I was passing by the ferry terminal – not the one at the foot of Bay St., rather one of its counterparts over on Toronto's islands – and my arrival coincided with that of the boat. I watched the ferrymen lower the gate and motion for the mass disembarkation. The first passenger off was a child, perhaps five years of age, who bolted forward with his arms outstretched as though he might take flight, his face twisted with rapture. "I'm on an island!" the lad shouted, alarming the loitering waterfowl. "I'm on an island!"
I was tempted to tell the lad he was, in fact, on a peninsula, or what was a peninsula no more than a century and a half ago. The Toronto Islands are made up of alluvial deposits from the Scarborough Bluffs. A violent storm in 1858 separated the sand spit from the mainland at what is now called the "Eastern Gap." But the kid was long gone before I could get any of that out. And anyway, I would have been drowned out, suddenly surrounded as I was by people, of all colours, ages and shapes, people burdened with strollers, coolers, backpacks and beach towels. They dispersed to sample the island's diverse charms. Being as I am currently an Island resident (a "live-aboard," I am staying on my houseboat, which is a boat that serves as a house, as opposed to a "floating house") I can offer descriptions of some of these.
Many, if not most of these people, were headed toward Centreville, the amusement park. Let me deal with some of the slight confusion here: "Centreville" is not, in fact, on Centre Island. It is technically on Middle Island. (However, Ward's Island, the site of the decades-old community, is, in fact, part of Centre Island.) And Centreville, the amusement park, is not built on the site of the famous amusement park of yesteryear, where Babe Ruth, as a member of the Providence Grays, hit his first major league home run. That was over on Hanlan's Point, and the Babe hammered that baseball over the fence and into the water, and it is still there, somewhere on the bottom of Lake Ontario. Anyway, that amusement park is no longer there (the Toronto Island Airport is). These days, all the fun is to be found on Middle Island, at Centreville.
Centreville is designed with the young child in mind. The attractions have names like "Fire Engine Ride," "Kermit's Dancing Bog" and "Leaping Lily Pads." There is a demarcation line set around the four-foot mark. Most rides demand the presence of a person over four feet in height, but many won't let a person partake if he/she is more than four foot six. Most days I stroll by an area, a cordoned-off lagoon, where people ride paddleboats made up to look like huge swans. I always hear, "Number 10! Time to come in, Number 10!" I didn't choose that example randomly; it usually is Number 10 they're calling to over the megaphone. I don't know if that paddleboat is particularly speedy, or possessed by the spirit of an insane Trumpeter.
That reminds me: Swans are nasty creatures, maybe even murderous. In the lagoon where I live, there are a couple with three new cygnets, and whenever I pass on the dock, one of them paddles toward me, opens its beak and emits a hiss that sizzles from the hearth of Beelzebub.
Some of the people getting off the ferry were going over to the beach. If you walk past Centreville, and over a bridge (on to Centre Island) you will come to a pier, and change facilities and a lovely beach. Things are a little cooler over on that side of the island, with the breezes sweeping in across the top of the water. If you walk further west, you come to the beach at Hanlan's Point, which is clothing optional. I go there, from time to time, to read. I can't offer much by way of a philosophical justification of nudism, beyond the fact that it feels good to be naked. The beach could use, it's true, someone with a megaphone: "Number 10! Time to come in, Number 10!"
Away at the other end of things, eight kilometres away, is the Ward's Island Community. Originally, the inhabitants were camping, but the number of tents so proliferated that the City of Toronto eventually came and laid in streets: Willow Ave., Lenore Ave. (etc., although the cross-streets are merely numbered, First through Sixth). Mind you, they are not really streets and avenues, these stretches of pavement, more glorified sidewalks, because the Toronto Islands are the largest automobile-free community in North America. (Service vehicles often rumble past.) This community has much in common with other island communities, like the Bahamian community of Eleuthera, or British Columbia's Haida Gwai. There is, I would assert, a high incidence of eccentricity. You can see it in some of the homes themselves, which often seem like elaborate assemblages of flotsam and jetsam. Some of the houses incorporate pieces of ships and boats.
Then there are the people themselves. I was invited once for dinner by a man who lived in one of these homes. As we walked along, he spoke at some length about his life (he had been born on the island) and revealed himself to be a man of considerable eccentricity. As we neared his house, he spotted another fellow, and elbowed me into the shadows of a nearby tree, a clear avoidance strategy.
"We have a new neighbour," he confided lowly, "and he's a bit eccentric."
So those are some of the several attractions and distractions on Toronto's Islands. There are other, more abstract, delights. For example, Toronto looks quite nice from over here. You know how sometimes, at a party say, you will catch sight of your mate across the room, and he/she will be smiling and obviously charming, and there is a sudden rejuvenation of attraction? That happens. But the most fundamental charm, I think, was voiced, and very eloquently, by the five-year-old mentioned at the top of the piece.
Sometimes, as I arrive on the ferry, I only want to raise my voice: "I'm on an island!"
