In the Skin of a Lion: Toronto under Construction and its Immigrant Workers

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In the Skin of a Lion Toronto under
Construction and its
Immigrant Workers

• City Vision and History

Franklin Carmichael 1890-1945 Winter Hillside, c.
1918 http//www.mcmichael.com/carmich.htm
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Who were the city builders?
-- Urbanism as a way of life -- History of
Montreal

• Where are they now?

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"The joyful will stoop with sorrow, and when you
have gone to the earth I will let my hair grow
long for your sake, I will wander through the
wilderness in the skin of a lion. (The Gilgamesh
Epic)

1. In the epic, Gilgamesh, grieving for his dead
   friend, goes in search of Utnapishtim, a
   Noah-figure, who has been given everlasting life.
2. In somebody elses skin to be imaginative

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Outline

• General Introduction
• Michael Ondaatje The novel general
  introduction and questions
• Toronto in the novel
• In the Skin of a Lion (Little Seeds
  BridgeSearcher)
• The City Planned and Built
• The Workers Claiming their Space
• Immigrant and Marginalized Characters
• Immigration process -- Nicholas and Alice
• Communication and mutual support -- Nicholas and
  Alice
• Next Time
• Book II
• Toronto The Meeting Place

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Michael Ondaatje

• Born in Colombo, Ceylon
• (now Sri Lanka), 1943, to a prominent family
  there.
• Went to study in UK
• Migrated to Canada obtain his B.A. at the
  University of Toronto in 1965, and his M.A. at
  Queen's University
• Got Canadian Governor-General's Award twice.
• Features
• combining different genres
• aesthetics of violence, obsession and gentleness
• narrative of fitful glimpses cinematic images
• Fluidity of images (esp. of time, space and
  subjectivity)

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Michael Ondaatje Images

• Clara her body -- the complex architecture of
  her past (66)
• Clara And during these days he found he had
  become interested only in her, her childhood, her
  radio work, this landscape in which she had grown
  up (69)
• They Alice Clara begin to draw hard and
  quickly, as if copying down a blueprint in a
  foreign country (75)

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In the Skin of a Lion Plot Characters

• Chap 1 Little Seeds -- Patrick in his childhood
  (interested in the workers, working with his
  father as cow herders and logging dynamiter
  (begins and ends with the Finnish workers
  ?Cato)
• Chap 2 Bridge The bridge workers experience
  Rowland Harris the bridges completion and
  naming, Alice rescued by Nicholas Nicholas
  experience of immigration (English, bakery)

Outside Ts History Map
T under construction
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In the Skin of a Lion Plot Characters

• Chap 3 The Searcher Patrick, "an immigrant to
  the city," falls in love with Clara, who is a
  mistress of Ambrose. Clara introduces him to
  Alice. Triangular relation among Patrick, Clara
  and Ambrose.
• Later
• Alice joins anarchist group and gets killed in a
  bombing action her daughter Hana is adopted by
  Clara and Patrick.

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In the Skin of a Lion Plot Characters

• "This is the story a young girl Hana gathers
  in a car during the early hours of the morning
  ... She listens to the man Patrick as he
  picks up and brings together various corners of
  the story..." (4).
• Characters besides Patrick and Hazen Lewis
• The missing millionaire, Ambrose Small his
  former mistress Clara Dickens, whom Patrick falls
  in love with.
• Alice Gull, the nun, later an actress friend of
  Clara, also associated with the Hungarian
  anarchists
• Nicholas Temelkoff, a daredevil and baker
• Caravaggio, a worker and then a thief
• Hana, daughter of Alice.

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Characters In the Skin of a Lion ? The English
Patient

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In the Skin of a Lion Main Themes

• History of Toronto Building Re-Visioned
  immigrant workers vs. urban designers
• Poetic language used to describe the workers
• Absence vs. Presence (p. 49)
• Love and Obsession Violence and Care-Taking

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Toronto in the Novel (1913 to 1940)

• Toronto the Good and the Grey

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Toronto in the Novel (1) history

• Major Natural resources in Ontario forestry
• Major Constructions in Toronto viaduct (??),
  water filtration plant
• 1919 -- Ambrose Small, one of Canada's greatest
  missing-persons mysteries and the searchers. (ref)

• Issues of map and boundaries
• Workers and their strikes in Toronto in early
  twentieth century
• History of early immigrants.
• (Love and obsession)

Two major strikes--at Bell in 1907 and in the
garment industry in 1912
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Location Napanee

River Napanee
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Log Drivers Waltz (ref.)

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Toronto places

• the Harris filtration plant by Lake Ontario,
  provides Torontonians with clean water.

• Bloor Street Viaduct, where Temelkoff, a
  daredevil, flinging himself underneath, on ropes,
  with pullies and straps.

Rosedale
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Bloor Street Viaduct (just starting source)
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Bloor Street Viaduct (almost complete source)
ost complete, 1917
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References

• Construction Photos of Bloor Street Viaduct
  http//www.flickr.com/photos/43021516_at_N06/sets/721
  57623051973126/
• The R.C. Harris Water Treatment Plant
• http//www.blogto.com/arts/2010/12/the_rc_harris_w
  ater_treatment_plant/
• Arthur Gosss photographs http//www.blogto.com/ci
  ty/2012/01/the_toronto_photographs_of_arthur_goss/
  

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Construction Plans City Map

• Concept City or Lived?

