It’s been a long drive from Ottawa. In the front it’s Andrew and I, in the back it’s Cam and our new addition, Alex.
Alex is the other side of Cam’s conservative shadow. He’s a cheerful, left leaning political science student who uses the phrase “privileged white guys” in about 30% of his sentences. He and Cam go back and forth constantly, they’re basically the same person, they’re just arguing different sides.
The energy rises as we hit the Don Valley parkway, Warren G and Nate Dogg’s Regulate plays on the radio and we sing in unison to all seven of the words we know: “the next stop is the East Sii-iide.” We sing this in the Honda Civic with Eco Boost and it seems like something privileged white guys would do.
We check into the hotel and the guys want to get a beer before going to the Raptors game. Alex and I detour for a coffee shop before going to the bar. We find we’re not allowed in the bar with our coffees so we stand outside on the abandoned patio. We talk about everything in less than twenty minutes. Sports, love, school, work, aging. The din of the city is raucous, it drives the speed of our talk. Something about the space and the buildings and the distant noise of a million lives makes me thankful to be talking with someone right now. Cities can make you lonely. There’s so much to want in the city, so much to aspire to and indulge in, you see the professional athletes, the gorgeous women, the fancy cars, the Harry Rosen suits. It’s all BS though, and the best way to still the vortex of wanting is to talk to someone else about what really matters in life.
The Raptors lose to big shot LeBron and his Cavaliers. Andrew and I are depressed. We sit in our seats until the arena clears out and we have to take the pouting to Yonge Street. I’m revelling in this sadness, life feels meaningful, sports are great.
I hit a crisis part way through our second day in Toronto. We’re wandering around with no plan, we consider visiting the Royal Ontario Museum, then decide against it. Instead, we walk to the Hockey Hall of Fame, but we’re not feeling that either. I’ve forgotten this always happens when I travel, I spend a lot of time walking around, not sure what to do. We go back to the hotel and the combination of endless choices and my insurmountable cheapness ruins me. I’m laying in bed groaning about late capitalism.
I pick myself up though, this is Toronto, the biggest big smoke in the country. I look up where the record shop/bookstore district is and head that way. On my way there I get sidetracked by the area around the Ontario College of Art and Design and the Art Gallery of Ontario. There are a number of galleries on this block and I stop in at a few. There are impressive photographs inside. We all fall victim to the editing and filtering game when posting photos on the internet. It’s easy to be tricked into thinking something is decent photography when it’s not. But the photos in these galleries put the amateurs in their place. They’re edited and fixed up too, but they’re a symphony compared to the kazoos you find on facebook. In one gallery is a massive picture of a 747 on final approach for landing. Its enormity is incredible, the flaps are all wonky and the wheels are down, the complexity of splayed parts make it look like some haggard bird, or a flying refugee camp. I leave before it hits me.
Across the street I stop in at the Art Gallery of Ontario, I browse in the book shop for a while, then settle into a comfy chair and hang out. This is the most satisfying thing I’ve done all day, maybe all week, perhaps in several years. The AGO has good people watching. As visitors enter, the rotating doors make a foreboding thump when the rubber flap hits the frame. I enjoy this and hope somebody will trip while in the middle of their passage. I people watch for carnage. There are a lot of these doors in Toronto and when you come from a small town, things like rotating doors are a thrill. When I was 10 years old and visiting Vancouver for the first time I remember feeling high class when walking through one of those rotating doors. Here in Toronto, they’re everywhere and rural roots are exposed every time I push them to cartoon speeds as I enter a building.
After my OCAD/AGO detour I need food. I’m not far from Kensington Market and once there I stop at a vegan burrito place. Some vegan restaurants make the mistake of replacing the meat with lurid amounts of garnish - a year's worth of cilantro or garlic or ginger with your meal. This is one of those places and my meal makes me feel as though my mouth has been spray bombed with ancho chili peppers. I exit the restaurant and burn down Kensington Market with my breath.
The next stop is Queen Street. The street where hip consumerism happens, where I can meet lumbersexuals and maybe Strombo and hopefully Margaret Atwood. I feel a rush of hope every time I see a woman over 60 with corkscrew hair. It turns out there are a lot of women over 60 with corkscrew hair in Toronto. This must be a trend here. Like people getting the Jennifer Aniston cut in the 90s, older women in Toronto are sitting down at the salon and saying, “give me the Atwood.”
I reach peak Atwood sighting probability when I stop in at a yarn store called Romni Wools. It’s full of all types of knitting enthusiasts. There is a goth woman, all rings and piercings except for her knit skull and crossbones sweater. There is a woman holding court on a tired chair with some other patrons. The woman is lamenting the destruction of some slippers she knit, her cats had shredded them to pieces. The best is a lady prancing around the store, hugging rare yarns with glee and excitedly setting up her teenage son and his friend with their first set of needles. The employees all look like out-of-their depth introverts and, judging by the pace of the line at the till, they just started accepting debit cards yesterday. But who cares about a line? These knitters are in no hurry. Cat lady has stories to spare. No Margaret here, but I’ve found the best store in Toronto.
I continue up to some record shops but find that these record shops only sell actual records. There are no CDs and no discount tape shelf. This seems a little snooty and highbrow, so I don’t stay long. I also don’t own a record player.
Queen Street is dizzying and in the thickness of life I notice something missing in Toronto. There’s little evidence of a connection to rural life and the outdoors here. Canada has less hinterland population than is assumed, but in many Canadian towns and cities you don’t have to drive far before losing cell service. Not in Toronto, it’s insulated by suburbs stretching 100 kilometers in every direction, no mountains to climb or moose meat in the freezer.
While browsing a book shop with almost no wilderness related titles - a theme I’m now actively searching for - I get a text from Andrew and Cam telling me they’re at a bar watching sports. I go to meet them but stop at Mountain Equipment Co-op on the way there. I have no reason to stop there other than to bathe in the slow pace and relatable consumerism that is the M-E-C.
When I arrive at the bar, they’re a few pints deep and scavenging online for last minute tickets to the Leafs-Canucks game. I sit down and order a ginger ale and a round of oysters. The ginger ale is sweet, I must have the bottom of the bladder bag from whence it came. The refills are free and I drink four more in the next hour. We find some $70 tickets and head to the arena.
Our seats are as high as you can possibly go in the arena. They’re not even seats, we’re alloted space on a concrete promenade that is literally in the rafters, if I jump up, I can grab the dust bunnies growing there since the Leafs played the Canadiens on the arena’s opening night 15 years ago. This all-Canadian match up brings out a lot of Canucks fans and there’s animosity between the two sides up here in deep space. Lots of chirping, security has to break up one shouting match before it escalates. It’s good fun though, I’m not a hockey guy but I enjoy the game and the inimitable atmosphere of being in the home team’s arena when they win.
When the game ends we go to another bar to watch more sports. This is quite obviously a Man's Trip. Sure I went to the knitting store and kept watch for a 75 year old feminist author. But this trip has mostly been a succession of having drinks, watching sports, dissecting guy-ish pop culture and making fun of each other.
When I leave the bar I stop at Tim Hortons and order a bagel with herb and garlic cream cheese and a frosted gingerbread donut. Maximum bread, minimum price. It’s getting cold out, the high rises stand tall and the construction cranes are bringing more. Though its late, my side street path back to the hotel is teeming with people from every background.
The next morning I board the plane back to Halifax, it will seem smaller than before and I might lose cell service somewhere, but that seems normal. Porter Flight 407 lifts high into the blue sky and briefly follows the north shore of Lake Ontario. The next stop is the East Sii-iide.