Trip to Toronto, and Visiting Snaige and Antanas

We awoke refreshed at the Chalets on Lake Muskoka early this morning - in time to say 'bye' to Dan and Noreen. We dined on fabulous rice pancakes that Jim had made, covered in Arleigh and Larry's wonderful homemade maple syrup.

I showed my abstract art portfolio to Terry, Betty, Joleigh and Vivien; Vivien really liked the musical series; she may be interested in one of them for her house.

Teal came to pick up Jeff and Gigi and Terry and me, and take us all to a car rental place in Barrie. Turns out it would be cheaper by almost half to rent a car for the 4 of us for a day rather than all of us taking buses, shuttles, taxis, etc.

It's Teal's 27th birthday, so we all sang to her; then the whole gang marched us out to Teal's car, banging metal utensils on pots and pans. What a hoot!

The drive to Barrie was, I believe, longer than our subsequent drive to get Jeff and Gigi to the Toronto airport. At the airport, we said our goodbyes to Jeff and Gigi; then Terry and I headed downtown.

We parked pretty near the CN tower and the sports arena; had a delicious lunch of panninis at Pizza Rustica; then wandered through various downtown areas in search of the art museum.

Great way to get the feel and smell of a city -- just wander about, turning where it looks interesting -- avoiding the too-polished looking streets. There were some young kids on the street near what appeared to be a University area with signs for handouts -- one said, "Spare change for pizza and beer;" another, "Why lie? Anything you can spare for pot." :-)

We sampled quite a variety of ethnic areas, before we came to Grange Park and The Art Gallery of Ontario. The park was lovely -- filled with people relaxing and kids playing and dogs frolicking, but the museum was surrounded by construction boards, and we couldn't tell if the museum was open until we spotted a sign on the construction boards saying it was.

So off we headed to the left around the construction zone...and around and around and around for blocks! Turns out the one remaining entrance would have been pretty close to us had we headed to the right, but we ended up circumnavigating about 80% of the perimeter before discovering it. And dang if it wasn't closed! On a Tuesday even! We were sorely disappointed, as it looked like a very good museum, and I'm sure we weren't alone in our disappointment, as about 15 other people tried to enter as we stood there scratching our heads wondering what to do with ourselves next.

We decided to head east, and found ourselves at the Peace Plaza of Nathan Phillips Square. What a lovely place! Fabulous architecture on the city hall -- beautiful fountain and gardens. We hung around there for awhile, then wandered through the gardens of the Osgoode Hall law buildings, before we decided to head back towards the car and maybe find a place for a beer along the way.

No shortage there! We settled into a small outdoor cafe, drank a good Canadian brew and watched the city energize for going home. It's so great to be in a city that works so well -- we weren't far from the underground -- trolleys passed quietly by every minute or so, as well as buses, taxis, cars, and people on foot or riding bikes. It seems like a very bike friendly downtown. For a city of about 2.5 million people, how cool is that? [Some info on Toronto.]

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We headed west during rush hour to my cousin Snaige's house. I'd really only met her once -- back in '93 when my mom and I came up to visit Snaige's dad, Algimantis, before our trip to Lithuania. Algis had been born in Lithuania, and when he was sixteen, he apparently had to leave Lithuania due to WWII, and wound up in a DP camp in Germany. He and my mom, who were first cousins, wrote back and forth during that time. Algis met a woman in the camp, Eugenia, who became his wife. If I understood the story right, they were able to leave the DP camp by basically becoming indentured servants to a farmer in Canada.

I don't know the rest of the tale, only that they had 2 children, and had since been living happily in Toronto.

When I met Algis in '93, he had such an effect on me. He was such a sweet and gentle man, full of intelligence and wisdom and lots and lots of love. He wrote to me from time to time; and sent me emails for years (once email became an option), and even had a subscription to a Lithuanian magazine sent to me as a gift. I had always hoped to get back to Toronto to see him and introduce him to Terry and vice versa.

But he had gotten sick, and early this summer, I received a card from Snaige saying he had passed away last fall of cancer -- 2 years almost to the day that her brother had also been taken by cancer (which was also news to me).

So, I just had to see Snaige. Being the not-so-hot planner that I am, I hadn't written to her until the night before we departed for Canada last week. I anxiously checked my yahoo email on the two days I had internet access after arriving in Canada, but no word from Snaige. I called on Saturday morning, and found out from her son that she was on a canoeing trip, and that her husband, Antanas, was also away in the country.

Antanas called me Monday to say Snaige was not scheduled to return home until Wednesday evening -- by which time we would already be home in Austin. So it seemed it wasn't meant to be this time around -- until I got another call from Antanas later that day, saying Snaige was actually cutting her trip short by a day due to the terrible storms they had been through last Friday, and would be home Tuesday evening and would we come for dinner, and would we like to spend the night at their house before our flight home? Well, of course, I was thrilled, and said yes.

Snaige and Antanas live in a lovely brownstone-type two story home, just as the neighborhoods seem to start becoming lovely real houses. Their house is beautifully and tastefully decorated with wood scandanavian type furniture and tasty fabrics, lovely colors of walls, with Snaige's beautiful art hanging here and there. We sat out on the back deck and drank Lithuanian beer and got to know each other a little better before Snaige's childhood friend, Amanda, arrived with the canoe, and Snaige ported it pretty much by herself to the backyard.

The photo above is of two of Snaige's prints currently in a museum in Vilnius, Lithuania. I shot this photo in 1993 when I was there -- my Lithunian teacher in Vilnius was quite surprised when I told her that was my cousin's work!

Antanas cooked us the most wonderful meal starting with bread and borscht (Polish style, but with delicious fresh beets), eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes, some of the most delicious new potatoes I've ever had, and grilled steak. He made this truly great dessert of fresh peaches and blueberries on top of whipped-cream covered mini shortcakes. He had also completely cleaned the house for Snaige's arrival. What a guy! He truly wowed his wife (and us).

He's also thoroughly charming and pretty darned cute. He's had 3 books published since I was here last - 2 novels and a collection of short stories. Terry was quite charmed by this, and they talked a bit about the writing process and Terry's book in progress. Antanas used to teach at Humber college, but now he's doing more of an administration position, which he actually made sound pretty cool, as Artistic Director of the Humber School for Writers, Humber Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning.

Snaige's art career is going well. I had forgotten she had studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. She's recently had another show, and was featured on a documentary on Canadian artists that was shown on Bravo Canada. They also used her lovely brush strokes for the beginning and ending credits for the whole series. http://www.movingimages.ca/catalogue/Art/artistslife_sileika.html We watched the video of her segment, and talked some about the artistic process, and how best to carve out time for creating.

Anyway, the evening and the visit with Snaige and Antanas was much too short, and I didn't get much of a chance to find out too much more about her dad, or as much about them and their lives and art as I'd like. Another time, perhaps.

Snaige's website: http://www.snaige.ca/

Some pages on Antanas: http://www.writersunion.ca/s/sileika.htm http://www.randomhouse.ca/features/travelbypaperback/book4.html http://writerscafe.ca/weblogs/writers/Antanas-Sileika-Woman-in-Bronze-a-novel.php http://www.city.toronto.on.ca/book_awards/tba_shortlist2.htm#time