How to Walk in Winter

After our mild autumn and holiday seasons, the current blast of winter requires some change in habits. We’re familiar with drivers trying to adjust to snowy driving conditions, but it’s just as important to adopt different ways of walking, especially on city sidewalks. Here are a few tips to help navigate your way safely in snowy weather. 

• Don’t put your hands in your pockets. You can keep your balance by moving your hands and arms, but not if they’re tucked into your coat. Wear gloves or mittens to keep your hands warm.
  
• Wear a hat that covers your head and ears, and maybe a scarf over your face. Which is preferable – a bad hair day, or losing the tips of your ears or nose to frostbite?
• Wear flat-soled boots. High-heeled boots may look fashionable, but wearing a cast on your leg is much less so.
• Walk with small steps. If your foot is too far away from your centre of gravity, the downward push of your weight could send it flying out from under you.
• If you encounter a slope in the sidewalk (say, the entrance to a driveway), walk at the very bottom of the slope, if possible. This area is flat, with more secure footing. Walking on the slope is an invitation to fall.
• If the surface of a shovelled sidewalk is too smooth and slippery, walk in the snow or rough ground beside the sidewalk instead. You’ll go more slowly, but you’ll have more traction.
• If you start to fall, try to relax as you go down. You’re less likely to break something if you’re not holding yourself rigid. 
• At an intersection, don’t just assume oncoming traffic can stop normally. Make sure approaching cars have stopped before you step off the sidewalk.

And finally, once inside a building, don’t stay bundled up “till you feel warm.” This just cocoons you longer inside a cold coat. Whip off your hat and gloves, and throw your coat open. Let the warm air get at you! Then off you go to shop, work, or make your dinner, having arrived safely and in one piece.

Kamikaze, by “Michael Slade”: Great thriller, less than great on the psychology

I didn’t expect to like this book as much as I did. In fact, two or three chapters in, I didn’t even want to. But Kamikaze grew on me in spite of myself. The things I felt were missing remained problematic, but other elements of the story gradually began to shine, and the book lived up to its advance billing as a thriller.

The story alternates between the present day and certain major incidents in World War Two, including the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the Americans’ dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. These events produced repercussions which have rippled through the lives of three of the main characters who survived them, and affected the families of these two men and one woman for two generations.

For those reasons, one might expect a great deal of emotional angst as the self-doubt of the American veteran and the Japanese soldier’s hunt for revenge are explored. Instead the narrative is spare, in some places almost staccato, and violent action seems authentic and alive while human relationships are portrayed as more stereotypical than real.

“Michael Slade” is a writing team which, for this novel, consists of Vancouver lawyer Jay Clarke and his daughter Rebecca. (Team writers for previous “Slade” novels have included Jay’s wife, Lee Clarke, and fellow lawyers John Banks and Richard Covell, but Jay Clarke is the common denominator for every book.) I am probably guilty of my own stereotyping when I say it was Rebecca Clarke’s involvement in this book that led me to expect a more realistic portrayal of the psyches and emotions of the characters.

But Joe “Red” Hett is more a symbol of “the American veteran” than a real person. He is tough and fiercely patriotic, giving ground to no one; one could imagine George C. Scott or John Wayne portraying this character. His son Charles and granddaughter Jackie are equally stereotypes: the easygoing ex-army son who is a chuckling buffer between his old man and his daughter; and the daughter herself, apple of the men’s eye yet full of spunk, who follows the family military tradition by joining the RCMP via her dual citizenship. The interactions of these three feel scripted rather than natural: “this is where the gruff grandfather awkwardly hints at his secret pride in the headstrong granddaughter.”

Tokuda the Japanese veteran, meanwhile, is ruthless and inscrutable, coldly plotting a sixty-year vengeance through control of the yakuza, Japan’s criminal underworld. He escapes being entirely a stereotype himself because his psychological state seems more real. But that could be mere coincidence, since we expect someone who has suffered the traumas he has to be emotionally inaccessible.

And yet, despite its shakiness when it comes to psychological exploration, the “thriller” aspect of Kamikaze is well worth the read. The most gripping segments of the book occur when the Enola Gay is on its way to Hiroshima, and finally drops the bomb. (And fortunately, the psychological effects of this act on the plane’s crew leap dramatically into the picture of their own accord.)

When the final hunt begins, we are on the edge of our seats, waiting breathlessly to see if this stage will go through without mishap, and this one, and the next. The hunt is exquisitely detailed, and our anxiety builds as the precious seconds tick away.

A dissatisfying non-confrontation is turned around by a final crowning plot twist that sideswipes us, and demonstrates that the psychological depths were always there if only they had been more vividly plumbed. Yet even that final psychological twist, although it was developed more convincingly than others in the book, is left in the end to be analyzed dryly by external observers.

Kamikaze is something of a mixed bag. If you’re uncomfortable with the emotional side of things but eager for suspenseful action, the story builds to a climax you’ll enjoy. If you’re interested in a real portrayal of the psychological and emotional effects of the violent history described in the book, you will probably not be satisfied. 

A Westerner’s Quick Guide to Bollywood Movies

Bollywood movies (films from India’s movie industry) are an exciting genre unto themselves, lovable for many quirks and virtues. Start by memorizing four words: willing suspension of disbelief. You will see things in a Bollywood movie that don’t exist in Hollywood or anywhere else. Embrace the following special differences, and enjoy.

Colour, colour, colour! Bollywood has never met a colour it didn’t like. Forget “does this shade go with that one?” Colours run riot, from flowers in the background, to building decor, brilliant Indian clothing and glittering jewellery, and most of all, the extravagant musical productions.

