Music
TTC Busker Profile: Maria Kasstan
You might breeze by TTC busker Maria Kasstan on a regular basis, so nondescript and passive are her dress and demeanour. But after watching her perform at the southbound platform of Bloor-Yonge station and getting to know her a bit better, it's become difficult for me to think of a more suitable application of the age-old adage that looks can be deceiving.
I discovered a powerful and complex woman behind the gentle folk singer and guitarist, who is also a member of the Toronto activist group, the Raging Grannies. And there was something else in her warbling voice and sad eyes that captivated me, too, but I wasn't initially sure what it was.
I couldn't, after all, have expected the tragic story I was about to hear.
Tell me a bit about yourself. Who is Maria Kasstan, and what does she do?
Well, who I am now and who I was five or six years ago are probably two very different people. Since my husband died five years ago, I've really felt like a widow, and that's my primary identity now... which is kind of odd, because I didn't know that could happen to you. I've kind of lost touch with the things I used to do.
You know how we're all supposed to have a third eye? I guess it's open more than it used to be. I don't know how else to describe it. I suppose it was my husband's parting gift to me.
Why did you become a TTC busker?
I've been a TTC busker for three years. The reason I became one was because I couldn't get the whole story of what happened to my husband out to the public. It was covered only briefly in the news. It looked like the story was going to go away, and I decided to take my voice out there and use it.
Can you tell me a little about your late husband? What kind of person was he?
He was a really introverted, nerdy, quiet guy who liked to work out chess problems, really loved dogs, and was crazy about baseball. He loved to listen to k.d. lang. He had some pretty big hurdles in his life, and he never complained half enough. I think he would've lived longer had he complained more.
What happened to him?
He had a heart attack in front of police headquarters, on Oct. 1, 2004. It was 9 a.m. I'd said goodbye to him about fifteen minutes earlier at the corner of Dundas and Bay. By the time the police found him having his heart attack, they actually pronounced him dead, which they're not allowed to do. They did not provide any CPR; they simply decided he was a deceased street person. They didn't treat it as a medical emergency. It was just so casual.
When I came looking for him a few hours later, they lied to me and told me that he'd been found by a civilian bystander. They wouldn't even admit there were police present in finding him. And that's how I found out how police treat street people. When you're homeless or you appear homeless, the loss of your life isn't a big tragedy, but an inconvenience.
Is there a connection between your husband's death and your album, Love Songs for the Homeless Guy?
My husband was headed to the North American Community Gardening Conference the day he died. He was a casually dressed man in his late 50s, with a beard, and he had this bundle buggy with him. So there it was -- he was condemned for the way he dressed. And that's where the song Fashion Crime comes from. I wrote that song the night that I finally heard the 911 call, about five months after the actual incident. I had to go get it through the Freedom of Information Act.
How long have you been playing the guitar and singing?
I guess I started playing the guitar and singing when I was about 14, in 1964, and I made my first LP in the '70s. It's been very on and off. When you have little kids, you sing lullabies. When you're angry, you sing protest songs.
What do you sing about?
My genre is folk music, and I sing about my husband a lot. I sing the songs I've written for him and about him. Sometimes, I actually sing to him. I also sing about things to do with nature and social justice, which I've always been concerned about and at least somewhat involved with.
How are you involved?
I was a founding member of the Green Party back in the early '80s. I haven't continued to be consistently politically active. I don't really do anything with the Green Party now except vote for them, when I get the opportunity.
How did you become involved with the Raging Grannies?
Well, after my husband's death, I was, quite literally, a raging granny... all by myself. So if you're a granny, and you're raging, I highly recommend that you find some other raging grannies and get together and try to make some noise. We're an international movement; there are Raging Grannies all over the world.
I'm not a very good granny to my grandchildren anymore. I feel so alienated from ordinary day-to-day life. Part of me is all broken, and it doesn't work right. So I try to compensate by being this kind of granny.
Who would you say are some of your musical influences?
Certainly people like Bob Dylan, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Joan Baez, Phil Ochs... people like that.
As a TTC busker, what's the most the interesting thing you've had dropped into your hat while you were performing?
