"Let's DO something, guys!" To the mighty Abra, all hail the Queen of Queen Street West.

She was the vegan who loved cooking eggs for her out of town guests and married a devout carnivore. She was the modern business woman who resisted the internet and couldn’t be bothered to move past the flip phone. She was the cancer patient whose support dog was a traumatized, frantic, lunatic of a bulldog who loved her immensely, yet with the emotional capacity of a three year old. She was the artist who hated going to her own art shows and was never really interested in selling any of her work. I could sit here all day and give you fact after fact about why she was so unique. She was Abra, Abra Shiner, Bob…and there will never be anyone else quite like her. It's just not possible. 

(Aside from Abra, I have changed the names of those in this story to protect their privacy.)

***

I first met Abra shortly after turning eighteen in 2002. I had dropped out of my OACs and had been hanging out with first and second year York University students, getting drunk at their campus bars and trying desperately to be cool. I, somehow through that crowd, ended up hanging out on Queen Street West, long before it became the trendy zoo it is now. Back then in the early 2000s the spread of gentrification in the West of Toronto had only just begun, yet parts of it were still clinging to its magical grit and filth. A few loft buildings with early 2000’s Toronto yuppy names like “The Chocolate Lofts” and “The Candy Lofts” began to sprinkle east of Trinity Bellwoods Park. Little galleries were popping up amongst the old used appliance stores run by middle aged Portuguese men, the small mental health hospital which was only a fraction of what is now CAMH, and its half-way house at Ossington. Yet, crack and sex work were still sold on the street at night, and what was to become the Drake Hotel was still just some some old boarded up building with the faded words “Stardust” written across it. If you knew where to go, you could walk quite a distance down Queen West from Parkdale to Bathurst smoking only twenty-five cent single cigarettes bought at certain convenience stores. For me, it was all about getting stoned before going record and thrift store shopping in Kensington Market, hanging out in cafes, working at a health food store, and pretending to be vegan and “know” politics, all with an old Canon AE-1 in hand. Myself in a pink, pixie-haired nutshell. As Abra’s mom would later say, “You were just…raw!” 

The other thing about Queen West at this time was that goths and true Toronto freaks still ruled the club scene and the afterhours from Spadina all the way heading into Parkdale. This is where Abra came in. 

I remember first hearing about Abra before officially meeting her, already some sort of super cool enigma in my mind. I would eventually catch my first glimpse of her outside Java House (Java Hoose she called it). “Hey Ben! How are you?” she called out to one of my co-workers during our regular pre-door-to-door Earthroots canvassing meal. Dressed all in black, bright red lips, and purple and blue dreads, she was a bustling social butterfly. Always with at least one individual by her side as she paraded down Queen West, she would chat up just about everyone that crossed her path on her way home. Of course my 18-year-old self admired her instantly.

Somehow we finally met not long after. I can’t remember how it happened, but soon enough she was having me over for tea and joints as we listened to the Pixies and the Fear and Loathing Soundtrack in her old Queen West apartment on the corner of Dovercourt. 1086 and half, to be exact. 

Eventually I was crashing at her house, either on the couch or the floor like everyone else. Her home was a sanctuary for ravers who needed to pass out after the rave, a traveller in the middle of a journey, or for anyone to get away after a fight at home. The misfits, the oddballs, the outsiders…one by one, we were all becoming a part of her extended family. 

I did a lot of my first experimentation with drugs in that living room, like many of us. Arba never took part. That part of her life was already over by the time I showed up. The party heyday of those two floors consisting of three lofts above what was then Chester’s old antique shop was over. Yet, it was still a safe zone for substance use. I remember once being high on left over 90s ecstasy pills still circulating with my friend Daniel who was Abra’s roommate at the time. Out of nowhere, the downstairs tenant, Mark, who was notoriously known for his drug use, came upstairs, excitedly. “Hey, do you guys want to do some DMT?” “Yes,” exclaimed Daniel. I didn’t even have a chance to think about it. At that point Mark sat down and proceeded to prepare the DMT for us to smoke on a piece of tin foil, “Mama Told Me Not To Come” by Three Dog Night playing in the background. Daniel took the first hit. Inhaling the smoke, he quickly jumped up and escaped to his bedroom. Then it was my turn. I sat in a cross-legged position on the floor as Mark turned to me, offering me a straw. I took it and inhaled deeply as he lit a fire under the tin foil. Then everything sloooooooowwwweeeedddd riiiiiiiiiiiiiighttttt dooooooooowwwwnnnn. My head flipped back and I glanced over at Mark, his eyes and smile wide with intense pleasure as he witnessed me go deeper into a swirl of discombobulation. At that point my existence became a skipping record as the world repeated the same moment over and over like a needle jumping in one spot, getting caught in a groove. Suddenly I felt queasy. I stood up and proceeded to walk down the hall toward the bathroom, each step felt like a Toronto Subway train car moving past me. I made my way to the toilet to puke, hugging it lovingly like a long lost friend. When I had let everything out that I needed to, I called out for Daniel whose room was right beside the bathroom. “Daniel?” “Ya. I’m in here.” I stumbled out of the bathroom and into his bedroom, collapsing onto his bed to join him in a fit of laughter. Oh the various states Abra would come home to find us in. 

