When I need to clear my head, I go for a long photo walk. I use my camera as a tool to silence the interior chatter by shifting my attention to the visual field. It’s the mental equivalent of splashing cold water on my face. I had just such a need on Friday, and hatched a vague plan to take a photo walk that would end at the mouth of the Don River. For reasons I could not possibly have anticipated, I never reached my destination.
I started my walk by going down the staircase from Bloor Street to Rosedale Valley Road which deposits you under the Mount Pleasant Road bridge. It’s a bit sketchy under the bridge; most people don’t even know about the staircase. Surprisingly, it appears on Google maps as “unnamed road” which is an odd name for a staircase. Somehow, its inclusion on Google maps gives it a legitimacy ordinarily denied to features that otherwise pass for local quirks.
From there, I headed down to the foot of Rosedale Valley Road, passing first under the Sherbourne Street bridge, then gazing up at the Glen Road pedestrian bridge which spans the valley and gives people in Rosedale access to the Sherbourne subway station. Two women stood on the bridge. They wore red gowns and white hats that reminded me of Christmas carolers in Victorian costume. On Wednesday, I had passed a movie set in Allen Gardens, a Christmas Market, complete with decorated trees and extras sipping hot chocolate, so Christmas carolers at the end of February didn’t strike me as out of place. But with a second look, I realized these weren’t carolers; these were handmaidens. They were shooting a scene for The Handmaid’s Tale, the Hulu series based on Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel. I switched to my 70-200 mm lens for a closer look.
Things fell silent, eerily silent. I looked around me and found I was alone on Rosedale Valley Road. The traffic had stopped. Traffic never stops on Rosedale Valley Road—except when it’s used as a marshaling area for the Pride Parade when things are anything but eerily silent. A buzzing started—drones. Christ! I thought. They’re about to shoot a scene. One of the handmaidens—maybe Elisabeth Moss—noticed me standing on the road below with my long lens pointed up at her and she called to a man. The man leaned over the railing and yelled down to me: Go hide under a bridge! Although they had hired cops to block either end of the Glen Road bridge and the top and bottom of Rosedale Valley Road, clearly they hadn’t counted on locals like me who use other paths to get into the valley.
I waved at the man and plodded through the snow back to the Sherbourne Street bridge, but when I tried to climb up between the concrete supports, I found that, underneath the snow, there was one big sheet of ice. I wiped out and slid on my ass down to the roadside as three dark futuristic cop cars drove past. I couldn’t even get a decent shot of the cars as I’d gotten snow all over my lens. When I righted myself, I pulled out a cloth and did my best to clean the lens, then headed back down the road.
I made it past the Glen Road pedestrian bridge when the same thing happened again. The eerie silence. The buzz of drones. And me scurrying through the snow, trying to find cover under a bridge. This time, I made it to the subway overpass. The ice was worse there than under the Sherbourne Street bridge and, once again, I wiped out, sliding on my ass down to the roadside as three dark futuristic cop cars drove past. I felt like Peter Sellers in The Party, eternally destined to fuck up the big scene.
When the cars had passed, I pulled myself from the snow and headed once again to the foot of Rosedale Valley Road. Screw it! I don’t care if it’s costing them $1000 a minute while they wait for me to clear the scene. I’m not risking my neck (or my gear) climbing onto another sheet of ice. Besides, they fucked up my plans. I’d wasted so much time hiding from drones and dark futuristic cop cars that there wasn’t time left to walk all the way to the mouth of the Don River.
