The ROM for the Water exhibit

My employeers being a sponsor of the exhibit, about 25 of my colleagues and I team went to the ROM to see the water exhibit. We had 2 docents assigned to us. Docents are not for everybody. I do better alone at this type of show. I can read the information, touch the exhibits, and watch the videos at my leisure. I felt rushed today, and rightly so -- we went through it in an hour. I'd say it would normally take at least double that to do it justice.  By the end , I was hot and tired, so I left but I'll go back to see it again, more slowly this time.

It's a great exhibit. It takes you through the origins of water, the uses of water preservation through time, the technology -- young and old, natural or manmade -- used to harvest, distribute, preserve, and clean water, and kinds of other neat water-related facts.

The live exhibit is particularly enlightening: animals that don't drink water; animals that can only access salt water and how they've evolved to live on that; camels that survive for days without water (no, it's not in their hump!). This is the kind of information that I just soak up like a sponge, and that museums present so well.

The exhibit is still on for a month or so, so try to see it if you can. It's time well spent.

So quick, can you name the 3 states of water?

Breakfast at Tiffany's at the TIFF Bell Lightbox

Since they moved into their new headquarters, the TIFF Bell Lightbox (quite a mouthful - I really wish naming rights had never been invented!), almost a year ago, I've been dropping by at least once a week, and often more, to see great movies. (Tiff, by the way, stands for Toronto International Film Festival.)

You see, seeing a movie at the Lightbox is not your typical movie-going experience.

First, it's a beautiful bright and airy building. You walk into a large 2-story atrium flooded with light. The ground floors has a small store that sells mostly movies, books about movies, and TIFF merchandise; a gallery for  movie-related exhibits; a casual restaurant with better-than-decent food -- great breakfasts! -- and a big outdoor terrace; and lastly, the box office.

On the 2nd floor, we have 3 theatres, a formal restaurant, the Blackberry lounge, a bar-cum hangout sponsored by.... why Blackberry, of course. (I love it 'cos I can charge by Bberry there which I often need to do.). There's 2 more theatres on the 3rd floor, plus Learning Labs -- studios, editing suites, and rehearsal halls for cinema students. 

There are 2 more floors, with offices, the Cinematheque film archives, and much more.

But it's also what's not there that I love: no gaudy decor, no video arcade, no greasy food or stale popcorn smell, no dirty carpets, no loud music. In other words, this is a cinema for grownups. 

The programming is pretty cool too. Tonight I sawBreakfast at Tiffany's, part of their Books on Film series.Thursday is the start of a Raj Kapoor retrospective, running simultaneously with a Fellini mini-fest. They're showing musicals outdoors this summer (West Side Story, here I come!). Well, you can check it out for yourself.

Me, I'll be back there Friday, for Armadillo.

Royal Ontario Museum (the ROM) for the Ed Burtynsky exhibit

I rarely go to the ROM. It's a fine museum, with interesting exhibits thanks to a wide and deep permanent collection, but I'm just rarely in the mood for the kind of shows museums curate.

Today, we went to see an exhibit of Ed Burtynsky photographs on oil. This type of exhibit should be held in an art gallery, but the lines are getting increasingly blurred between art galleries and museums, so to the museum we went.

First, we had brunch in C5, a beautiful restaurant at the top of the building. Scrambled eggs & lobster -- the eggs perfectly fluffy, the lobster a teeny bit overdone but not so much to make it unpleasantly chewy, a beautifully creamy avocado puree, the whole topped with a sprinkle fried black beans. A great way to start the day. The restaurant is big, bright and inviting; the staff warm and unpretentious. I loved it.

Next we headed down a floor to the Burtynsky show. It did not disappoint. Over the years, I've seen a number of his oil photographs, but to have most of them in one place really brings it all together, from how we get our oil to to the residues of using it. It's only when you see the mountains of discarded tires, empty oil drums, rusted car batteries, and dismantled cars; only when you see those mountains of waste do you begin to understand the full impact of the oil industry.

I did spend some time visiting the other floors, but not in great depth -- I did overhear that the other exhibit they're holding now, on water, is worth it. So I will be back at the ROM soon, and suggest you drop in if you're in the neighbourhood.

FrancoFete at Harbourfront

Today I volunteered at the cooking demos of the FrancoFete, the annual celebration of French culture at Toronto's Harbourfront Centre.

For those who don't know, Harbourfront is a cultural centre that hosts festivals each weekend throughout the summer, each with a different theme. Next week is Canada Day, the week after is Mexico, just to name few.

The first food demo today was spectacular... and the food samples more than generous! The hosts were Les Touilleurs from Montreal, a foodie store with their own TV show. I discovered the joys of smoking .... smoking fish, smoking duck, cold smoking, hot smoking. Not only is it super easy to do (who knew!) and you don't need special tools -- unless you think of woodchips as tools -- it was delicious. First we had fish: smoked sturgeon, black cod and scallops, each prepared a bit differently. Then we had a smoked duck sample in a lovely mixed salad. And they topped it off with banana cheese cake.

Lucky me, I'm going to Montreal soon, so I'm definitely dropping by their store.