Some old pictures I didn't take: Cottage Country

Cottage country, Ontario, late '30s

I CAN'T SPEAK FOR THE REST OF CANADA - it's a big country and our regional antipathies would be hard to explain to anyone who doesn't live here - but I can say with authority that "Cottage Country," an only semi-mythical place, exists in a vivid spot in the minds of people who've grown up or lived in Ontario.

My family never - or didn't until recently - have the money that got you to Cottage Country, which makes me wonder at these frames, shot by my mother and discovered in the pile of negatives I've inherited. They were taken in the late '30s - a time when everyone, we imagine, should have been on a breadline or riding the rails - and reveal a glimpse of leisure that I certainly didn't expect to find in my mother's past.

The lovely wooden speedboat pulling the water skier is hardly consistent with our image of the "Dirty Thirties," yet it's obvious that there were people with a financial cushion that meant their 1930s weren't markedly different from their 1920s. What surprises me, however, is that my mother somehow managed to find her way to a spot where she could catch this moment with her camera. It seems a long way from the Kodak factory and Mount Dennis.

Cottage country, Ontario, late '30s

I can't really guess where these were taken; it could have been the Muskokas or Georgian Bay or the Kawarthas. I'm assuming Mom was there as someone's guest, though I don't know who that could have been. In the context of the rest of the negatives and photos I've inherited - pictures of friends and family members posed in backyards or at weddings in Mount Dennis or Hamilton - these are exotic and unexpected, like finding a shot of Macchu Picchu or the Lascaux Caves.

We never owned a cottage, and my only memories of Cottage Country are a couple of day trips to Wasaga Beach and a crowded week in a tiny, musty-smelling, rented place where I spent the whole time scheming to get someone with a boat to take me out on the lake - without success. And yet I had a vivid image of places like the one in the photo above - a big old unwinterized cabin that smelled of pine and wood smoke, with a dark boathouse where the water lapped a hollow pulse against the walls.

I don't really share the Ontarian dream of Cottage Country despite this, but I wish I knew what brought my mother up there at such an unlikely time. These photos, more than any others I've dug out of the ripped envelopes where they sat for decades, remind me that my mother had a life full of incident and memories that I could never share, only some of which was captured in passing on the film in a box Brownie.

Who are they?

PART OF A TRIPTYCH OF A LOCAL BAND, shot for NOW magazine some time in the mid-to-late '90s. The band's name, alas, lost to time. A timeless look, really, and one that a band with a suitable sound - anything from sloppy '70s hard rock to retread punk to cock rock metal with a blues overlay - could slip into like an old slipper.

While there's a point before which you probably couldn't find a band that looked like this (1976, perhaps, if you weren't called The Stooges,) it's a sure thing that in some town, in every year subsequent to that you'd find some band sporting a variation of this look. In some years - 1978, 1987, 1992 - you would likely find dozens, even hundreds.

Some bands presented themselves to my camera at NOW with a blandness or halfhearted generic attitude that made the shoot work, which usually meant putting them in shadow or out of focus, or buried in some larger landscape. A band like this, however, did most of the work for me, and all I needed to do was find a suitably flat band of light and background to let them pose.

They had their image in hand, even if it was a bit identikit in style, but no one casting an eye over the page with the purpose of looking for something to see that night would be much mistaken about what a band that looked like this had on offer.

(UPDATE: My friend Brian Taylor tells me that this was The Sinisters, a glam-punk outfit that kicked around the city for several years. Sure enough, the Big Ledger tells me I shot them in October of 1997 for NOW.)

Ornette

Ornette Coleman, Diamond Club, Toronto, July 1988

ORNETTE COLEMAN HAD THE STATUS OF A LIVING LEGEND around the time I was getting into jazz. There were plenty of legendary jazz musicians still performing and recording by the late '80s - I had photographed Dizzy Gillespie just a few months before Coleman came to Toronto, and would have a frustratingly brief chance to shoot Miles Davis at Massey Hall a couple of years later.

But Ornette was considered more elusive; a more difficult, experimental artist, rarely seen outside European festivals and more generally recorded by this point on obscure labels. In 1988, though, he'd suddenly been signed to Portrait, a subsidiary of CBS, and was on tour with a new record, Virgin Beauty - his first on a major label in twelve years.

