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Thoughts Toronto Uncategorised

The Hill

A view of downtown Toronto from the top of the Don Valley Brickworks
The Hill itself

In my mind it looms large. In reality it’s little more than a path leading out of a Toronto park, a former quarry. Generations scooped out shale and clay for the bricks that built old town Toronto. After that ran out, the local conservation authority bought the land and turned it into a park. Now tourists, wedding parties and cyclists saunter leisurely through the landscaped pit, admiring the ponds where steam shovels formerly ripped the earth

I don’t saunter. I pit myself against “The Hill” as I call the path. It’s my own Tour de France mountain stage, a personal biking challenge, even though it’s only about 80 feet high.

If no one’s lollygagging at the base, I can gather speed and let momentum carry me partway up. That never lasts long before I need to start pumping the pedals. It wouldn’t be difficult if it didn’t snake up and around on its way to the top. It’s those damn turns that make it challenging.

A hot day makes it even tougher, as my lungs labour to compress the sticky soup Toronto calls summer air. Even without the added difficulty, there’s a point where doubt starts creeping in: am I going to make it?

That sounds terribly dramatic but is entirely self-inflicted. Not making it means walking the rest of the way, not falling to my doom. There are no medals for reaching the top, except the one in my mind that says “Not today, Hill. I win.”

But a few years ago, the realization hit me: one day The Hill is going to win, finally and forever. Over the last few years, I’ve had to admit defeat and perform my self-inflicted walk of shame more often than I care to admit. Those times seem to be coming more frequently, even though I’m still in my early 50s. At moments like those I think about my dad.

He passed away last summer, but in his final years he was able to do fewer and fewer things that were dear to him. First he had to give up his house and move to a seniors facility. Then he had to stop driving. Then the long walks stopped, and eventually walking anywhere aside from the dining hall ceased. But the loss I remember most is fishing. For years, I tried to go fishing with him one last time, like we did when I was a little boy. I could see the day coming when we wouldn’t be able to do so ever again. I tried convincing him again and again to let me drive him down to St. Margaret’s Bay outside Halifax, where we used to cast for mackerel.

But there always seemed to be a reason not to go until one day age won, and I realized we were never going to go fishing together again. I think about that whenever I catch myself crafting an excuse not to do something I enjoy, or when I feel like giving up before the finish. The little victories I earn atop The Hill makes me feel alive in some small way, and I try to remind myself that one day the choice to try again won’t be there.

That’s what I tell myself whenever I’m feeling the burn going up The Hill. Near the top there’s sometimes a panic moment when I start to wonder, breath labouring, “What happens if I pass out? Has anyone had a coronary trying to summit this thing?” It’s pretty silly, and is more about anxiety than imminent system collapse. I realize it’s not the Pyrenees and I’m not in the Tour de France. But when I’m pedalling like crazy and starting to doubt myself, my mind can spiral away in strange directions.

The reward is a view of the Don Valley, a lush canopy struggling to eclipse the taller and taller towers Toronto is continually pushing up downtown.

One day will be the last victory. I won’t know which one it is. It’ll just be a good day before a not-so-good day. But then the next day will be another not-so-good day, and another, until I finally realize The Hill has won.

This is the way of all flesh: the things that were easy a few years, a few decades ago, one day seem hard.

Age is a process, not an event. It’s a companion you develop a closer relationship with the longer you last, a kind of friend you grow closer to. Age gradually takes things away, some good and some bad. It takes away selfishness, immaturity and impulsiveness. It also takes away strength and reflexes. I didn’t say it was always a kind friend, but it’s the only lifelong friend you’ll ever have.

Maybe I’ll get a better bike, a real racer, that will buy a few more years of victories and delay the inevitable. That day will come, but not quite yet. For now, in man vs. Hill, I’m still coming out on top more often than not.

Categories
Life Thoughts Toronto

Accidentally Torontonian

It was only supposed to be a year: move to Toronto, get the certificate, move back to Calgary and continue with life.

23 years later, the move back to Calgary hasn’t happened. I have become, accidentally, Torontonian.

That was never the plan. I never had any desire to move to the Big Smoke.
Growing up on the east coast, Toronto seemed incredibly distant, a mysterious chunk of population somewhere past Montreal where folks moved later in life, and from where repairmen ordered parts for your fridge.

Later, it gained an unfortunate reputation as a breeding ground for snobbery. I remember the handful of kids transplanted from Toronto. Young and naive, many of them assumed us yokels would be awed by their big city pedigree, and flaunted it accordingly. That was a bad idea that backfired consistently, leading to ostracism and the conclusion that TO was a jerk factory.

