They are missing part of an x-chromosome, but although this comes from the paternal side, only females are affected.  In addition to diminished height, there are health concerns including heart disease, hearing or vision impairment and infertility.

Turner Syndrome Society of Canada president Shirley Underwood. PHOTO: Phil Lameira / Beach Metro News

Shirley, who lives in the Beach with her husband and son, is just completing a two-year term as president of the Turner Syndrome Society of Canada.  From May 25 to 27 members from Victoria to PEI and all points in between are holding their 31st annual convention at the Novotel Toronto Centre. The City of Toronto has declared May 25 Turner Syndrome Awareness Day.  At the Saturday night banquet the Malvern Jazz Band will entertain the diners.

Because TS is a relatively rare condition, isolation can be an issue, and the annual convention is an occasion for TS girls and women to get together and compare notes.  They also advise the parents of TS daughters who want to know what to expect, whether growth hormones should be used, what resources are available, where the doctors are who understand the syndrome, and the answers to questions about relationships.

Underwood grew up with five siblings. No one in her family has TS as it is a random, not a genetic, condition. Her father was a minister and the family lived in parishes all over Ontario. She was never allowed to get away with anything because of her height.

“If you can’t reach it get a chair,” they told her.

Nevertheless her family have been her biggest supporters and  they encouraged her to pursue her great passion, music.

“The secret of happiness is to find your passion and not lose it because you are a bit different,” she said.

Her soprano voice is her instrument. As a child she sang before she talked. She had 20 years of voice training and has performed with numerous choirs and groups, as a soloist or  as part of an ensemble.   Some may remember her as Dorothy singing Somewhere over the rainbow at a Beach Couples Club show. For several years she was musical director for the club’s annual show. Shirley and her husband Richard are currently the club presidents.

Shirley was a JK -grade 8 teacher, and for a time she taught at Balmy Beach School.  She was the music consultant for the Toronto Board of Education before amalgamation. Since retirement she has had more time to serve the TS Society.

July 30 will be Lilac Day, when members try to spread the word about TS.  So if on that day, you see a woman of short stature in a lilac dress on Queen Street, chances are Shirley is promoting Turner Awareness.  For more information visit turnersyndrome.ca.

Jackson Hulbert tries to shake off the pressure of St. Catherines' Craig Ashwood. PHOTO: Phil Lameira / Beach Metro News

The arena and the team were looking fresh, with new banners on the boards and floor, and new uniforms for the boys, and the Beaches team played hard for the home crowd. Despite their best efforts, the team couldn't get enough shots past Athletics goaltender Eric Penney, who stopped an impressive 46 shots on goal during Sunday night's game.

Beaches coach Bruce Codd said he was encouraged by the turnout and response from the crowd at the game, and took a somewhat philosophical approach to the loss.

“It was great to see that. I haven't seen that big a crowd at a Beaches game in quite a while. It's just too bad we couldn't pull out a victory for all the people that came out, but hopefully they enjoyed the match,” he said.

While Codd had been hoping for a win, he's still looking at the positive side of an ongoing learning process with the team.

“It was disappointing, but there were some positives at the same time. We're still a young group trying to figure out some of the systems,” he said. “It might take a little bit to get stuff figured out, but I definitely think there is a lot of potential in this group. It's up to us coaches to make good on that potential.”

Toronto Beaches coach Bruce Codd talks to the team during a timeout in the third period. PHOTO: Phil Lameira / Beach Metro News

St. Catharines coach Darris Kilgour said his team struggled through the start of the game, but pulled together by the third period, when the Athletics turned a one-point lead into a 10-6 win.

“It was really tight in the first and second. We weren't playing with a lot of confidence, but in the third period we did a much better job of pacing the game to what we wanted and it showed on the scoreboard,” he said.

Kilgour said the Beaches team was still tough competition, and like all the other teams in the league, the Beaches team can only get better with more experience.

