Street

I’m so glad that Toronto remains a place where I can go to get away. There are places to stay, an end­less cycle of friends or acquain­tances to visit, and some­one else takes the wheel and drives.

It’s amaz­ing to see how much Toronto has changed. How cer­tain streets down­town have turned into trendy, expen­sive shop­ping dis­tricts, a Canadian ver­sion of Rodeo Drive, and a far cry from the run-down roads I would visit every lunch in high school by rollerblade and sub­way to buy Magic cards and Warhammer figures.

MindBender loves you

After Bill Clinton’s speech at the CNE, there was a brief ques­tion and answer period. The host asked him, “What do you like most about Toronto?”, adding that Torontonians seem to have a sort of self-deprecating humour1. After mak­ing a diplo­matic com­ment on the Aboriginal art as being his favourite thing, Clinton said, “You folks can make fun of your­self, but peo­ple would kill to live a soci­ety like this. You should be very proud.” I had to agree.

Dim sum

Before leav­ing, I had dim sum with my dad, and we caught up on each oth­ers lives a lit­tle bit. He sounded pretty happy when I called to ask him if he wanted to go.

I bought a pair of wind­shield wipers but didn’t replace them, bring­ing them with me to his house instead, hop­ing he could show me how to install them. I could just as eas­ily have read the car man­ual, but I wanted some­thing to share with him. Maybe now I can catch up on these father-son things that I seemed to have missed in my childhood.

  1. I sup­pose you have to, with how well the Leafs have been doing in recent years. [↑]