Everyone dances! Is there a festival, wedding, or religious holiday in the plot? Then you’ll see at least one (but rarely just one) strenuous dance number featuring the romantic leads, backed up by 20 or 30 others — all colourfully-dressed, of course — singing enthusiastically while apparently doing gynmastics.

Romantic singing! The lead characters sing several lavishly romantic songs, in music video style, as their relationship progresses. In a single song, they may start beside a street fountain, suddenly change scene (and clothes) to twirl atop a snowy mountain, and end up running through a field (again in new clothes). Whatever romantic imagery you want with your love songs — slow-motion running, wind-blown hair, shy gazes, flower-strewn paths, billowing white curtains — you will see it eventually in some Bollywood movie.

Love at first sight! Across a crowded square, shaking hands in a business meeting, colliding in an airport: the young couple’s eyes meet, and They Just Know. But the course of true love never runs smoothly. They must overcome obstacles such as a gangster father (who almost always reforms in the end), differences in class and wealth, religious objections, or even political upheavals. But in most Bollywood films, love overcomes and the star-crossed couple finally unites.

Graphic passion — not! There is no kissing. Only a few rare, and recent, Bollywood movies allow the star couple to kiss onscreen, never mind anything else. Don’t worry, though, they more than compensate in their singing numbers. These are wildly romantic, and sometimes downright erotic. A Bollywood couple is hotter with clothes on than most Hollywood couples naked.

Melodrama! If you love it, these are your movies. The word “subtle” is nowhere in Bollywood’s vocabulary. You will never miss the point. If the abrupt zooming close-up of an actor’s suddenly troubled/shocked/ecstatic face doesn’t clue you in, the blare of dramatic music will. And when Our Hero, inspired by love, fights off 20 heavily armed attackers with his bare fists (not to mention acrobatic back flips and leaping kicks), you will think, “Well, of course.”

Bollywood movies are a rollicking adventure, enjoyed by millions of fans worldwide. Embrace their special quirks and join the romp.

St. James Town: in the Middle of Everything

Remember that song, “Stuck in the Middle With You?” I’ve got another version, for my neighbourhood at Sherbourne and Bloor streets: “Gay to the left of me, ethnic to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle with you.” 

Few places in Toronto are as ethnically and socially diverse as St. James Town. Take the area’s largest apartment complex, for example. On certain Saturday evenings in the summer, you can come up out of the Sherbourne subway station accompanied by the sound of a steel drum band. Follow the music south and east for a block, and you will find a large gathering of people in a tiny park surrounding a basketball court, with the band at one edge of the park, and tables of different national foods around the other edges. In the apartment buildings looming over this green space, at least 90 different linguistic and ethnic groups live together. 

Most of these people probably never heard a steel drum band till they moved to Toronto. Yet here they all are, sharing each other’s food and enjoying the music, while kids from several continents bounce basketballs together, between bites.

You could, on the other hand, cross Sherbourne in the opposite direction, and immediately encounter a different sort of culture. This area is still known as the “gay ghetto” of Toronto, despite the fact that many gays and lesbians have now dispersed through the rest of the city in recent years. It’s a good “starter neighbourhood,” though, for newly out young people to get their bearings. As you stroll west on Isabella Street, shaded under a canopy of beautiful old trees, many apartment windows and balconies display the rainbow flag.

The nearby intersection of Church and Wellesley was made famous in the 1990s by The Kids in the Hall, the ground-breaking Canadian comedy group, when they placed the flamboyant character of Buddy here, in a fictitious gay bar. A gay friend of mine from Virginia came to town a few years ago, and immediately wanted to visit that intersection, as a sort of pilgrimage. Bars and stores cater to the gay and lesbian community all through this area. And early in the summer, Pride week fills the neighbourhood with parties, music, and of course, two parades that run along Yonge Street to the west.

Farther south down Sherbourne, there are residences for physically disabled people, who move in their mechanized chairs through the shops and along the sidewalks with as much ease as everyone else. The trendy district of Cabbagetown is just a couple of blocks east, so there is no shortage of antique dealers, restaurants, and specialty stores.  This sounds idyllic, as though people of all different ethnicities and social status live here together in perfect harmony. The neighbourhood is not without its problems, however. 

While many tiny parks are set like small green jewels among the apartment buildings, stores, and pubs, these spaces occasionally host drug dealers doing surreptitious (and sometimes not so hidden) business. Hookers stroll through once in a while, looking for customers, and groups of homeless people view certain parks as handy places to congregate. On weekday mornings these individuals are often seen, weary and tattered, petitioning for spare change from workers walking toward the subway station.

Contrast this with Rosedale, the neighbourhood across Bloor to the north. Many well-to-do Torontonians still live there, even if it’s no longer the richest district in the city. Huge houses with wide bay windows dominate beautifully landscaped gardens, while people jog or walk their dogs on Sunday mornings before heading out for a leisurely brunch. There aren’t many little grocery stores on corners in this area, but if you have a yen for designer clothes, expensive accessories, or high end furniture, this is a good shopping district. There are fewer homeless people in parks in this neighbourhood, while many more homes are guarded by fences, locked gates, and electronic security.

But there is some interaction even between Rosedale and St. James Town despite economic differences, particularly on special occasions like Pride week in June, or when Cabbagetown throws its annual street festival in August.

That’s the thing about the neighbourhood radiating south from Bloor and Sherbourne: there is something for everyone at various times of the year. People of all social, economic, and ethnic groups seem to pop in for a visit eventually. Whether you’re looking for a great little ethnic restaurant, a neighbourhood where you can be out and proud – or a place to enjoy summer nights to the music of a steel drum band – St. James Town is “stuck in the middle” of all of it, just waiting for you.