Being There

Sil­ver Fox Way dedication

A few weeks ago I had the plea­sure of pho­tograph­ing a street dedication.

The Sil­ver Fox started work­ing at the Hong Kong race track when he was 14. Nobody knows how old he really is, but the best guess is 91. He still shows up to the track, to groom and  train the horses. It was the Sil­ver Fox’s son who brought us here, to the family’s horse farm in Rich­mond, Ontario. Appar­ently when you build a new­sub­di­vi­sion you get to name the streets. He used his trusty shears to cut the red rib­bon strung between the two post mark­ing the coun­try road that now bears his name.

Some impor­tant guests were late, and I took this pho­to­graph as we were wait­ing for them to arrive. The crowd was buzzing with worry about the approach­ing storm clouds (it was a big storm; some of my com­puter equip­ment was fried by a surge). In the dis­tance we could hear the thun­der. The storm passed to the North, every­one showed up, and the rib­bon cut­ting went smoothly. After­ward, we headed back to Chi­na­town for dinner.

What a din­ner it was. I have pho­tographed a lot of wed­dings in the last six years, and never have I seen so much food. The eat­ing lasted four hours. I lost count of how many courses we had, but I remem­ber every­thing being deli­cious. The ban­quet was attended by roughly 150 peo­ple, and it was the most diverse crowd I have seen in one place in a very long time.  I grew up here in Chi­na­town, but mov­ing away and going to col­lege and uni­ver­sity I had for­got­ten how incred­i­bly free­ing it is to be in a crowd like this. The only other time I have seen as much food, or such an accept­ing and open com­mu­nity, was at the Chi­nese New Year cel­e­bra­tions at my grade school. In the back of my mind, I couldn’t help but feel that this party was a wel­come back to the neighborhood.

Being Cana­dian is a funny, spe­cial thing. See­ing so many dif­fer­ent peo­ple in one room enjoy­ing each oth­ers’ com­pany made me proud of where I come from. They might not name a street after me, but I hope one day that I can look out across a room and be proud of the com­mu­nity I have helped to build.

Oh yeah, they call him the Sil­ver Fox because he really is one smooth operator.