After finishing school, I was faced with a decision: Halifax’s economy was small and sputtering, and I felt the need to move somewhere with more opportunities. Toronto’s economy was in the dumps, Vancouver was too expensive, I’d already lived in Ottawa, and I didn’t think my French was good enough for Montreal. Calgary beckoned with an oil economy firing on all cylinders, and I made the leap.

Soon after landing, I discovered something Calgarians share with Haligonians: antipathy for Toronto. The more folks I met, the more I realized those feelings of resentment travel across our great land. In fact, the unifying force in our country isn’t the great outdoors, maple syrup, poutine or even hockey: it’s animosity for Toronto.

Some of that has nothing to do with the town itself. It’s probably aimed at residents of every big city around the world, from Beijing to Buenos Aires. I think it stems from the inhabitants’ sense that they’re from somewhere just a little more sophisticated, important or awesome than anywhere else. I breathed that in when I landed in Hogtown in 2000.

I loved Calgary. I had no intention of leaving, until I hit a ceiling at work and needed a diploma to keep moving up. I found a program at Humber College, packed everything in boxes and bought a one-way ticket, confident I’d return in a year.

Toronto didn’t impress at first: it felt too big, impersonal and uncaring. It seemed less like a city with an identity or personality, and more like a sea of people crammed together on top of each other.

That feeling started to change when I moved to a friendlier neighbourhood, and found parks and shops I liked, a favourite pub and a go-to coffee shop. I started to discover what there was to like about this big fat city. There were neighbourhoods branded everything from “Little Italy” to “Little Tibet”. There were festivals and a theatre scene I stumbled into after an acting class. There were the bucket list concerts I finally got to see, museums, restaurants and all the other things tourist bureaus stuff into ads.

I ended up staying another year. I found a job and then a girlfriend. I got another apartment. I found another job and another girlfriend. I kept discovering more things to like about the city: bike trails, the islands, ravine hikes and more.

Years passed with the plan to move back to Calgary quietly receding in the rear-view mirror but never overtly abandoned. And then something quite unexpected happened: I started becoming Torontonian.

I’ve transformed, and I doubt the me from 23 years ago would recognize the current one. I’ve become that guy, the infinitely impatient one muttering under their breath at people lollygagging on the sidewalk when they’ve got places to be right now. (Could you walk any slower, buddy?) I talk about how the vibe in places like Kensington Market needs to be protected from gentrification, as if “vibe” were something that shows up on Google Maps. I read blogs and magazines about the city as often as I read ones about Canada itself. And I’ve embraced the idea that there’s something impressive about living in the biggest city in the land.

Recently I had to confront just how Torontonian I’ve become. Part of me will always hate myself for admitting it, but one night in front of the TV — how can I really be saying this?

I found myself cheering for the Leafs.

You can’t spend 23 years somewhere and not have it change you. Halifax will always be home, because home is where the heart is. But home is also where you hang your hat, and that’s Toronto. It’s where my condo leers over the perennially pissed-off drivers on the Gardiner Expressway. It’s where my cats constantly fight and make up. It’s where I found my wife, and where all but a few friends live. It’s the city that needs constant reassurance, but which is somehow quietly certain it’s the Centre of the Universe.

That’s what makes a good city great: a balance of contradictions.
A friend had a theory that life sorts you into the city in which you truly belong, by size, temperament and so on. Calgary is young and a little conservative. Ottawa is bureaucratic, well-planned and restrained. Halifax is friendly and loves a good time.

And Toronto? Well, Toronto is never satisfied. It obsesses about its shortcomings, even as it lands near the top of “best cities in the world” lists, a pessimism born from privilege. Toronto is the commercial, financial and cultural centre of the country even as it dreams of becoming New York City when it grows up. It’s the centre of its universe, but also the centre of self-doubt, perpetually comparing itself to everywhere around it.

That describes me a little: a collection of contradictions. It’s what endears me to the city. Like me, Toronto doesn’t have just one identity. At a certain point a city becomes too big for that, and its identity becomes the sum of its parts. Or maybe that’s way too Zen and Toronto is just like every other big city, with its good, bad, beauty, ugliness and endless complexity.

By my calculation, sometime in 2025 I’ll have spent more than half my life here. Assuming I last long enough, will I retire and end my days here? Will I move back “home” to Halifax? Maybe I’ll go back to Calgary. Maybe I’ll find a villa in Italy. Who knows? But this town has shaped me as surely as any other has.

I have become, unexpectedly, Torontonian.

Categories
Toronto

The Mayor of the Market

I have seen my retirement. It is delicious.

