In May '98, I went up to Toronto to get out of the US cheaply and (relatively) easily for just a few days. Toronto is known as "Toronto the Good" because in the forties and fifties it was known as a bastion of Victorian morals and goody twoshoe do-goodism. It was also hugely anglophilic, and dull. Then came waves of immigrants, and they loosened the place up. Now you could call this multicultural vibrant but down to earth metropolis "Toronto the Great". Besides, the exchange rate for the US dollar was too good to resist, so I booked a train ticket and a room at an inexpensive hotel called the Selby. On the day before Memorial Day, I arrived at Penn Station at 6:30 in the morning, surely the most hellish Amtrak station in the country. The place was packed even at this extremely early time of day. Apparently quite a lot of people wanted to go to Toronto and points in between. The train boarded on time, although a near panic rush for the platform when the track number was announced only a few minutes before the scheduled departure just highlighted the reality that Americans have no idea how to run a railroad. All the Toronto bound passengers were herded into the last car of the train. When we pulled out of the station, there wasn't one unoccupied seat left. As usual, a small wailing child was right behind me! Fortunately, I'd come equipped with a cd player in the hope that I might drown out the inevitable restlessness of the toddler.
My batteries went dead before we'd gone 50 miles north of the city, and so I had to suffer the whines of the small child, although the mother tried her best to lull the kid to sleep. It worked eventually. After several visits to the toilet and the cafe car, I realized I was disturbing the kindly old lady sitting right next to me in the aisle seat. I noticed that there was actually a seat nearby that was empty, so I grabbed it. I was now mostly out of earshot from the kid, but I soon discovered I was next to a man with a chronic nervous tick that surfaced somewhere from his bronchial cavity like a geyser spewing forth at regular intervals. Ah the joys of long-distance train travel! Eleven hours of this strange noise. I plotted to rush into the station in Albany-Rensselaer to buy out the local supply of batteries, so I could listen to cd's the rest of my journey. I succeeded in doing that during our short stop there, although the polite young man at the station news kiosk apologized that his batteries were extremely overpriced.
I wish I could say the ride was pleasant and comfortable, but it was under par for Amtrak, not the most user friendly railroad to begin with. The offerings from the snack bar were really bottom of the line junk food.There was no proper dining car, which was a surprise, since this was a twelve hour trip. The good thing was that we were staying close to schedule, and I had a good supply of music to listen to.
When we got close to the Canadian border, the Amtrak crew distributed customs forms for us to fill out, and then in a fit of xenophobia, gave us a lecture about the arbitrary nature of Canada's customs and immigration officials that made it seem like we were about to cross the border into North Korea. I was really surprised that people who worked closely with Canadians would be so ignorant, but the American education system and the overwhelming message of the American media constantly reinforce the idea that we can only really trust and understand ourselves...that even a society so extremely influenced by American culture as Canada was a land of "the other".
Needless to say, the Canadian officials were polite and efficient. The train did leave Niagara Falls a little off schedule, but it seems there's always somebody trying to smuggle tobacco into Canada, where it's heavily taxed. Also, the lock was open on the canal connecting Lake Ontario with Lake Erie, which caused another delay.
We arrived at Union Station in Toronto about twenty minutes late. That's not too bad for an Amtrak train. The station is quite impressive and spotlessly clean. It's well organized, so it was easy to get to the taxi stand. Within a few minutes, I was at the Selby Hotel, right on the edge of Toronto's gay ghetto.
I'd reserved a month in advance, but the place was full, and the front desk clerk more or less had to invent a room for me. I was given a halfway renovated room that was extremely messy, with sticky plaster on the worn out carpet, and an overwhelming smell of plaster and paint. I was promised I could change my room the next day, when most of the weekend guests would clear out. At least I had a bathtub and a tv. As I filled up the tub, I turned on the tube, to see that an old favorite: Reptilicus was just beginning. I'd never seen this dreadful movie in color, so I sat on the edge of my bed watching this embarrassment to the Danish film industry until it got so bad I dived into the bathtub for relief. This movie was the Scandinavian response to the Godzilla genre, and was released in 1962. Fortunately they never made a sequel! I'd seen it more than once as a kid, and I think I knew it was awful even then...
After a nice bubblebath, I went out to get a bite to eat. The last time I was in Toronto was in 1984. I knew my way around a bit, but I wasn't very familiar with the neighborhood around my hotel. Since the weather was so nice, I decided to walk across Bloor Street, the main east west road in the center. At the west end of Bloor was a commercial strip full of inexpensive restaurants, and I settled in at a small Indian place. Near the window were three college aged young men, discussing in detail the rheumatic symptoms of one of them. I thought he looked a bit young and fit to have such a complicated list of ailments, but his friends kept asking for more details, and he described even more physical problems. There was only one other person in the place, and when he got up to leave, he went over to the college kids' table and said he knew a remedy that would help the poor sufferer. The young men looked surprised but politely asked what he recommended. Of course the guy said: "Ganja! That'll take care of all your aches and pains." Then all four of them broke into laughter, and one of the college kids thanked him for the tip, but said that the three of them were role-playing! They were medical students and were going through doctor-patient scenarios.