“They have some really good coaching, they have really good talent and once they get everybody on the same page they'll be a tough team to play – in fact they're already a tough team to play,” he said.

Toronto Beaches played their road opener the previous Friday in Orangeville, against a powerhouse Northmen team that hasn't missed appearing in the final league championship in years. Although Toronto took an early 4-2 lead after the first, the Northmen pulled ahead and outshot Beaches for an eventual 10-7 win.

Toronto's next home games will be Tuesday, May 22 against the Brampton Excelsiors, and Thursday, May 24 against the Whitby Warriors, the top team in not only the Ontario Junior A league, but the country, in 2011. Both games get underway at 8 p.m. at Ted Reeve Arena.

The girls are members of the Variety Village Synchro Club and have qualified to compete in this pilot program for younger synchronized swimmers.

Maura McLean, 11, has been swimming with the Variety Village group since 2007, when she joined the club's Little Mermaids program. Since then Maura and her team have won awards at every level of competition. In past years, Maura has medalled in team, duet and solo events.

“Variety Village Synchro Club really puts a lot of emphasis on training their young swimmers and they've been one club that has stood out in Ontario for winning with their young group,” said Maura's mother, Eileen Barry.

Maura and her teammates train most days of the week and weekends, but the payoff includes not only athletic achievements, but learning positive life skills such as co-operating with others, time management, and life-long fitness. The girls are friends outside of the pool, too.

“Maura loves being part of the club and feels she is part of a really great group of people,” said Barry. “And the coaches are phenomenal women. It's such nice role modelling for the girls.”

The 12U team will represent Ontario at the upcoming Nationals event. From there, the girls may be thinking about a future Olympic opportunity, but they have a few years to go. Olympian synchronized swimmers are usually in their mid-20s.

But Maura doesn't think about where things will go at her age.

“She just goes and has a good time,” said Barry. “[The girls] really do have fun. They're all smiling and laughing and truly joyful.”

The year began tragically for a family on Ferncroft Drive. A father and two young sons died from carbon monoxide poisoning. Animals had built a nest in the chimney, blocking fumes from the furnace from escaping.

The newly amalgamated City of Toronto came into effect on Jan. 1, 1998, and the six former municipalities began merging services. When Beachers received their new property tax assessments, it was said that their howls could be heard in Whitby. In Ward 26 (now Ward 32), 156,382 homeowners faced an increase and 6,736 a decrease. Many in the old city of Toronto faced 20 – 120 per cent increases, while those in Scarborough and Etobicoke were more likely to see decreases. The new FMA (Fair Market Assessment) was based on what an assessor thought a residence was worth by comparing it with similar residences, which might be next door or several streets away. This was the year that homeowners went in droves to assessment tribunals to try to get their taxes lowered. The new city council decided to phase in the changes over five years, with increases capped at $300 annually, and reductions capped at $200 a year.

For over 150 years local school boards in the province had been able to supplement education grants through property tax levies. Bill 160 changed the way education would be funded through the provincial government on a formula based on what it decided each community needed. The formula allowed just over nine square metres of space per student. Williamson Road School, for example, had 563 students, but 6,500 square metres of space which included not only classrooms but the gym, pool, library, lunch room and even hallways, so it should have been able to accommodate 705 students. This meant Williamson Road was under-utilized and was one of 138 schools in the new City of Toronto that could have been closed. Other local schools in jeopardy were Bowmore, Courcelette and Corpus Christi. In the end only Corpus Christi was closed. The plans to build a new school to accommodate all the students in the new housing development at the former race track never came to pass.

On Jan. 10, 1998 the Teletheatre at the Queen Street end of Greenwood was officially opened. While residents were unsuccessful in preventing the Teletheatre from being built, they were able to have the liquor licence amended from 1,000 seats to 400 seats, making it more in line with local facilities.