Which was probably why, when a date was finally announced, access was so carefully controlled. Even getting an advance copy of the record seemed a matter of strictest security and publicist scrutiny. (Which is strange - considering how small sales of any Ornette record, or jazz records in general were, you'd think the PR people would be doing their best to create some sort of buzz.)

When Ornette finally arrived I managed to get a photo pass but was told in no uncertain terms that any sort of portrait shoot, no matter how brief or ad hoc, would be impossible. It was terribly unlike the way I was able to approach almost any jazz musician passing through town and get at least a couple of minutes of their time in a corner of a club or in a (relatively) bright corner of a dressing room.

Ornette Coleman, Diamond Club, Toronto, July 1988

Ornette put a fairly large band on the dim stage of the Diamond Club, including a tabla player and his son, Denardo, on drums. I brought both colour and black and white film and scurried about at the apron of the stage trying to get a decent shot. I was far less successful with the colour film, which I thought was a shame since Ornette was wearing one of his trademark "suits of many colours," and I was simply unable to capture it.

Virgin Beauty was an odd record, but you could have said that about many of Ornette's albums. The electronic drums pin it firmly to the '80s, and Jerry Garcia's guitar contributions had a feel of "Hey, look who showed up - pull up a chair!" I was curious to see how his whole concept of Harmolodics - explained countless ways, though never to any particular satisfacion - would play out live.

Joe Zawinul's description of it as "nobody solos, everybody solos" ended up being as good a description as any that night. My good friend and "jazz mentor" Tim Powis had made me a mixed tape of Ornette "essentials" in preparation for the show, but in the end I remained as baffled as before.

Ornette Coleman, Diamond Club, Toronto, July 1988

Technically, the best shot I'd end up of Ornette playing had him with his trumpet instead of his signature alto sax. At the time - and I'm not sure this opinion has shifted much since then - his trumpet playing was esteemed only in comparison to his violin playing.

Of all the jazz "greats" - Armstrong, Miles, Coltrane, Dizzy, Basie, Ellington, Charlie Parker, Monk, Bud Powell, Bill Evans - Ornette was always the most stubborn nut to crack, and that night at the Diamond club did little to help me figure him out. I am still trying, to this day.

Ornette Coleman died of a heart attack on June 11.

 

Dad

William McGinnis, High Park, Toronto, 1967

THIS IS MY FAVORITE PHOTO OF MY FATHER, WILLIAM MCGINNIS. It was taken on what looks like a fine summer day in High Park, the place of refuge for our very West End family. He is 60 years old. I have tried to find this spot in the park for years now, and while trees have grown and the layout has been changed, I will continue looking.

He would have a year left to live. My memories of my father are scant; I can only barely remember the faintest trace of this day. My most vivid is waiting by the big picture window in the living room on Gray Avenue for him to come home from work, sitting on the couch next to him, watching Looney Tunes on the big black and white TV. It is one of my happiest memories.

William McGinnis and Agnes Murphy, Toronto, 1943(?)

William McGinnis was born in Lanarkshire, Scotland and emigrated to Canada with his family near the beginning of World War One. His father, Robert, died not long after they arrived, and he and his brothers would leave school early to help support their family. His teens and twenties are a record of manual labour and factory work in Toronto's industrial West End: butcher's assistant, Canadian Cycle & Motor, Willys-Overland.

My father got a job at Supertest, where he would stay for the rest of his life, working his way up into white-collar middle management, thanks - or so the family legend goes - to a mathematical formula he worked out to estimate the amount of gas stored in tanks at service stations and depots all across the country.

I don't know when he met my mother, but they were an item when he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force in December of 1940, and it was on leave in November of 1943 that they got married at Our Lady of Victory in Mount Dennis - a church his father-in-law had helped build.

He lost an eye working on an airplane engine and had the first of a series of heart attacks while in service, but both times he refused an honorary discharge. He spent most of the war with the 168 Heavy Transport Squadron - the "Flying Postmen" - based in Rockcliffe, Ont., and was a Flight Sergeant when it was disbanded and he was discharged in October of 1945. He returned to Supertest and my mother, who gave birth to my brother, Marty, in December of 1945.

