So I was already late for work the other day when I got to the subway station. When I descended the stairs to the train level, I found that there was a holdup on the subway line and a huge crowd already on the platform, and I decided that if I was going to be late I may as well be really late—I took the streetcar. It’s slow, but at least I would get a seat, instead of having to puzzle myself around knees and elbows and briefcases on the train.

I took my place in one of the seats at the back of the streetcar, and what to my wondering eyes should appear on the seat beside me but a surgical mask? Wait, before you say, Ewwwww, don’t touch that!, let me explain. It wasn’t just some discarded surgical mask from a passenger who showed up 8 years late to the SARS-phobia trend of 2003. This mask had a little note attached.

Clearly it had been been deliberately left on the streetcar. I took a closer look at the note.

Ooooh! A game! Or possibly some public art. I do love public art. I find a lot of it on the streetcar, actually. Not just the regular Sharpie graffiti, either. Streetcars make very popular galleries to budding artists, I find. I held the mask in my hand and turned over the note. Lo and behold, on the back I found a website.

I was so happy that I had taken the streetcar and was thus above ground with cell reception. I checked out this Masked Crusaders site and found a series of photos of people wearing these masks, each decorated in some way to express the subject’s answer to the question on the note. They even have an option to submit the photo using an email address they have set up to ensure anonymity. Kinda like a Post Secret sort of thing, but challenging people to expose their own impression of themselves through the mask.

In short: it IS a game! Yay! If there’s one thing I like even more than public art, it’s interactive public art. Good times!

I’m going to keep my eyes peeled for more of these masks.

The residents of North Slope, or High Park as it is formally known, are an outspoken people. They wear their politics on their bumper stickers, hang them in their windows, and sometimes even scrawl them out on public structures.

Some of their theories are more…controversial than others.

And sometimes they express more personal entreaties.

And sometimes they simply furrow their brows and engage your sense of disgrace.

Let the finger-wagging commence!

Serve Canada Youth.