When I arrive at the Strachan Avenue streetcar stop on the north side of Queen West, the TTC shelter still looks like a TTC shelter — curved glass roof, sterile metallic posts and floor-to-ceiling ads on the far wall. By the time I leave, after spending about three hours with Toronto Public Space Committee’s Art Attack! division, the structure will look more like something out of the Hoth sequences in The Empire Strikes Back.
Behind the shelter, up to their shins in the virgin snow of Trinity Bellwods Park, Art Attack!'s Corbin Smith and his friend Bruce Ward have already laid the initial snow bricks of what will be the second annual TTC Snow Fort (dubbed The ReKonstruKtion on the FaceBook event page). We chat for a few minutes about engineering particulars — not that any of us are what you would call professional igloo-ists. But as the wind picks up, whipping snow across the barren park, there’s a tacit understanding that physical labour will provide us with much needed warmth, and we set to work.
The “bricks” are formed by packing snow into smaller-than-usual blue and green bins, which Corbin and Bruce have brought with them. Though the snow is still fluffy, it holds together surprisingly well with the pressure and moisture from my already soggy gloves. I’m actually somewhat amazed that the bottom row supports the second and third tiers as we overturn the bins and ease the snowy cuboids out.
Soon, we’re joined by Michelle and her daughter Ininna, along with Art Attack! coordinator Liam O’Doherty. With this new division of labour, the walls begin to pile up quickly, despite Ininna’s preoccupation with tobogganing down the small snow mound next to the shelter. People waiting for the streetcar or just walking by begin to take interest in the project, offering technical suggestions and encouraging exclamations of “That’s amazing.”
This response is already a lot bit better than last year’s construction. According to Corbin, after the crew had been working on a similar snow fort at Queen East and Jones until the wee hours of the morning, they had to abandon the project when a TTC constable threatened to have them arrested for destruction of property — a somewhat ridiculous charge considering nothing was destroyed (the last time I checked, snow eventually melts). In the past, Art Attack! has challenged the advertising space on city property by posting homemade mixed-media-on-paper renderings over the ads on garbage bins, on wayfinding structures and, of course, in transit shelters. But building a snow fort is definitely one of their more intriguing, if not downright enjoyable, projects yet.
By the time I couldn’t feel my feet any longer, we had carefully stacked over 200 snow blocks for a six-foot0high wall that extended all the way around the front of the shelter, with a window on the east wall for spotting approaching streetcars — and another window carefully located on the outside wall so that the west-facing advertisement now publicizes… a fresh new approach.