A Quilt of my house

A Quilt of my house

I went to the Toronto archives , in an attempt to start looking into the history of my house. I thought this might be difficult, but it appears to be much more complicated than I thought. I pulled a bunch of boxes that were labelled post war Shaw street which I was interested in as my house is on Shaw street and compared to say Yonge street, Shaw is not nearly as long. These boxes in turn had nothing to do with my house and the files about Shaw street were concerning who was living there, whether they had paid their rent, there was a bunch of rent receipts from the emergency housing division as well as hand written notes explaining why the full rent hadn't been paid, as well as complaints about tenants and letters explaining that tenants must show up in front of the tenant board or face eviction. All of this was intermixed with war records which I guess if often the reason certain people received certain housing. There was very little context to explain what these records were and why they were saved, but I am guessing this is what happens with a lot of research. For this project I would like to make a sampler quilt of my house, basically the size of which it could be hung on a wall. Despite finding no information on my house I was still inspired by the information I found and the ways in which permanent stable housing can change your life. I have lived in this house for over ten years, the longest I have lived anywhere besides the house I grew up in. This stability is part of the reason I went back to school. The queer angle on this project is that I am queer, so is one of the other people in the house and so are our landlords who I would love to gift them this quilt after our digital exhibit. I would take pictures of the quilt for our digital exhibit.

Lauren Carter