Broken Willow

About a year ago I gave my last update on the Victoria Park homeless encampment. At that time, the city had developed a new shelter option and was planning to renovate the island on which the residents were living. They had put up barricades around the two bridges connecting it to the rest of the park with guards protecting each entrance 24/7. They were admiting previous residents of the encampment but denied entry to newcomers.

A single woman held out long past everyone else. For months, she was guarded by two people around the clock and had sole rights to the island. She was a bit of a local celebrity. Eventually she did move out, and they've been working on the place over the summer to open it back to the public.

Last week we heard that the day had come and we went over to see how it looked. Nothing too different from before the encampment. There was the old gazebo, ornamental cannon, gardens... And then I saw this

For my job, during some of the partial lockdown measures in the pandemic, we hosted a park group. One day when I was facilitating, we saw the broken remains of an old tree. I reflected with the group on how much longer the tree had lived than any of us, how many things must have happened throughout its life, and how we were seeing the end of a very long story.

Well, this was that tree! I think it's a willow. It's been busy during the encampment and renovations! You can see where the thick stump stops abruptly, and it's now growing new branches and leaves.

Earlier this year, I read a book called The Hidden Life of Trees. Apparently trees communicate with each other through a fungal network attached to their roots, and they are able to transfer each other nutrients. They will do this even at the cost of their own resources in order to maintain a canopy, which is vital for the ecosystem. They will share with weaker trees and rivals. Sometimes they will even give nutrients to the bodies of passed relatives, with seemingly no other motivation than sentimentality.

Apparently trees are social creatures, and city-grown ones suffer from social isolation. They often never learn to talk or trade. I would assume this to be the case for the park's trees, but as we see here, this one is making a comeback despite the fact it was rendered completely defenseless. It's neighbours must have intervened!

Obviously this tree isn't forming a canopy with anyone. Willows are considered pioneering species, moving far away from their parents. Usually they're relatively solitary. Yet, this one still shares a root system and it must have been talking to its peers.

While we were taking pictures of the tree, some guy approached us and asked us to take a picture of him with it. He did kind of a silly pose, sticking his foot out over the river with his mouth agape. He was pretty particular about how it was taken and we went through several rounds. Then, he wanted to take a picture of me doing the same pose.

It crossed my mind that he was going to steal my phone. He was talking fast, building legitimacy by starting with the request being for him, scrutinizing the photos, and eventually creating a situation where I hand my own phone to him and put space between us.

I was intrigued enough by how much energy he was putting out that I just went along with it. Somehow, he was legit. Took the photo and handed it back to me. Apparently he just wanted me to promote his artisty over social media. I guess sharing it on here kind of counts.

Never got his name so I can't give a shout out, but this was the pic he took:

I told Lee-Anne afterward that I'd thought he was going to steal the phone and she said she hadn't "got that vibe" from him.

On the other side of the island, we discovered another example of a tree with a similar disposition to the newly rejuvenated willow.

Even before the reopening of the island, I had an inkling that the trees in the park were a bit more talkative than you might assume. Earlier this year while walking through a different part of the park I noticed this

I think this is a cedar tree. Clearly, at some point it had fully been toppled to the ground, broken at its base. However, it has since closed its wounds, redirected its branches and grown new leaves. In the book, it refers to conifers as being "staunch perfectionists" that maintain posture even at the cost of their own lives, unlike deciduous trees which are more willing to bend as the need arises. He only gave examples of firs, spruce, pine, and larches though. Maybe cedars are a bit more adaptable.

We also saw a cool stump. I've been reminded recently that trees offer life-giving resources long past the end of their lives. Here is an example of one that's been felled but continues to give back through its remains

Back when I was a child, I was enamoured with the concept of the "forest spirit". Even as an adult, I would kind of scoff at city trees for not fulfilling their function of supporting this manifestation. I preoccupied myself with coming up with definitions for forests, and how big one needed to be to facilitate its own spirit.

