{"id":319,"date":"2020-02-06T15:01:06","date_gmt":"2020-02-06T15:01:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/canadianauthors.org\/toronto\/?p=319"},"modified":"2020-02-06T18:08:41","modified_gmt":"2020-02-06T18:08:41","slug":"the-watchers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/canadianauthors.org\/toronto\/the-watchers\/","title":{"rendered":"The Watchers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Michael Newman, Christopher Johnstone, and\nChristopher Gorman<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m sitting at a table in Starbucks. My venti\nlatte is growing cold as I stare at the man in front of me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He\u2019s stocky, his shoulders are broad, and his\nunshaven stubble is patchy on his black skin. His coat hangs loosely on his\nshoulders. It\u2019s a nice coat\u2014a North Face\u2014that looks like it used to fit, before\nhard times struck. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

His eyes are downcast, as if he\u2019s embarrassed,\nand he\u2019s mumbling. I catch, \u201cFive dollars for a coffee and they can\u2019t spare me\na twoonie,\u201d in a voice that somehow conveys that he remembers being able to\nspend five dollars on a coffee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He heads out, the door closing with a swoosh\nthat somehow seems to lighten the air of the caf\u00e9 behind him. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I glance at my watch as the heater next to me\nkicks in. It\u2019s just past five in the evening. I have to be at Queen and Spadina\nfor seven o\u2019clock which means I have lots of time, but I still need to eat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Police sirens cut through my thoughts. At\nleast six police cars and an ambulance mount the sidewalk across the street\nfrom the Starbucks and come to a halt with a screech just as a harbour police\nboat pulls quickly into the marina.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I toss back my latte. More emergency services\nare pulling up, and my curiousity is piqued. I still have time to cross the\nstreet to see what the commotion is all about before grabbing a bite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sweeping up my things, I pull on my overcoat\nand step out into the cold. The air is bitter, biting into my skin, and the\ncold amplifies the screams of the sirens. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I cross the street, heading for the gathering\nonlookers. I\u2019m surprised to see my eighty-three year old Danish neighbour\nJurgen has already beat me here with his dog. He always did have a sense for\nwhere the excitement was going to be. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I walk up just as two of the police officers\nin the boat jump over the side, still in their winter coats, their guns still\nstrapped to their waists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They\u2019re converging on a calm ripple in the\nwater. The water is dark with a deep cold, but I can see that same distinctive\nNorth Face coat that was in Starbucks mere moments ago, lazily sinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The police reach him, start to pull him up,\nand the calm ripples explode into a violent thrashing as he starts to fight\nthem off. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through the tumultuous yelling I hear my name\nand look up. There\u2019s a woman there, young, with her brown hair cut in a bob.\nHer purse hangs off her right arm, and she clutches a large black and white\npuppy, holding it close to her heart. Her eyes are distraught, and she\u2019s\nfocused intently on the accident. She\u2019s not the one who called my name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I look to her right and see Jurgen gesturing at\nme, beckoning me over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDid you see that?\u201d he asks excitedly. \u201cHe\njust jumped in! No one around him at all\u2014walked straight out of that Starbucks\nthere and straight into the lake!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I shake my head in disbelief as violent\ncoughing erupts from the water. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The police haul the man over the edge,\novercoming his kicking. He\u2019s not screaming, but he\u2019s yelling, cursing,\ndemanding that they let him die\u2014that his life isn\u2019t worth living.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The woman with the dog shrinks smaller. Jurgen\ngoes quiet. We all watch in stunned silence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re still trying to comprehend what\u2019s taking\nplace as a group of dry police officers step up and haul the man to his feet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They ignore his protests and almost drag him\nacross the cold, bare pavement to a waiting ambulance. Through the yelling, the\nparamedics step in, wrapping him tightly in a thick blanket and bustle him into\nthe warmth of the ambulance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The doors shut, cutting off the angry curses,\nand as quickly as they arrive, they depart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Silence fills the air as loud as the sirens\nbefore it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a moment, I stare after him. I watch as\nthe woman and her dog continue on their way. I watch as Jurgen shakes his head\nand starts for home. For a brief moment we three glimpsed through the cracks at\na soul that had fallen through. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I cross the street to catch the 510 streetcar to Queen, I can\u2019t help but wonder if anyone will ever convince him that life is once again worth living. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

