Back Lane Studios
9 Neepawa Avenue M6R 1V1 Toronto, ON, Canada

Our Stories: Our History Roncesvalles Village resident Lisette Mallet remembers the Acadian tradition of Christmas nolet, a molasses cookie I grew up, as my parents did, on the Acadian peninsula in northeastern New Brunswick. One object I have that belonged to them is a chamber pot, the first item they bought when they moved into a house they’d built in 1947 just before my brother was born. My mother refused to have her first child in my father’s parents’ one-bedroom hou...se, then occupied by 18 people, including my parents. But I have something else from my Acadian family the tradition of molasses cookies. These are large, tender, cake-like morsels with generous amounts of ginger, cinnamon, cloves and a pinch of allspice. You can visit any Acadian baker’s house, and these cookies look, smell and taste the same. Even if you don’t like them, they bring comfort, like the time my nephew handed me a tin full, made by his paternal grandmother for my first train trip to study in Toronto. I remember how they took me back to the smell of my maternal grandmother’s woodstove and the diffuse light in her kitchen. She didn’t have much to say to us children except to tell us to go to the living room where she kept cookies in a round metal tin. And then my thoughts went to my mother growing up in that old house, the third in a family of 12 children. In those days it was the custom to hang one of your stockings by the wood stove on Christmas Eve. In the morning you would find maybe an orange, some candy and a molasses cookie called a nolet in the shape of an infant or a doll. It could be as large as a small baby or smaller if there were many children and less dough. In some families, your godmother made your nolet, and on Christmas morning, the children were often sent off to get their cookie. One of my mom’s younger brothers once ate his and then hers before she even got to see it. He was never forgiven. Photos: 1. Lisette’s nolets. 2. Lisette’s father’s family. 3. The house they lived in. 4. A molasses cookie recipe Lisette uses. #christmascookies #acadia #molassescookies #newbrunswick

Our Stories: Our History -- Mary Louise Ashbourne on how her family always cooked the Christmas turkey! When I was growing up in Weston during the 1930s and ’40s, we would have a fresh turkey for Christmas. It would still have things like the claws and pin feathers on it. My mother would take a twisted newspaper, hold the turkey up, then set the newspaper on fire and singe off those pin feathers. She was very good at it, and fast. We always cooked our turkey in a well-grease...d brown paper bag. As long as it’s well-greased, it never burns. All the flavours and the moisture are kept inside. That’s the way I’d still cook a turkey if I cooked one today. In the good old days, we would have greased the bag with bacon fat. More recently we used just margarine or something like that. It had to be a solid fat, and you would rub it in well. We prepared the turkey with stuffing, sewed it up and I would place strips of bacon on the breast and drumsticks. (The kids loved the bacon, which always mysteriously disappeared before the turkey was carved.) The turkey went right inside the bag and into the roasting pan breast side up for a long slow cook in the oven at 275F. I never had a failure, and I cooked a lot of turkeys in my lifetime, every one of them in a brown paper bag. After the grocery stores switched to plastic here, I used to enlist all my friends to get paper bags for me when they travelled. They got a big kick out of that. Over the years, my friends and relations would show up with a couple of bags and say, I’ve got a present for you! They thought it was a big joke, but I used them! #turkey #christmasturkey #westonvillage #toronto

Kevin Whitakerr's exhibit is up at the studio.. You'll be able to view it through a video tour by our film-maker and instructor Jeana McCabe, plus award winning author and Roncy resident Carolyn Abraham interviews Kevin.

