Cynthia

Hi everyone!

Greetings from Toronto, the hottest city on the planet. This is my first summer spent in a city—ever—and I have wisely chosen the sweatiest summer on record. Obviously, there are some things to get used to. First of all, it is completely acceptable to take your pants off when you enter an apartment that is not air-conditioned (i.e. mine). Second, it is important to remember not to leave your unscreened windows open at night, no matter how hot it is, because city dwelling wildlife (raccoons, for example) are not afraid of using the fire escape to enter your bedroom. Also, although they are not advertised as being so, every yoga studio here occupies the top floor of a building, and as a consequence practices hot yoga. After about three sun-salutations you’ll feel like you’ve lost five pounds of water. I truly believe that this is contributing to the city-wide epidemic of slightly underweight water bottle carrying thirsty looking people here. And then there are the pools. Thank god for the pools. Although they are never quite deep enough to dive into, and usually only slightly cooler than my own body temperature, these surprisingly common oases are great. As much as I love lakes, I can safely say that in all their convenience outdoor pools ain’t that bad. They might be filled to capacity with children and remarkably fit gay men in speedos, but they are free admission. Naturally, I am longing for some wilderness, some darker waters, maybe some rocky shores, or even just one mosquito. But what else could you expect of a country girl?

Besides the weather, Toronto is a huge, street meat eating, dim sum serving, road-rash inducing, minority-festival loving, jam-packed city. It’s overwhelming. There is a lot to do, especially for someone with not a lot to do. Which brings me to what I have been doing! Besides lounging by pools after yoga classes, I’ve been working with book-maker/printer/publisher Michael Torosian in his garage turned workshop in Toronto’s west end. It is exactly 10.3km from where I live in east Toronto. It takes approximately 40 minutes to bike there if you go up Broadview Avenue, across Dundas then down Sorauren and across Fermanagh. That’s the best route. It is faster than taking the lakeshore bike path and it is not as busy or as trendy as Queen Street, making it far less embarrassing when you fall off your bicycle once you get caught in the streetcar tracks.

I am the only intern at my job. Micheal has no other employees. At the end of the summer a previous intern will be returning to help us out. But for now, it’s just the two of us. As we are getting to know each other, I am constantly being surprised, confused, informed and outraged by this guy. It seems like he is always either trying to impress me or get a rise out of me, and he is usually pretty successful at both. For example, the other day he told me that he doesn’t buy local fruit and that he would rather support California because ‘the people are nice to me there.' In fact, the only places in the world he would consider traveling to (and which he does indeed make visits to throughout the year) are Paris, New York, Rome and, of course, California. Whenever a female folk singer comes on the radio, he complains about another girl with a mediocre voice singing about the first things that come into her head. But at least that is better than the African dance music that CBC always plays. He claims to be in with the socialites of Manhattan. He has an incredibly intelligent successful girlfriend with an expensive apartment in the village, a PhD in Art history, and a job curating New York's Frick Collection. He’s seen every Woody Allen film more than once. He is thinking about getting a Kindle. He actually succeeded in reading Moby Dick and Ulysses after he graduated university. He wants me to figure out how to remove the text messaging ap from his I-phone. He was good friends with Michel Lambeth, a photographer of Toronto to whom Michael Ondaatje dedicated In the Skin of a Lion. Ondaatje sent him a copy of the book as symbol of condolence when Lambeth passed away years ago. Michael my boss says he never could get into it.

On a typical working day at Lumiere press we start working at ten. For the first fifteen to twenty minutes we sit and talk about what we are going to do that day, as well as whatever else crosses our minds. Then I will take on my first task, usually something to prepare us for the larger task we will take on in the afternoon. For example, one day I spent the morning mastering my folding skills as I used a folding bone to compress the freshly printed pages of a poetry book, three pages at a time. This prepared us for that afternoon during which we used a temperamental sewing machine to individually sew the 42 books together. Forty-two has been a ballpark number for the projects I have worked on so far. We have mostly been printing small runs for local poets’ interested in having special editions of their books. What makes these editions special is that the pages originally printed at Coachhouse or Bookthug (community-minded, small scale publishers with high standards and low profits) are now hand bound and enclosed in hand-made covers. From what I have gathered, these writers, funded by the Canadian Arts Council, plan on giving the books that we made away to people they wish to thank, as well as to people they seek to impress.

