TORONTO ⎯ On Thursday, April 23, 2009, Mayor David Miller and author Michael Ondaatje will be at Toronto’s Bloor Street Viaduct to launch Project Bookmark Canada, a national initiative to bring the imagined landscapes of stories and poems into our physical spaces.
Mayor Miller and Mr. Ondaatje will unveil a plaque (or “Bookmark”) bearing a scene from Ondaatje’s legendary Toronto novel, In the Skin of a Lion, in which a nun falls from the Bloor Street Viaduct during its construction. The Bookmark is the first in a planned cross-Canada series intended to create a permanent presentation of literature in public spaces.
“Many cities have tributes to writers. What makes Project Bookmark Canada unique is that these literary scenes will be read in the exact locations where the stories and poems are set,” says Miranda Hill, Founder and Executive Director of Project Bookmark Canada. “Readers can step right into the stories, experiencing the authors’ visions and the real locales simultaneously.”
Project Bookmark Canada is launching during Lit City: Toronto Stories, Toronto Settings, an event running from March to May. The City of Toronto is a partner on the Toronto phase of Project Bookmark Canada.
“We’re very pleased to launch this initiative in Toronto, where we’re committed to recognizing the benefits of ideas and imagination to the city’s prosperity through our Creative City goals,” says Rita Davies, Executive Director, Cultural Services, City of Toronto. “Project Bookmark Canada is a wonderful example of how Toronto⎯its landscape, its people, its history⎯inspires writers like Michael Ondaatje to tell this city’s stories to us and to the world.”
Mr. Ondaatje is also enthusiastic. “For me it is magical to live in a city that has been 'named'⎯by writers from an earlier generation such as Hugh Garner and Morley Callaghan and Margaret Avison, and also by contemporary poets such as Dionne Brand and Dennis Lee and Christopher Dewdney,” Ondaatje says. “So I feel very honoured by this.”
Future Toronto Bookmarks will include a passage from former Toronto poet laureate Dennis Lee’s children’s poem, “The Cat and the Wizard” at Casa Loma and a scene from Anne Michael’s internationally acclaimed novel Fugitive Pieces on Grace Street. But Hill says that this is just the beginning for the new organization.
“These words by Ondaatje, Michaels and Lee inspired this project, so I am glad that we can pay tribute to them first. But there are countless stories and poems set in recognizable locales⎯from St. John’s to Toronto to Vancouver,” Hill says. “I think it would be wonderful to Bookmark them all. My vision is that you should be able to read your way right across Canada.”
The launch is open to the public and will begin at 11 a.m. on Thursday, April 23rd at the Northeast corner of the Bloor Street Viaduct.
Contact:
Miranda Hill, Founder and Executive Director
Project Bookmark Canada
905-483-2715
miranda.hill@projectbookmarkcanada.ca
www.projectbookmarkcanada.ca
