Hi there!! I am an artist in Delray Beach, Florida and also am a blues singer. These are some samples of my blues paintings. If you are interested in them please let me know at heidi202@aol.com. I am from Toronto Canada...Here's a bit about me.....

Toronto really comes alive in the summertime and one of the best things about the summer for me was always the exhibition. The Ex! For two months every year, the Toronto National Exhibition opens up and thousands flock to the Lakeshore to catch the warm breezes off Lake Ontario and have fun at the Exhibition.

I always loved going to the Ex. It meant having a big funny hat with buttons on it, meant seeing a famous band like Supertramp or Abba pay at the stadium, it meant going on all kinds of fun rides and roller coatser. I live fairs and rides. I love the ride where the guys asks you if you want to go faster...Do you want to go faster???? Yes!!!!!!! AHHHHHHH!!!! And roller coasters. The only rides I don’t like too much are the rides where you have to go upside down in a little cage. I am always scared of falling out of there or someone barfing on me or something and getting stuck in that little cage. I have heard so many horror stories about that. Yukky!

Yeah, the best part of the CNE was the bands that would come in from the States. You could see the big trucks unloading all the equipment and setting up the stage. Then it would start to get dark and people would line up to go into the stadium and the big lights would come on. Then there would be the music. Loud, rocking music and lights and a big show. We some some great acts play, The Osmonds, Supertramp, Elton John, Cher.....They were all from America.

The CNE was vendors selling their T-Shirts and cotton candy, games of target practisce and skill, waterballoon games and guess your weight games, bingo and poker.....You name it. I love the raunchiness of all that corny stuff. I love a good fair. Makes you feel like a kid again. All you need is a little dough in your pocket and you can blow the whole wad at the fair, taking home cheap stuffed animals as a souvenir of the nickels you’ve spent.

Then there was the Food Building. The Food Building is a building where all the food vendors have displays of their food products. You go in there and they give you samples of Coke, Ice Cream bars and French Fries. You could almost eat yourself sick. I’m sure plenty of people did too....

Hmmmnnnn. Other favorite places on mine in old TO...Well, there is always downtown. If you’ve got some cash to blow might as well head for Yorkville, yuppy capital of Canada. Yorkville is the place to be seen. All the models, stockbrokers, fashion police and movie stars hang out in Yorkville. A street of trendy shops and cafes, Yorkville is the hub of downtown. You can browse the shops or sit in a cafe, do some serious people watching...and be watched yourself. Put on some dark sunglasses and look out of town and everyone will be thinking you are some Hollywood talent agent scouting new faces. Tell them you are and they will belive you too, because Torontontonians are gullible. Oh  yes, they are. Say, yeah, I blew into town from Hollywood on the red eye...they’ll be looking at you to see if your eyes are red....Yeah, it’s a case of serious small timers disease in TO, where everyone is insecure, even the girls in the magazines.

So, spend the afternoon in Yorkville, do the beautiful people deal...Then head down to Queen Street to where the real people are, the artists.

Toronto has got alot of students, young people, people on the cutting edge of industry...Queen Street is a hodgepodge of stores, cafes and newspaper shops where you can just hang out and find cool things.

I like going to a little cafe on Queen Street, watching the traffic out the window. You don’t have to be pretenious on Queen street because no one gives a damn about you. if you tell them some bullshit Hollywood Story, they won’t beleive you anyway. Nor will they care. Hollywood is way far away from Canada. The dudes that hang on Queen Street just care about one thing and thats where the dough is coming from to buy  their next cafe latte and donut.

There’s a cool music store on Queen Street where Cliff buys vintage equipment. Its called Capsule Music and it is a great store. Its got tons of vintage gear in it. Its an old store, with a small plate glass front window. The decor is always varied, from retro crap to vinatge Hawaiian. The owner is always there and they are always ready to cut a deal on some music equipment. Cliff really digs the store. We have bought some cool stuff there for the band.

