Day 6 – 11: Toronto – “Go Blue Jays!”
If Montréal comes across as a city with the vibe and culture of a different continent, Toronto follows suit as a location suffering from a similar geographical identity crisis.
While Canadians will often go to great lengths to assert the differences between their great nation and their closest neighbour down south, you can’t help but feel that Canada’s biggest city (and the fifth largest in North America altogether) has been completely overwhelmed by the steady pulse of americana from across the border.
Toronto is a sprawling metropolis much akin to Boston or Los Angeles. In fact, a Canadian friend we meet up with later on in the trip accurately describes it as “a mini New York”, albeit cleaner. And safer. With more donuts.
I’m willing to bet that if you ever found yourself dropped into Toronto with no idea what city you were in, it wouldn’t be too ludicrous to think you might be in the States. This is not a slur on Toronto (or the States for that matter) — far from it actually — but with a mere perfunctory concession to the French language, immense sky-scrapers and a complete embracing of urban lifestyle, Toronto epitomises the great American dream without some of the nightmarish side-effects.
Casting first impressions aside, scratch beneath the modern and citified surface of Toronto and you uncover a town very much with its own heritage and unique personality. We spend a similar amount of days here as we did in Montréal though this time there are a few noticeable differences. For instance, due to its spawling size, we avail of a weekly transit ticket that grants us the use of the metro and street-cars (trams) to our hearts’ content. It’s an amazingly efficient system and one that puts Dublin’s inability to introduce an integrated ticketing system to shame. Here’s how it works: you get on to the street-car and show the driver your ticket. That’s it. And, guess what, it works. No machines that need to read Aramaic and no complex fare systems to baffle the masses. You buy a ticket, you show it to the driver. Jesus, it’s like that (probably urban myth) of how NASA burned through millions of dollars in R&D inventing a pen that could be used in zero-gravity. The Russians, well, they just used a pencil. Once again Canada shows the world how it’s done. Occam’s Razor – the simplest solution is usually the best.
Man and Machine in perfect harmony. The people of Toronto
Location wise, Toronto perches on the northwest edge of Lake Ontario, four and a half million souls strong, just waiting for the Americans to get angsty and invade somewhere closer to home. The locals love their sport (hockey and baseball mostly – though not the local team – the Toronto Blue Jays – because “they suck” apparently) and good food. This second love is apparent from the unending number of eateries on show with every second building offering food, drink or both. It’s therefore somewhat understandable that the locals are a little more rotund than their Montréal cousins up north. Or maybe it’s all the smoking that keeps the average Montréalean’s weight down.
It’s not just the fondness of rich food that they share with their American neighbours across the border as there is a dramatic language shift between Montréal and Toronto. And I’m not just referring to the obvious English versus French difference. Toronto’s nomenclature is distinctly Americanised with the annoying over-reliance on such words as “like” and “awesome” everywhere but performed with an almost musical accent that Americans find amusing while most Europeans can’t tell the difference. Until they say “about” that is. Yes, the rumours are true, “about” becomes “aboot” and “eh” does complete a lot of sentences. It’s quaint and reminds me somewhat of Japanese and how that language’s sentences often end with “ne”, basically asking “no? do you agree?”. The Canadians and the Japanese – two nations desperate for you to agree with them.
Rogers Stadium with the phallic stem of the CN Tower sprouting ever-upwards
We arrive from Montréal via train in the evening time and emerge from the underground at College Street. True to its description, we surface in the middle of the vast University of Toronto college area. The sheer scale of UT is hard to quantify in words. The campus is so large, in fact, that it technically isn’t even a campus but a series of dedicated city blocks. You can walk through what you think is simply Downtown Toronto for an hour but you are actually wandering around various faculty buildings.
Toronto is a young and vibrant city, a fact seen in the faces of its inhabitants. As I cart 18kg of belongings over university greens and past administration buildings, I can’t help but notice how young the people who walk past us are; some dazed by the sun, others just dazed and confused from the night before. I feel strangely old, a feeling that I suppose is natural considering I graduated from college over ten years ago. If I saw me ten years ago carrying large bags and desperately seeking coffee (with a little less hair and a tad more bulk) I’d think I was old too. And stupid for wearing a jacket during Toronto’s balmy evening.
