I know it’s eccentric, distributing your backlist titles in Little Free Libraries. But when one of my publishers went under, I was left with eighty copies of two of my books, a novel and a memoir that I left in the basement—for years. 

Then, as I wrote last time, it occurred to me to slip a copy of the novel in a Little Free Library down the street. Then another, then more, until I recently started taking flaneuse-style walks with Little Library maps in hand, distributing the books for readers to find. During the first walk, a friend and I seeded eighteen books throughout her neighbourhood. When she went to check a week or so later, they were all gone.

The fall weather was still strangely warm as I began my second group of Little Free Library walks. This time I went out with a friend who was visiting from England. Frances wasn’t just humouring me; she was on a mission as well. Her oldest daughter has been awarded a fellowship and will be moving to Toronto with her family next summer. Knowing Frances would be visiting, Bonnie started looking online for the type of rentals they’ll be able to afford. Her husband will be working in the east end, so she concentrated her search there, and was curious what the houses she found would look like without the lighting and primping of real estate photos. Local schools, playgrounds, that sort of thing.

Frances are curious as well, so we compiled a couple of maps to guide us on several long walks. The Little Free Library non-profit in Minnesota has a website where you can punch in your city to call up maps of the authorized libraries. I was surprised to find that Toronto is full of them–hundreds of addresses–and printed out their map of libraries in the east end. Afterward, we added in the houses and apartments that Bonnie had found, so the maps were pocked with Xs and semi-legible scrawled addresses. Then we set out for our first hike.

It proved to be a wonderful way for Frances to get to know the city, wending a crooked path through residential areas where tourists never go, stopping in friendly neighborhood coffee shops, then windowshopping the local grocery stores, the craft stores, indie bookstores and a surprising number of hair salons. I was curious and looked it up: a successful hairstylist has 100 to 150 regular clients, most local, who each book appointments an average of 4.8 times per year. Local businesses depend on vanishingly small communities. Which have a tendency to vanish as well, maps rewriting themselves as the economy evolves.

I was interested to feel the subtly different vibe in the three neighbourhoods we visited, a couple of them becoming less affordable, newly pocked with expensive renos of roughly the same design: those boxy, coldly-elegant ones with huge windows that make me wonder about both privacy and heat loss in winter. I’ve mentioned that the novel I’m writing is set partly in present-day Toronto, and that I’m always looking for fresh details and glimpses. Now I scribbled a note about a downy woodpecker hammering away at eye level on a tree, so habituated to people he was absolutely unconcerned as we stood watching. A woman sitting on the steps from her house to the sidewalk and called out a friendly, “Li lo.” 

We started out in the Pocket, a small area of housing originally built for workers in brickyards that had flourished nearby in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. I recently reviewed a book set there when brickyards still flourished, Semi-Detached by Elizabeth Ruth. As we walked along one of the streets in her novel, Concord Avenue, Frances was surprised by the number of people wearing orange tee-shirts with a logo she didn’t recognize, Every Child Matters. She wondered if people were dissing the Black Lives Matter slogan, which she knew had spawned an unsupportive response before: All Lives Matter.

It was September 30, Canada’s National Day of Truth and Reconciliation, and I told her that the tee-shirts honoured the more than 4,000 Indigenous children known to have died in residential schools. Now she was impressed to find that the Pocket was full of orange shirts: local dogwalkers and runners, a woman getting out of her car. Eventually we passed a class of small children from the local elementary school sitting like disordered pumpkins on the playing field beneath the high blue sky. 

Five books deposited. And speaking of pumpkins: As we walked south to Leslieville, Frances again admitted to being puzzled. “I’ve obviously got the date wrong. I thought Halloween wasn’t for another month.” Blow-up ghosts eight feet tall wavered over yards planted with rows of plastic tombstones. Giant skeletons hung from trees. Skeletal arms emerged from beds of chrysanthemums. I explained the popularity of Halloween here, warning that her grandchildren would spend October changing their minds about their costumes, and November eating too much candy. 