What struck me most about all four of the people involved in this little conversation was how civilly the three young men talked with a stranger and with one another, and how when he left, they didn't say anything bitchy about him at his expense. They went right back to their role-playing exercise, or chatted about other topics in complete sentences and without any grandstanding or egotistical attempts to monopolize the conversation. What was really interesting was that little vignettes like this occurred again during my short visit to Toronto. Since so much of my vacationing is as much "anthropological" as getting away from it all, it was a treat for me to see such a clear example of "everyday life" just an hour after arrival.
The food by the way, was delicious and cheap. Full and in a good mood, I walked back to my hotel, stopping off in a couple of stores still open late on a Sunday night, including a huge supersized bookstore. I had an ice-cream from a street vendor who casually called out "hello" as I passed him, for no other reason than I was someone out for a stroll. That's just not a part of daily life in New York, a city that I enjoy for many, many reasons...but where the thin veneer of civil behavior rubbed off a long time ago.It's our loss, of course. At least on my trips I can enjoy the kindness of strangers.
The next morning I got up early and headed out to explore the Queen St. area, another shopping district with a lot of interesting stores, including some bookshops. I took the admirable Toronto subway to the Dundas St. station, which connects to the enormous Eaton Centre, an indoor shopping mall connected at each end to the subway. I had a bite to eat in the food court and then headed over to Queen St. to take the streetcar. Toronto is one of the few North American cities that hadn't torn up its tram system. Another one of the many reasons I like the place. Soon I was on a streetcar headed west. I rode for about two miles, saw a bookstore that looked interesting as we passed, and decided to get off at the next stop and walk back to the city center. The weather was beautiful, and the street scene was lively. I found several inexpensive books about Canadian politics and history, one of the esoteric topics I enjoy reading about, and after passing dozens and dozens of tempting restaurants, settled on an Italian place with a really cheap lunch special.
I walked back to the hotel after lunch. It was a very ambitious walk, probably three miles or so, but since the weather was so mild and I wasn't tired, I headed north up Yonge St., stopping off in more stores along the way, and noting a couple of interesting looking restaurants. When I got back to the hotel in the late afternoon, my feet were getting that sore, fatigued feeling that meant a bubblebath would be a big help. I lounged in the tub until my feet felt less numb and plotted my strategy for the rest of the day.
I spent the early evening taking a good look at the main branch of the Toronto Public Library, on Yonge St., just north of Bloor, and not too far from my hotel. It's a modern light and airy building, with a large atrium that goes from ground floor to roof, with many hanging plants on the railings. The book collection is easy to get to and explore, so I spent several hours browsing the Canadian history and geography sections.When I finished taking notes of titles to look for back home, I grabbed a bite to eat on the way back to the hotel, and settled in to watching a full schedule of Canadian evening television. First off, hockey was on the main CBC channels, French and English. That was typical, since hockey is Canada's most popular sport. Since my hotel had cable, I could check out all the other local offerings. There are several private networks, more than a dozen specialized cable channels that seemed carbon copies of American cable networks, and public networks at the provincial level that were similar to our own PBS stations. There was a CBC counterpart to CNN called CBC Newsworld,and even a French language version of the same concept called RFI. I spent most of my time looking at the CBC news programs, which seem to model themselves more on the standards of the BBC instead of the Vegas influences of CNN. The main evening news show is called the National, and it's on for an hour. It puts the American evening news programs on the commercial networks to shame.The National doesn't suffer from low ratings. It's the most popular news program in Canada. The CBC is constantly undergoing budget cuts, but the quality of its programs it still higher than anything in the US, including the American public tv stations.
I fell asleep to an old rerun of "I Love Lucy". I'm sure I could do that almost anyplace in the world I care to visit, including Burkina Faso.
The next day I skipped the wretched continental breakfast on offer in my hotel and hopped over to the Toronto version of Starbucks, a chain called Second Cup, which had a store across the street from my hotel. The coffee was acceptable, and got my engines revved up for another day exploring Toronto.
My first stop was to take a look at the Queen's Quay area. This is a sort of "new town" in town that has been built up along the waterfront. Like many of these huge developments put up with private money, there are lots of huge boxy buildings. At least a little imagination was used to design pedestrian friendly areas at ground level, but I was most interested in taking a look at the streetcar line that had been built to give easy access from Union Station to the built up area along the lake. The TTC (Toronto Transit Commission) did a good job. What had been a messy walk through a sort of no man's land when I looked at the area during my last visit in 1984, was now just a 5 minute tram ride through a tunnel and then along a well landscaped boulevard.
