I saw the movie Paris je t’aime last night at The Colonial Theatre in Keene (it’s a fantastic place to see movies, but they could use a more skilled projectionist).

The film, which is really 18 short films spliced together, was the cinematic equivalent of having tapas for dinner: some segments were beguilingly, others were self-indulgent and out of place. On balance, though, the film is at least slightly more than the sum of its parts, and I’d recommend it (my favourite of the 18 was Place des fêtes, directed by Oliver Schmitz, starring Aïssa Maïga and Seydou Boro).

If you’ve arrived here because Mio Adilman told you to come here on Q this afternoon on CBC Radio, here’s the story you’re looking for. Enjoy.

It seems that I am destined, at every turn, to bump up against Rudolph Steiner these days.

It all started on my last visit to Yankee. I was updating the biographies of the editors of The Old Farmer’s Almanac and noticed a reference to The Education of a Yankee: An American Memoir, a book by Jud Hale.

I asked around about the book, and within minutes I had a copy in hand, generously autographed by Jud. I’m now halfway through the book — Jud is in his teens — and it is a fascinating tale of how a Yankee family got the Steiner religion and reinvented their lives to follow.

The next week I was in Copenhagen in a bar with Olle and Luisa and they’re telling me about a new apartment they’re purchasing and how they need to switch banks because their current bank — somehow, it seems, a “Rudolph Steiner bank” — won’t do.

The next week I was in Berlin in an Italian restaurant with Stefan and he’s telling me how he went to a vaguely Steiner-inspired school in Austria as a youth (I can’t recall whether it was more Steiner than Steiner or Steiner lite).

And so here I am back at Yankee for another visit and having a conversation with one of the editors about how her daughter has been thriving in a Waldorf School.

To top it off, it turns out that Steiner was born in Donji Kraljevec in Croatia, which is less than two hours from where my Rukavina ancestors eventually settled after leaving the interior of the country.

Flipping through the channels on my hotel room television over the last few days I was bombarded with images of Paris Hilton being released from jail.

Perhaps the most absurd aspect of this all is watching reporters, on several networks, camped out in front of the jail making comments like “In addition to traditional media like us, Bob, the place is crawling with paparazzi.”

Cue footage of crowds of media outside the jail. And photographers chasing Paris Hilton’s SUV. And helicopter footage of the newly-release Paris Hilton playing with her dog at home. Etc.

Any line that may have existed between “paparazzi” and “coverage of paparazzi” has disappeared, and that the irony of this is lost of “traditional media” is depressing.

And by watching, I become part of the spectacle. I turn away, but then turn back.

The truly sad thing is that when coverage of her antics pushes coverage of actually important news down the schedule (“and on a more somber note, Bob, 13 soldiers were killed in Iraq this morning”)

I think it might be time to turn off the TV.

Catherine and Oliver are visiting her parents in Kingston this week, and are due to take the train on Friday, June 29 up to Montreal to rendezvous with me. However Friday, June 29 is also the First Nations National Day of Action and, possibly, a related rail or road blockade between Belleville and Kingston.

We’re currently looking for alternative ways to get Catherine and Oliver up to Quebec. Unfortunately VIA Rail provides no information about the possible implications of the blockade nor proposed alternative travel arrangements.

I noticed last night that the sun in Keene, NH where I’m staying seemed to go down much earlier than I expected for early days of summer. It turns out that I was right: sunset last night was 8:32 p.m.

Back in Charlottetown it didn’t set until 9:09 p.m.. And even up at my parents’ place, which is in the same time zone as Keene and seems “close,” there was an extra 30 minutes of daylight as the sun set at 9:05 p.m..

Go even further east and they get even less of an evening: in Cape Cod the sun set at 8:20 p.m.

Go north and west to the western extremes of eastern time in Thunder Bay and the sun set at 10:03 p.m.

Amazing.

Upstart Porter Airlines is now flying out of Halifax to Ottawa and Montreal with connections to Toronto. Fares to Montreal appear to start at about $79, with Ottawa around $124 and Toronto starting around $114. Taxes and fees add about another $50.

Porter is flying the Bombardier Q400 turboprop: Halifax to Montreal takes 1:45, vs. 1:30 on an Air Canada jet. From the looks of it, Air Canada is matching fares at least some of the time — both Porter and Air Canada were charging the $79 one way fare for Halifax to Montreal in mid-July when I checked tonight.

Of course only Porter can boast a Tyler Brûlé-designed in-flight magazine (the first issue as a PDF).

After almost a week here with my parents, I’m off at the crack of noon tomorrow on American Eagle 4605 from Toronto to Boston. After a brief detour south for dinner with parts of the usual bunch, I’ll drive north up to the E.F. Lane Hotel (the hotel with possibly the worst hotel website ever) in Keene to stay the week while working out of Yankee’s office up the road in Dublin.

I’ll have a brief diversion on Wednesday night: a quick trip down to Becket, MA to see Coleman Lemieux’s show at Jacob’s Pillow.