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In the Skin of a Lion Chap 1Starting Questions

• What strikes you as impressive?
• Why does the novel starts with a place which is
  not yet mapped? Why is logging, cow-herding
  importantin terms of city building?
• Characters How would you characterize Hazen
  Lewis and Patrick? What roles do the Finnish
  workers play?

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Patricks Learning on the edge of civilization

• Unmapped place 11
• His father
• skillful, 15 his change of direction 15-16
• Withdrawn 13 taciturn 18
• Patricks learning from his father
• Cow-herding 10-14 dynamiter 16-17 17-18
• p. 17 (like his father) p, 19
• His companies
• the insects 9
• the loggers and pp.16-17
• Finnish workers 7 21-22

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The novels narrative styles

• use of history archive (mixing fiction and
  history)p. 26
• flexible use of foretelling and flashback pp.
  9, 20
• Already he knew it could not be lightning bugs.
  The last of summer's fireflies had died somewhere
  in the folds of one of his handkerchiefs. (Years
  later, Clara making love to him in a car,
  catching his semen in a handkerchief and flinging
  it out onto bushes on the side of the road. Hey,
  lightning bug! he had said, laughing, offering no
  explanation.)

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The novels cinematic skills the early dawn of a
city

• Related to the Finnish loggers
• Loggers walking to work (Audio-Visual images) p.
  7 (the boy seeshe hears)
• Skating (Collages of visual images of movement)
  pp. 21 - 22
• Section Transition (with visual images)
• p. 14 (winter? summer)
• pp. 24 25 (lantern? fire)
• Glimpses of the future p. 49
• The bridges building 25-27 (next slide)

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Absent Presence Bridge builders position
spaces

• The cyclist at the opening ceremony and the
  workers the night before.

"In the photographs he is a blur of intent," but
even he is not the first, for the "previous
midnight the workers had arrived and brushed
away officials who guarded the bridge in
preparation for the ceremonies the next day,
moved with their own flickering lights--their
candles for the bridge dead--like a wave of
civilization, a net of summer insects over the
valley 27.
Alice --Moth 39
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In the Skin of a Lion Chap 2 Starting Questions

• What is it about?
• What details or characters or passages impress
  you the most?
• What are the bridge builders related to the
  Finnish loggers?
• Is it related to us at all?

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The City Imagined vs. the City Built

• The City imagined Concept City or Invisible
  Cities p. 29
• Rowland Harriss ideal about the viaduct and the
  water plant p. 29
• Unexpected outcome of his ideal construction p.
  31
• Harris vs. Nicholas p. 42-43
• Nicholas as a daredevil 34

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Unknown Heroes Bridge builders and tarrers

• Work starts in early dawn, night and day. Pp.
  25-26
• Tarrers pp. 27 28 hardship in summertime and
  in winter.

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Between the Marginalized Nicolas vs. the
traumatized Alice

• Saved Alice 31--34
• communication between him and Alice after the
  rescue scene
• pp. 36-37 (you must talk)
• Alice collecting herself before the mirror, which
  stores the memory of their talk (The zinc was an
  edge of another country. She put her ear against
  the grey ocean of it. Its memory of a days
  glasses 39)
• N. becoming aware of her (her weather, her
  perspectives) 48-49

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Nicholas as an immigrant

• Ohrida Lake Restaurant as an old courtyard of the
  Balkans. P. 37
• Nicholas Quiet, self-sufficient at work p. 42-43
• Nicholas immigration/acculturation process
• Pull Daniel Stoyanoff pp. 44-45
• Push War at home
• Journey and jobs
• language learning p. 46
• (If they do not speak in English in public, they
  will be jailed. 133)

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Chap 3 The Searcher

• Love, Obsession Violence
• How are Patrick and Clara related to each other?
  
• How is Ambrose (the millionaire and capitalist)
  presented?
• How does Alice function?

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Patrick, Separate, Opened up by Clara

• Patrick, an immigrant to the city--from sea to
  land 53 his memory of childhood 53
• Likes to sleep, to be separate in his own world
  65
• Talks about his past less calmly 71 a wall in him
  71 a tiny stone swallow years back 71
• On the verge as usual

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Clara Dickens Patrick

• Clara Dickens 61
• Clara and Patrick 62-
• in love 65 67
• love was like childhood to him 66 tree frog 67,
  light bug
• Clara, unwilling to commit herself 67
• Intimacy exchange of semen 68
• Clara's non-committal and intimate gestures,
  removed place, country, everything 70
• Patrick does not know who she was 72

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Possessiveness and Violence of love

• Clara and Ambrose the piano 70 the romance in
  the afternoon for Ambrose 71
• Patrick
• The blindfold episode--you moved 80-81
• His letters to Clara 84
• the searcher --now of Clara p. 91
• Patrick and Ambrose, looking into a mirror 93

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Patrick vs. Ambrose

• his dream of Ambrose with a grey peacock 68
  wanted to exorcize Small from Clara's mind 69

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Next Time Bk II

• Palace of Purification Patrick at work as a
  tunneller 1930 working under Lake Ontario, and
  with Alice
• Remorse

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Next time Toronto Its Recent Immigrants

• Recent immigrants
• '50s and '60s -- European immigrant groups,
  including German, Italian, Polish, Greek, and
  Portuguese.
• 1970s and early '80s -- from Asia and the West
  Indies.
• Across the Toronto CMA (Census Metropolitan
  Area), immigrants comprised 42 of the
  population, while in the amalgamated City of
  Toronto 47.6 were foreign-born.
• Vertical Mosaic (e.g. clips from Toronto The
  Meeting Place)