The next controversy at the old racetrack was whether the community wanted a six-screen Famous Players movie theatre on the site. Beach Metro received more letters on this topic than any in its history – even more than the annual off-leash dogs at the beach issue. The majority of writers were in favour of a new cinema, even though some thought it would impinge on The Fox.

The theatre went ahead when the following terms were agreed on: the developer would not seek a liquor licence; the developer would provide parking; the local councillors Tom Jakobek and Sandra Bussin would encourage Toronto Parking Authority to develop more parking at a nearby city lot; a traffic light would be installed on Eastern Avenue to ensure people could safely cross the road; and the developer, EMM, would donate $150,000 for local community improvements.

The Kingston Road extension to Eastern Avenue opened in the fall. Cars travelling on Kingston Road no longer had to jog along Queen Street and risk getting dinged as they turned on to Eastern or Coxwell Avenues.

The development of the Canada Lands (on the north side of Gerrard between Ted Reeve Arena and Victoria Park) continued to be an issue as citizens led by David Breech and local councillors tried to set parameters. Five residents’ meetings were held at Malvern C.I. and the issue was set to go to the Ontario Municipal Board in January, 1999. Local concerns included increased traffic congestion, overcrowded schools, lack of parkland and recreational space, the addressing of planning and environmental issues, and whether current plans would produce a healthy viable neighbourhood.

In 1998 an officer at 55 Division, William Hancox, was murdered while on a stakeout. When the Canada Lands site was developed, a street was named after him.

A proposal to name one of the streets after the late Joe McNulty, a well-known Beach figure, became a city-wide controversy when the public learned that he had belonged to one of the Beach Swastika Clubs in the 1930s. Readers weighed in on whether poor choices made as a youth should count 50 years later. Apparently they do, because the plan for a Joe McNulty Street was shot down.

Homeowners near Blantyre Avenue north of Kingston Road were caught up in their own battle over the fate of the former Fallingbrook Heights Baptist Church, overlooking Blantyre Park. A developer, finding there was no height restriction on the site, wanted to replace the church with a senior citizens’ building with 28 square metre units.

“The question is whether our community wants 111 shoe-boxes on this location,” said one resident.
For once the OMB agreed with the residents and put a three-storey restriction on the site. The developer gave up and the church was sold to a new congregation and became the Toronto New Covenant Cathedral.

Shoppers World, one of Canada’s first malls in the 1960s, was given a new look with a multimillion-dollar renovation. A 4,900 square metre Dominion store (now Metro) was built at the eastern end on the site of a former garage and paint store.

Erin McCloskey, a Malvern student, was elected for a one-year term to head the Ontario Secondary School Students Association in 1997, and served the rest of her term in 1998. This made her the strongest political voice for 800,000 Ontario high school students. During her term, Bill 160’s centralization of municipal school boards, one of the most volatile education bills in Ontario history, was passed.

June 20 was declared Beach Flag Day by Mayor Mel Lastman, and at noon the flag was hoisted on the pole in Kew Gardens, and some locals took a ride in a cherry picker to hang it over the Queen Street firehall. The proclamation said that the Beach is not just a place where people live, but a web of relationships which includes the values we cherish and a place we call home. The Beach flag symbolizes the harmony and spirit of the community.

The Beach flag was first introduced in 1998 after a design competition.

A competition was held earlier in the year for flag designs. Phil Sybal’s entry was chosen. Flags are still available at Community Centre 55, along with t-shirts, pins and other items. All proceeds go to the centre’s Share A Christmas program.

A popular fundraiser for the centre was a raffle for ‘The Little Leuty’. This was a garden shed replica of the Leuty Lifeguard Station made for the community by the racetrack developer.

During 1998 Beach Metro published the obituaries of a number of well-known local residents: the newspaper’s gardening columnist Eric Slater, writer Louise Boyd, war hero John Baillie G.M., businessman Glenn Varty, former head of the Toronto Board of Education Ron Jones, Ruth Fraedrich who gave out children’s books at Halloween, social activist Rosemary Popham, retired linguist and librarian Leonard Wertheimer, and a man synonymous with the Balmy Beach Club, Joe McNulty.

