******************** But I hate to be alone... Because I fancy myself a writer, I like to think I am an introvert too, a craver of solitude. When the day-to-day of family life is particularly grinding, I've often used the evenings hours to google things like "cabin retreat" or "writing escape" with visions of myself alone in the woods with nothing but a calcified kettle and a rickety table for my laptop. Scrolling through the results, I actually deselect options like "WiFi" and "Close to Town" because apparently I'm the sort of person who wants to be alone for days and days so I can write. But, I'm not. On a windswept weekend in June, I left my gaggle of children with my brave husband and boarded the ferry from downtown for the 10-minute ride to Toronto Island. That I was the lone passenger on the ferry probably wasn't the best omen, but it felt somehow Victorian, my bags on my lap on the damp bench with all those old red lifejackets tucked into netting overhead. Out the window the rain fell sideways. Victorian and writerly, right? Except I spent most of the ferry ride texting my sister. About my kids. On the western tip of the islands is Gibraltar Point. This used to be what we born-and-raised Toronto kids called The Island School. It is now an artist retreat/colony/work space run by Artscape , a Toronto non-profit. My lovely and gracious host picked me up at the island terminal then