was taken some time in the 1990s. Ilford XP2, Mamiya c220.

 

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor

The former Duke of York in 2008

By World Economic Forum - originally posted to Flickr as Duke of York - World Economic Forum on the Middle East 2008, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4486062

The former Prince Andrew went to Lakefield College private school in the Kawartha Lakes region of Ontario. Some places (streets and a lake) in Canada were named after him, which the local authorities are trying to change. I had a friend who was a year behind him and he said he was a 'nice guy' but wasn't friends with him. 

  My mom went to school in Bangor, Wales in the 1930s and 40s, with some children of the royals who were born from women who were maids at a nearby stately home the royals visited - I think it was Penrhyn Castle, but I'm not sure. The other kids called them 'Prince of Wales' as a joke.  

   This kind of abuse has been going on for centuries. I'm glad it's coming to light.

Sunflower from drain

 I found a little seedling growing up from a bathroom drain - it came out intact so I planted it to see what it was. Sunflower! Growing like a vine because I guess it's not getting enough sun.

Flags at half-mast for Tumbler Ridge

 

The flags of Canada, Ontario, the municipality and Franco-ontarians at half-mast near Alexandria, Ontario, in memory of the eight victims of a mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia. 

Miyo

Miyo Takeda (1983-2025), Toronto, July 30, 1998. We were shopping for a camera and I suggested she get this Olympus Stylus. It was rugged and weather resistant and had a fast 2.8 lens for candid photography. In my Plymouth Neon.

I thought I'd look up a friend I hadn't seen in years. The first thing I found was her obituary in the Toronto Star from a few days before. "No, it can't be the same person," I thought, but it was. I met Miyo at Canzine 1997 in Toronto, when she was 14. She did 'zines and organized music shows and later worked in art galleries and became a landscape architect for the city of Vancouver.

She lived in a rough part of Toronto - when I parked nearby, a prostitute came up to my car. When her dad had painted a door that he'd taken off the hinges and left it outside to dry, someone stole it. We both wondered what kind of market there was for a stolen used door.

We drove to the Beach (Beaches District in Toronto) and she noticed that there were very few black people there, something I, being white, didn't notice! She was always concerned about racism and remembered how one of her teachers had in all seriousness asked whether it was the Chinese whose eyes slanted up or down or the Japanese!

She used to work at an ice cream stand at Harbourfront. She told me she stole from the till and I wondered how she did it, and she showed me - she just pocketed some change and never got caught! "So how are you avoiding not having to shower with several heavily tattooed women, all named Butch?" I asked, and she deadpanned "Hello, Cutie!" in a butch voice, and said the owner just didn't pay that much attention to what was going on. A few years on, I saw her walking down Queen Street West, a club scene in Toronto, in a beautiful outfit and six inch platform shoes with a guy from CFNY, the hip radio station. 

She suffered from depression and was on paxil even in her teens.