GERRYlive - the life and times of a man who at 96 struggles to live fully and for himself

Sophia and Gerry McCord at the Paddock Tavern on Queen W. in Toronto, 1991

I met GERRY McCORD decades back when i rambled along biking up and down QueenWest in Toronto's 'art&create' district - back in the 80's into much of the 90's it was the 'Main' of Toronto where dozens upon dozens of very talented and wild real people, freaks, doppelgangers and the like hung and hugged and embraced the creative live full out and high throttle - nights never ending 'till dawn - night after night after month after years. Away from most of that stuff were the normal or near normal regulars who lived in the area sort of not even aware that it was taken over by creators of creations - artists who always look for interesting cheap places to live, love and linger. For many of them it was a bit run down, cheaper than living elsewhere and right downtown in the heart of everything that was anything.

GERRY was and is one of those normal citizens who lived in the area in the senior citizens aparatments. He was always out and about always walking, checking things out paying attention to things that inerested him which were very unusual.  The locals knew him as the man who was out every day and night wandering in and out of places. He was a man who was then in his 70's who loved geometry, who actually met and spoke rather often with world famous, projectile geometer, Coxeter. GERRY would bring his geometric ramblings into the Paddock tavern at Bathurst and Queen and amid the BOPkids on BOPnight would want to go thru his endless meanderings of point a, point b and so on. He was wild about geometry, women and life and, he was and is, an undiagnosed bi polar who is now at the age of 96 still filled with the fevour of the mania but settled in his senior citizens apartment and with failing eyesight and failing health finally calming down fearing that a fall on his replaced hips might cripple him for life and that he says would mean suicide, 'No point living like that .. in a chair!'

I have been recording bits and pieces of my encounters with GERRY over those decades, sometimes nothing more than notes on a pad, other times photographs, sometimes video or film but always memory placed his personality into my movements thru life -

As my life took me away from Queen west, I never forgot GERRY and still, when in Toronto, go see him and listen to his hours and hours of thoughts of his life, his actions, his way of living those many decades as a single man attached only to himself and as he says, 'I'm always in love... in love with myself.'

An odd way to sum up ones life but an honest one and i do believe after those decades of listening to GERRY and watching his life unfold, that he really does mainly care for himself more than any other person and admits it openly; whereas, most people do that but few admit it so boldly...

At the present time when i'm in Toronto i record his life and thoughts and may one day put them into some form of a document that will reveal his life to others - there's only one GERRYlive, believe me!