Our Stories: Our History James FitzGerald on anti-vaxxers and his grandfather. Anti-vaxxer demonstrations. Conspiracy theories. A backlash against strict health measures. Sound familiar? Welcome to 1919 and an outbreak of smallpox in Toronto. My grandfather Dr. Gerry FitzGerald literally rolled up his sleeve to help quell opposition to the smallpox vaccine produced by Connaught Laboratories, which he had founded. Dr. Charles Hastings, Toronto’s chief medical officer, had c...alled for inoculation of the city’s entire population. School children whose parents refused to comply would be expelled from school. On Nov. 13, 1919, the small but vocal Anti-Vaccination League staged a protest at City Hall. Their signs read: Compulsory Vaccination German Born -- Down With Compulsion! Veterans complained that the forced vaccination was antidemocratic and unacceptable to the men who had risked their lives for freedom in the Great War. There was a tremendous irony in this. Many soldiers who served in WW1 had benefited from serums and vaccines produced by Connaught. In earlier conflicts, at least eight soldiers died of disease for every one killed in battle; on the Western Front, the Canadian Corps pulled off a spectacular turnaround, in large part because of Connaught’s work, with only one soldier dying of disease for every 20 killed in battle. To help quell anti-vaccine sentiment, my grandfather dramatically rolled up his sleeve in front of his undergraduate U of T medical students and injected the smallpox vaccine; then he inoculated the whole class. Through the coming winter, the city recorded 2,800 cases of smallpox and 11 deaths. When no deaths were attributed to the vaccinations of over 200,000 people, the dispute died down. Given anti-vaccine sentiment in the U.S., former presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama are now promising a public demonstration of taking the Covid-19 vaccine, just as my grandfather had done for smallpox more than a century ago. Photos: 1. Anti-vaxxers at Toronto City Hall; 2. An outline of Connaught’s work; 3. Dr. Gerry FitzGerald; 4. @Roncy resident James Fitzgerald's family history What Disturbs Our Blood. @barackobama @georgewbush #vaccines @oldtoronto #torontohistory #toronto #publichealth See more

Our Stories: Our History -- Betty Ferrie on getting a TTC job after WW2. In 1946 or ’47, when I was 19, I left our family farm in Greenwood just north of Pickering and went to Toronto for work. I found a job at the TTC paying $19 a week, which was a good salary then. But they warned me to get a place to live before I took the job. In those days, it was harder to find accommodation than work. There were many displaced people in Toronto, and there was a housing shortage. I m...anaged to rent half a bed in a rooming house near Pape and Danforth. I had to share a bed with a girl I didn’t know. I also had to eat all of my meals out, which was difficult for a farm girl. (A greasy spoon at the corner served meals for 70 cents.) Moving to Toronto was an enormous shock for me, but I could take the train home on weekends. That was the saving grace. After six months sharing a bed, I put an ad in the paper saying an educated farm girl was looking for room and board five days a week. I found a place in the same Pape and Danforth area. I didn’t keep up with the girl who I shared the bed with. I was a stickler, who grew up in a church household with morals. She was much freer. It was interesting working at the TTC. I was in the cashier department. An armoured truck would get the fare boxes, dump the contents into a bag for, say, Runnymede, and they would bring the bags to the TTC cashiers. We would have to count and estimate how many tickets and cash came in on the Runnymede route or Bloor St. -- that sort of thing. It was a good job. I got a TTC pass and was able to ride around the city for free. (Tickets were four for 25 cents.) I learned the names of the streets quickly because of working there, so it was helpful in that way. I worked for eight years at 35 Yonge, which was TTC headquarters, on the north side of Front. The building sadly was torn down in the late 1950s. Photos: Betty on the farm (she loves animals) (1); now (2); when she moved to TO (3); with a friend from the TTC and Santa (4); the building at 35 Yonge (5) . @old_ttc Old Toronto Series #toronto #ttc

Our Stories: Our History -- Brenda Gravelle remembers life with her grandparents in Northern Ontario: Three generations of my family worked in Northern Ontario for the Algoma Central Railway (ACR), starting with my grandfather (Vaari in Finnish). He was a section foreman, who looked after part of the track, and he and my Mummo (grandmother) lived in the section houses that served the rail lines. These houses had no electricity and no running water. Most of the cooking was do...ne over a wood stove. We bathed in a traditional sauna built by Vaari. My mother, raised with her sister in the wilderness, hated the bugs and lack of indoor plumbing, and most of all, she hated sweating over the wood stove. But not my grandmother! She was a force to be reckoned with in that kitchen. Her meats were dry and overdone, but you were in for a treat when she roasted vegetables, fried fish or baked. Pulla, a sweet, cardamom-flavoured braided loaf known as coffee bread in English, was my favourite. To get supplies, Mummo would write her list on a piece of paper, tie it to a stone and wait for the passenger train to pass by each evening around 4:15 p.m. When we heard the whistle blow at Mile 45, we would wait on the veranda. Mummo would stand by the tracks waving the yellow flag. That would let them know we had an order and to have the baggage door open. Either my oldest brother or my Mummo would wait for the conductor’s hand signal, and then they would toss the note into the baggage car. The next morning, the train would stop and our groceries would be delivered, like magic! The smell of pulla brings back memories of a simpler time, swimming in the lake, going to sauna each night, watching the stars from the section house veranda and of the warmth and love of my Mummo. I can still picture her standing in front of the wood stove on a hot summer day, apron on, hair tied up in a scarf, her favourite sleeveless cotton housedress on, putting more wood into the oven to keep the temperature just right for baking pulla. Brenda contributed her pulla story to our favourite childhood food project. Check out more stories on our website: http://backlanestudios.ca/our-stories-our-history/ #food #foodmemories #ontario

