A Lazy Sunday Morning in Bolivia

A Lazy Sunday Morning in Bolivia

Saturday 28 January 2012

In Search of Toronto


Toronto doesn’t seem to know what it is, or precisely, ‘who’ it is. It’s a Canadian city, Canada’s biggest city, geographically lying below America’s northern states, knocking at the door to come in out of the cold. It’s a part of the Commonwealth, yet inescapably American in everything from sport, music, television, ‘wing nights,’ old people clinging to the imperial system, left hand drive and – let’s be honest – accent. People from northern Manitoba or Newfoundland have what would unmistakeably be called Canadian accents, people from Toronto could easily settle undetected into any number of the states to their immediate south. It is North America’s fifth most populous city, an amalgam of culture and ethnicities that are an example to the world.

The CN Tower lives up to its name and towers above the city, like a giraffe arching its neck to see over Lake Ontario to America and find out what they’re up to. It’s visible from almost anywhere and was my guiding light on many an inebriated saunter home. Beyond that, landmarks are hard to find, or notice. After having lived there for a number of months I looked up exactly what Toronto’s main attractions are and realised I had already seen most of them without knowing their importance.

What I found to be the most interesting feature were the homeless. While the Toronto Tourism Board would understandably be reluctant to list them as an attraction, for me they were the single most fascinating part of the city. They stay outside day and night in conditions only fit for penguins. Air vents on footpaths throughout downtown each night are covered with piles of ragged blankets and a human burrowed underneath. Elsewhere you’ll see them stumbling about, brown paper back in hand, looking for somewhere to curl up and survive. As I shiver beneath my thermals and jacket on my way home to my heated apartment I figure tonight must be it for them, but sure enough, there they are the next day, stubborn as ever, resisting any threats of capitulation. On a corner in the Bloor West Village near where I worked a large, scruffy, grey bearded man looking like Santa’s poor, alcoholic failure of a twin stood outside a liquor store asking for change. Whether in a blizzard, downpour or summer’s oppressive heat he was there, always wearing the same outfit of dirty tracksuit pants and dirty dark jacket. Even when the mercury went so low that it disappeared completely and the streets were empty he would still be there, defiant, like so many others of the super-homeless throughout the city.

Toronto has a rich economy, financial institutions, good schools and universities and boasts Canada’s envied free health care system. Despite its hellishly frozen winters and stifling albeit short summers it constantly ranks as one of the world’s most liveable cities. It’s a place perfect for families and rewards hard workers with promising careers in any desired industry. The public transport runs on time, freeways flow as they should and parklands are large and bountiful. It has everything a major city should have, except for atmosphere or any sense of vibrancy. It may be perfect for raising a family but it’s a disaster for an unmarried twenty-something itching for a night out. Bland is a word that comes to mind. The problem isn’t a lack of bars or pubs, just a lack of people inside. The city hibernates through winter. On Christmas Eve not a venue was open, and the streets were empty but for a few forlorn tourists who’d overestimated Toronto’s potential. It didn’t get much better as winter went on.

I figured a sports bar would be a prime location when the local hockey team was playing. Ice hockey in Canada is as passionate a national pastime as any sport in any country I’ve been to. When the ice briefly melts in summer they use roads and roller blades and use a ball. Males and females both engage, there are junior teams for those who have just learnt to walk and veterans leagues for those whose walking days are numbered. But the sports bars were deserted as well. The Toronto Maple Leafs haven’t won the league title since 1967. They were ordinary this season and hadn’t made the playoffs since 2004. In that time teams from California, Florida and South Carolina have all won the final, states where hockey isn’t a blip on the radar. But what stings of embarrassment even more is that Canada’s biggest city, in an immediate area with over 8 million people, in a city where ice hockey is everything there is only one major team. Just one. In Los Angeles there are two, and most people in Los Angeles couldn’t identify a puck if it whacked the liposuction off their face. I speak to the barman who tells me he knows the Leafs suck, everyone does, but they’re all they’ve got. It’s a fitting acceptance that reflects the city. In other professional sports Toronto latches onto the US leagues with a single baseball and basketball team. Neither is any good, and they find it difficult to attract players who usually opt for the bright lights of American cities as soon as they can. I don’t blame them. Now Toronto is trying to get a professional American football team. I fear the same fate awaits them should it happen. But they’ll be happy just to have a team, another foot in America’s door on their way to integration.

If there is a quintessential Toronto franchise it is the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO), the state run liquor retailer of Ontario, with a monopoly as the only liquor seller in the province which allows it to set prices high to discourage excessive alcohol consumption. Many LCBOs will shut by 9 pm, so if your party runs out of alcohol you’ll have to go to a bar, which also has to buy their beverages from the LCBO, and will likely shut at midnight or 1 am or even earlier if it isn’t busy enough, which is likely. It’s very Torontonian. Drinking and fun is allowed, as long as it is government regulated and doesn’t go too far. And as long as you’re eating while you do it. Provincial law says that pubs and bars must serve food while open, so when entering an establishment at midnight looking to run amuck on the dance floor with a number of other drunk retards you’ll instead be given a menu and shown to a table among the throng of other occupied tables as you wonder how you ended up at a restaurant when you thought you’d walked into a bar. It’s an effective mood killer. I’m bad enough at approaching females in public, it’s a lot harder when they’re in the middle of a poutine (Canada’s national dish of fries covered with cheese and gravy, originating in Quebec, not Toronto). I’m not saying that enjoyment is completely reliant on alcohol, but unless you’re North Korea, nobody really party’s without it. Compare this with Quebec, with its lax alcohol laws, plethora of discount liquor stores all competing with each other and a lower drinking age limit and it’s not hard to choose where you’d rather spend a buck’s weekend. Tim Horton’s, by contrast – the famous Canadian fast food chain opened by a hockey player – is open all night. So while you can’t escape the overnight chill with a beer in a bar, you can find a donut and coffee whenever you want.