I've had a few religious medals dropped in. I once got a whole tray of lamb slices from somebody's party that they never even used. A couple of bottles of wine, too. Oh, and marijuana joints -- those might've been accidental. But no live animals yet.
Other than the subway system, where else do you perform?
I love some of the little clubs around Toronto, like the Tranzac on Brunswick. I used to go out to the Renaissance a lot. I go to Dave's Gourmet Pizza up at St. Clair and Christie, which is a great place with live music every Thursday night.
What do you do when you're not busking or with the Raging Grannies?
I do some educational things about pollination and seed-saving with sister organizations Seeds of Diversity Canada and Pollination Canada. I'm a volunteer with the Toronto Beekeepers Co-operative down at the Don Valley. And I'm a volunteer at the Good Neighbours Club where I do a music workshop.
I noticed the song you performed for me on the subway was about the UN Climate Change Summit that wraps up today. How do you think our government has been representing us at Copenhagen?
I am ashamed. Our government does not represent the will of the people at all. We don't need the tar sands. Apparently they're willing to bargain almost anything to develop them.
This world that we have now is a kind of a feudal society. There is an aristocracy and the rest of us are just serfs. They give us this illusion of democracy, and I think it'd be interesting to have a real democracy, one in which everyone was included.
Watch Maria perform Wonderful, Wonderful Copenhagen written by fellow Raging Granny Helen Riley, below.
Every Friday, TTC Busker Profiles aim to shed some light on the talented people who add a little something to our daily commute -- Toronto's true "underground" musicians.
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That was really interesting.
I've always known that she's got such a powerful voice. Now that I know her story I will pay closer attention to what she's singing.
im so glad u r giving a face to the voices of ttc :)
Great story. This is why I love blogTO.
Fantastic story. Putting a face on people that everyone disregards is very noble journalism. Cheers!
I've never formally met Maria but I feel like I've known her for years because she used to model for my drawing class when I was a student at OCA in the mid 80s. I still have a few paintings and sketches of her. After that I used to see her and her family around town but I had never heard about what happened to her husband. Thanks for talking to her and giving us a chance to know her.
Sad story about her husband but not at all unexpected reaction from the police. Another embarrassing story of our "heroes", as some like to call them.
She is wrong about the tar sands - we do need them for our economy. I find it funny that people who complain about the tar sands never mention regular oil wells. We seventh largest producer of oil in the world and we are the biggest supplier to the U.S., not the Middle East as is so commonly thought. The people who protest this stuff conveniently ignore the fact that oil has done much to provide us with the lifestyle we enjoy and the ability for these people to protest.
I am not a big supporter of oil production or in the industry, I just don't like when people make simplistic statements such as "We don't need the tar sands". Oil will continue to be used for the foreseeable future and, if we want to maintain our 1st world status, we need to keep pumping it out. Most people are not educated enough and just want to hop on a bandwagon barking about climate change and our government not heeding the will of the people. What credible suggestions for alternatives do they have? Usually nothing, just like this lady.
Suggestions for alternatives? Well, take the TTC for a start. Having never owned or driven a car, I have never understood why they are considered to be a personal essential. Walking through your landscape, you care about and notice the living things within it intimately. The economy is not currently a realistic construct. It is based on competition for limited resources and fails to consider that we are plundering future generations for temporary convenience. Almost like competing with your grandchildren. And please, that lifestyle "we enjoy" is actually not available for most of the people on the planet. Even a lot of my friends do not "enjoy" this lifestyle, whether through their poverty or because they just don't enjoy destroying the environment in order to acquire more stuff.
The tar sands are worse than the other oil. Barrel for barrel, the environmental cost is much higher, but all oil burning should be phased out quickly. What if, in generations to come, [say, around a thousand, or a hundred thousand years in the future,] there is no more oil and there are some really necessary uses for it that have been discovered. Those folks are going to curse their shortsighted ancestors. If we can't think about the needs of our descendants a thousand years down the road, we shouldn't be using up non-renewable resources.
Beautiful response, Maria! Keep singing and getting the word out!