Our Stories: Our History -- Joanne Shimotakahara on how her mom learned to cook My mother, Esther Kuwabara, was an excellent cook. One summer, when we were living in Hamilton years ago, she made food for 160 children at a United Church camp on Lake Erie. How she gained those skills takes us back to her parents’ story in their adoptive country. Her father, Sannosuke Ennyu, was sent in 1894 by the Japanese government to identify fish stocks around Haida Gwaii and Prince Ruper...t and assess if any species could be introduced to Japanese waters. In his report, he identified some potential fish. He also fell in love with Canada. Back in Japan in 1902, he gave a speech about the fish. My grandmother Moto Otsuyama attended the lecture, saw my grandfather’s pictures and, I think, fell in love with the fish. Soon they were married. My grandfather was petite but powerful, with a black belt in judo. My grandmother, the daughter of one of the last samurais, was about half a head taller. She was enthralled by the prospect of adventure in Canada, and the couple returned to northwestern British Columbia in 1903. Some years later they went to Haida Gwaii where they successfully ran a sawmill. Grandmother Ennyu was the camp cook. She didn’t speak English and, as a samurai’s daughter, had never learned to cook. But she was a natural talent, able to make anything on a wood stove. My own mother learned to cook by watching her mom. When my mother and two younger sisters were of high school age, my grandfather sold the lumber business and moved the family to Vancouver where he opened three small lunch counters. My mother had a hearing problem and never expected to marry. She took on management of the lunch counters in the 1930s. To attract customers, they offered meat pies, homemade bread and down-to-earth meals such as stews. Many of the recipes came from my grandmother. At one point, people lined up to buy the fresh bread at a premium price of 25 cents a loaf (compared to 5 or 10 cents), a testament to the talent of Grandmother Ennyu and her daughters.

We're excited to see the online opening of Kevin's exhibit. He has produced this remarkable series of paintings during the pandemic. They are now up in the studio. We hope to have in-person visits when we are no longer in the 'red zone".

Our photography instructor Diana Nazareth and her @prokidscameras program is back with a 4-week interactive photography course on Zoom for kids 9-12. Sessions start on Nov. 24 and Nov. 25. Swipe through the attached images to see some of the great work kids have captured in past courses at the studio! Go to our website -- backlanestudios.ca -- for more information!

Our Stories: Our History James FitzGerald on his grandfather, a horse and vaccines Crestfallen Lane, which runs behind Barton Avenue near Toronto’s Christie Pits, commemorates an old mare, bought in 1913 for $3 by my grandfather Dr. John (Gerry) FitzGerald. Named Crestfallen for her sad eyes, she played a key role in developing vaccines and creating Canada’s public health system. Gerry installed her and three other aging horses, rescued from the glue factory, in a two-st...orey stable on a lot beside an associate’s home at 145 Barton. He used $3,000 from his wife Edna’s dowry to build the metal-clad structure and equip it with a lab. Earlier that year, Gerry had made an impassioned pitch to the University of Toronto to back his vision for making a diphtheria antitoxin and distributing it free to Canadians. The university needed time to consider the unprecedented proposal, so Gerry forged ahead on his own. At the time, the country was mired in a public health crisis with disease running rampant against a backdrop of political inertia. Diphtheria was the single greatest killer of children, and the exorbitant cost of imported American medicines left the poor to suffer. On Dec. 11, 1913, two days after his 31st birthday, Gerry injected a minute but deadly dose of diphtheria germ into Crestfallen’s neck. Her immune system began forming antibodies to neutralize the disease’s toxins. After four months of incremental injections into all of the horses, Gerry extracted their immunized blood, processed it and proved that the resulting antitoxin worked, first in guinea pigs, then humans. Orders poured in from across Canada. On May 1, 1914, the Antitoxin Laboratories, later renamed Connaught Laboratories, were established in U of T’s Department of Hygiene, now the Dalla Lana School of Public Health. My grandfather’s inspired vision was transforming Canada’s public health system into a world leader. Vaccine work grew and by 1916 a larger facility was built at 1755 Steeles Avenue West. The site is now owned by pharmaceutical giant Sanofi Pasteur, which acquired Connaught assets in 2004. The Barton Avenue stable was moved there and restored. If you visit it or when you walk along Crestfallen Lane, think about the horse who helped my grandfather achieve a miracle in a stable. Photos: 1. Crestfallen Lane; 2. Barton Ave. Stable; 3. One of the diphtheria horses being bled; 4. Dr. Gerry FitzGerald; 5. Roncesvalles Village resident James FitzGerald’s book about his grandfather and family

