Stories from the Sidewalk: How Toronto connects through posters

Read it at The Mike

If you’ve ever walked around Toronto, you’ve probably spotted a strange poster or advertisement stapled to an electrical post or a tree. Maybe you’ve wondered what you’d find if you went to one of their events or websites or scanned their QR code. In this article I bring to you three mysterious posters found around Toronto, and tell you their stories.

This poster was found on the OCAD campus. The awkward photo of a screen of a QR code brings me to styleicon.org, a competition in support of the Elton John AIDS Foundation, where participants compete to become the style icon of the year. The group phase is coming to a close and Mirjana has placed 8th.

A snoop around her Instagram reveals that Mirjana is a registered massage therapist, and that in the 90s, she was a stunning runway model. These days she posts photos of her bold outfits, often featuring frills, bright colors and patterns, and vintage pieces. She is always smiling. Even though I’ve never met her I’m sorry she hasn’t made it to the next phase of the Style Icon contest. Better luck next year Mirjana. I’ll be rooting for you.

This poster was found on St George Street, right outside Robarts. I send a message to the email address and a few days later get a phone call with Schroeder Reitzel, a film student at TMU. He tells me the poster is part of his latest project, a documentary called My Red Shirt, about his search for the man in this photo.

In late February, he spotted the man at Innis Town Hall, and snapped a photo of him. Reitzel was compelled by the stranger because, “he looked like he could have been anybody's dad. I think the fact that he was so normal looking. But maybe not. He stuck out to me in the moment.”

But Reitzel isn’t only compelled by the man in the red shirt. “I see interesting people all the time and I never see them again,” he says, “and these people just disappear from our lives.” Reitzel hasn’t found the man yet, but he isn’t giving up anytime soon. He and his film crew have put up around 140 posters around Toronto and plan to put up even more, even offering a cash prize for anyone who can find the mystery man.

The film is scheduled to come out in mid-December and will be showing at TMU and local theaters.

This poster, found on College Street, was put up by Erin Saint Gull. I meet her for coffee to hear the story behind it. Saint Gull walks into the cafe wearing a big fur coat and matching fur hat. She has the kind of energy that fills up a room. I ask her who the woman in the red shirt is, and excitedly launches into a story about a different poster she found in her neighborhood. The poster reads:

I met you on Saturday night. You were walking on College Street. I was sitting at a bar. You had a red shirt on and your hair was up. Silly me, I never got your name. I want to apologize for my behavior. I was celebrating my friend's birthday and had too much to drink. I was inappropriate. I hope you can forgive me. If you let me take you out for dinner, you will see I am actually a really nice and smart guy and a traditional gentleman. I am saved in your contacts as Alex. I also left my number for you at Cafe Diplomatico. I hope to hear from you.

“He decides to make a plan and to take action, and that is the exact quality… I am looking for in a partner,” says Saint Gull. No one at the bar had his number, so she made her own poster, in the hopes that Alex, or someone with the same sense of initiative, would reach out.

When Saint Gull describes herself as agentic, she means it. She graduated high school at 15, and at 17 moved from Paris to Toulouse, where she couch surfed her way into a new city and community. After that, she moved to a house in the woods in Tours, then Portland, and finally, Toronto. “The world is something that you create,” she says. “There is no great man. I do not believe in the great man theory of history. I believe that it's always people just like us who have just decided to do things, right? You can just do things.”

Saint Gull has the same take-charge approach when it comes to dating. She hasn’t heard back from Alex, but she’s received six emails so far, (excluding mine) one of which resulted in a date. “My goal is to be in the same room as the kind of person who is compatible with [me,]” she says. “That person exists and is roaming around in Toronto… I just need to be there at the same time, same place, and look into their eyes and be like, ‘so what's your deal?’”

If you think you or someone you know might be a good match for Erin, you can email her at torontoheartfelt@gmail.com.

After investigating these posters and hearing from the people who put them up, I find myself lingering on posters a little more when I’m out walking. And I think you should too. You might scan a QR code that gives you malware, but you might also find a style icon, a mystery man, or a girl who wears a lot of fur and has a lot of stories. Why not take the risk? If I learned one thing from these posters, it’s that Toronto is a city of people searching for people, looking to be seen, and for their stories to be told. Only some are brave enough to put it on a lamp post.