We arrive at the hostel in a dark off-campus residential district, rich with students hanging out by Japanese rice bars and quaffing strange umber brews. Their merrymaking is shielded from prying eyes by a canopy of low tree-cover and a suitable lazy lighting system that keeps the pathways and going-ons beneath the foliage unseen and discreet. The hostel we’re staying in for one night before moving on to Global Backpackers (a more upmarket and popular hostel smack bang in the middle of the city) is like something Stanley Kubrick would dream up after a sleepless night on downers. It’s a complete shit-hole in other words, but it has a bed and they’ve been good enough to remove the offending body from the out-of-service shower in the women’s bathroom. They did leave what looks like the police “Do Not Cross” tape, however.
Redrum! Redrum!
We check-out/run for our lives the next morning and, with our handy “this travel card gets you anywhere” card, we take our first of many street-car jaunts to Spadina (which is pronounced SPA-DYE-NA and not SPA-DEE-NA like I originally thought when consulting the map).
Global Backpackers is basically a hostel super-chain at this rate and is as much a thriving business as it is the quintessential backpacking haven. The single room we book is clean, austere and looks out on to the street-car stop below. There are separate bathrooms which, in a strange twist of the norm, are awesome for the men but a bit shoddy for the women. Sheila gets pissed off at the constant queuing for the shower and the fact that the wash basin is inside the cubicle so you can’t even brush your teeth if someone else is answering nature’s call. There’s a huge kitchen which is currently being renovated so there’s a substitute offered which is a tad small and lacking in amenities but it does the trick. There’s a common area with one of the warpest pool tables I’ve even seen (with named cues for a touch of quirkiness) and a TV galley where annoying members of staff turn up bad Canadian TV and laugh maniacally.
There’s also free wifi which is as temperamental as a drunken fish-wife. I request the assistance from the Australian crew member behind the desk (many people travelling trade in a few of their hours helping out up front or cleaning the hostel as barter for free accommodation) and he takes my netbook and performs some covert techno voodoo on it. “There,” he says triumphantly, “should work now.” He’s right, but it’s only half the story. It’s only when I get to Niagara Falls and I can’t connect to the hotel’s free wifi do I realise he’s locked my TCP/IP settings to a static IP address. For the non-technical out there, it’s like making your car go – but with petrol that only works in one city. Thankfully we don’t spend much time in the hostel and take to Toronto like French missionaries in search of heathen aborigines in need of urgent conversion.
Toronto is everything a modern city should be. Its sky is dominated by the CN Tower, once the world’s largest free standing structure, an accolade now eclipsed by some much less interesting and recently built Asian contender we’ll undoubtedly visit on our travels. Not world’s largest building I should stress as we learn buildings must contain inhabitable floors and we’re pretty sure no one is living in the spindly concrete support spire that shoots into the sky and cradles the tower’s observation deck and countless TV and radio masts. It’s impressive up close and, like a strange unwaxing moon, incessantly follows you around the city. The locals use it as a giant reference point and you get the feeling it’s viewed as a cultural and navigational aegis for Toronto’s wayward souls. Lost? Just aim for the needle.
Right next to the CN Tower is the Rogers Stadium, home to the aforementioned “suck-tastic” Toronto Blue Jays baseball team. As I have a long-standing history with baseball (I pride myself on telling every North American I meet that I don’t understand the rules while hinting that it’s far too complex and drawn out for a nation that invented Attention Deficit Disorder), we buy tickets to “the ballgame” (the cheapest we could get – $28 for the pair) and climb into the heights of Rogers Centre. Fortuitously, I’m right behind the home plate and, unlike stadia back home, even the cheapest ticket here grants you a clear and unhindered view of the action. For $20 more I’m guessing they would have let me throw a few pitches. In fact, considering how poorly the Blue Jays have been playing of late, they might actually let me do it for free.
Have you seen my baseball?
With the CN Tower looming high overhead like a disapproving sentinel, undoubtedly despondent at the Jay’s faltering home record, the game kicks off with some saccharine antics we Europeans were sure were only made up in the movies. But no, some unknowns are paraded at the start having beaten some international team who probably can’t even afford sand in some tournament that I have never heard of and I think the first ceremonious pitch is thrown by a cancer victim. I could be wrong though. I was a little in shock at the price of the beer at the time.
The “event” lasts over three hours and is a constant start-stop affair. It’s so long and devoid of anything that even resembles activity at times that it makes me wonder why Americans (and Canadians) continue to complain about soccer and its “lack of goals” and/or “boredom factor”. At least Steven Gerrard doesn’t leave the pitch every five minutes to high-five a team-mate or to maybe take a few practice swings of his left foot.