Congratulations to our instructor/filmmakers Jeana McCabe and Jordan McTavish. Their film Chasing Monsters: Parkinson’s and the Power of Art screens virtually at the Awareness Film Fest on Wednesday, Oct 7 at 5.30pm. Jeana and Jordan made the doc after Kevin Whitaker’s first art exhibit at Back Lane. A former Ontario Superior Court judge, Kevin turned to painting after his diagnosis of Lewy Body Dementia. The festival, based in LA, features films on ecological, political, health and spiritual topics. More info on our website!

Kevin Whitaker’s show Pandemonium is up in the studio, but, alas, no visiting until we are out of the Red zone. Fortunately, Kevin has a great new website kevinwhitaker.art where you can see all of the paintings and purchase them! They’re selling fast. All proceeds go to support Parkinson’s and Lewy Body Dementia research. #artshow #toronto #parkinsons #roncesvalles #torontoart #lewybodydementia

Kevin Whitaker is back with another exhibit of his paintings at our studio. Titled Pandemonium, it represents a reflection on the impact of the pandemic. This is Kevin’s fourth show at Back Lane in just over two years. The former Ontario Superior Court judge stepped down from the bench after his diagnosis of LBD Parkinson’s Disease. He has since embraced painting, and has raised more than $100,000 to support PD research through the sale of his art. Join us for a virtual opening next Thursday, Nov. 19 at 5 pm on Zoom. Register at kevinwhitaker.art.

Our Stories: Our History -- Ester Saltzman remembers her Montreal childhood and describes how a cookbook made her mother happy. As an elderly woman and stroke victim, my mother spent her last years in a geriatric hospital in Montreal. Her speech, mobility and short-term memory were dramatically affected, but her long-term memory was still somewhat intact. Once during a visit to the hospital gift shop, accompanied by her companion, she saw a copy of the cookbook Second Helpin...gs, Please! by Norene Gilletz. She became very excited and insisted that her companion purchase it for her. Clearly she was no longer able to cook and did not have access to a kitchen, but just flipping through the book was comforting enough for her. The recipe for apple cake, one of my childhood favourites, came from that cookbook. Just thinking of it reminds me of the lovely aromas of sweet dough, cinnamon and cooking apples. My mother frequently made it Friday evenings, when my grandfather (her father) came over for dinner at our modest apartment in Montreal’s NDG. She would prepare a roast chicken or brisket, and often she might make a noodle kugel (noodle pudding). She would always bake a cake. My mother came from a family -- and a society -- where marriage was expected. At age 31 soon after the war ended, she married my father, gave up her job as a secretary at Canadair and became a full-time homemaker. Although I have many memories of her cooking and cleaning up in the kitchen, my most vivid image is of her lying on her bed reading a book. She, of course, would cook regularly, but her meals were simple and routine. Often, however, I would catch her flipping through magazines checking out recipes perhaps dreaming about what she might make some day. Years later, looking through the pages of that favourite cookbook from the hospital gift shop would have perhaps offered her the solace of familiar recipes from the past. (Ester provided this story as part of our childhood food and memory project. Read more about it on our website.) #apple #montreal #appleseason #jewishrecipes #foodmemories #secondhelpingsplease #cookbooks #roncesvallesvillage

