A recent visit to my old stomping grounds of Toronto occasioned a meetup with two distant relatives for a nice meal and some catching up. I say distant relations despite their being very close in blood ties, because we are separated by great distance (Cape Breton and Toronto). I guess that’s a great cultural distance too, but I’m happy to report that we are similarly inclined in many things; our “distance” is not of the cultural sort.
Two
nice policemen on their handsome twin Percherons stroll along King West in
Liberty Village area of Toronto – the ironically named Liberty Village.
We met at a great restaurant near one of those relatives’ workplace, in the Toronto borough called Liberty Village, King St. West. The name was familiar to me from many years of visiting and hanging out in Toronto (and living there during grad school), but I’d never had reason to stop and look around that precinct.
Before I go any further I should name the restaurant, Caffino. Sounds more like a coffee shop than a dining room, but menu-wise it is primarily Italian, though I am not one to judge authenticity. But I can judge menu, price and setting. I loved it.
I guess Caffino is considered moderately priced by Toronto standards. Menu selection is not extensive, but it offers a good selection serving most tastes. The décor is “early eclectic,” but not in a bohemian sort of way. As I say, I really liked it and would definitely go again – let’s call that “highly recommended.”
Be careful if you’re trying to find it, though. Civic number 1185 is deceiving. Behind a simple but substantial iron gate that seemed to signal ‘closed,’ runs a narrow, but not claustrophobic, covered close leading to a dingy entrance. Because of my vision issues, I really had to concentrate to determine that I had the right address. So, 1185 is a gateway, not a doorway.
A vintage sign complicates the confusion by recalling one historical incarnation of the overall complex: “Carpet Factory.” Enough about Caffino, except to say that I loved it.
As I wrote, the general area is known as Liberty Village, and the name has an interesting provenance. The vestiges of the carpet complex mentioned above includes a maze of multistory stone and brick buildings that once served as a penitentiary. The less substantial buildings that evolved surrounding the prison was dubbed liberty village. Behind the walls was incarceration, outside was liberty. I imagine – perhaps romanticizing – that liberty village greeted loved ones’ release.
While I was biding my time outside the walls – waiting for the appointed hour to enter – I was thrilled to hear the clop-clickety-clop-clop of horses’ hoofs. Around the corner of the street that encircles the prison, came two handsome and perfectly matched Percherons ridden by two of Toronto’s finest. What a picture-perfect sight was that pair of crowd-control equines!
It was like a Toronto travel commercial. If they had been RCMP in red serge it could have been a proud Canadian travel commercial. But it wasn’t, as I learned when I rounded the corner onto Fraser St. I was drawn to walk down Fraser because that was the name of the street where I once lived, for about twenty years, in Sydney Mines, Cape Breton. It was like a step back in time, of sorts.
These are not the tents of medieval re-enactors camped outside the castle walls holding out for a pretend prince’s clemency toward wretches imagined in the dungeons. This is an encampment of 21st-century wretches huddled outside a 21st-century soup kitchen under the watchful eyes of security guards carefully controlling the flow of unhoused Canadians seeking comfort.
This patch of green that is Libert Village is known to prisoners of a different sort. They are held outside, but they are inmates nonetheless – free captives. In a strange “catch 22” the residents of this village of liberty are free of the constraints of a society that neither understands or restrains them. They rely on that same society that ignores them. They wait for handouts and hands up.
My moments of concern and consternation over the encampment of miscreants [sic] took me back to that romanticized view of the Percherons. Those great beasts, and their armed human handlers, I now processed in an entirely different light: from romantic to repressive, from grace, beauty and strength to power and control.
The snapshots I include among these thought were taken discretely, from across the street in hopes I was not intruding, not adding to the spectacle. Then, thoughtfully, I returned to the heavy iron gate to Caffino and my appointment with family and friends whose warmth and comfort I find so liberating.
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