So I spent the long weekend thinking about all of the stories I covered during my time at BMN. I also spent time that weekend reading about the Easter Parade in the dailies, and watching live coverage on television. It made me reminisce about the many times I had cruised along a closed-off Queen Street, cameras in tow, covering the parade, or Jazz Festival, or the replacement of the streetcar tracks.

Queen Street was always a place to go for action, but it wasn’t always a great photo op that drew me there.

In January 1999, before dawn broke and in the midst of a brutal cold snap, a fire raged in an apartment building on the north side of Queen at Neville Park. It was so cold my cameras seized up in minutes, and the water from the fire hoses froze, encasing the building in an eerie shell of hanging ice. Two people died, and for the rest of Toronto’s media, the story was all but forgotten within 48 hours. But not for BMN.

We had a duty to tell the entire story. So together with my editor Carole Stimmell, we put together a package that encompassed stories about the victims and the local effort to help their families. We talked to the first firefighters on the scene, and tracked down the streetcar driver who went door to door when he spotted the smoke. We offered a page of photographs that captured the heartbreak of that day. In the end, we beat the major media players, and were recognized for it with an award.

But the true reward was knowing we did everything we could to tell the story that impacted our readers – our community.

It is the community that makes Beach Metro what it is: a truly incredible resource. It is the community that lives in the Beach Metro newsroom. It is the community of volunteers who make sure the paper makes its way to doorsteps across The Beach. It is the community who contribute to Beach Metro in ways no other local paper can ever know.

This community has been a beacon for me ever since I was a kid. I would regularly make my way from Scarborough to visit my Nan, who lived at Queen and Coxwell. It was my Nan who saw the reporter posting in Beach Metro and passed it along. And the community took it from there.

The late, great Mark Dailey was on the board during my time as a staffer, and it was on his recommendation that I was hired at Citytv. My move from print to broadcasting brought me more challenges than I could imagine. It took me to the Vancouver Olympics. It now has me overseeing the production of a national network. But the community has not left me. In fact, The Beach is the place I proudly call home.

Quite simply, if it wasn’t for my colleagues at Beach Metro, and the community that supports them, I don’t know where I’d be right now.

I am blessed to have contributed in some small way to its storied history.

I still look forward to every issue – and to the memories that flow every Easter Sunday, when that bunny makes its way along Queen.

Beach Metro News: Thank you. Here’s to many more years of continued success.

Grant Jennings was the reporter/photographer at Beach Metro News from February, 1998 to September, 1999.

Scott Speedman as the titular criminal in Edwin Alonzo Boyd: the Story of the Notorious Boyd Gang.

Boyd helped Morlando write the script, which may explain the sympathetic portrayal of a charming ‘gentleman’ bank robber. The real Edwin Boyd was a much more disturbing character. Late in life he made the chilling confession, “I did a few things that could have got me hung.” For the full story read Brian Vallee's book, Edwin Alonzo Boyd: the Story of the Notorious Boyd Gang (1997).

In the summer of 1928, 14-year-old Ed decided to run off and join the French Foreign Legion. His parents would need to believe that he was dead. He rode an old bicycle down to the beach at the foot of Woodbine Avenue and piled some clothes and a pair of running shoes on the sand. In a shirt pocket Ed left a paper with his name on it. His plan was to walk east on Kingston Road to Oshawa the first day. He got as far as Whitby. Police dragged the lake for hours looking for his body. Glover Boyd couldn't have been pleased – Eddie's father was a Toronto constable, walking the beat for 25 years.

Ed had the bad luck to be born in 1914, not long before his dad went overseas to fight in World War One. When Glover Boyd returned home in 1919, the young boy was replaced in his mother's arms by a man he didn't know. His stern and religious father became a policeman at Number 10 Station on Main Street, now Community Centre 55. It was a short walk over the bridge from the family home on Harris Avenue near the Danforth.