Maria, you are a wonderful human being. I've always loved hearing your voice in the subway. I was just reading about some of these mayoral candidates on here, and after reading your little interview and comment, it makes me think that you should run for mayor. I know... not in a million years. But after reading about these men in suits, all so similar to one another, I would just love to see an Earth Mother like yourself up against them. You deserve to have more power. You care about the right things. Ahhhhh.... maybe in another lifetime!
Maria is right about the tar sands.
To produce one energy unit from the tar sands requires 6.34 energy units of natural gas and about 7 units of water that is irreparably poisoned.
I don't think you should be talking about being educated - you don't even know the economic metrics of the tar sands.
Thank you Maria for being such an incredible inspiration to us and for so earnestly sharing your story and music.
Bless you.
Dear Maria,your story has moved me so very much.Can I say though there is no right or wrong way to be a Grannie to your precious family,and I'm sure they will learn much from you as you will from them.My thoughts and best wishes to you,from another fellow"part of me is all broken" xo
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Very much enjoy these busker profiles, a quick look into the lives of people who are in the public space but very much anti-celebrities. Just what I want to read about rather than Tiger or Brangelina. Keep on doing them!
Thank you for your reply, Maria, it is good to open the lines of debate. As I said in my post, it was sad to hear how your husband was treated by the police. He certainly deserved better
The Federal government earns $4 billion annually from excise taxes on gasoline and that tax is $.10 on the dollar. This mean that means people here spend about $40 billion dollars a year on gasoline. That doesn't sound like the will of a bunch of people who want an end to oil production.
Look how much people freak out when the price of gas rises. This is not a group of people who hate oil.
The TTC uses oil, gas and coal to operate so there is little ameliorating effect by substituting personal cars for the TTC. Besides, how much cleaner is the TTC? One only has to wait in a station to see buses idling for no good reason in summer, as an example of pointless emissions. Also, running buses up and down routes while they are mostly empty (as happens in off-peak hours) diminishes any carbon savings effected by the car-pooling effect of the rush away. Subway trains use electricity which is derived from mainly from coal in this province. Despite popular belief, hydro is not king here in Ontario. Hydro power also destroys habitats anyways.
As for the lifestyle I spoke of, you point out that others in the world don't enjoy it yet I spoke only of our situation here Canada. As for your friends you say don't enjoy our lifestyle because of "poverty" I am not sure what you mean. I wasn't referring to acquiring "stuff" mores o things such as health care, which are funded by tax dollars such as those derived from oil and gas not to mention the personal income taxes from those employed in the industries surrounding fuel. Shatter the economy by removing an important commodity and our standard of living falls and who and what do you think will first feel the axes as they start to come down? The poor, that is who, as social and poverty-assistance programs are starved of capital funding. Certainly the friends you spoke of enjoy the same state-funded health care and have access to social assistance and other government and donation-funded programs.
Tar sands are certainly a little worse to obtain currently than conventional oil but technology will change. The extra energy and money spent obtaining them will drive companies to address them and will result in cleaner extraction and processing. You can't only single out tar sands and not be against all oil. If you are against all oil what will fill the gap? If oil is gone the TTC won't run unless they go back to horse drawn trolleys.
I agree that much of the business conducted today is unsustainable but in many markets not just energy. To say the whole economy is unrealistic is to do a disservice to many businesses that are making a difference and actually developing answers to problems that work, not merely demonizing our current system. It is short-sighted and obtuse for people to think we could instantly stop using oil as a fuel source. The oil will continue to flow and, indeed, if you were to take it away, these same people would cry and moan at the misery that follows. We must have an answer before just deconstructing our economy one large chunk at a time.
Oil will be used, even if we stop selling it and using it. We here in Canada might as well get our share and secure our needs. It is good we have people calling for cleaner energy but we must do it in a collaborative way realizing that we need the current sources and working to make them better not just saying "no" to oil altogether without a realistic alternative, which is entirely unhelpful
And please, if people still exist in a hundred thousand years and in roughly the form we do now then I am sure they will have figured out ways to synthesize hydrocarbon chains in a lab to not really, really wish we today hadn't burned all the fossil fuels.