William and Marty McGinnis, Mount Dennis, Toronto, 1946

Here he is, demobbed and a new parent, in the backyard behind the house on Grandville. I have quite a few photos of Bill and Agnes and their new family, and they radiate with the optimism and prosperity of the post-war years.

Agnes, Mary and William McGinnis, Mount Dennis, Toronto, Christmas 1952

My sister Mary was born in 1952, around the time they bought their first home, at the corner of Gray and Outlook. This is the big picture window from my memory, where I waited for him to come home.

He was, as they inevitably describe such men, a "pillar of the community." He helped found the credit union and fundraised to build a new church. He bowled on a team.

Dad and me, High Park, Toronto, 1967

This is the only photo I have with just Dad and me. My sister and mother are sitting on the picnic blanket behind my cousin Terry, who took this picture. The bags hanging in the trees are keeping the food safe from ants. I remember being very fond of that blow-up dolphin, though what I was doing with a pool toy baffles me - we didn't have a pool and I have never learned to swim.

The book my father is reading is Dear and Glorious Physician, a Taylor Caldwell novel about Saint Luke. Caldwell was once a famous, bestselling novelist, but no one reads her much these days. I ordered a copy a week or two ago; I'm going to try and read it this summer, perhaps at a picnic in High Park.

My father died in his sleep on a May morning in 1968. I have no memory of that day, or of the weeks and months on either side of it. I would miss him bitterly, and still miss him today. Like most boys who lose their fathers early, I was desperate for a father figure; my brother and brother-in-law would be pressed into service, though I'm sure neither of them were prepared for the role at that point in their lives.

I think about Bill McGinnis all the time, and since becoming a father often wonder what he would do, and hope that he would approve.

Indy

USF2000 race, Honda Indy, Toronto, June 12, 2015

I LOVE CARS ALMOST AS MUCH AS I LOVE PHOTOGRAPHY. Which is why the auto show and the annual IndyCar weekend here in Toronto are probably the highlights of my year, the way the film festival once was. The Honda Indy rolled through town this weekend, a month earlier than usual, and for the fourth year I was able to snag accreditation and spend three days in the sun and rain with my cameras, stalking the edge of the track with my earplugs.

It's mostly a technical challenge, about capturing action and framing shots on the fly, trying to get some sense of the speed, the weather and the human element tucked somewhere inside the machines. Learning to shoot motorsport presented a steep learning curve, but this was the first year when I felt I could get up to speed fast and reach a plateau of competence, and maybe set myself a further technical challenge.

IndyCar race, Honda Indy, Toronto, June 12, 2015

The challenge I set myself this year was "car panning" - those shots that inevitably get run on double truck spreads and posters, where the car is relatively sharp and centred and the background and foreground are a horizontal blur. It's a motorsport photography cliche, but I wanted to see if I could pull it off this year.

The challenge at the Toronto Indy circuit is that there are no long unobstructed straights where you're level with the cars as they speed past. The closest you get is the front start/finish straight running down to the Princes Gates, which is planted with a line of trees. As you pan your camera, trying to hold the car stationary in the middle of the frame, you hope that one of the shots in the high speed burst you're firing will catch the car between the trees and the poles of the catch fence.

This shot isn't perfect, but it's as good as the circumstances allow, and I'm pretty pleased with it considering; it'll be nice, one day, to find myself in an ideal spot, on a track with a clear view of a straight. One day, maybe.

I set myself another challenge this year - an Instagram series shot with my new X-30, provisionally titled "Behind the Fence" and featuring the sorts of things you see when you have an all access pass and a photo vest.

Call it street photography, where the street is one where the cars can hit 200mph and occasionally flip over or hit each other. It's also the sort of place where there are literally dozens of professionals and hundreds of amateurs walking around with cameras; it's an environment where almost anyone expects to be in someone's frame at some point, which makes them relaxed in a way the average pedestrians aren't anymore.

I set the X-30 to work as a compact Rolleiflex, with a 1:1 frame and the sensor set to either ape black and white film with a yellow filter or nice, bright Velviachrome. It let me work much more in my comfort zone as a photographer, which kept my shooting morale up while I worried about what my DSLR was capturing all weekend.