The Boyds moved to Chisholm Avenue and Glebemount Avenue with Ed attending Gledhill, Secord and Earl Beatty Schools. He excelled at sports and music, but had no interest in the three ‘Rs’ and especially didn't like to follow rules. With a policeman for a father, Ed impressed his friends by getting into trouble. He never made it to high school.

His mom's death had a devastating effect on Ed at 15. He soon quit school and left home. By 1930 he was a drifter out west, riding the rails, surviving the Depression by conning women, odd jobs and petty theft. At 22, ‘Eddie’ Boyd robbed a gas station and spent two and a half years in a penitentiary.

When the Second World War came along in 1939, hobos became heroes. Eddie served in France, but didn't like army rules and became a military policeman of all things.

Citizen Gangster picks up the story with Eddie returning home from overseas, a British war bride and three kids in tow. He got a good job as a TTC streetcar motorman on the Yonge Street line (not a bus driver as in the movie). More rules! Boyd was soon bored with routine civilian life. (Maybe he got tired of waiting for the Yonge subway to be finished in 1954). Between 1949 and 1952, Boyd committed at least 11 bank robberies and escaped from the Don Jail twice, sparking a media frenzy and the largest manhunt in Canadian history. The very first CBC Toronto television newscast shows Lorne Greene (the ‘Voice of Canada’ and later the patriarch on Bonanza) reporting on the dramatic events. Ironically, Boyd wanted to attend Greene's Academy of Radio Arts under the delusion that a 35-year-old ex-con could become a Hollywood star by flashing his smile.

Two members of the Boyd Gang were hanged in 1952 for the murder of Sergeant of Detectives Edmund Tong. Boyd was paroled out of prison in 1966 and moved to B.C. Author Brian Vallee alleges that Boyd was responsible for the 1947 robbery/murder of a couple in High Park. Their strangled bodies were found in the trunk of a car. A CBC documentary Unmasking the Myth: The Life and Times of Edwin Alonzo Boyd (2002) concluded that “the new revelations unmask Boyd as an ego-driven psychopath whose own words connect him to unsolved crimes committed half a century ago.” Boyd figured, “if it's so easy to rob a bank, what the hell am I working for?…I just enjoyed the money.”

After conversations with Boyd, director Morlando “realized that he had suffered an immense amount of loss. He had lost his family. It was a tragic love story.” Also, “He had the courage to reach for an extraordinary life.” How much ‘courage’ and ‘charm’ does it take to put a gun in a female bank teller's face? Our city was terrorized by a ruthless gang. Bullets flew in bank holdups and shootouts with lawmen. Two policemen were shot in the line of duty.

Even from the grave, the con man is fooling people.

Some reviewers have fallen for the ‘decent family man’ myth, even writing about Boyd working as a film extra or actor. Film and TV production was non-existent in the 1940s in Toronto.

NOW magazine called Boyd “a failed actor” (he never even tried), “dismayed by public indifference towards war veterans” (an ex-con with a grade seven education given a good TTC job and throwing it away), and a “family man and impoverished war veteran” (between the war, on the run and in prison, he must have spent about five minutes with his kids. His own father helped him financially).

Boyd robbed the Bank of Toronto at 1436 Kingston Rd. near Warden of $10,000 in June 1952, one of what critic Rex Reed calls “friendly, nonviolent attempts to relieve banks of a few piles of small bills.” He engaged in shootouts with armed bank managers. Boyd was arrested with five guns by his bedside.

Do we glorify violence and glamorize criminals? The movies have always loved gangsters, making folk heroes of thugs like Bonnie and Clyde. It's exciting to see that rarest of films, one about a part of Toronto history. Just know that Edwin Boyd was no hero and anything but a ‘model citizen’.

There won't be any movies made about popular detective Eddie Tong. Now there was a hero.