Other favorite Toronto places....Well, my favorite place to have a raost beef sandwhich is at the Greeks diner at Jane and Bloor. I forget the name of this place, but these two Greek guys own it and they haven’t changed a thing in thirty years. The counter is the same old formica from the fifties, the grill is greasy and old. They have this roast beef slicing machine that cuts the best roast beef in the world. I have been eating there since I was five years old.

They have jukeboxes at each table so you can pick a song and listen. We used to go there after school when we were kids. We would pick the song of the day and play it loud. This is a place where you can let your hair down, cause the Greeks don’t care what you do as long as you spend your dough there.

Other places of interest: The Eaton Center. I remember when the Eaton Center was first bulit. A giant shopping mall on Yonge Street it was a marvel to all Torontonians that such a mall could exist. It was big at the time. Everyone went there, especially teenagers and hung out at the mall. I was quite the mall rat in those days, scoping out the ten stores, looking at the clothes. I have always loved clothes and the flashier the better for me. I used to love a store called Le Chateaux. They played loud music and it was a bright store and had all the trendiest clothes. I bought lots and lots of clothes there. Disco outfits. Gold pumps, mini skirts, leggings....

The Eaton Center had a nice food court. It was a place to hang to escape the cold Canadian winters. A cup of hot chocolate could use up a good 1/2 hour of time. I spent most of my time alone purusing the mall, I was always a bit of a loner, always wandering around the city on my own.

Shopping has always been a favorite pastime of  mine, and there have been many times when I have had no money to even buy the subway fare home, yet I would go wandering into the most expensive shops and try on the clothes. I was always dressed nicely, so no one ever asked me any questions. I have always had the gift of gab and am a great bullshitter. Salespeople are especially vulnerable becasue they don’t know if you are going to buy or not.

Yeah, whatever. I have been poor and I have been rich. I would rather be rich!

So, lets see....Where else to hang out in Toronto...

For a while I used to go down to the Kensington Market. Thats off Spadina and Queen streets. Kensignton Market is a cool place. It actually has live animals that run around, like chickens and goats. There are alot of fruit vendors there, fish markets and some old, weird stores. There was a cool import record store. I used to buy these records from London with this really avante guard dance music on it.

I would head down to the Kensington Market after school and wander around. I liked it, I don’t know why. The poverty appealed to me. Everyone was happy, there was life there. I liked the chickens and the goats and the street vendors. I liked the Chinese people and the Portugeuse people. I liked that nobody knew or cared who I was and what I was doing there. I was just a girl, wandering around. Nobody paid any attention to me.

Yeah, Kensington market is cool. There used to be a TV show called King of Kensington. I used to watch it with Al Waxman. He died a few years ago of a heart attack. Too bad. One of the few Canadian actors that I liked.

So, I know there’s other places that were cool in T.O, but its been thirteen years, I can’t remember too much about it...

Oh yeah, the place I hung around the most was Bloor West Villiage, my home town. Bloor Street is a long street that runs East to West, all the way downtown. My Bloor Street was the West end of the city, near High Park and Runnymede. Our stores were there, so we spent alot of time there.

There were many stores that I love on Bloor Street. One of my favorites was this Chinese store called Mr. Lings. It was a store filled with trinkets from China. I was fascinated with this store...It had all these weird smelling incence sticks, little ceramic eggs, bowls, cups, fans, kimonoes, packets of things, linens and boxes.

I would buy things there, lots of treasure. At one point, when i was about twelve, I was going through my Japanese phase. I bought some beautiful fans and put them up in my room. Yeah, Mr Lings was cool.

Then there was the Odeon theatre, where I saw nearly all the movies. What a great old theatre! I have always loved watching movies...The movies was my passport to the world out there. Another world, far away from my own. I would go to the movies and watch John Travolta and Sissy Spacek and Jenifer Beals and Clint Eastwood....The movies was always a wonderful escape from reality, my little world on Bloor Street. I wanted to be an actor so bad, but didn’t have a clue to how to be one. Going to acting school never occured to me, I thought it was something that happened to you, like someone would tap you on the shoulder and say “Hey, want to be in my movie?” Those people didn’t hang out on Bloor Street.

Reality check!

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