i remember Tod as the very committed photographer who made so many excellent portraits for Opening Doors, the oral history that Carole Itter & i put together for Strathcona, the neighbourhood  that your family lived in for so many years.  whenever i walk past the co-op on Union St. i still think of Tod & Fumiko.  he contributed a striking cover image for periodics, the small magazine of experimental prose that i co-edited with Paul de Barros.  there was something understated but remarkably “present” about his photographs.  i remember him talking about the quality of light in Strathcona as different from that in any other part of the city.

but i most remember seeing him at work in the studio on the south side of Hastings Street, that building now gone.  i rented a writing room from him & it was always a pleasure to see him or hear him moving about just beyond the wall where my writing table was.  i remember how he taught me to be careful with a calculator, always to double-check (i still push the wrong buttons) — a care i associate with everything he did.  that quiet, observant, & so attentive mind that is much in evidence in his piece of writing about his post-surgery experiences in hospital, “The Mother-Machine.”

Daphne Marlatt