So Toronto has been a difficult place – not for anything of its own doing, but as the location for my descent into call centre purgatory
Between rounds with MetroPCS, I did manage to get out and explore the city.
Though it was a little more difficult given the lack of data on my phone.
I managed to survive by taking voluminous screenshots – from Google maps to Metro maps, to bus timetables to, well you get the gist.
Given my limited connectivity, I base myself in one place and use what become familiar bus, tram and train routes to get around town. It is easy, and the ticketing system is just brilliant – you can buy tickets using your phone, activate them as needed, and your phone simply displays a smart screen that moves and changes colour at a touch so it can’t be scammed.
Who needs smartcards (Myki, Opal etc)?
How to describe Toronto?
It’s a mixed bag of sorts. Surrounding the city are some of the ugliest high rise apartment blocks I have seen outside of Eastern Europe/North Korea. It’s as if the architects designed these in the height of the 70s whilst still suffering from the after effects of repeated psychedelic drug use. Bizarre, yet they seem quite well populated.
Entering from the South West, coming over the freeway bridges, you are greeted by a solitary wind power turbine that seems more aspirational than functional. I’m unsure what its purpose is – surely it can’t generate any meaningful amount of power, and it must be continuously challenged on both the aesthetic and practical fronts. Yet it remains – a sentinel at the gates of sorts but exactly what it is protecting is unclear.
With the exception of a few entertainment districts, Toronto is a wide city. Broad streets, straight lines – it has none of the pokieness of Sydney, or the charm of Stockholm. It isn’t antiseptic as such, but it lacks the cosmopolitan feel of Melbourne, and the vitality of New York.
It is home to a fantastic beer scene, and the people, well to be honest, they are fantastic. Friendly, engaging, polite. None of that distance and separation that big city people seem to wear as a protective shield.
The beer scene is pretty good – from Bellwoods Bewery, who have perhaps the most charming setup of a city brewery I have seen, to Burdock Brewery (far too pretentious and stuck up it’s own proverbial for my liking), to Tallboys (more a dive bar selling a huge selection of ales by the can), to Bar Hop (just a pub, but one with the finest slection of craft beers seen since the US), there is something for every type of mood and personality.
It’s at the former (Bellwood) that I meet a bunch of brewers from Molson Brewery who invite me to share their after work drinks session on a Friday.
It’s at the latter (Bar Hop) that I meet a guy I have to doff my cap to.
Phil (a Canadian Irishman) was diagnosed with testicular cancer about 14 months ago. Treatment followed, including loss of hair, removal of one of the boys, and significant weight loss. Now in remission, with hair growing back and a prosthetic in place, he cheerily volunteered all this as he sat at Bar Hop with his fiancee (Amanda) and his soon to be mother in law, ostensibly doing wedding planning at the bar, but instead getting into trouble for talking to me.
Despite the fact that both he and Amanda work at Bar Hop, I still have no idea how he managed to get approval and agreement to effectively go to the pub with a laptop to finalise the invitation list, build the wedding website and other assorted tasks.
If he had been the person doing the work I could almost see the argument in favour (albeit at a long long distance), but given he is technologically illiterate, it is Amanda who is doing the laptop work, whilst Phil sits looking rather bored until I arrive to provide him an outlet and Amanda a source of frustration.
To be honest they are a fantastic couple and good sports, but I realise that ventually I have to leave them to the tsk at hand, and bring the conversation to a close.
I even meet another Aussie guy who plays Aussie rules in the local Ontarian league. We both try to explain the game to a very inebriated Canadian, who wont listen and wants to pontificate to both of us how much AFL is like rugby, on the basis that he has been to one game back in the day. It takes some restraint to keep the conversation civil. Given my new mate’s size, I wouldn’t have been pushing my luck on a topic I clearly know nothing about. Oh perhaps that is pot/kettle!
Mixed between the beer drinking and call centre jousting is a lot of sight seeing. CNN tower, Graffiti alley, Markets, parks – Toronto has a lot to offer, including “beaches” if you can call sand on the edge of a lake a beach.
I’m a fan. Not enough to live here (the winters would be far too hard with all that snow), but It’s a pretty cool place to visit. Like everywhere else it’s the people that make a city, and Torontonians (?) certainly live up to the much heralded view that Canadians are generally more easy going and less stressed that their American counterparts.
I’m still having trouble adjusting to Oot and Aboot though.
