In 2005, I discovered the Toronto Psychogeography Society, which in the ‘00s had regular Thursday-night walks. I immediately fell in love with walking as a way of discovering the city, meeting and socializing with people, and stumbling into tiny serendipitous adventures. The TPS gradually faded out as people moved away, had kids, etc., but I really missed it, so I’ve started a new Toronto Company of Flâneurs and Flâneuses. We’ve been going on semi-regular walks for a couple of years now.
When you set out for a walk with friends on a Toronto evening, you never know what will happen. There was the time we found the Cube House and rang the doorbell, and the building’s lone inhabitant emerged to tell us his story; the clear, windless night when we took turns walking out along a narrow wooden jetty on the Humber and gazing down into the fathomless reflection of the starry sky; the night we walked down Weston Road and found the Skull Store just as a taxidermy class was wrapping up.
We’ve examined the antique movie projector that’s still on the second floor of the cinema-turned-drugstore in Bloor West Village, and perched on the great hunk of Canadian Shield rock in Yorkville, people-watching.
Artist Daniel Tapper once carried a vintage overhead projector up Spadina Avenue with us as a performance piece, and recently, Melissa Brizuela and Daniel Rotsztain co-organized a walk where we took rubbings of anything in the Financial District that had an interesting surface texture.
If you’d like to be notified of future Flânerie walks, contact me!
Nadia Halim 