Despite being massive and ancient, the church is almost invisible.
There are a few reasons: While it caps the T-intersection of Adelaide and Bathurst streets magnificently, cars turning onto one-way Adelaide cram the stocky steeple into rearview mirrors rather than panoramic windshields as they speed east. Also, for 11 months of the year, it looks like any other late-19th-century church.
But, when St. Mary's on Portugal Square does step out for the annual Senhor Santo Cristo dos Milagres festival each spring, it's dressed in twinkling CNE midway-like stars, candelabras, flowers and flags – a conservatively suited grandpa that has allowed kindergarten children to pin him with glitter-glued, construction-paper cutout medals. Except, says Giller Prize short-listed author Anthony De Sa, the church is decorated by wrinkled old Portuguese men hanging off battle-scarred ladders, one of whom is his uncle, who lives a few blocks north in the heart of the half-century old Little Portugal.
On Sunday at 1 p.m., as part of the city of Toronto's Lit City and Doors Open's 10th anniversary, Mr. De Sa will read from his debut novel, Barnacle Love , across the street from St. Mary's at the Factory Theatre. Afterward, the high-school English teacher will take his audience on a walking tour of the invisible parts of his former neighbourhood, which feature prominently in the book.
After a cupped-hand peek into Corrado's Barber Shop (where he and his friends would ogle faded pinups after mass) and a stroll past the mysterious Oak Leaf Steam Baths, the author will reveal the secret, serpentine residential laneways he haunted as a kid. “Growing up, our world was the world of alleys and the unknown and that was really quite exciting and wonderful,” he remembers.
In 1956, Mr. De Sa's father left his small Portuguese village to come work for CP Rail (unlike the father in the book, Manuel Rebelo, who came to Canada illegally by jumping from a fishing boat) and his mother was plucked from the same village five years later when there was money to buy a large 16-room house on Palmerston Avenue; Mr. De Sa, 42, will share stories of how the laneways between Euclid Avenue, Palmerston and Markham Street became a new village, of sorts, for himself, his friends and all of his cousins in the 1970s. “The wonderful thing about laneways is that although they look like they go nowhere, they're all incredibly linked and so there were ways of escape and ways of not being seen and certainly when you heard the shrill call of an angry mother, there were ways of dodging that too,” he says with a laugh.
Unlike the mannered and manicured front yards of the big Victorians between Queen and Dundas, the backyards and laneway-accessible garages were where real – and sometimes messy – life took place, from tending fig trees and berry bushes, to winemaking, auto repair and spectacles such as the slaughtering of the pig (depicted quite graphically in the book). In essence, backyards were mini farms and the garages were outbuildings/storehouses; jars, bottles, scrap metal and wood were all stashed for future use.
“We didn't throw anything away,” admits the blond-haired, blue-eyed Mr. De Sa with a chuckle.
During the walk, Mr. De Sa may convince his aunt and uncle (who still live next door to his childhood home) to open their crammed “outbuilding” to show the very same rafters from which pig carcasses swung. Even if he's unsuccessful, there is still much to show and tell: For instance, the little windmills his uncle makes from discarded pails and ceiling fans, the smuggled grape vines brought from Portugal and tales of garage rooftop races, a barn fire, and how he was introduced to other cultures via rented garages. “There are stories behind the blistering paint,” he muses.
The some-time electric hues chosen for the fronts of homes will be discussed also: “In Portugal, most homes were just whitewashed [because] dyed paint was quite expensive, so when they got here and realized that a tin of bubblegum pink costs the same amount as a tin of white, well, hey, they went to town!” While it's disappeared under a layer of beige in recent years, Mr. De Sa vividly recalls his uncle's “peacock blue” painted brick with painstakingly executed mortar lines of high gloss black that “looked like a fish, it looked like scales!”
Today, interesting paint schemes aren't the only thing disappearing. While many of his aunts and uncles still live “within 20 houses of each other,” there are signs of gentrification as professional, non-Portuguese hipsters move into the area. And, unfortunately, many neighbourhood idiosyncrasies might remain a mystery to the newcomers since the brutal murder of 12-year-old “shoeshine boy” Emanuel Jaques in 1977 caused the already tightly knit community to withdraw further (there is an entire chapter in Barnacle Love about this).
Little walks like this Sunday's will go a long way toward making this almost invisible community visible, much as the book has already done: “People in the neighbourhood who aren't of a Portuguese background are picking it up to make sense of the place they now live,” finishes Mr. De Sa. “At least that's my hope.”
For more information on Lit City, go to www.toronto.ca/litcity/. For more information on Doors Open, go to www.toronto.ca/doorsopen/.