It also let me dip a toe into Instagram as a publishing and promotion platform - one that (so I'm told) is where you'll find the kids who source and buy photos for magazines, books and websites. My Instagram feed is here, if you're curious, and the series can be found by searching it using the hashtags #indyTO, #behindthefence and #indycar. Let's see what happens with this sort of thing, shall we?

   

Trimmings: Nursery

Couch and pillows, Macdonell Ave., Toronto, 2003

I DON'T HAVE TO GUESS WHAT - OR WHERE - THIS IS. Probably taken sometime in the summer of 2003, after we'd vacated what had been our bedroom in the apartment on Macdonell and set up a nursery for Agnes. We moved down to what had been the living room for three years, which wasn't ideal, but we hadn't planned on becoming parents when we first moved into the place - or at least I hadn't.

This is the old couch from my loft, bought out of a warehouse storage space from an antiques dealer from whom I was buying an old RCA Victor TV. (Don't ask why.) On the couch: An assortment of my wife's pillows, part of Aggie's bouncy chair, a puppy-shaped pillow that I think we'd bought on a whim, and Comfort Bear, the pink-and-blue stuffed bear with whom my daughter still shares her bed. And what looks like a crumpled Kleenex. There would be a lot of those.

The baby who occupied this room turned twelve yesterday. Time passes quickly.

Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, 2015

I KNOW THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE A BLOG ABOUT MY OLD PHOTOS, but I am - at least inasmuch as I need to imagine myself as such - still a working photographer. And I know I like to complain a lot about shooting live music, which probably was about the miseries of photo pens and three-song limits and having to photograph bands I don't like. Which is why I forced myself out of the house last night, camera in hand, to see if I could rise to the challenge of shooting a band I do like.

I've written about Jon Spencer and his bands before. What I haven't written about yet is how one of those old photos of Jon and the Blues Explosion ended up on the back of their latest record. So when the JSBX announced that their tour was passing through town, I decided to make the evening a challenge: take your new camera and leave the club with at least one decent shot.

Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Lee's Palace, Toronto, June 10, 2015

I don't remember how long it's been since I squeezed up against the front of the stage at Lee's Palace. The photos of the Red Hot Chili Peppers on the same stage that I posted earlier this week are almost thirty years old, so I have a vague idea when I first took my place, looked over the stage monitors and wondered that anyone can get a decent photo in such dim light.

There were at least a half dozen other photographers there, and we all got to work when Jon, Judah and Russell took the stage and started a breakneck set. Not long afterward I noticed that a couple of them were gesturing to each other with confused looks; one of them caught my eye then held up three fingers. It took a moment for me to realize that he was asking if three songs had already been played, and whether they had to leave.

Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Lee's Palace, Toronto, June 10, 2015

Let's be clear about it: I wouldn't have bothered bringing my camera along last night if I only had three songs to work with. I guessed that Jon didn't do that sort of bullshit, and I was right - security wasn't enforcing any photo restrictions and we were free to shoot like it was 1985. But I couldn't help but wonder about the young photographers holding up their three fingers and thought to myself: You poor fuckers - they really have you trained, don't they?

The band were great - fantastically tight, playing without a set list. In my mind they're still "Jon's new band," but I have to remind myself that the JSBX has been around for over twenty years. I shot for about half the set, but since my little Fuji X-30 is still new to me, I couldn't find the preview button in the dark, so it was like I was shooting with film, unable to take a look at what I'd shot until the show was over.

Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Lee's Palace, Toronto, June 10, 2015

After a quick glance through the images, I turned to my old friend Tim and said that we should say goodnight to Jon before we headed home. He was standing by the merch table, and unexpectedly said that we should try to take a band photo for old time's sake. Back in the dressing room I reintroduced myself to Judah and Russell after twenty years and scanned the tiny room for a good spot. I glimpsed the band's stars and stripes backdrop through a window looking onto the stage and said that was as good a spot as any.

Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Lee's Palace, Toronto, June 10, 2015

I shot ten frames of the Blues Explosion out on the stage with the X30 set to a square frame - less than a single roll of 120 film in my old Rolleiflex. The light was harsh and the camera set to a high ISO but I was sure as thirty years of experience would let me that I'd have something worthwhile. It was rushed and improvised but not bad, considering the circumstances.

I'd set out to shoot a great band and get one good live photo. I came home with a half dozen decent concert shots and a portrait. As evenings go, it made a good case for leaving the house.