January 30, 2020 The Journey: A Group Writing Session Group 2<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A note on the process of writing The Watchers<\/em> by Christopher Gorman<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Watcher <\/em>was born of a collaboration between three writers who had never written together before as part of the Canadian Author\u2019s\u2014Toronto group writing event: The Journey. Our group, author Michael Newman, artist and writer Chris Johnstone, and myself (Christopher Gorman), was randomly selected by drawing numbers from an old fashioned top hat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We splintered off from the other group and\nsequestered ourselves in a room with some mango-orange tea that was quite\nperfect at stimulating the creativity, and set to work. We knew where we had to\nstart: our protagonist had to arrive at CSI Spadina, and our characters had to\nbe born of our observations on the way to the event. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similar to the other group, we started out by\ntalking about our respective journeys to the event (Chris and Michael by\nstreetcar and myself by an aborted streetcar ride turned Uber ride), the\nfeelings we felt, and some people we had witnessed that might make interesting\ncharacters. At a certain point, Michael leaned back and said, \u201cYou know,\nyesterday was Bell\u2019s Let\u2019s Talk day, and that reminds me of something that fits\nwith that theme. It happened two weeks ago\u2014not tonight\u2014but it still involved me\nand a streetcar ride.\u201d And he proceeded to tell us a poignant story told to him\nby his neighbour of witnessing a man who had given up on life throw himself\ninto Lake Ontario and try to fight off his rescuers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the time he finished his recounting, it was\nclear we were going to attempt to open up a small window into this man\u2019s story.\nWe had no idea of the details that led him to that moment in his life, but we\nfelt it important to illustrate that mental health is fragile and that the\npotential to wind up in a similar situation is not as far away as most of us\nthink. It was also clear that we were running out of time and we hadn\u2019t started\nwriting yet! Only half an hour of our allotted writing time remained!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the second hand sweeping by on the clock,\nwe started by filling out the character section of the \u2018cheat sheet\u2019, as we\nknew the characters were at the heart of our story. For the purposes of our\nstory, we took creative license and mixed in people we had seen on the way to\nthe session, with people Michael had seen two weeks previous. We gave them\nnames, descriptions, occupations, personalities. For our character who would\nwind up in the lake, we created a back story and a job that had been lost not\ntoo long before that, making him feel real to us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had my laptop in my bag beside me, but it\nfelt like this story needed the organic rawness of a piece of paper and a pen.\nSo I wrote the first sentence, and then Chris and Michael started throwing in\nideas, events and descriptions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At times, the ideas came faster than my pen was\nmoving and before I knew it we had our story plus three pages of partially\nfilled in scribbled side-notes and to-come-later\u2019s. The story itself was full\nof scratched out sentences and arrows redirecting sentence fragments. Bit by\nbit, we ended up with three pages of story, and brought it to a close by\nreinforcing that not that long ago, this was just an average man going through\nhis life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We wound up taking an extra fifteen minutes,\nbut in the end created something we\u2019re all proud of. Chris and I know each\nother fairly well but we\u2019ve never tried to co-write a piece together, and it\nwas our first time really meeting Michael. Overall it was an amazing experience\nand we would be happy to work together again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Can\u2019t wait for our next writing adventure! <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

-Christopher<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The story you are about to read was born of a collaboration between three writers who had never written together before as part of the Canadian Author\u2019s\u2014Toronto group writing event.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[19],"tags":[21,20],"class_list":["post-319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writings","tag-group-sessions","tag-writings","category-19","description-off"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/canadianauthors.org\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/canadianauthors.org\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/canadianauthors.org\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/canadianauthors.org\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/canadianauthors.org\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/canadianauthors.org\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":326,"href":"http:\/\/canadianauthors.org\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319\/revisions\/326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/canadianauthors.org\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/canadianauthors.org\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/canadianauthors.org\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}