Bulmer Street

I do not know what line of the Bulmer family warranted this street in Toronto, but it is interesting to see how this Yorkshire name (which was and still is both a surname and a place name in England) has spread out across North America. I don't think Elizabeth Bishop ever visited Toronto (she twice spent a brief time in Montreal, indeed, she was hospitalized there in the late 1960s), but she surely would have been delighted to see this ancestral name in such a public space in Canada's largest city.

This photo was taken by Suzie LeBlanc who has just sung St. Matthew's Passion in Toronto and is now working on a Masque based on the myth of Europa. Thanks, Suzie, for sending us a "sign" connected, in spirit, to Elizabeth Bishop.