Hello friends,
It has been two weeks since we raised the Patchwork Pride Project flag on June 15, and I am happy to report that as I type this, it is still flying proudly from the bell tower of Morningside High-Park Presbyterian Church, 4 Morningside Avenue, Toronto, ON, M4K 1X5. Having said that, I can also admit that the flag flying has not always been smooth sailing (if you’ll pardon my shameless mixing of metaphors).
Full disclosure – we encountered a few setbacks here and there following the installation. The good news is that with a little ingenuity and stick-to-itiveness we’ve been able to keep the Patchwork Pride Project in place.
I thought you might be interested in an account of our bumpy ride dealing with repairs and renovations along the way.
The first thing that occurred to us was that we might need some sort of tie-down feature on each corner of the flag to stop it from slipping along the pipes from which it hung. Thankfully, we figured this out just before we raised the flag up the tower... but only just. As a result, we didn’t make the corner tie-downs as sturdy as they should have been. Sure enough, when we arrived for Sunday service the next morning, the tie-down at the top right corner of the flag had given way, allowing the flag to shift to the left along its hanging pipe. You can see what I mean in the photo below. Also note that none of this stopped us from getting a great group shot of the entire congregation following the flag’s dedication. Our good friend Georgia Kirkos of jorjas photography offered to take the photo for us—along with other beautiful shots of the work.
Following that group shot, we climbed the tower to reattach the offending tie-down and strengthen the others. The tower climb, by the way, is not for the faint of heart or the claustrophobic. In order to access the tower, one must squeeze through a hole measuring approximately 1 foot wide by 2 feet high, awkwardly placed among the huge old pipes of the MHP pipe organ. Here’s a shot of it taken after wiggling through the “S” shaped channel in the thick stone wall.
Four of us made it to the summit, pulled up the flag, and restitched the tie-downs. Here’s a shot of our intrepid first repair team having completed the mission. Left to right: my son Emmett, nephew Ben, and brother Marc. Well Dunn, team!
Seeing that the wind had caused the flag to slip a bit, we figured we should do something to anchor the bottom pipe to the tower to be sure it wouldn’t flap up too high should the wind pick up. So, we ran some paracord from each end of the bottom pipe, fished it through the belfry windows above and behind the pipe, and tied them off. That oughta do it.
It didn’t.
See below:
The above shots were taken on Tuesday June 18th. The wind had come up, and it blew right through the tower (which has windows on all four sides), causing the flag to act like the main sail on a pirate ship. Obviously, we had given the flag too much slack in the cords that secured it to the windows. Our solution was to anchor it to the stone embellishments above and to either side of the church entrance (circled, below), but first we had to wait for the wind to die down. By the time it did, the flag had been blown out of position:
Once again, I enlisted my brother Marc the firefighter (who had some experience with ladders) to help me tie the anchor cords to the stone door embellishments. Of course, behind the first embellishment we found a nice big wasp’s nest.
Thankfully, it was home to last year’s wasps. Two trips up and down the ladder (after crawling into the belfry to reposition the flag and then release the cords), and the job was done. Now, when the wind came up, the flag stayed pretty much in place. Success! But then we worried that the constant play of the paracord back and forth across the rough stone would fray the cord. I cut up some of the remaining PVC pipe and ran one side of the cord through that. But there were still some parts of the cord contacting the stone. Marc had the solution waiting for us in his garage: some old garden hose. Here’s what the final rigging looked like. Not pretty, but it got the job done.
Feeling confident about the Patchwork Pride Project, now flying well at MHP, I was able to find some time for a quick day trip to Crieff Hills Retreat Centre to reinstall their tree sweater (aka a Rainbow Yarn Bomb] for Pride 2024. I’m thankful for Crieff’s renewed interest in hosting the installation—last year, their Rainbow Yarn Bomb was the only one of three that survived—the other two were vandalized and stolen. They were thrilled to have the installation return. Thank you, Crieff, for your support.
Finally I could rest easy. Which was just tempting fate. On Sunday June 23rd, a particularly windy day, Marc rode by the church to check out how things were looking, and sent the following photo:
Not only had the bottom right tie-down given way (again), but the flag had been so buffeted by winds that about 8 inches of the bottom right corner of the rip-stop nylon backing had...well... ripped. The next day, once the wind had died down, back up the tower Marc and I went (we’re getting pretty tired of that access door by now), and below is what we found: the tie—downs we had reinforced the week before had pulled away from the backing, and the resulting hole that was left started an eight-inch rip exposing the bottom corner red square.
I got to work cutting a long piece of ripstop nylon to patch the torn section, and Marc thought it might be worthwhile to drill through the bottom PVC pipe and install tie-downs every few feet to take the pressure off the two tie-downs at each end. Great idea. I performed a Frankenstein-like stitch repair on the backing, and Marc took care of the drilling and extra tie downs. Up close, it was anything but beautiful. But thankfully, no one was going to see it up close.
Funny story: while all this was going on, our eldest’s girlfriend drove by the church as she does every morning on the way to work, and sent a panicked text message to Claire saying, “the Pride Flag is gone!” She was relieved to hear it had just been hauled up onto the roof for repairs. 😅
And that, my friends, was that! Fully repaired, reinforced and re-mounted, the Patchwork Pride Flag continues to fly proudly. It will do so until early July, when we can assemble a team (who is willing to crawl through that infernal access door) to take it down. We’ll let you know how that goes. In the meantime, here’s a calendar-worthy shot of the project taken by Georgia Kirkos of Jorjas Photography. Enjoy.