“I'm still shocked when people say how amazed they are about my work,” she says. She names artists such as Anna Clarey, Shirley Jones and Liz Russ as inspirations, as well as mentors.

“Patrice Carmichael and I met years ago when our children were in Montessori,” Pape recalls. “Years later we met again at a Guild meeting and found out that we both were wanting to become artists.”

Pape, Carmichael and the other members of the BGFA are holding the annual spring Small Paintings for Small Spaces show, May 25 to 27, in the historic Kew (Gardener's) Cottage in Kew Gardens.

Beach painter Marlene Pape with one of her abstract works. PHOTO: Phil Lameira / Beach Metro News

Pape had been many things before deciding to add artist to the list. For 10 years she was an elementary school teacher who found that teaching art to her young pupils was one of the more enjoyable aspects of that career. After the birth of her first child, she ran a children's clothing store. After her second child came along, Pape decided to stay at home and concentrate on her children.

When the kids got old enough to be less dependent, Pape went to George Brown College to study Interior Decorating. It was there that she learned about perspective drawing and colour theory. While working as a decorator, she found herself spending more time in her personal studio working on paintings. In 2005 she made the decision to commit herself to painting full-time.

Pape's first show was at Cobalt Gallery on Kingston Road, and with support from gallery owner Annette Hansen and friends, she was encouraged to stay on her artist track.

“Every single new painting is, for me, like re-inventing the wheel,” Pape says. “My art is not pre-planned. I like to start, and just see where it's going.”

That kind of approach is often fraught with potential problems, and Pape is quick to acknowledge them.

“Sometimes I have a hard time knowing when to stop,” she says. “I have had to go to a lot of work to 'correct' mistakes... and sometimes just start over again.”

Marlene Pape has narrowed – if that's a word that can be applied to art – her paintings into three styles. With one style she calls her 'scrapings' she creates large, colourful abstracts in oils and acrylics in which she uses a palette knife to apply and direct the paint. These are the works that people find amazing, and she admits to them being her signature style. Then there are her 'skies'; again, large, colourful, impressionistic and fanciful paintings that feature a landscape – or seascape – dwarfed by an immense and powerful sky. Their size, combined with a surreal, captivating light, often leaves viewers convinced that there is a religious aspect to these works.

“I'm not in the least bit religious,” Pape states. “But I've been told that many of my paintings have a spiritual  aspect to them. I suppose that could be true.

“My 'staircases' are becoming very popular,” Pape says of her latest subject. “I'm going to concentrate on more of them.”

These, too, are large (Pape admits to having had a tough time creating work for the Small Paintings show) impressionistic renderings of staircases. Pape says she often works from photographs, but that the finished work bears no resemblance to the original photo.

In the living room of her beautiful Beach home, books on the great Italian artist Caravaggio (1571-1610) were seen on her coffee table. Was he an influence?

“My husband and son are huge fans of his,” Pape says. “I appreciate his work but I could never even attempt to do that style.

“How I judge what is successful art is when I look at the piece and can't imagine how it was accomplished,” she says. “I look carefully and can't even distinguish the brushstrokes.”

Pape enjoys the solitude required to be an artist. “It's so nice to be able to work from home,” she says. “The kids still come home for lunch... I can work all night if I'm inspired.”

With the success she is finding as a member of the BGFA, the development of definite styles of paintings, and the joy that comes from the solitary act of creating, Marlene Pape definitely has all it takes to call herself an artist.

For more information on Marlene, drop by the Small Paintings for Small Spaces show in Kew (the Gardener's) Cottage, May 25-27, or visit her website at marlenepapefineart.com.

