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.

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.

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. [↩]