Our Stories: Our History - Katy Petre describes her favourite childhood meal. Autumn may be here, but locally grown plums are still available, and I can continue to make my favourite childhood meal -- plum dumplings or gwetsche knodele. This seasonal treat is particularly special because the dough contains potatoes, the food that saved my parents’ lives. Both my parents’ ancestors migrated some 200 years ago to eastern Europe from Alsace Lorraine. My mother’s side ended u...p in a small German-speaking village in Yugoslavia; my father’s, in Romania. After the war, the German-speaking families of men press-ganged into the German army were stripped of their homes by Communist partisans in Yugoslavia and were used as forced labour for two-and-a-half years. Later, my father, Joe, met my 18-year-old mother, Grete, in a coal mine. She once told us she was so hungry that she stole a potato knowing full well that she would have been shot if caught. My father likely would have starved to death if a kind farmer had not slipped him potatoes. I was born in a tiny town called Rtanj in Yugoslavia (now Serbia) in 1949. We lived in one room with a dog, Spitz, before moving to Germany when I was one and then Canada when I was five. I started Grade 1 in Toronto without knowing a word of English. When my strong-willed mother made the dumplings, she was always in charge. She would not let me touch the dough, but I was allowed to help by removing the pit from the purple plums. I remember her ricing the boiled potatoes before adding eggs and flour. She rolled out the dough, not too thin, and cut it into squares. Then we inserted a half plum in each square, closed it up and boiled the dumplings. When they floated to the top, they were done. We would fish them out onto a plate and sprinkle them with bread crumbs fried in lard. Then began the game of who could eat the most among our family of four. We cut them up and sprinkle them with cinnamon and sugar. In those days, we never heard the word diet. (One photo shows Katy and her mom on her 80th birthday.) See more

As part of Our Stories: Our History, Sheila McIlraith, 91, recalls her summers as a farmerette in the 1940s. During the war years in Ontario, girls worked as farmerettes, helping to pick the crops. I started when I was 13 in Grade 9. Before I was old enough to go away for the summer, I remember going to Jane and Bloor and being picked up. We would stand in the back of a truck, maybe eight or 10 of us, and just hold on to the edges as we bounced along to market gardens, prob...ably in the Clarkson area. We cut celery and pulled radishes. Can you imagine letting kids do that nowadays? The first summer in Niagara I worked at the Inniskillin farm, which grew peaches back then and is now a winery. That was a wonderful summer with great food and long hours. We worked from 7 in the morning until 10 at night, picking peaches during the day and packing at night. We worked seven days a week, with no days off unless it was rainy. We earned $3.50 a week, with room and board. Peaches have much less fuzz now than they did. I remember once getting a terrible peach fuzz rash and actually having to go to the hospital. I was sick and feverish. They gave me something, I don’t know what it was, but it worked. As a treat at Inniskillin, the boss took us to the Fort Erie race track and gave us $5, which was a handsome sum of money, to bet on the horses. I lost all my money very quickly, probably the first race. I also worked three summers in St. Davids near Niagara Falls. In the third year, they trained a small group of us to do grafting. You could have a good strong peach tree and have different varieties on it. So I remember learning how to graft. As a farmerette, I never felt hard done by because everybody else was doing it. And you know, even now, I never regret any of the jobs I had. I learned very early on, the value of money and the value of hard work and doing a good job. It’s something that’s central to my whole being. Read more of "Our Stories" on our website, backlanestudios See more

Our Stories: Our History Gil Carty talks about his Great Aunt Jean: When I was little, I was intimidated by my Great Aunt Jean McKenzie! She seemed so big. She was experienced with kids she had been a nanny to the Eaton family children and got a charge out of scaring me. When I called her a giant, she’d take a few steps toward me, threaten to bite my head off and send me scurrying. She really was a giant in terms of her accomplishments as a Jamaican immigrant to Toro...nto in the 1920s. By the early 1940s, she had saved enough to buy a large house on Beverley St. She turned it into accommodation for sleeping car porters and others. The multi-talented celebrity Paul Robeson stayed there; he couldn’t get a hotel room because of the racial climate at the time. The porters probably directed him to my aunt’s. "The place was always busy. Our family, which then included cousins and grandfather, lived on one floor in the 1950s while my parents waited to buy their Scarborough home. My mother was a seamstress in the garment district; my father, a porter. They had met at my aunt’s house, where my mother came to stay after leaving Jamaica at 18. My father, from New Brunswick, had left the air force and was living around the corner at University Settlement House. I was born in 1950. I have some vivid memories of life at my aunt’s. I used to share my mother’s bed because my father was on the trains. Once, I awoke, mistook clothes on the bedpost for a man and alerted my mother. She screamed, and my grandfather came running. After that, I never slept in her bed again. One Sunday morning in 1955, I awoke to smell smoke from the smoldering ruins of St.George the Martyr, which many Black congregants attended. It had caught fire during the night. I also remember chicken feet hanging in the back shed. My aunt made soup out of them, but they gave me the creeps. My aunt was a generous, considerate woman. Preparing to return to Jamaica in the early 1970s, she sold her house and left money to a loyal Hungarian tenant to make sure he would be all right. Jamaican Canadian Association Jamaica Diaspora Canada Foundation Old Toronto Series Old Toronto Series: Crowd Sourcing from your Past

