This was Island Girl in February 2006, shortly after arriving in Toronto from the Bahamas, where she’d been rescued from a pound by vacationing friends of a friend. I would meet her two years later when asked to fill in temporarily for her walker. We took to one another right away and have been best friends and twice-weekly companions ever since. The pursuit of squirrels being her principal passion, we usually catch a North Yonge bus to Lawrence, then follow the paths that weave their way along either side of Burke Brook through Blythewood Ravine and Sherwood Park. Once, for a change of scene, we caught a ferry to the Toronto Islands, where, for several hours, she filled the autumn skies with honking geese and cleared the beaches of seagulls. These are a few of the many pictures I’ve taken of her along the way.

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