Bright Lights, Big City II

Of all the people in Canada, I'm the last person who I would ever imagine hearing say the words, "Toronto's actually not that bad". Last Monday, I was sitting at a table with Eips and two other Calgarians (Jimmy and Dan Jacob) and she was lamenting on our supposed "western pride". People from the west not only manage to find each other with their western-canada equivelent to gay-dar, but they also are damn proud of it, too. That's right, I was born in the big city of Calgary, home of Peter's Drive In (with 30 milkshake flavours, it's worthy of it's own entry), the Calgary Stampede and my beloved Flames; an existance blissfully ignorant of things like OAC, subways, the "GTA" and Via Rail.

I'm not necessarily a stranger to the Toronto area, either. I spent a summer living in a classed-out condo in Mississauga (which had it's own bowling lanes ... also worthy of an entry!). I visited here frequently, from my friend Sunil's penthouse apartment on Queen's Quay, to trips home with Alana, to shopping days downtown. I never liked it. I was scared of the crazy people, overwhelmed by the traffic and disgusted by the smog
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But when my bus pulled into downtown yesterday, I found myself spotting familiar landmarks (the Kinkos on university, for instance). I can now confidently name at least 5 major Toronto streets, and can semi-confidently get myself from the University Campus to Union Station on the subway. I've been to a few baseball games, seen a dead body underneath a tarp at the Danforth GO station (I have a lot of catching up to do!) and shopped in Urban Outfitters. Tonight, if I felt like it, I could have seen the Black Crowes OR Sarah Mclachlan, watched at least 100 major motion pictures and eaten food from Thailand or Chile. And over the past few days, I've actually started to say to myself ... "Hey. Toronto isn't so bad"; in fact, there are parts of it that are just plain awesome.

Now I'll be the first to admit that it's not hard to like Toronto when the trees are blooming and people are walking their dogs in the park. And it doesn't really compare to the way I feel walking down Kits Beach near my dads house (see below) , or rollerblading on the Stanley Park Seawall, or what it was like to grow up a stone's throw from Banff ... But with my Don interview @ UofT in 9 hours, I'm starting to see Toronto as a place that I can call home - at least for the next 12 months.