Saturday, December 09, 2006



This project was done one summer away back about 18 years ago. I
remember taking it with me to summer concerts at Ontario Place
which is located on the shores of Lake Ontario in Toronto.

At that time there was an outdoor venue there to go and see concerts.
The concerts were free with your admission to Ontario Place. The
concert stage was in the centre of a bowl shaped indentation in the
ground, with seating rising up on three sides. There was a high roof over
the stage but the sides were open to the elements, and you could also sit
on the grass on the higher slopes above the seating area. The stage area
could rotate (like a lazy Susan) during the shows so no matter where you
sat you would eventually have a couple of opportunities to face the
performers.

I was on holiday from work for a couple of the shows that my friends and
I wished to see that Summer, so I would go down to Ontario Place in the
afternoon, and pick out seats for us on a row of benches close to the
stage area, and settled in. Usually the person, or group performing that
evening would show up in the afternoon to run a sound check, and would
perform a few songs, and do what ever needed to be done to prepare for
the show. So those of us there early to hold onto seats were treated to a
preview of the show.

To pass the time while waiting for my friends to come from work to join
me at the Forum (which is what the venue was called) for the show I would
take something to read, and my cross stitch. It passed the time quickly and
made the wait of about six hours bearable. Those wooden benches were
hard on the back side when sitting for so long but that was the only draw
back to the whole experiance.

So who did we see back then at the Forum? At the risk of dating myself
I'll list who I remember seeing. Some of these would be Canadian groups
so I don't know how well known they would be away from here.
1) Mike and the Mechanics
2) Rita MacNeil
3) The Monkees (all but Mike)
4) 1964 (a Beatles tribute band)
5) The Box
6) Glass Tiger
7) John Williams conducting the Toronto Symphony Orchestra....Star Wars
done live....WOW!!
8) Gowan
9) Blue Rodeo
10) The Nylons
Ah, it was so much fun. Now the Forum is gone, a standard concert stage
has taken it's place, and you have to pay a good chunk of change to get in.
It's no fun anymore. We saw The Rankin Family there once and though
they were great the venue was nothing special. And too expensive.

1 comment:

Gina E. said...

Judy, I love the way you write about your memories of where you were and what you were doing while you were working on your various cross stitch projects. I really can't remember that kind of stuff; probably because most of my larger projects took 2 or more years to complete!! Is this lovely creation framed? I was in a "$2 Shop" today and found a large frame for $10. I was so pleased, because I have a couple of finished items that I haven't got professionally framed because it is so expensive. So I bought this frame and put one of my works in it, took one of Ken's posters down off a wall and hung mine up. He has just come in and said "That frame doesn't suit the cross stitch" - in other words (Take it down!!) I'll leave it there for a while and let him get used to it - lol!
Have a lovely Christmas!
Hugs
Gina