Abra always had a talent for motivating people to get out and do things. True, it was not without a bit of a selfish bossy nature, but only the harmless kind that now just makes me laugh. And really when you think about it, she had good taste and was rarely wrong when it came to style, art and culture. She motivated all of us to keep living, whether that meant going to a gallery or museum, a show, or a restaurant. Every day was an opportunity to enjoy life to the fullest in between working and necessary downtime with a book in a coffee shop somewhere.

She was also good at making art emerge from people. Over the approximate year and a half that I lived with her, we changed a few things around her apartment. One of the things we did was paint a huge pop art wave in the several shades of turquoise and blue that came down the hallway between the kitchen and living room. I had the vision, and Abra had the gumption. We were a good team when we weren’t getting on each other’s nerves. She also at one point had the idea to renovate the kitchen, Abra Shiner styles. We cut out various images from magazines, glued them on opposite tiles, and then went in with black paint on the others. At the end, Abra threw multicoloured sparkles everywhere which stuck to the drying paint and Mod Podge. 

When I first moved into 1086 and a half, two of her living room walls were also covered in graffiti, phone numbers, and random messages to Abra. Most of us still had landlines back then in 2002-2004, except for drug dealers who were getting pagers and cell phones, and the rich kids just North of Toronto. After stopping through, people would often leave something on either of the two walls beside the landline and jar of markers which sat on her vintage corner couch equipped with a table and lazy susan. Because many of our friends were artists, some of the graffiti was actually quite interesting to look at, plus Abra had some of her own work hanging alongside her father’s photography. And while seated at the corner couch in the living room, if you flipped the lazy susan around, you would find a collection of fun rolling papers of all types and flavours, a grinder, and a jar of weed. Classic Abra. 

I also built my first black and white photo developing lab in our bathroom of that apartment. Back then, my old film camera was always on me much like my cell phone is now. A friend and I who lived close by split the cost of film developing chemicals, a red light bulb, trays, and tongs. He lugged his old film developing contraption over. I hung a string up over the bathtub to hang the drying photos, and heavy black curtains over the door and window to block out the light. Abra loved that I did that in our place. I think one of the greatest things about my relationship with Abra, another one of those things I wish I had told her when she was still alive, was the inspiration that flowed between her and I. It's so funny to look back and see that, despite our sister-like quarrels, we actually encouraged the best in each other. 

When I met her in her early twenties, she was still travelling for at least half the year every year. Out of all the traveller friends I have, and there have been plenty over the years, Abra was by far the most travelled. She had conquered every continent, multiple times. I remember shortly after moving in with her, she ran away to some other city with a man who later became her boyfriend but was only known by any of us at that time as her “stalker”. She didn’t tell anyone until she was gone. They just up and left one night after one of her shifts at the club she had been a staple at for years. She didn’t tell her work until after she was gone either. It seemed she would do those kinds of things every so often and just get away with it. She was, afterall, an excellent bartender and could hold it down on any crazy night. I’m sure they all grumbled, but like the rest of us, couldn’t help but love her anyway when she returned from any of her shenanigans. 

I also remember when she got her beloved bike, and the day it was stolen. She annoyed the hell out of me, the way she fawned over it like a lover that she couldn’t help but constantly stroke and fondle. To be fair, it was quite a nice pedal bike with a slick silver paint job. But let’s just say that if Abra was ever into something, the whole damn neighbourhood was going to hear about it. “Oh HAAAWWWWLLLLIIIIEEEE! It’s BEEEEAAAAUUUUUTTIIIIIFFFFUUULLLL.” Not to mention, the sounds she would utter as she would carry that bike in and out of the stairwell, or just coming up the stairs to our apartment in general. You’d think she was always returning from a triathlon. Whoever committed the horrendous crime of stealing that bike stole a piece of a fierce woman’s tender heart. She was broken up over the loss of it for a while, and rightfully so. 