Colin Hefferon made this video at Back Lane about his grandfather Charles Hefferon, who 112 years ago today, July 24, ran in the dramatic 1908 Olympic Marathon in London. He won Silver, and most likely would have earned Gold but for an unfortunate mishap at the 24-mile mark that is thought to have involved the Toronto Star Sports editor Lou Marsh. Hefferon ran for South Africa -- he had fought with Canadian forces in the Boer War, married an Afrikaans and didn't return to Ca...nada with his new family until 1912. But he spent most of his life in this country -- served in two wars, joined three police forces and was killed in 1932 while on duty as an Ontario Provincial Police officer. He died after being struck on his motorcycle by a motorist in a BRAMPTON intersection. Hefferon is recognized in a memorial for fallen police officers at Queen's Park, but his remarkable athletic accomplishments are long forgotten in this country. https://www.youtube.com/watch See more

If you're a music fan and remember the '60s, maybe you visited Rock Hill Park, a popular venue for performers in farm country north of Orangeville. Many of Canada's top bands played there, along with Country & Western's greatest stars. Forty years ago, on June 28, Willie Nelson performed there despite heavy rain. And that's where Tom Connors got his first big break! Find out more by checking out our website! Happy Canada Day!

In Toronto, we love our neighbourhoods! Len McAuley, who grew up in Parkdale-High Park and now owns Pollock's Home Hardware on Roncesvalles Ave., shares what makes the area so special. Visit our website to learn how to get involved in our SilverShorts documentary program!

Don Cullen may be semi-proud of being Canadian -- in true Canadian spirit. But we're sure he's very proud of building the Bohemian Embassy - even though he won't admit it. During the early ‘60s, his coffee house provided a venue for early performances by Margaret Atwood, Gordon Lightfoot, Ian & Sylvia, and Mark Breslin, to name a few. Don, with his gift for accents, was a regular on the Wayne & Shuster Show for years. Visit our website to learn more about Don.

Happy Father's Day from Back Lane Studios! Here's a great fatherhood story from our friend Gilbert Carty. We've been collecting fun stories like this and sharing them in short docs. Everybody's got a story to tell - and we'd love to hear yours! Check out the rest of Gilbert's story here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJ0qn-ZdIhs&t=1s

We’re going international for our reading on Zoom of Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People organized by @untoldstorieshigh for this Sunday, May 17, 2.30pm. Joining TO actors virtually from England are clockwise from top left director Di Trevis, who will introduce the play; veteran of stage and TV David Hargreaves; actors Peter Clements and Mathew Wernham. The performance is free but we urge you to consider a donation to the @dailybreadto here or Trinity Hospice in London. All details and links on our website @backlanestudios. Looks like rain on Sunday so, wherever you are, log on for an 1882 play with a remarkably timely message. #virtualtheatre #henrikibsen #toronto #torontotheatre #torontoarts #roncesvallesvillage #isolationcreation #playreading

What do these four have in common? A connection to Henrik Ibsen’s (top right) play An Enemy of the People. We’re partnering with Untold Stories High for an international reading this Sunday, May 17, 2:30 pm on Zoom. Written in 1882, its theme is timely: What happens when a human health crisis threatens short-term prosperity! British director Di Trevis will introduce the reading, and actor Anna Tierney has assembled a terrific cast of London and Toronto performers. The reading is free but we encourage donations to the Daily Bread Food Bank or Trinity Hospice in London. Go to our website for details and links! So, the connections above? The play was an inspiration for Jaws; Erin Brockovich (with Julia Roberts) has a similar theme, and Steve McQueen starred in the film version of An Enemy.