Tad Robinson

Making a return visit this year is W.C. Handy Blues Award nominee Tad Robinson. Considered to be one of the best blues and soul vocalists around, Robinson is bringing his touring band that features guitar wizard Chris Vitarello.
Local blues sensation, Maple Blues Female Vocalist of 2011, and Indie Blues 2011 Artist of the Year Shakura S'Aida is also on the bill. Her two CDs – Blueprint and Brown Sugar – established this multi-faceted singer's reputation as a solid performer. Expect to hear songs from her upcoming CD Time, as S'Aida mixes originals with blues standards.
All the way from Colorado comes the 2011 International Blues Challenge winners, The Lionel Young Band. Young is a classically-trained violinist who devotes his energies these days to the music of Willie Dixon, Ledbelly and Stevie Ray Vaughan.
John Primer is considered one of the last of the great traditional Chicago bluesmen. At 63 Primer brings a rich history of the blues to the festival. His CDs Stuff You Gotta Watch and The Real Deal showcase his “concise guitar work, and gruff no-nonsense vocals.” He has accompanied such blues legends as Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon.
MonkeyJunk won the 2012 Juno Award for its mix of “swamp rhythm and blues, soul boogie and bedroom funk” on its CD To Behold. This Ottawa-based band features Steve Marriner, Tony D and Matt Sobb.
The Johnny Max Band is renowned for its mix of exceptional music mixed with a dynamic and humourous stage presence. The band's latest CD It's A Long Road has continued in the groove of mixing traditional blues with “gumbo R 'n B, rock 'em sock 'em soul and flat-out boogie.”  Other performers include Eugene Hideway Bridges, Erin McCallum, Chris Antonik, and Dylan Wickens and the Grand Naturals.
The Don't Lose the Blues Contest gives you a chance to purchase tickets to win seven Top Shelf Blues CDs each day, and be entered to wind an aqua-coloured D3 Danelectrro guitar valued at $600. You can find out more about the Waterfront Blues festival at waterfrontblues.ca.
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Beach jazz piano great Mark Eisenman will be at Chalkers Pub, 247 Marlee Ave., on May 26 from 6 to 9 p.m. Eisenman will be presenting an evening of personal interpretations of the Great American Songbook collection, as well as original numbers from his CDs Double Double and Apparition.
“Real jazz created the way it should be,” says Mark of his approach to the piano. “Great players counting on their experience, talent, listening ability and some measure of telepathy.”
Joining Eisenman will be drummer John Sumner and bassist Pat Collins. For more information visit jazzpiano.ca.
For more information about the gig call Chalkers at 416-789-2531, or visit chalkerspub.com.
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The Lish (formerly known as Relish Bar & Grill), 2152 Danforth Ave., continues its New Music Nights, featuring up-and-coming  singer/songwriters, every Saturday night from 9:30 to 11:30 p.m. May 19 is Jessica Mondello; May 26, Mary Stewart (with a video release); June 2, Nicklas Balkou, and June 9 sees Clara Engel take the stage.
Don't forget the Stir It Up Sundays open mic, from 10:30 to 2 a.m. There is never a cover. For more information call 416-425-4664.
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Organizers have just announced the selections chosen to be at the first annual Toronto Beaches Film Festival, June 29 to 30. They include Surf, Sand and Silversides by Karen Martin; A Strange Day In July by Shantal Reich; Breathe Life by Antje Beyen; Shag Nation by Brittany Brothers; To Rest In Peace by Fawaz Al-Matrouk; and If I Should Fail by Brendon Culliton.
Stay tuned for more information about dates, times and location of screenings.
The call has gone out for entries for the 2013 Toronto Beaches Film Festival. Visit torontobeachesfilmfest.com for more information.

I have learned that not everyone approaches the sale of their personal items the same way.  To some, a treasure is a treasure forever.  When I was a kid, the garage sale wasn’t really the thing; it was the school or church rummage sale that held the junk/treasure relationship.

I remember a fundraiser for the new playground at our public school being the talk of the neighbourhood one spring.  The teachers were encouraging all of the kids to go home and look for items to donate to the rummage sale.  We would feel good about our donations, knowing that the proceeds would be contributed to build the new playground.  Sounded like a win/win to me.

