A Warm Night In Toronto
2025
We are out on the little back porch, off the kitchen of my top floor lodgings on Palmerston Boulevard.
It is a hot, uncomfortable night in Toronto. We have a bottle of Wild Turkey and a case of Miller High Life, those little pony bottles.
Lenny is downing the High Life ponies at a furious clip. When he finishes one, he throws the empty bottle between the big sugar maple trees and it shatters in the street. The rest of us follow suit.
We leave the porch for the roof and sit on the peak.
Then, in search of cooler, more comfortable air, we leave my place on Palmerston Boulevard and wind up in a marina on the lakefront. I ask a guy sitting on the back deck of his sailboat if we can embark for Cuba. He’s all for it.
How did we travel from Palmerston down to the lakefront for the Caribbean Festival? Did we pile into Lenny’s imposing Lincoln Continental?
After the Caribbean Festival, where did we go next?
How and where did this night begin?
Did my friend Jay, who was traveling through town on his way to Nova Scotia, have a motorcycle in TO that summer? Yes. The two of us wound up at an Art Deco water treatment plant out by the beaches.
Up all night, humid air cut by an undependable breeze off the lake. And then at sunrise, onto the bike and off across the city, sailing a straight line through soft light along Queen Street to a place in Chinatown Jay wanted to hit for a Chinese breakfast.
Scarred Formica tables, buzzing fluorescent and the end of a warm night in Toronto when everything was flawless.
