Toronto, Film and A "Terrifying" Big Cat!

There is an interesting opportunity for a film/travel blogger here to visit Canadian film festivals. I'm tempted but not eligible, but if YOU love film, and blog, and want to visit Canada, maybe you can check it out.

I have written several articles about Canada, but my favourite was a piece I did about "Film in Toronto." My article isn't online any more but I found a quote in a piece about Reg Hartt . Reg is one of those people you only meet once in a lifetime. Eccentric, sure, but one of those eccentrics who gets out into the world and lives his life the way he wants on very little money.

Here he is (top right), with friends. He screened classic movies on 16mm in his own dilapidated home on Bathurst, and sent out for pizza for his audience at half time. It was all very friendly, like attending a really rather strange party. I thought he'd been closed down (read the story here) when the landlord tried to throw him out, but I just found his website and now I'm not so sure....

I also liked Cinecycle, a bike shop that shows silent movies. Struggled there through three feet of snow, but what an atmosphere after dark, with the lights down, the bikes everywhere, loads of people and a bloke in a bowler hat playing the piano to Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin.

Also visited the IMAX research and development, in Mississuaga, just outside Toronto which was so slick and professional and in great contrast to the city's old hippies doing their own dotty thing. I've always yearned to accompany an IMAX crew and write about it. The film quality is stunning and they take those gigantic cameras into all kinds of unexpected places.

Toronto's very much my kind of city. So I'm rather sad I don't meet the criteria for this trip - they're searching for people who have never been to Canada before. So if you apply for the trip and get it, let me know.

PS. Talking of film, here's one from John, on "Don't Unplug your Hub" blog, another of my favourites. It's all about a really terrifying Big Cat, as you'll see if you watch.

Don't Just See The Sights

Travel writers often have an interesting time because they have to build their trips around a theme - more memorable than just seeing the sights. Give it a try on your next trip. Even a few days can yield some unusual experiences.

I had a good trip to Canada a few years back on the theme of "Toronto and Film." The city has a surprisingly fantastical side, and my memories are also strangely fascinating. It was winter and everywhere was deep in snow. One night I battled through the dark whiteness to watch silent movies in an echoing bike workshop, where a man in a top hat played on a piano wheeled out from somewhere amongst the cranksets.

I had a strange conversation wtih Reg Hartt, whose Cineforum is a Victorian house with boarded up windows on Bathurst St, with surrealist 16mm movies and free pizza.

I ate in a restaurant to streams of bizarre, ancient television advertisements on screens all round the room - and those 1950s Japanese washing powder ads were accompanied some pretty passable salads.

Of course I talked to everyone I could. Hearing about their lives plugged me into the life of the city, and it would never have happened if I'd only come to see the "sights".