Confessions:

1. This work appears to be a book, a bookmark and a highlighter. But it's just an illusion of the objects. I cut and pasted various found and scanned digital images together, erased parts, resized others, and painted over sections in Photoshop.

2. Even the orange highlight is an illusion; my original copy of the novel In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje is clean.

Stories:

1. I found a photograph in the City of Toronto Archives (see below) which I think may be the one that inspired Michael Ondaatje's story about the opening ceremonies of the Bloor Viaduct.

2. The cyclist in this photograph is, as Ondaatje's describes, "a blur of intent". And the photograph was, in fact, given the title "Opening of Bloor Viaduct".

3. But the photograph does not show the cyclist with "a string of onions that he carries on his shoulders". There are no "police barriers" for the cyclist to escape through, and no "thunderous applause" to greet him on the other end.

4. Thus, the French title of my work "l'histoire" is a double entendre. The English translation "a story" is more in keeping with Ondaatje's account of history.

5. After reading Ondaatje's novel and finding this photograph, I felt I knew the cyclist. No longer anonymous, the cyclist's sense of adventure inspired me. I clapped and cheered him on. I saw a police officer grin. And I said to myself, "What is that bump on his back? Onions? I think so."

6. If there really does exist a photograph of a blurred cyclist with a string of onions over his shoulders, going through a police barrier, with a crowd applauding on the other end of the Viaduct, titled and dated "Opening of Bloor Viaduct, Oct 18, 1918", I don't want to know about it. I'm sticking to my story.