"What are those strange brick patterns in that wall over there?" the octogenarian asks the pierced, hipster twenty-something behind the coffee shop counter.
"I'm not too sure," he answers, handing over the man's change.
"Have you ever wondered about them?"
Looking out the window at the wall in question, he admits, "Yeah, I have, actually; I think they might be an art piece of some sort?"
Fifteen minutes before, the same white-haired gentleman, smiling as wide as the brim of his Tilley hat, posed a similar question to a dog-walking couple: "Excuse me, can you direct me to any sculptures in this area?"
"Um, we're not from around here; the only ones I know of are those right there," says the perplexed young man, pointing vaguely to the massive Rosa Nautica over the elderly man's shoulder and another in the distance. "If you go toward the water, I think there's a park where there may also be some sculpture."
With a nod and a "Thank you, good day," retired York University geography professor John Warkentin, 83, has proven with a little bit of impromptu fieldwork that while there are a dozen sculptures within a stone's throw of one another in the condo forest of CityPlace, it's still a challenge finding folks who know much about them.
"I was the same way," he tells me. "Remember Sherlock Holmes used to emphasize that people may walk by something but they don't observe." So, one way he helps others hone their observational skills is by posing innocent little questions; when folks are really prodded, he says, they'll come up with the 1989 Memorial to Commemorate the Chinese Railroad Workers in Canada near the Rogers Centre or the controversial "Gumby Goes to Heaven" on University Ave. (real name: Canadian Airmen's Memorial), installed in 1984.
The other way Mr. Warkentin helps is with his fantastic book, Creating Memory (Becker Associates, 2010). At over 350 pages, it may be the definitive guidebook to Toronto public sculpture, so, on an unseasonably warm and windy November Sunday, he and I picked our way through the maze of new point towers north of the Gardiner Expressway to see what we could find.
After meeting at the sextant-inspired Rosa Nautica at 15 Brunel Ct., we cross Spadina to admire the equally impressive Barca Volante, also by Chilean sculptor Francisco Gazitua, which depicts ships lost during the War of 1812. While standing in front of this piece at the foot of Navy Wharf Ct., Mr. Warkentin points to the top of the street and opines "this is one of the finest views in Toronto," since, acting as bookend is the Chinese Railroad Workers piece. "This is the sort of thing you want in an urban environment," he says.
Speaking of nautical themes, a short walk away is Douglas Coupland's big red canoe and fishing bobbers at Canoe Landing Park. Unfortunately, these are not included in the book since they were installed in 2009 and Mr. Warkentin's cut-off date was the end of 2008. However, since the canoe is such a strong Canadian symbol, we discuss two that did make the cut: Passage by Marlene Hilton-Moore at the Scarborough Bluffs and Canoe and Calipers by John McEwen near the Humber River.
More than a simple guidebook, Mr. Warkentin's decade of research has produced a tome that works on several levels. While it can be flipped open to one of the many maps illustrating "clusters" of sculpture (and there are many) to easily plan city walking tours, it's also a thoroughly researched armchair history book offering analysis of how streets formed and changed, how immigrant populations moved through the city, and why the installation of public sculpture exploded after 1960. With multiple indices, it becomes an indispensible reference book for students, journalists and Toronto lovers of every stripe.
Always "interested in man's imprint on the landscape," it was during an assignment in rural Manitoba in the 1950s that Mr. Warkentin was first struck by the awesome power of sculpture to create memory. While cataloging houses and barns, he stumbled upon white-painted, horse-drawn harrows with a sign reading "LANDMARK." In smaller type was the story of a pioneering Ukraine farming couple who, it read, "helped build our beautiful Canada" in the early 1900s: "And to me that was a sort of a sculpture," he remembers. "It was not a gravestone – they were buried in the cemetery close by – these were just proud people and the family had put up this marker."
After revealing to the coffee shop hipster that the "strange brick patterns" are really 18 niches by American sculptor Jackie Ferrara, Mr. Warkentin and I walk past the rocks-and-metal-leaves of Orenda by Marlene Hilton-Moore at a Front St. condo, admire the beginning of the TTC-commissioned pole sculptures along the Spadina streetcar line and then end our tour at Victoria Memorial Square. Here, we find a "sad, one-armed soldier" by Walter Allward, the great Toronto sculptor who spent 11 years crafting the Canadian National Vimy Memorial. We also find a recently installed, whimsical set of granite chairs dedicated to the late Jane Jacobs.
"As a field geographer, you learn through the soles of your boots," he says as we take a load off courtesy of Ms. Jacobs. In our daily rush to keep appointments and our pocketbooks full, the appreciation of public sculpture can also be a very urban way to stop and smell the roses, too.
Dave LeBlanc