On the last Sunday afternoon in July, Rob and Beth stood in the road just north of Nassau Street on Augusta Avenue showing off their pet iguanas to passersby. She had one perched on her head; he was stroking one resting on his shoulder. Five photographers jostled for position trying to capture the perfect moment.

“Do you want to hold one?” Rob asked an interested observer. “You want Lizzy or Magic?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she answered.

Rob told me that the iguanas had suffered abuse before they were rescued by the Humane Society, where he acquired them. He brings them out to street festivals to educate people about these green lizards that most us never get to see or touch. 

They all have their own unique personalities.

“Lizzy’s a daddy’s girl,” said Rob. “She’s very possessive and very jealous.” Last year while Rob was recovering from a stroke, Lizzy babysat him. “She would actually climb on my chest. If I got a headache she’d lie on my neck.”

And they’re vegans too. Georgina loves her apples. Lizzy craves bananas. And Magic is a grape and melon addict.

A few steps away, a balloon artist was twisting, pinching and hooking several balloons to make an animal creature for a little girl.

“I can easily go through 300 balloons in a busy afternoon,” said Aaron the Balloon Man, dressed in a silver jacket and wearing a dragon balloon hat.

Originally from Ireland, where he started making balloons in the street four years ago, Aaron is in the midst of writing a book called ‘Tales of the Balloon Man’ about his travels. Four weeks ago, he started in Toronto before heading off to Montreal and Ottawa.

Nearby, Kyle was juggling three balls while walking around on stilts. Since completing a degree in theatre arts in Windsor five years ago, he’s been busking spring, summer and fall at music and street festivals around the province. But this is his first year in Toronto.

“Juggling was in my living room,” said Kyle, pausing for a photo. “Unfortunately I was a theatre student and couldn’t afford cable. So this was the better option.”

During the winter, he works as a professional actor in Windsor. “Things are a little dry in the industry,” he said. “But hopefully in the winter it will pick up again.”

As I moved north on Augusta, I noticed Steve Mann was playing his hydraulophone, which is a cross between a flute and a pipe organ, with an abstract aquatic shape, a fat end and a resonant cavity. “It’s kind of like a flute that has a mouth piece for every finger hole so that you can play more than one note at the same time,” said Mann, who invented the hydraulophone after dreaming that he was playing a pipe organ in a fountain.

At the intersection of Oxford and Augusta, Angela Bischoff was busy telling everyone about the province’s plans to expand nuclear energy. Bischoff, who is opposed to nuclear energy but in favour of renewables, is the Campaign Manager of Ontario’s Green Future for the Ontario Clean Air Alliance.

On Sunday, she invited people to send postcards (which can also be found at the Ontario’s Green Future website and sent electronically) to Prime Minister Harper and to Ontario’s Minister of Energy and Infrastructure George Smitherman expressing opposition to more taxpayer subsidies for nuclear power.

“Everybody I talk to takes one,” said Bischoff. “I’ve given out 50 postcards in fifteen minutes.”

Most people, according to Bischoff, are anti-nuclear yet unaware of Ontario’s plans to move forward with nuclear power. “The province is planning to replace our existing nuclear plants with new nuclear plants and increasing nuclear generation,” she said. “That information nobody knows about.”

The Ontario Clean Air Alliance is hoping to convince Ottawa not to subsidize Ontario’s nuclear expansion budget that’s calling for at least two multibillion-dollar refurbishment projects.

Before leaving Augusta Avenue, I managed to grab a few minutes with Alexander, who ran a small puppet show. He called it a walk-by act, which meant people could walk by, stop for a few minutes, watch the show and then move on.

“My big shtick is that they give me a subject, which I improvise a song for them on that subject with my marvelous characters here,” said Alexander, as he pointed to his puppets. “It’s a very small puppet show but it seems to work very well.”

He got the idea for a puppet show after work dried up in the film industry. And even though the work is exhausting, especially since Alexander is performing five or six hours at a stretch, it’s something he enjoys because it’s so challenging.

I left Alexander and headed across Baldwin Street towards Kensington Avenue, marveling at the array of food, clothing and small specialty shops while admiring the efforts of neighbourhood groups who’ve fought gentrification and prevented big box stores from taking over the Market.

As I walked down Kensington Avenue, I heard the voice of a poet. “…so walk with me to the edge of the chessboard and peer down,” she said. “Consider everything that might not happen and then look up…”

That was Lara Bozabalian performing Music Box.

“It sort of fuses my love of chess and classical music and the notion of two people unable to move forward in a relationship,” said Bozabalian, a member of the first All-Women Canadian Slam team, along with Truth Is, Ariel Platt & Kimiko Carter, that went to the American National Poetry Slam from August 4 to August 8 in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Every month at the Drake Hotel, she performs at the Underground in a judged competition. At the end of the year, the top four poets represent Canada at the National Poetry Slam.

Bozabalian, who’s a high school English teacher, didn’t start writing poetry until she was 24 years old and has only been performing for the last two years.

“It’s very organic,” she said. “You write the piece and you learn what parts are for the audience and how you can move and share.”

John Bonnar

John Bonnar is an independent journalist producing print, photo, video and audio stories about social justice issues in and around Toronto.