Annatopia

An ode to Toronto

In preparing for my trip to Cambodia, I was struck at how easy it is for me to leave Toronto – the place where I live and for all intended purposes, the place the has become my home over the last 5 years. I’m not sure if it’s that I don’t indulge in the romanticism of nostalgia as much. Or, if it’s the simple reality that I really have not have solidified my roots in Toronto, and hence leaving is not a painful exercise.

Whether I’m rooted in Toronto or not, whether I return or not, Toronto holds a very special place in my heart. I have left and returned. And left again, only to return.

It is the place where I have unified my “Canadiana” with my “Polska”.
It is the place where I became independent, where I became a woman, where I grew and evolved the most, where I let go of my past.
It is a place where I have met amazing people who have left their etchings on my heart – from Torontoninas to travellers passing through. Toronto is a place where people converge and diverge at the same rate.

There is something personally familiar with the fabric of this city.
I love that writers have written about intimate moments on the streets I walk and restaurants I visit. I love the diversity of activity – from political conventions to underground jam sessions to protests at Queen’s Park. That it is made up so many different little worlds, defined by finite neighbourhoods of little India, Chinatown, Little Italy, Danforth, Brewary District. I love the changing landscape between the money of king and bay to the concerete jungle north york to the explosion of colour in the don valley in autumn. That on the subway, numerous nations sit side by side travelling to and fro, quietly, lost in their own thoughts and exhaustions.
Visitors express how they don’t like Toronto – how it’s busy, edgy, crazy. And yet they keep coming back to at least vicariously touch the racy nature of it’s energy.

I wonder what I will think of Toronto when I’m not in.
I wonder if I will return.
If nothing else, expect change.

posted by Annatopia @ 11:06 AM