My mother didn’t have a lot of spare time on her hands with three young kids, but she gamely filled a box of less- than-loved garage items to go to the rummage sale.  My youngest sister, who was six at the time, took a look inside the box of items to be donated, and with a stricken look on her face, turned to my mother and said “You can’t sell our ducks!”

These were not real ducks.   They were wooden cut-out shapes of ducks that you could spear into your garden to make it look as if a family of ducks were walking across your lawn.  They had been made by my Ukrainian paternal grandfather – two big, and three little garden ornament ducks to represent our family.

They were quaint, but to be fair, I’m not sure my British mother every caught the country ‘feel’ of these ducks.  She just couldn’t see how a family of ducks would ever be on the front lawn of her middle class suburban Mississauga home.  She did know, however, that they might sell at a rummage sale, and had decided this would be the fate of the ducks – to be “adopted” as she explained to my sister, by another duck-loving family.

There were a lot of tears about the ducks by my sister that night, and my mother, in one of the few times that I know she lied, told my sister that if she really loved the ducks that much, she would unpack them and put them back in the garage.  But, she didn’t.

So jumping to the present for a moment, we decided it was time for a garage sale at our home last week.  You know it’s time when you open the car door in the garage and something falls on you. So we organized, we plastered the neighbourhood with neon signs, we hauled and cleaned and artfully displayed our junk and the gods smiled and gave us a sunny Saturday morning, and we were underway.

I was proud of our sons.  Not little kids anymore, they worked the crowd on our front lawn with the pride of used car salesmen.  My 11-year-old watched with a lot of enthusiasm as the bins of toys he’d stacked away in the garage over the years started to fetch cold, hard cash.  With a dollar for this and 50 cents for that, he was amassing a small fortune.  It all appeared to be going along really well, when mid-morning a young kid, cruising our garage sale with his father, pulled a toy gun out from deep within one of the bins, turned to his father and said “Hey Dad, check out this cool cap gun!”

And then I saw it; that same look my sister had on her face 40 years ago as she looked into the box and saw the ducks.  On her six-year-old face, it had been sad; on my eleven-year-old’s face it was chilling.  He desperately looked at me to save his favourite childhood gun – but we’d established the rules; if it was on the lawn, it was up for sale.

The father and son customers continued to add items to their pile of treasures as they walked around the tables, and distracted, I lost sight of my son.  After several minutes of shopping, the father was ready to tally up all their items, but missing from the pile of toys he and his son had chosen was the cap gun.  Determining that the gun wasn’t in his son’s possession already, nor had my husband sold it to anyone else, I started searching through the bins, thinking it been put back in by one of my many family helpers.

It was then that I realized that also missing from my front lawn was, strangely, my son, the seller.  The buyer started to put two and two together just as I did, and said, kindly, perhaps my son had decided he didn’t want to sell the gun after all.  He must have been a garage sale veteran – he managed his son’s disappointment and they wandered off down the street, happy with the items they’d bought.

My son never reappeared on the front lawn to help, a little too traumatized to continue his breezy attitude while separating from his childhood treasures.  Cold hard cash could never replace the memories garnered by that cap gun.

So it’s only fair that I should tell you the end of the duck story too.

As I said, my mother lied, snuck the ducks into the school rummage sale, and everyone in my family forgot all about the ducks.  Several weeks later all three of us little girls were allowed to take our change purses to the sale and shop for a few treasures.  My mother was volunteering all day, so we unveiled our purchases at dinner at home that night.

You can imagine my mother’s surprise when my little sister, clearly feeling like the luckiest girl in the world, unpacked her treasures.  She had found a set of five wooden ducks on a table at the rummage sale that looked EXACTLY like the ones our grandpa had given us!  They could join our ducks on the front lawn of our house!

My mother still laughs about my sister’s innocence, and those ducks making it home.

And my sister?  Well, she still has those ducks, 40 years later – in her garage.