Flying into Toronto seems new to me. I’ve seen all of this before – the red, faded colours of the TTC, people holding cups of coffee with great care in front of TimHortons, but it feels different this time. Toronto is now slow, quiet, leisurely, gentle.
I feel like I’m seeing Canada now through the eyes of so many foreigners who come to Canada saying that we are polite, easy-going, calm, good to other cultures. When I first came to Toronto it was, like this time, after a year long stay in Asia. The first time, Thailand, now, China. What is different is that before I had never really experienced a big city. I grew up in a town of 4000 and most of my stay in Thailand was in a “city” (and it was a city, for that part of Thailand) of about 10000. Toronto felt fast, rude, rushed, pushy, sometimes angry and always focused, full of energy. Now I have seen many of the great cities: Rome, Barcelona, Istanbul, San Francisco, Miami, Gang Zhou, Shanghai, Hong Kong. It is the last three in particular that have changed my feeling for cities. Chinese cities are full of people. Crowded, noisy. Everywhere you go you must understand the movement of people, the demands of others and react to it. You understand yourself as one among many, an understanding that is furthered by the primacy of culture and family over individuality in Asia. But Toronto , by comparison, feels very slow, spacious, sedated. It is like Guang zhou recorded, characters switched and replayed in slow motion. And there I stand in the middle of it, once again, as I did when I first came to Toronto, feeling like an outsider. A white man not used to being surrounded by white.