After reading The Hidden Life of Trees, I've gained a bit more compassion for city trees. The author refers to them as traumatized due to being raised in areas where they don't experience the mentorship of old growth, and simultaneously being spoiled and neglected through human care. But a traumatized individual still has value. Often city trees are doing their best given the circumstances, and even if they're not as loud as their forest contemporaries, they sometimes do talk. Just a little quieter.

Accidentally Joining Social Movements

Food prices in Ontario are soaring. I mentioned this in a previous post that I'd made about a giant sandwich. Lee-Anne had requested it, but I was hesitant because as a story, it didn't seem to have much meat (unlike the sandwich, haha). However, some of the commentary about food prices have aged well as a reference point.

In that post, the surprisingly cheap giant sandwich came from Sobeys, and the novelty came from the fact that a purchase of such good value could come from a place that is otherwise ludicrously pricey. This is because Sobeys is owned by a mega corporation named Loblaws which owns most of the major grocery outlets across Canada.

Recently, people have started calling the company out for artificially inflating food prices. I'm not savvy enough with economics to say one way or the other, but my brother used to work for one of their branches and had many ugly stories about how they treated their employees. So while I can't confirm that they aren't doing their due dilligence to keep prices low, I can see that their reach is wide, that they are charging more than most smaller outlets, and I've got a soured opinion of their company culture.

It came to a point that people started calling for a boycott. This caught some speed, enough that the CEO started whining about it on Twitter. He complained that the amount their sales had gone down was the same percentage as people who vote NDP, Canada's left-of-Liberal party. He tweeted that it was a shame that people had to politicize everything, and that this was only harmful to Canada-based companies.

His complaint about their loss in sales matching the total NDP vote only makes sense if everyone who voted NDP was already buying from Loblaws, which would sort of be a self-tell on how they're running a monopoly. The comment about not supporting Canadian companies is also kind of rich coming from an organization that hasn't been supporting Canadian customers and has been crowding out other Canadian businesses.

Mostly, I find his commentary to be of little value. However, I do find it kind of weird to heard people participating in the Loblaws boycott have replaced them with Wal Mart. When did we stop hating Wal Mart?

Loblaws has made a bit of a comeback though. Recently, the LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario) has called a strike due to our Premier's decision to cancel a contract and allow beer and wine to be sold through convenience stores.

I've heard our Premier Doug Ford called the "King Midas of Alcohol". Everything he touches turns to booze.  It was within my lifetime that we only had three outlets for alcohol: The LCBO, Beer Store, and Wine Store. You weren't allowed to sell alcohol in grocery stores, but some places had a wine store branching off. It wasn't Ford that put beer and wine into grocery stores, but he's followed the trend. One of his campaign promises was to deliver "buck-a-beer" pricing. Now he's paying big to sever a contract and get booze into convenience stores, and apparently he's trying to get scratch tickets sold in beer stores.

I don't think I'm morally opposed to convenience stores being able to sell alcohol, but it still feels like something no one was asking for, and the scratch ticket thing is creepy. There are a lot of things that need addressing right now, like low staffing in education and healthcare, so doubling down on making addictive products more accessible is a weird angle. Especially now when Canadian health care professionals have recently changed policy to say that there is no amount of alcohol that can be safely consumed.

Because grocery stores can sell alcohol, Loblaws is seeing a surge of former LCBO customers go to them. Some supporters of the LCBO are holding off, mostly as a show of solidarity against Ford.

During these boycotts, I've asked myself what my responsibility is as a consumer. After brief consideration, I realized that this doesn't effect me much personally. The grocery store nearest to us is independently owned, so I've already been passively boycotting Loblaws. And this whole LCBO thing was really perfectly timed, as I was planning on trying a month of sobriety already.

I love accidentally joining social movements.

