"A steel-toed sketch artist"
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Friday » June 23 » 2006
A steel-toed sketch artist
Wychwood Park
Peter Kuitenbrouwer
National Post
Friday, June 23, 2006
He's a sketch artist with steel-toe boots. For years Anthony Jim, an engineer at the Toronto Transit Commission's sprawling Hillcrest Yards, took lunch- hour strolls in Wychwood Park, Toronto's tiny, historic gated enclave that is just across Davenport Road.
"It's very enjoyable," he said. "Many TTC employees walk through. It splits the day in half and takes away some stress.
"I walked here many, many times and said, 'Hmm, I can sketch it.' Then five years ago I started."
Armed with nothing but a sheet of 8½ -by-11-inch paper and an HB pencil, he began to draw the heritage homes, and people began to notice.
"Albert Fulton, the archivist of Wychwood Park, said, 'Anthony, you have to sketch all the houses."
Five years later, Mr. Jim has drawn 58 of the 60 Wychwood homes. The other two are under renovation, and he'll do those sketches next year. Many he had to sketch in winter when the leaves had fallen; in this lush, wooded community, most houses are hidden behind foliage in summer.
"When I hide in someone's backyard and sketch, I feel like I'm in Muskoka," said the father of two.
Mr. Jim sold all the drawings, most of them to the homeowners, for about $250 each, and raised more than $10,000. He gave every cent to the United Way. "It's fun," said Mr. Jim, a rail-thin man whose grin is as big as a streetcar. "I improve my sketching skills by doing some good for United Way. And some people invited me in to have a drink or a tea inside."
I met Mr. Jim on the corner of Davenport Road and Bathurst Street yesterday, where he sat in the shade of the big trees here and worked on a sketch of the TTC central control building.
I was winded from climbing the hill on Bathurst north of Dupont Avenue. Talking to Mr. Jim perked me right up.
There he sat, on a tiny blue cloth folding bench, sketching. Beside him on the cement wall was a new pack of HB pencils. So far, he has sketched the control building from two angles and is working on the third.
Many mornings Mr. Jim catches the subway from his home at Danforth Avenue and Coxwell Avenue, arrives here at 7:15 a.m. and sketches for an hour before work.
As a teen growing up in Hong Kong, Mr. Jim learned to draw from British engineers. His brother was in Canada.
"I was struggling. Working class, eh? My brother said, 'Why don't you come over here?'
In 1973, he came. In 1977, he graduated from Ryerson in engineering.
"My teacher, Anthony Souroshnikoff, was an artist as well as an engineer," Mr. Jim recalled. "He was a renaissance man."
Those mentors are with him today, as he sharpens his pencils and draws, always improving, he says.
"Each time you pick up something about the pencil skills," he said. "I'm no big artist. I'm just a regular kind of person doing regular kind of stuff. If I can help out a bit, that's great."
It's so heartwarming on my walk to meet people like him, immigrants who pour so much love into this town. Earlier yesterday, on Augusta Avenue in Kensington Market, I met Jack and Elizabeth Sunbulian, Armenians who 20 years ago figured out a good way to make money in this multi-culti town: sell flags.
Today, Araz Impressions, their shop at the corner of Nassau Street, carries the flags of 232 nations, including Kyrghyztan, Kiribati, Comoros and Curacao.
"Where's Curacao?" I asked.
"Who knows," Mr. Sunbulian said. "I think probably either the Far East or South America."
Yesterday, he stood making from scratch red-and-green Portugal key chain tassles, which he sells for $5.99. The red-blooded, fiercely nationalistic Portuguese community, passionate about their World Cup team, account for 80% of his business right now, he said.
Even so, patriots will be happy to know that his best-selling flag is the Maple Leaf.
Once again World Cup fever gripped the town yesterday; I popped into Cafe Brasiliano on Dundas Street West, where one TV showing the Italy-Czech Republic match had half the crowd's attention; the other half of the patrons were cheering for Ghana, in its match against the U.S.A.
A Portuguese friend leaving next week for the Azores, Eduardo Pimental, expressed a bit of regret about the trip. "It's much more exciting to watch the World Cup here in Toronto. Back home, there's only people cheering for one team."
pkuitenbrouwer@nationalpost.com
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