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03/21/2006: "Last Walk of Winter"
We meet at the corner of Queen and Pape, several first-timers among us, and start east to find pregnant Anna a washroom. We pass several Leslieville furniture stores, a few darkened restaurant windows and a small seven-tabled diner packed full with beer-drinking locals. Tango Palace is our pit stop of choice, and the group lines up to order coffee and squares while whispering about by-election candidate Ben Chin who’s been spotted at a table.
At Leslie Street, it’s south to Eastern, and at Eastern Avenue, it’s east to an alleyway. We take the alleyway north, until it dead ends at a high chain link fence. Eastside Laurel says to cut through a yard, but instead the group backtracks to the street (oh! the dreaded backtrack). Still, the notion of alley sticks, ‘cause we find another and follow it north to Gerrard.
It’s been half-an-hour, so predictably, Anna has to stop again, this time at the Golden Arches. Shawn buys a McTaco Flurry, and says the trick to beating the cold is to make your insides colder. It doesn’t seem that anyone believes him.
We walk in behind Gerrard Square and trail the train tracks up a ramp and through an alley where a man is scrounging scrap metal into a white panel van. Then we walk Myrtle Avenue and then Ivy, where we pass a peculiar mix of imposing Tudors looming high off the hill, quaint bungalows built on triangular lots and a variety of homes in between. Across Greenwood, we walk through a series of mid-sized housing complexes to find the local playground where we bounce on spongy black ground.
Laurel tries again and says she knows the way. This time we comply and follow her through a parking lot to discover a beat-up sedan with bashed-in windows left for dead in the grass. Behind that is a tunnel we take under the tracks and north into Monarch Park.
The park is quiet and nice, an appropriate enough place to contemplate the coming of spring. We congregate on the outdoor rink, the ice packed away for the year. Beside us is a swimming pool, yet to be filled. We watch as a train races off towards Ajax, maybe Cornwall. It reminds us that there are places to go, though not just yet. This is still the last of winter, so we return to our homes for a well-deserved sleep.