We are almost done these books. Next we will be starting two larger projects, both of which I will see through from beginning to end. One is a book that will accompany the opening of Ryerson’s new gallery of photography, highlighting the university’s primary photography exhibit, a historical collection called “Black Star”. Conveniently, Michael, a member of the university's alumni as well as a photographer himself, has a large collection of historical photographs that he is donating to the collection. Being familiar with the work, he has been asked to make the books.

Once the book has been written, we will start the printing process that I missed out on with these smaller projects. From what I understand, layout, design and editing happen simultaneously since we have to cast the type in lead using an intertype machine and then line up the matrices, inverted words, in the format of a page. Then like a big intricate stamp, this ‘slug’ sits in the printing press, gets covered in ink, and impresses its form on each page that passes over it. The first printed page needs to be checked for typos, formatting and ink density. Once the problems are fixed, the rest get printed at a surprisingly quick speed. And then the first page of the book is competed. I ran this machine when we were making covers two weeks ago, and I learned that even the simplest of designs can take more than a few tries to get right. Although this process is the one I look forward to the most, since I believe it to be the most creative and important step in book design, I foresee this task becoming tedious and demanding patience. The satisfaction of bookmaking relies on endurance. This stuff takes time.


If nothing else, this job is fulfilling my love of physical labour. Designing the covers, learning about typeface selection and getting more information about New York than I could ever hope for is great. But seeing such seemingly menial and repetitive tasks produce a meaningful object, a finely crafted book as Michael would say, is something else. I guess it is comparable to when I planted trees. I used to find great satisfaction in looking over a large expanse of land re-planted by my own shovel. Similarly, it feels pretty great to pack up a run of books to be sent to their author. And as I make this comparison, I can’t help but point out that both of these paper loving industries, tree-planting and book-making, are all too aware of their rapidly approaching doom. Both stubbornly refuse to rethink their outdated technologies and techniques but still manage to survive for the time being. I guess the difference is that I am not so convinced that books are on their way out. I’m not sure how, but I still have hope for the printed book. Considering that the latest numbers from Amazon would tell me that electronic book sales are swiftly outdoing the good old paperback, I am still figuring this out. And I guess I am in the right place, or at least general area, to do so. I’m done with treeplanting though. That I know.

Otherwise, I’ve been keeping busy helping my sister plan her wedding, eating the local organic delicious meals prepared by her wonderful fiance Darryl, and keeping up with my fiction reading. I just got to through the last of the novels in my sister’s Douglas Copland collection. But while I am waiting for an ambitious stack of novels to be delivered to my local (!) library, I can’t stop reading this biography of Nora Joyce I was kindly lent. Nora is a fascinating person, one that the nearly blind Joyce claims to have fallen in love at first sight, even though he wasn’t wearing his glasses at the time. Rumour has it that, before working as a bar-maid in Dublin, Nora Barnacle worked for a book-binder. I love that. I have decided that I am going to try to channel Nora in all her matter-of-fact decision making and self-assured courage. But maybe not so much her indifference to grammar or her willingness to spend her life with the condescending and perhaps emotionally abusive Joyce. But we all make mistakes, right?

It’s been so great reading about everyone else’s adventures. I can’t wait to read more. Such interesting things you are all doing! Keep doing them!

One last thing. I heard that the attic ladder at Oxford Street isn’t doing so well. I can’t help but think of this one time I was up there with Luke and Nick. Luckily, the moment has been video taped for all of our enjoyment. And yes, there is more footage, which I promise to share very soon. Consider this a preview.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v87ytavWF1s

Enjoy!
Cynthia