One of the fantastic things about living in a large city is an abundance of culture – museums, parks, statues, and the people and places that surround us. We recently visited the Lawren Harris exhibit (“The Idea of North”) at the Art Gallery of Ontario – and it is fascinating to see depictions of our own city and country, that have shaped our sense of what is “Canada”.
A most interesting part is that it is a multi-layered journey for us. At the same time as we are visiting depictions, we can see some of the sites still standing in our neighbourhood, others now-buried under newer construction. 
My husband was also reading The Ward: The Life and Loss of Toronto’s First Immigrant Neighbourhood; we live near here now, and there are still many people arriving, struggling, and starting near what was once called “The Ward”. Our own condo is built in a neighbourhood that is experiencing a sort of rebirth or redefinition, and we wrestle daily with what our presence here means to the community.
So back to our visit to the AGO…I called it the Harris exhibit, but Harris is not the only featured artist. We also discovered Anique J Jordan, a woman who is searching, defining, exploring herself, our shared city, its past, and how that can be expressed or depicted, both in visual art, and in words. She has an intriguing blog, here, which I plan to keep reading – I find that in reading Anique’s exploration, I am discovering as well. It has been some time since her last post – I hope she will post again.