Speaking of culture gaps. One of my husband’s personal support workers was puzzled as well, a woman recently arrived from Ethiopia who’s coping with a huge dissonance between life there and here. After asking him to explain Halloween, she said, “But why do you celebrate ghosts? They’re not nice people.” 

Leslieville: We left another seven books in Little Libraries. A couple of days later, we seeded nine more in the Upper Beaches. That means we distributed a total of twenty-one books while walking around ten to fifteen kilometres a day: this in between a busy series of visits to the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Crow’s Theatre, a Mexican restaurant, the cordial Reid’s Distillery. Then I drove Frances to the airport, and something very strange happened.

A lovely friend of mine had died of cancer a few hours before Frances arrived, so I was feeling more than autumnally sad on our walks. It wasn’t unexpected. Jane had been in hospice care, and we were told the previous Friday that the doctors didn’t think she’d make it through the weekend. As it happened, she died early Monday morning with her daughters beside her.

After leaving Frances at the airport on Friday, I drove to Jane’s funeral at a church in the neighbourhood where she grew up. We’d played hockey together so I was meeting our hockey team there. Yet lovely Jane had friends from all parts of her life and the church was packed. Candles were lit by her children, eulogies were given by her brothers and the minister delivered a graceful homily. It was beautiful and heart-rending and Jane-ishly funny at times, especially as we left the church to a recording she’d requested: Don’t You (Forget About Me). Afterward, we went to a nearby house for a reception, but I didn’t feel like staying and headed home.

I was driving up the steep incline of Pottery Road when I saw a man I took to be unhoused sleeping in a very strange place near the top of the hill. There are concrete barriers on the south side of the road there and he was sleeping on the narrow top of one, curled up under what looked to me like an oversized hoodie. I was caught in a line of moving traffic, and hoped that a man walking down the pedestrian pathway behind the barrier would help the hoodie guy, who seemed to be in danger of falling. 

The passerby only glanced at him and kept walking downhill. I drove straight ahead on Mortimer, feeling perturbed, and decided to turn right down the first street, Jackman Avenue, and call 911. I was on hold for a surprisingly long time, and when the despatcher came on, it took a few minutes to establish where the guy was—not far from Broadview on the south side of Pottery Road—and talk about what sort of assistance he might require, ambulance or police. Ambulance, please, I said. I’m afraid he’s going to fall into traffic and get hurt.

Then I looked over and realized the man was walking down Jackman, where I was parked. He wasn’t wearing a hoodie. He had one of those flimsy hospital blankets over his head and that he was holding closed at the throat, the rest of it covering his upper body. He also wore the type of blue mask they give you in hospital, and I thought I could see a green hospital gown under his blanket. Mainly I saw his grey sweatpants below the blanket and a pair of white sneakers with red trim. I can still see them now.

I told the despatcher I thought he might have slipped out of a hospital, and said I was going to follow him down Jackman until they got there. I started driving slowly down the road, and the man glanced at me with a strangely rueful expression in his eyes. He was in his twenties or thirties, thin, olive skinned. A woman walking by sped up her pace as she passed him. 

As the man reached Jackman School, the despatcher told me, “It’s okay, the paramedics are almost there. You can leave now.” By can he seemed to mean should, and I peeled off to the right, wanting to get home.

I took a few turns through the one-way streets and pulled to a stop.

Did that just happen? Suddenly I had no idea if it had happened or if I had hallucinated the whole thing. I was over-busy, tired and stressed. But other people had seen him, hadn’t they? I remembered the man who’d glanced at the guy on Pottery Road, and the woman who’d sped up when she’d seen him. The man could have been looking at anything and the woman remembering an appointment. I distrusted myself and rubbed my forehead. It was too weird for real life.

When I looked to my right, I realized that I’d pulled up beside a Little Free Library. I couldn’t help a sudden laugh. 

Jane, I thought, you would have loved this story.

Then I got out, took a book from my trunk, put it in the Little Library and drove home.