There was a Raptors victory parade. Like a fool, I went to see what I could see. I left before 9 a.m. and went to St Andrew Station, emerging into the crowds on the southwest corner. Despite all the people, I found a perch that set me half a metre above the crowd. Across the road, metal barriers kept people on the University ave sidewalk, but on my side there was no barrier, so people started to play a little game. They rushed out onto the street by one lane. Police ordered them back to the curb, starting at Wellington and working their way up to King. By the time the police got to King, the people at Wellington were back on the street by two lanes. The police worked their way back down to Wellington, ordering people back to the curb. By the time they reached Wellington, the people at King were onto the street by two lanes. It was a game. Everyone knew it was a game. There was a lot of laughter and running. The police were good-humoured about it. From my vantage, it had an undulating effect as people flowed back and forth from road to curb, like a wave form.
Two young guys sat beside me at my feet. One was drinking from a paper bag and the other had a metal flask. A lot of people passing on the sidewalk were smoking weed. A friend texted to say he and his wife were on the southeast corner of University and King but my reply wasn’t going through. It turns out I wasn’t the only person having trouble sending texts/emails/phone calls. Local cell networks were overwhelmed. I caught my friend waving in the distance and waved back and we each gave a thumbs up, acknowledging that we’d seen each other, but that was the extent of our contact. When I left my perch and squeezed through the underpass to the other side of University, I couldn’t see my friends anywhere. It turns out they had gone home; the whole business was overwhelming.
As an introverted anxious depressive, I get why people recoil from crowds; the noise and the jostling produces a sensory overload that makes you want to turn and run. But I have a secret weapon: my camera. I use my camera to mediate experience to me, which is especially useful when experience threatens to overwhelm.
I milled around on King St. each of University for a time, reminding myself that, as a street photographer, I wasn’t there to photograph a parade, but to photograph the people who come to see the parade. So I started walking. I went up York and down Adelaide to the crowds at University, then back up York to Richmond and down Richmond to the crowds at University, etc. It puzzled me that the city/police hadn’t blocked Richmond at Bay. Ditto York at Adelaide. Through the modern miracle of one-way street technology, cars got funnelled to Richmond and University which was impassable thanks to the thousands of people waiting for the parade. People got out of their cars and smoked cigarettes and talked to people passing by. Drivers in delivery trucks snapped photos of the situation and tried to send them to their bosses on a cell network that barely worked.
On the east side of the Hilton is a lane way giving access to the Hilton’s service entrance. At the entrance to the lane way, the sidewalk has been excavated and covered by large metal sheets the size of plywood and marked by orange pylons. Steam is constantly venting from the excavation. Naturally, I’m drawn to the atmospheric opportunities that venting steam affords, and so spent time shooting people walking through the steam—sports fans in a post-apocalyptic dream. As I crouched by the curb, I heard cracking sounds to my right, shrub branches breaking, a conduit snapping off the wall. On the east side of the Hilton is a small side entrance covered by an awning. People were scaling the wall, and stepping onto the awning (flimsy and bending under their weight) so that they could hoist themselves onto the hotel’s podium for a better view of University Avenue.
The hotel’s chief of security and a manager appeared in the lane way and yelled at the growing mob of climbers: this is private property; you are trespassing; we’re calling the police. The manager got on his cell phone and, presumably, placed his threatened call, but it became obvious that police resources were already stretched thin; the Hilton would have to handle the situation on its own. A couple minutes later, the chief of security appeared on the podium and started pushing people back. He looked like a real hardass—big and with a shaved head—which I suppose made what followed even funnier. People were climbing the wall on both sides of the awning. While the security guy pushed people back on the right side, people clambered onto the podium on the left side, dancing when they got up while people cheered from below. When the security guy turned to the left, people clambered over the right side, dancing when they got up while people cheered from below. Back and forth, back and forth, like an idiot marionette, the security guy yelled and pointed and stamped his feet and tried to pull people’s hands from the top of the wall while, inevitably, people streamed over the wall and others stood below documenting this foolish-looking man.
There. I’ve given the incident a benign loss by calling the security guard a foolish-looking man. But one could read the situation differently, as a parable of race. A significant proportion of people climbing the wall were black. They were trying to reach a higher location where they could view the Raptors parade. The higher location is owned by a hotel which styles itself an exclusive venue for exclusive people. The hotel sent its white security chief to keep out all those unruly chaotic celebrating black people. Or am I reading too much into the situation? In subsequently published aerial photos of the Raptors bus passing that intersection, it’s clear that efforts to keep people off the podium ultimately failed.
After a while, the security guard puppet grew tiresome, so I went back to York and up to Queen Street. A cyclist was sitting in the middle of York Street cross-legged on the pavement and writing in a journal. Maybe he was recording his impressions as I am now, only his observations would be more immediate. Does temporal immediacy lead to emotional immediacy? Does that make his observations more authentic?
On Queen Street, I used the same strategy I used at York and Front on Thursday night, standing in a fixed spot and shooting as people flowed around me. I cut through the caw gates at the Law Society and up the west lawn, hopping the wall by the County Court Library. By this time, I was fed up waiting and just wanted to go home. From what I could gather, the buses carrying the players were having trouble getting through the crowds. It was 1:20 and I wanted to get someplace quiet, and with a bathroom. I had it in mind to catch the subway from St Patrick Station and, following the path of least resistance, went up Osgoode Lane to Armoury Street which was impassable, then back under the County Court Library to University to cross Armoury Street there, but again it was impassable.
Maybe I could go back the way I came, hop the wall onto the Law Society’s west lawn, then out the west cow gate to the Osgoode Station entrance. I dove into the crowd, reminiscent of what I encountered Thursday night, pushing south along the sidewalk. When I got to the entrance, they told me it was shut. They weren’t letting people onto the subway for fear of overcrowding. They weren’t even letting people use it as a pedestrian underpass to the promised land of personal space and weed-free air. So I pressed on. Overhead, a guy stood on a street light and directed people. Go to your right; that’s where the people are flowing. Don’t go that way; it’s solid with people and they aren’t moving. I thought maybe I could get back to Queen Street where I had first decided I wanted to go home, but now—an hour later—it was as densely packed as anywhere else. Besides, the flow of things seemed vaguely westerly, buffeting people across University Ave.
There was a brief moment when my evil monkey mind tried to dredge up thoughts of an earlier time when I might have been stricken by anxiety. I might have panicked or been overcome by the feeling I was suffocating or drowning. Instead, I paused. I drew a measured breath. I calmed by thoughts. This is not who you are anymore. Do not heed the evil monkey mind. I pressed on. It took me between 70 and 80 minutes to get clear of everything. Once west of University, I walked up to Queens Park Station and rode home. Not that it matters, but I never did see the parade. I started processing images and learned that there was a shooting in Nathan Phillips Square.