Friday afternoon I’m flying back up to Montreal to rendezvous with Catherine and Oliver where we’ll hook up with Steve for a weekend of maximum fun.

We’re flying back to Charlottetown on July 1, just as the embers from the looting and pillaging following the Nickelback concert have died down and just in time for what they now appear to be billing as the “Largest Fireworks Display in Canada,” which suggests that we’re either spending more, or someone else is spending less, as it used to be “in Eastern Canada.”

By the time this late-June family work/visit/vacation is over, we’ll have criss-crossed Ontario by train, taken three different airlines, rented two different cars, visited two sets of family, and will no doubt be thoroughly exhausted.

Sometime in the past twenty years I turned on Toronto. After growing up in its shadow and thinking that it was possibly the greatest place on earth, something snapped and I ended up with no desire to visit and a bad taste in my head every time I thought about the city.

Mind you it’s not that I’ve ever really had a bad experience of Toronto. I did live a rather antiseptic existence during the 6 months I spent as a resident in the mid-1980s, living out much of my time inside a thin corridor that ran from my home at Mount Pleasant and Eglinton to my school at Don Mills and Eglinton. This is, if you know Toronto at all, not exactly the most lively part of town, but I have fond memories regardless.

But I also followed this with a summer working at the ROM right downtown at Avenue Road and Bloor. Not exactly hip either, but certainly central. I ate a lot of ice cream at Greg’s and enjoyed summer in the city.

But somehow my malaise about Toronto sprung up and has continued, and during the regular “I wonder which cool urban location we should move to” conversations I have with myself Toronto never came close to making the shortlist.

Today, however, we had a great time in Toronto and I saw sides of it that I’d never seen before. I’m not quite ready to move, but the malaise is gone, and I’m eager to return soon.

Dad, Mom, Catherine, Oliver and I started the day with a race down the escarpment to catch the 10:14 a.m. GO Train into Union Station. We made it with 10 minutes to spare, and by 11:20 a.m. we were on the subway going north to the ROM.

We decided to overlook the fact that the dinosaurs are in storage and let ourselves be drawn into all the hype about the Crystal that now envelopes and re-centres the museum.

While I’m as much of an architecture tourist as the next guy, I can’t say that I was blown away, at least not Bilbao-style blown away, by my first view of the structure. You hear “crystal” and you think it’s going to shimmer or something. But it’s primary characteristic seems to be jutting.

But as we experienced the interiors of the crystal, it turned out to be a far more interesting structure on the inside than on the outside. All that juttiness creates some intriguing indoor spaces, especially where the old ROM meets the new ROM. It turns out that perhaps the crystal’s most useful role is as a exhibition container, and as a grand entrance hall. An expensive role. But it plays it well.

Inside, crystal aside, this ain’t your father’s ROM. There’s a new brightness to the place. The exhibits are more lively, more focused, and ultimately much more interesting. Even a docent-guided tour of the Peru temporary exhibition didn’t put me to sleep (and I can’t stand docents in the normal course of affairs). Even the cafeteria has a new life: what used to be chaotic and run, if memory serves, by Druxy’s Deli, is now Danish-inspired minimal with wood-fired pizza and organic juices.

By far and away my favourite of the exhibitions currently on display was The Evolution of Style, a quick survey from the Renaissance through Baroque, Rococo, Neo-Classical, and Victorian ending up at Art Deco. It was compact, well-illustrated, and I left knowing more than when I started.

After a few hours at the ROM, we went across the street to the Roof Lounge at the Park Hyatt (nee Park Plaza) for a drink. They make a mean cappuccino up there, and put on a nice olive plate. They also have world-class washrooms and a great view over the new ROM.

Sated, we headed down for a brief detour through Dad’s old residence at Victoria College, and then walked south on University Ave. to College where we took the streetcar over to Bathurst to spend some time in Kensington Market.

It’s odd, but I’d gone through 41 years without setting foot in Kensington Market. I had no real idea what it was — I suppose I assumed it was something along the lines of the St. Lawrence Market to the south (i.e. a souped up farmer’s market). It turns out that it’s actually a rather interesting neighbourhood and, by all appearances, the capital of a certain kind of Bohemia in Toronto.

We had a really good time wandering around for 2 or 3 hours. Mom bought an apron for 99 cents. I had an excellent espresso at Luis Coffee Stop (and I do mean excellent).

Dad bought some ginger tea, and then had a demonstration of a folding bicycle from a guy riding by. We had dinner at Freshwood Grill (they make a mean iced tea there) and then walked over to Spadina, across Dundas past the new AGO (likely the subject of a future architecture-whore visit) and down past the crazy new Sharp Centre for Design, a building that strikes me as among the most interesting buildings I’ve ever seen (I love it, I think).

By 7:43 p.m. we were back at Union Station and on the GO Train home.

So really just a brief slice of Toronto. Or really two slices of two very different approaches to Torontoness, both of them compelling.

I might not exactly love Toronto yet, but I may be developing a crush.

There are more photos in the Flickr archive if you’re keen.