Shawarma History in Belmont Village

My favourite food is shawarma, and in general dishes that bridge Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cuisine. Lebanon is my favourite food culture in the world, although I understand Turkey is very similar. Kitchener is a wonderful place to live for people with this opinion, as almost anywhere you go in the city, you'll find multiple options in this genre. Unfortunately, the specific area that we live in is a shawarma dry zone. We live near a place called Belmont Village, which is dedicated to local businesses and when we moved in, there were four bakeries, but no shawarma.

Eventually, after Big John's Subs changed location and left a spot vacant, a place called Sam's Shawarma decided to break the mould. I mentioned this briefly in a post after my diabetes diagnosis.  Sam's had announced their upcoming opening and I was being really strict with my diet at the time. I lamented the fact that I wouldn't be able to try it.

However, it took them awhile to get to opening day, and by then my health situation had changed a lot and I was more relaxed. Me and Lee-Anne got classic pita wraps as a control to test their skill. Unfortunately, it was probably the worst wrap job that I've ever seen. I could easily, easily have done a better job myself and I can't imagine that someone who had never made a wrap before could do worse. We chalked it up to early-day jitters, although they were several days in and it's probably the most common order.

We came back later and got platters, which were fine but surprisingly expensive. Despite serving my favourite food and being the only option for it in the area, I found myself having difficulty buying from them. I understand that small businesses often need to charge a bit more than chains, and prices of ingredients have skyrocketed. But still, there's a point where even with these things in mind, cost becomes a deterrant. If they had been a little cheaper or a little better, I might have been a regular.

They never posted a sign displaying their hours and it seemed kind of random. Eventually Google labled them as being open until 7:00, but there were a few times when me and Lee-Anne thought about getting dinner from them before then and they were closed. Builds a loss of trust.

They kept expanding the menu and trying different things, a common mistake of independently owned places. Typically, you should have a few standard options, maybe one thing that distinguishes your establishment, and something simple that goes against theme for picky eaters. I don't remember everything they tried but they introduced a few pita wrap alternatives. First they added saaj bread. This isn't unheard of and I'm kind of disappointed I never got around to trying it, but I just never trusted them to wrap anything again. Then they added durum wraps, which as far as I can tell is a flour used to make pasta? I couldn't find an example of anywhere else making durum-wrapped shawarma. I wonder if it really was like a pasta pita.

I'll never know because they shut down about a year later and were quickly replaced with Bossman Shawarma. At least one of the staff members retained her position. I know this because we recognized her when we went in the first time and she told us about how she was working at the old establishment when a car drove through their front window. It's not a large place so she would have been staring it right down. Terrifying

 When I first saw her, I wondered if the brief closure and change in names indicated a renovation and new branding rather than a change in ownership. But the employee talked about a new management with new goals, so I guess it was an actual new business.

Bossman's displayed a Ganesha statue at their cash register. For food options, outside of the standard shawarma and falaffel, they had butter chicken and tandoori. I guess an Indian owner decided that shawarma was more marketable in Kitchener than his home cuisine and opted to use it as the main selling point. Somewhat curious, as they were neighbours to Raja, an Indian sit down restaurant that has been around long before we moved into the area. Maybe they didn't want to be directly competing with them, but since Bossman's was fast food and Raja sitdown, it would have probably been fine.

One notable thing about Bossman's was that their falaffels were ENORMOUS. They were the size and shape of hamburger patties. I've never seen anything like it. I wasn't even sure if I enjoyed it or not, but it was interesting enough to bring me back several times.

Bossman also lasted about a year. Now we have Relish Shawarma. They don't stock the ingredient relish, so I suppose the name is for the descriptive, as in, to enjoy and savour shawarma. This time it doesn't appear that any of the workers from the previous establishment carried over. I feel bad for the one woman who managed to survive changes in ownership and a car driving through the store front.

Relish is owned by an Indian family, and so in addition to the usual options, they also have tandoori and Sikh kabob. They're about six months in and unfortunately appear to be having an identity crisis akin to Sam's, as they added Philly Cheesesteak.