Another thing you couldn’t separate Abra from was her compulsive need to dance, and precisely in her own living room while wearing her signature platform boots and blasting CAN. Apparently before I moved in she was paid $100 to stop dancing and turn her music off. It was for a film and back then Queen Street West had far less traffic, therefore making it a hotspot for the Toronto film industry. Plus, it was the late 90s/early 2000s, therefore $100 went a considerably long way for kids like us. 

We had these two friends who started a band together named Disco Squid Kills President. They wrote a song about Abra. All I can remember is the end which went, “Abra, Abra, Abra. She hates meat. Abra, Abra, Abra. Lets us sleep on her floor. Abra, Abra, Abra. Looooccckkkk yuuoooorrrr doooooooooooor.” A roughly two minute long song that couldn’t have been more fit for a queen of the bizarre such as her. 

***

Abra passed away last year from breast cancer nearly three months after I last visited Toronto in mid April for my mother’s funeral. Abra was in her mid 40s. The week before I flew out to Toronto, I was also on Hornby Island for ten days picking up my dad’s ashes and dealing with more from my executor duty list regarding his will. I had only found out at the beginning of January 2025 that I was the executor of my father’s will during the week of his death. Fortunately I was not the executor of both of my parent’s wills, as they died within seven months of each other and I don’t know how anyone could possibly handle more than one will. But regardless, I was still coming into contact with a lot of life changing logistics under the most unexplainable circumstances during the month of April 2025. Oh ya, and to add another layer to one of the weirdest, most fucked up months of my life, I had become estranged from both of my parents a little over ten years before each of them passed away. Three very significant deaths in my lifetime, yet all in significantly different relationships with me.  

A few days after Abra passed away last summer, I was hit with something that I think most of us experience with at least one significant loss in their life, if not more. Ironically, I made this huge realization while soaking in the bathtub on the one year anniversary of my mother’s death. Although I’d always known that Abra loved me as a friend as I loved her, I realized that the depth of it went deeper in a way that I wished I’d cherished more when she was alive. She actually loved me. She believed in me. She supported me. All wholeheartedly. She fully accepted me for who I was and didn’t expect anything of me but to just go on being myself. Not to say that no one has ever given me that kind of gift in a friendship before. But it's rare. Plus, it was never something that my parents gave me. My stories regarding my relationships with both my parents are deeply troubled ones. I am a child abuse survivor. Therefore, the love that I received from Abra was especially significant. That moment in the bathtub was one of those moments when you stop and realize that sometimes you truly don’t know what you’ve got till it's gone. 

When she watched my first documentary film when I finally completed it a few years ago, her response was as if it changed her life. Now I know that it's not the most amazing film of all time. It’s good for my first film, and one made without going to film school at that. But in reality it's not an award winner, and in the world of film that’s not necessarily an insult. I’m fully aware that I’m trying to do near impossible things with my life by holding firm to my dream of becoming a successful documentary filmmaker. Yet, in Abra’s eyes I was already a star. These days when I think of her, I can’t thank her enough for that.

It's funny how the people that you sometimes love the most are also the most annoying in your life. I can think of three people: 1. My grandmother. Like any older family member when you’re a kid, they can all be annoying, particularly the more they care the more annoying they get. My grandmother had so many things that she would do which as a child and teenager would drive me up the wall or embarrass the hell out of me. But when she passed away when I was still in my 20s, all I wanted was her to come back and do all those little annoying things all over again. 2. My brother. He’s thankfully still around of course, I’m just adding him to the group to prove my point. My brother and I weren’t actually raised together, and although I have mainly fond memories of us spending time together as kids, those moments were few and far between. Now as adults, we’ve become closer, especially in the process of our parents dying within seven months of each other. He’s my brother, so by right of passage he’s supposed to annoy me. But in the end, he’s my favorite dude, every time. 3. And last but not least, Abra. She annoyed me with her high shrill loud squawking with which she communicated, the stomps she made with every single step, the constant praise she gave her crazy bulldog named Nugget, and her relentless need in almost every single situation to dominate. Yet, I would take it all back in a heartbeat. Every single moment that would have at one time caused me to roll my eyes or reply in exhaustion, “Whatever, Abra.” I would take every single one of the moments back, if only. 

Oh Abra. My Abra Pie, high in the sky. 

Love you always. 

Thank-you.