You could try a club, but they’re as pretentious and selective as anywhere else in the world, clones of Miami, where prima donnas dress like they’re in South Beach, short skirts, heavy makeup and Bacardi Breezer in hand dancing to the latest L’il Wayne song while wannabe gangsters grind from behind, thumbs in jean pockets with Ed Hardy t-shirt exposed and eyes hiding behind sunglasses under a flat-brimmed NY hat. All with delusions that they’re somewhere fashionable and important and better than what it is. I’d rather be in the fridge outside.

The cold is quite impressive. Coming from a warm climate I found it incredible that somewhere on Earth could get that cold and even more astounding was that millions of people lived there and had done so for centuries. Initially it was the French who arrived first in 1750, but they only lasted nine years before abandoning the land. Then, during the eighteenth century, before central heating and boilers and underground malls, people began to settle into what is now Toronto, and lived through the winters which can ice piss as it hits the ground. Infants were born and survived, enough food was stored and rationed, enough fires were lit to provide the warmth to make it through and eventually a city was built. I’m amazed they didn’t just pack up and head home as soon as the first wind chill threatened to tear off their faces and leave the land to the natives who knew no better. It’s a wind chill that sent me into shops I had no business being in just to regain feeling in my bones. Torontonians have a staunch resistance to the cold that is admirable. As a society they seem to embrace it, they came up with ice-hockey for example, but more than one individual told me how much they hate the cold. A Canadian hating the cold is like a worm hating dirt. They’re built for it and it’s their only option. There is no Florida or Queensland or Spanish coast to escape to. Toronto is as close to the equator as a Canada goes.

With winter nearing its end I walk out of my basement apartment, avoid a few icy puddles formed from all the melting snow and look at the roasted ducks hanging in the windows and try to work out what the picture writing means. I live in Chinatown. In a short walk to Kensington Market there is reggae music blaring out of bong shop windows while aging punks drink on the street and laugh at a child fall off a bike. An Indian drives me to Little Portugal where a Brazilian serves me a beer that I drink with two Irish labourers. I could go to Greektown, or Little Italy, but they’ll probably shut at 1 am anyway. It’s hockey play-off time so I decide to give it a chance, expecting to be flooded with options, but all you can see is UFC posters everywhere, big screens inside being watched by juiced up, neckless wonders in a trend that is sweeping the city, although I haven’t been here long, maybe it’s permanent. I know it’s the first night in four months that the city has actually had a buzz about it. The definitive month of the national sports season is in full swing, but this is Toronto, and it’s taken a couple of guys beating each other up on TV to get people out and about. Perhaps a world class event will visit soon. MontrealCanada’s second biggest city and capital of Quebec – has a Grand Prix fixture and International Comedy Festival. Out west, Calgary has the famous Calgary stampede. Toronto has Canada’s only ceramic art museum.

Out of the blue, after months of snow and frost then weeks of mild rain, it’s July, and the sun is out and it’s hot. A heat so out of character. In a city with heated sidewalks and underground malls, ice-hockey rinks and indoor pools, the heat is an aberration. I visit The Beach, the imaginatively named long stretch of colourless sand on the banks of Lake Ontario that lie empty but for a layer of snow for most of the year, which is suddenly covered with people. Torontonians playing volleyball and soccer, sunbathing and building sandcastles. Nobody is swimming mind you, the water not as it once was after centuries of receiving a major cities waste.

Since arriving in Toronto I’d heard constant praise for Canadian beer. Television commercials, novelty t-shirts, billboards and citizens had all boasted about Molson, Labatt Blue and Moosehead. How Canada’s short-straw of a national climate had blessed them with the world’s best beer that was ‘Made from Canada’ and had the perfect natural resources to produce its national passion. On sampling it on a number of occasions I found nothing wrong with it, the problem was rather that nobody was joining me.

A sunny, warm, spring Sunday afternoon following a numbingly frozen winter seemed the perfect time to hit up The Annex, Toronto’s bar rich student quarter. And it was, if I wanted some solitude. Everyone was out drinking, but they were drinking coffee. Every coffee shop was full. Starbucks, Tim Horton’s, Second Cup and all the independents were brimming, not a seat to be found in the street level patios, while neighbouring beer gardens were deserted. In Toronto, coffee culture is king. It is a society fuelled by the beans in an environment built for it. It took me a few months to realise. Coffee is universal in this world, and in Toronto it is a constant. An addiction. Barely a person walks by without their mittens wrapped around one. Now on this glorious day, a clear, bright, Sunday evening, so rare in months, there were hundreds of people bathing in the weekend sunshine enjoying a coffee. It was a totally foreign concept to me. It’s when I realised I would never fit in. I don’t drink coffee and I never have. I drink beer. And although the commercials on television and presence of bars told me it was a drinking town, the people proved otherwise.

But maybe that’s who Toronto is, a contradiction. Being nobody makes them everybody, and doesn’t paint them with a stereotype. Almost 49% of the population was born outside of Canada, and no single minority dominates that figure. That’s a fusion of cultures that exist in harmony with each other, none dominating the other, or completely cancelling the others out. It gives the city a comfortable, liveable serenity. Toronto is the couch where you want to spend your Sunday nights after a busy weekend, bereft of stimulation or excitement. I left the next week.

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