After about ten minutes, my life-long infliction of not understanding the rules of baseball is remedied by a majestic display of sporting prowess on the field below. The Minnesota Twins are three runs up heading into the sixth inning and the Blue Jays are truly living up to the local’s word of sucking some serious ass. In the sixth inning, however, there is a shift of fortune. The Jays are batting and, what’s this? After a few freak hits, a couple of pyjama wearing fat old guys get home bringing the score to a slightly more respectable 3-2 and some much needed life is breathed into what has been a somewhat somniferous affair. It gets better when “Big Mac and Fries” McDonald (I hear his nickname from the half-naked troop of college frat-guys behind us who never stop chanting and rarely watch the actual game despite their flabby bodies spelling out GO JAYS!) hits a home run and, for the briefest of passing moments, baseball is the greatest sport on the planet and I jump up and desperately want to hug the nearest overgrown man. Then we have another hour of near inactivity accompanied by large sections of the crowd chanting at one another while ignoring the game again.
It’s a bizarre past-time (not my term, I remember an American friend describing it as such; relegating it from the lofty “sport” status) and something I could seriously get into if I ever lived in North America. Of course, as long as I could take my eReader to the game and not have to pay $4.50 for a bottle of “pop”. Or soda. Or whatever term both countries are incessantly fighting over for what is, in fact, just over-priced Coca-Cola.
The crowd-baiting and perpetual cross-arena name-calling is something I find both bizarre and strangely alluring. This phenomenon involves large sections of the crowd who never shut up, rarely watch what they’ve paid to see, and literally insult both the visiting team’s fans and fellow sections of their own supporters for hours on end. “University Toronto sucks” apparently. But “At least we’re not virgins”, retorts the offended strata situated right next to us. At one point around the seventh inning a local man with his kids has seemingly had had enough and starts his own chant: “We’re here to watch baseball!” he repeats about twenty times before questioning how any of the illuminous shirt sporting nitwits could even get into university nevermind question the intelligence of a fellow student. Thankfully it’s all good-natured and with no profanity which I find amazing. Back home we’d be calling the rival’s travelling support “whores”, “bastards” and probably worse. We might even rip up some seats in order to brain these foolish visitors to our Mecca of sporting greatness. Not so in Toronto. Chanting that the other supporters have a higher chance of dropping out than you do is sufficient a slur it seems. And everyone is friends again after the game. Just don’t ask who won. ‘Cause we weren’t actually watching. At all.
The rest of our time in Toronto is spent eating and getting fat. We check out the restaurant Utopia (twice) which is near Little Italy but serves burgers the size of small dogs and a nachos dish than can only be described as a “cheese and chip hat“. Sheila surprises me by getting through half of it before signalling defeat. The effeminate waiter comes and takes the shell of her plucky attempt away; a wry smile of knowing on his face. He’s seen these pasty European types before. And no one gets through Utopia’s Mexican Hat of Death.
Toronto Islands - picturesque
We also venture out to the Toronto Islands, a smattering of tiny isles literally just off the coast of the big city, the result of a hurricane some years ago separating the sandbar from the rest of the mainland. It’s a beautifully maintained and self-sufficient community (it even has its own fire house), with windy forest tracks and authentic summer houses around every corner, no doubt the idyllic retreat for Toronto’s many artisans and affluent. It’s the juxtaposition of towering metropolis (we’re never far from Toronto’s impressive skyline) and backwater quaintness that gives the Toronto Islands its uniqueness. The isolated locale smacks of character and a more laid back pace, one we’ve somewhat turned our backs on of late. The time we spend on the islands is a welcome break from the hectic non-stop travelling and sightseeing and reminds us that it’s OK to slow things down a little.
Soon enough it’s time to check out of Global Backpackers and head to Union Station in order to catch a train to Niagara Falls. Either I’m becoming less fit or my backpack is getting heavier (I’m pretty sure it’s the former) but we make our way down the concrete valley between Toronto’s looming skyscrapers and down into the bowels of its transport network. Next stop: the Falls and a meet-up with some old friends. On the train I talk to my Mom (Hi Mom!) as I avail of the free wifi and get some writing done. At some point during the last few days I also get an article published for a new site I’m working for which receives very positive feedback from the multitude of people who read it. Things are looking up with the only negative mark being the fact that someone stole my milk from the hostel. Nevermind – I just stole someone else’s in return. It’s kinda like a Cosmic Milk Karma thing. It all balances out in the end.
Tags: Trip
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