550 Words
Canada - Made from Concentrate
Four hours later we spill out onto King Street, blinking from our riveting journey filled with hobbits, creepy Warriors of the Dead and ethereal singing that still has me in goose bumps.
As it turns out, we've just left one of the many worlds that Toronto encompasses. It's our first full day in the fifth-largest city in the U.S. and Canada. We are among the estimated twenty-one million visitors that will flood into this already-busy metropolis. There are over 100 languages spoken in this cultural blender of immigrants and it looks like every nationality is represented by their entrepreneurship. We cover miles of streets like shoes dancing around a globe in an old black and white movie. We pass through a mini-Korea, China, Vietnam and Italy. Best of all, that night we find a perfect piece of Paris, in the brick and board warmth of Le Select Bistro. Patrons cozy around candles illuminating bottles of red wine and plates of perfectly seared duck. Outside, the last of the winter winds crackles litter against fences. Another day finds us in the upscale Annex neighbourhood, where we ask directions at a Polish bakery. The young woman goes to the back for translation and comes out with her helpful co-worker who sends us on our way with smiling directions in broken English. In chi-chi Yorkville, we walk past store fronts offering Kaballah courses next to French lessons. Florists deliver exotic orchids wrapped against the cold and everywhere there are men and women in business suits.
Even on the funked-up stretch of Queen Street, at the crowded Queen Mother Cafe, we see men with suitcase-sized briefcases tucking into paninis. They're squished next to young girls with multiple face piercings. We watch it all sitting next to the wall filled with fun photos of Her Majesty the Queen. The Queen is not in attendance at the Utsav - the Indian restaurant where we share perfectly flavoured tikkas and paneer dishes with an attentive server ensuring no morsel is overlooked.
They say you can know a man by the friends he keeps. Perhaps the same applies to a city. It seems you can tell a lot about a place by who shares the neighbourhood or the adjacent table in a restaurant. Toronto is often accused as thinking it's the centre of the Canadian universe. Given the concentration of so many nationalities rubbing shoulders and sharing meals - whether it's jerk chicken, won ton soup or blinis - it seems congratulations rather than accusations are in order. In the rest of the country the experiment is a little more spread out. Here, in this mega-city of ten million, there is a world of people working to make lives for themselves and their children.
Somebody once joked that Canada would be a great country...when it was finished. So far, as Toronto demonstrates daily...it's a pretty amazing work-in-progress.
|
