On Tuesday January 7th, the City of Toronto conducted a sweep of homeless people from the Rosedale Valley ravine. Mayor Tory cited “health and safety” as an important reason for the sweep. News sources also cited “risks such as fire when open flames are used.”
Yesterday, at approximately 4:40 pm that risk returned with a vengeance when dense smoke began to pour from underneath the south end of the Sherbourne Street bridge. CBC reports that “a fire broke out at what’s believed to be a homeless encampment in the area.” The statement makes it sound like a campfire run amok.
Since the weather has turned cooler, I often smell smoke wafting up from under the bridge when I exit the Sherbourne subway station. But this? This was no campfire. Smoke rose hundreds of feet into the air and, for a time, completely enveloped the office building on the south side of Bloor. Given that the city had cleared out the area only five days earlier, someone had to have brought flammable materials back to the site. This was not a campfire; this was a protest.
But I’m not a reporter and don’t pretend that any of my photography is reportage. My aims are altogether different. It might make sense for me to post this a year from now, or ten years from now, when the intervening time has measured my response to the events unfolding through my viewfinder. In time, the smoke may not cloud my eyes so much.
Is there a political dimension to what I witness? Power and privilege? A frustrated underclass? Is this even the right way to frame the matter?
How does it make me feel? Does it anger me? Should I want to blame people for this? For endangering firefighters and damaging a public asset?
If I respond in the moment, the way social media wants me to respond, do I even give the smoke time to clear before I’ve already drawn my conclusions?
As an afterthought, I discovered that the CBC report of the incident includes a photo by Jennifer Bradley where I appear in the lower left corner, poised with my camera, shooting into the smoke across the street. I spend so much time looking through the viewfinder that I forget I am also a subject passing through other people’s frames.