He used to hang around Yonge & Eglinton in Toronto, but I haven’t seem him in a long time. I don’t visit midtown much since moving out in 2010, so I don’t know what became of him.

The first time I saw him, I couldn’t decide whether he was homeless or a millionaire. He looked in his late 50s, with a smoothly shaved head, a deep, lurid tan, an earring and a big belly. His clothes were on the rough side of casual, but not ragged. He seemed to be everywhere: at the hot dog cart, occasionally helping the owner; on the corner watching the world go by; installed in shops here and there.

Everywhere I saw him, he was talking to people, casually and easily, like an old friend catching up, without a care in the world. His whole reason for being seemed to be to watch the world go by.

His Lordship, The Mayor

I nicknamed him “The Mayor,” because he acted like he was in charge of the neighbourhood, somehow responsible for its smooth operation, relying on a mix of casual observation and small talk. He seemed so natural and at ease, with no pressing or prior commitments, in some kind of laid-back, Buddha-bellied communion with the neighbourhood and its people. I thought, “That’s what I want to do.” I want to be the mayor of somewhere.

Of course, maybe none of that was true. Maybe he was homeless and had nowhere else to go. Maybe he was injured and on disability, with nothing to do but kill time. Maybe he really was a millionaire, and enjoying his neighbourhood was his idea of a plum retirement. I like to think the latter was true, because the idea of spending my golden years tending my neighbourhood appeals deeply to me.

My neighbourhood has none of the yuppie ambition or sleek lines of Yonge & Eglinton. Gentrification has largely passed it over, thanks in no small part to a mix of public housing and heritage protection. In my neighbourhood you’re as likely to run into a busker with three teeth and a sailor’s mouth as you are a bright young thing from condoland. There isn’t the variety of chic boutiques Yonge and Eg has sprouted, but the hustlers and collectors at the antique market will sell you anything from Roman coins to Tinkertoy for the right price. My hood lacks the pretense that dogs much of Toronto, and the epicentre of that authenticity is its eponym: St. Lawrence Market.

Still Life with Pork Chop

The Market holds a special place in my heart, grown over four years of living next door. My wife and I took most of our wedding photos inside, she in her immaculate white wedding gown trailing across the scruffy concrete, me in my tux. Our favourite photo features us posing in front of rows of pork chops at one of the butchers.

There’s nothing elegant about the Market. It resembles nothing so much as a cross between an overgrown barn and a collection of roadside stalls. Any ambience is a byproduct of the chaotic jumble of boxes and people crammed into a city block, hitting a fever pitch Saturdays when Toronto descends en masse.

Duelling green grocers try to establish whether you’re inadvertently trying to pay for the other guy’s zucchini. Boxes of spices overflow in the basement bulk shop, surely Toronto’s cheapest aromatherapy. A butcher rings a cowbell seemingly at random. Is it to celebrate a significant sale? Does it mark the hour? Is it just random boredom? Who knows?

The Stories that Make a Place

I’ve discovered the Market’s idiosyncrasies and details, both cryptic and trivial, over the years, like the name of the flower guy I buy a rose from each week for my wife. I know where the prison used to be when the Market was Toronto’s town hall, shackles hanging from the wall. I’ve learned that if you wait till 3:00 on a Saturday, you can find fish that’s been marked down at least once, and maybe twice. I know that the German-sounding deli is actually run by a Greek family. (“Odysseus” is the best name ever for a cheese-monger. It makes me think of some intrepid soul embarking on a ten-year journey to bring back the finest Camembert from around the globe)

Farther afield is the lunch place I visit each Saturday, where the owner knows my order before I even set foot inside (chicken salad with an extra falafel), and the barber who regales me with the latest on which businesses are moving in or out.

That’s what makes a place a neighbourhood: people and their stories. A neighbourhood needs context and history, roots and randomness, knit together by people you want to get to know. It never ceases to amaze me that in a city as big and cool-to-the-touch as Toronto, there are still places like that. That’s  why when I think of what I’ll be doing when I’m 65 (if I’m still around, healthy and financially solvent) the thought of just being a part of the place appeals to me: sampling the cheese at Scheffler’s, listening to the guitar player compete with the Dixieland combo for change, recognizing toys from my childhood at the antique market, helping out here and there if people need a hand. The thought of becoming part of the neighbourhood by becoming one its stories makes me happy.

Maybe I should visit Yonge & Eglinton to see if the mayor’s still around. Maybe I can tease his story out of him, and find out if I was right. It’s probably better if I just leave his story in my imagination intact, because if I’m right and he was (or still is) the Mayor of Yonge & Eglinton, I feel like there’s a precedent, and maybe I can become the Mayor of the Market.