They are really, really friendly. Like, almost to the point of intimidation. They made sure to get to know us, and the second time we went they were looking for tips on anything they could tweak or modify. Theoretically, I think it's good for businesses to learn about their customers and connect, but I'm not above this culture of isolation that we're in, and the prospect of making conversation can be a bit much when I just want to get food and get out.

One thing that is odd about them is their hours. One time, I got back home from out of town at like, 10:00 and noticed they were still open. They recently put a sign up with their hours, and apparently they're open until midnight every day, even Sunday. There are places where this makes sense, especially places with a party scene. In Guelph, there's a shawarma joint that closes in the evening and then reopens from like, midnight to 4 am or something like that. Pretty obviously for sloppy drunk University students coming back from the clubs.

But out neighbourhood really isn't that scene. We have a few bars but they mostly attract middle aged people that would probably just buy food wherever they're drinking.

Anyway, I do hope they are doing well because the people that work there are nice and their prices are a bit more reasonable. I think the tandoori platter is probably the best thing on their menu. They have fattoush salad, which I like and don't often see. But it's easy to imagine them falling to the same fate as their predecessors and that Philly cheesesteak addition feels like a move of desperation.

Maybe shawarma just can't survive here. Oh well, at least I have four options to buy luxury doughnuts from.

Five Years From First Date

Yesterday, July 8th, was the fifth year anniversary of mine and Lee-Anne's first date. We now have a wedding anniversary so we weren't sure if we were going to celebrate both. But five years is a nice and clean number so might as well.

We didn't do anything too unique, just revisited the place we had our first date, a bubble tea shop near the University of Waterloo. 

I have a blueberry milk bubble tea and she has a lyche one. On our first date I got mango and she had coconut with pineapple jellies. A chipmunk startled me by sticking its nose on my hand shortly after I took this photo.

I don't know if I've told this story on here, but five years ago I thought it would be crass to ask her out over Facebook, so I set up a time to meet and chat. After we'd had our drinks and had eaten our paninis, we were walking laps around the university as I steeled my nerves to ask her out. I finally popped the question, which surprised her as she thought we already were on one. 

Despite the second date being the first one where we were both knowingly dating, we count it from the July 8th bubble tea shop.

Whenever there's some kind of romantic occasion and we're lacking creativity, we get bubble tea. It is, I guess, our signature romantic beverage. Along with sunflowers it's pretty high up as a symbol for our relationship.

Speaking of sunflowers, I've had no luck with them this year. I planted a bunch that never came up. I planted a second batch and a bunch of sprouts grew that looked kind of right, but became increasingly disappointing as they slowly revealed themselves to just be weeds. In a final attempt, I bought a 12 pack of jiffy pots and put them on the window sill in our office, one of the few places the cats can't get to.

Eventually, exactly one sprouted. I don't know why it's been such a good year for vegetables but so bad for flowers. None of our wildflowers came in either, which I thought would be the easiest thing we did.

Yesterday I deemed the little sprout ready to be transplanted into the garden. I admit, it may have been ready a day or two earlier but the symbolism of planting it in celebration of five years together was too good to pass up. It was looking pretty strong today, having reoriented itself to face the sun. Hopefully it does okay when it has to deal with the tail end of Hurricane Beryl tonight. Hard introduction to the real world, little sunny.

In these past five years, we moved into where we're currently living. Her from her parents' place and me from my old bachelor's pad. She got her job at the CNIB. We got married. She's had prolonged stays in the hospital twice for observation of her epilepsy. One done over the skull, and one under.

A few days ago, Lee-Anne finally got the report for her intra-cranial examination. It turns out that she has insular, not left temporal epilepsy as she had been previously diagnosed.

This means they were able to pinpoint the location of her seizures as coming from the insula, a part of the brain set just beneath the left temporal lobe. Tomorrow, July 10th, a panel of doctors are going to come together and discuss potential treatment options. Then they'll schedule an appointment with us and we'll talk about steps forward. No clue what the timeline for that will look like, though.