After having a terrific lunch at an Indonesian place on Yonge St. (it had the best "kroket" I've ever tried), I took the subway to the farthest reaches of the Bloor line to Royal York Avenue station. My destination was a little second hand bookstore on Queensway, so I had to transfer to a bus. The Toronto subway reminded me a lot of Stockholm's . They were started around the same time: the early 1950s.What was really nice about the Toronto subway was that many of the cars still have vintage fifties upholstered seats, in excellent condition. There was no sign of vandalism anywhere.
The visit to the bookstore paid off. I found several books about Toronto that I'd hoped to hunt down, and the prices were great. On the way back, the bus passed by several large schools. Kids poured on at several stops, and the Royal York station was full of students. What really impressed me was that the kids weren't out of control. They were a mulitinational bunch, and although they were talking amongst themselves and teased one another as is normal for teens anywhere...they spoke in complete sentences, and not once did I hear the word "fuck". I suspect that the Toronto school system isn't in a shambles like the schools in many cities in the US. I think the future looks a bit brighter for Canada as a result. After all, a generation of badly educated and abnormally socialized youth isn't good for any country. I think the US will reap a sorry harvest from its huge number of substandard schools.
While I'm ranting...I realized that as Americanized as Canada is in many ways, it's still a separate country(and I hope always will be.)Their history is very different from the US experience. They became an independent country non-violently, and there is no equivalent to the American Wild West of gun-totin' loners chasing out the Indians and making the land safe for white. Canadians have different national characterisitcs: they're more consensus oriented, more deferential to authority (not always a bad thing), and they don't automatically think that government is a bad influence in their lives. They're generally well behaved, well-spoken, polite, non-macho, and these days, more egalitarian and less homophobic than Americans. Sounds great. It wouldn't be an easy thing to pack my bags and move north for good, and Canada has its own problems (specifically, how to keep the country together!)Still, it was pleasant to be in a place that some have said would be how "America could be if it were civilized."
During the evening I had a civilized evening in front of the TV at my hotel, having a pizza for dinner from a nearby restaurant.
I took the Bloor St. subway the next morning to its eastern terminus, which connects to a lightrail line going to the suburban borough called Scarborough. Scarborough is quite big, and full of suburban sprawl, interspersed with typical North American strip mall shopping developments, and occasional complexes of highrise apartment buildings.At the end of the lightrail line though there has been an attempt to build a town center. There's a large shopping mall which connects right to the lightrail line, and there's also a plaza with several government buildings that form a civic center.Scarborough is an "edge city", but seems to have a more urbanized feel than other similar areas in North America. Scarborough wasn't overwhelmingly chaotic. It wasn't awe-inspiring either, but is an improvement on almost all of the rest of suburbia I've come across.
Of course, I like the old center of Toronto much more, and I headed back in after looking at Scarborough. I spent the afternoon walking up Church St from Front St near the lake. This gave me a chance to see the two main cathedrals of Toronto: St. James Anglican Cathedral, and St Michael's Catholic Cathedral. A little further north I saw Maple Leaf Gardens, a sort of cathedral to Toronto's hockey fans. Right after this begins Toronto's gayest neighborhood.
The gay ghetto seemed very similar to New York's Chelsea, if a bit less haughty. I sat for a while at a cafe to watch the passersby. There were lots of people schmoozing about. It was all rather relaxed, but the neighborhood actuall is a bit honky-tonk looking. It was very early in the day, and at night I think it would be much livelier, since most of the gay bars and clubs were in the area. I took a look at the "519 Centre" (located at that address on Church St.)It's Toronto's gay community center, and it's nicely situated in a little park. It was just a few minutes more to my hotel.
After resting a bit back at the hotel, I headed back out. I had Malaysian food at a little place I'd spotted in the gay area. Then I went to Sam the Record Man, Toronto's biggest record store. The cashier seemed to give me a flirty look as I bought my compilation of Quebecoise chansons. This was about the closest I came to havings a "gay experience" in Toronto. It's not known as the cruisiest city in the world, but then again, that wasn't my reason for heading north to begin with.
My final outing was to go to the top of the CN tower as the sun was setting. This turned out to provide a spectacular view of the city, with all the lights coming on as it grew dark. The tower is still the tallest free standing structure in the world (I think...), so the view really was incredible.
Next morning,I was back on the train to New York. I'd accomplished what I wanted to do in Toronto: buy books, eat good food, and relax. I saw a city that works, with its excellent transit system, safe neighborhoods, and urbane atmosphere. And I didn't have to go all the way to Europe to experience these things!
The inevitable slowness of Amtrak got me home a little off schedule. I didn't really mind. The train wasn't crowded and I had plenty of batteries for my cd player. I arrived home to an eager cat and a dusty apartment. No matter how crazy, dirty, and frustrating New York can be on a day to day basis, it's still home. It was nice to get back to the familiarity of the Village. Still, I'll remember my nice visit to Toronto for quite a while.