And you do? Where do you get these absolute numbers when not even experts agree and at best can offer a range of how much more energy is required?
I find it funny you are impugning my knowledge of the economics of the tar sands when you have just made up your figures.
I did not dispute they require more to obtain than conventional sources, I said that people aren't educated enough to know the extent to which our economy depends on fossil fuels of which tar sands will play an increasing role.
With respect, Alogon, I don't think anyone here thinks we should stop using oil completely, right now. It's a matter of degree and the rampant boom-and-bust mentality that has swept through the tar sands is not sustainable. Canada requires drastic action simply because we are so far behind - worse emitters per capita than the United States and far worse than comparable countries in Europe, like Norway, who have a similar climate and dispersion of people across a large land area.
If we don't change our behaviours I think we'll simply be left behind. China is investing strongly in wind power, mass transit, etc.; long ago they managed to de-couple GDP growth from growth in energy use. Continuing to build cookie-cutter suburbs and drive everywhere will wreck not just the planet, but our economy too.
I agree with you that change must come and that we have woefully underfunded mass transit and alternative energies. I agree that sprawl is an issue. However, I don't see how anyone can be for oil and against tar sands. How can one be the villain and the other get a pass? Studies I have seen suggest that as you compare well-to-wheel emissions tar sands level out opposed to conventional oil.
The tar sands represent half of our reserves of petroleum and worldwide the conventional stuff is running out and we still need it. I am all for changing the world but it will be a slow process and oil will continue to play a major part.
China's claim to have "decoupled" their GDP from energy usage has often been questioned and China's National Stats Bureau has even said there is no direct correlation between GDP and energy use. The NBS also said it was due to the economic downturn as some energy-intensive yet low-productivity industries were hit hard. China's emissions will increase as time progresses, they are no leaders and the pollution there is horrendous.
Maria is a powerful force, as are all The Raging Grannies -- all over the world! If you're interested in their work, take a look at our new documentary -- "Raging Grannies: The Action League," about a Raging Grannies gaggle on the SF Bay Area Peninsula. These women do not go quietly into old age! They inspire us with their dedication to social justice. Our doc has won the 2009 National Mature Media Merit Award. Available for both institutional and home use. www.pamwaltonproductions.com
Thanks for this. It is always nice to hear the voices of real Canadians raised in song, eh? Of course it would be nice to hear Maria's complete performance of Helen Riley's timely verses without the din. Has anyone proposed a TTC busker CD/DVD compilation? And if such a thing already exists why isn't it better promoted?
Happiest of Holidays too all!!!
Thanks for this story. This is typical of why I keep reading here.
I am still going on about the oil situation, alas. What I see in this compliance to the oilfueled vehicle economy is an incredible lack of vision. Cars have been, continue to be, invented, that don't require oil. They have been deliberately suppressed and destroyed.
See "who killed the electric car" documentary. Human powered vehicles , not just bicycles, but low friction, peddle powered cars have been invented but never "picked up" by the industry. Solar, which was dismissed for decades, is finally being incorporated into new designs. Vision, and flexibility, and even maybe compromise and retooling expectations, [do we really need to go 100 km/hour or more?]all must be part of the plan. Most folks I know who don't ride bikes are mainly afraid of traffic, not of the effort of peddling. [How many drivers will drive to the gym to do their peddling there?]Does anyone notice that the more people drive, the more type two diabetes there is? If kids never see their parents walk, it doesn't become "normal" to them to do so. In the area of heating, there are construction innovations like earth houses that require little in the way of heating, yet they haven't really been accepted in most communities. There are so many obvious places we could go with these ideas. And they would provide tons of jobs in manufacturing and construction right here, right now. It is too bad that we can't just embrace the idea that there will be life, even human life in thousands of years to come. It is, after all, an immature urge to strive for personal instant gratification. Every creature that survives today is the descendant of millions of generations of feisty little guys who who, consciously or not, made the right choices. We have the evolutionary luxury of being able to make conscious choices that will leave a better world. How can you let that go?
That was so touching. Thank you for opening my eyes and sharing this wonderful story.