When I was a little kid, I was often curious about the white stone signage you’d see on the side of the Gardiner Expressway.  I wondered who made those things?  How did they do it?  How did they access the side of the highway like that?  And what was on the other side of that hill?  Who were the people that lived there?

Flash forward, 30 some odd years, almost every morning, I walk down to King Street, and look over to the Gardiner, and see those white stone marquees peaking up at me from under the snow as I wait for the streetcar.  It brings me so much joy, knowing those little white stones are there.  I look down at the frustrated folks stuck in their cars commuting into downtown and feel gross satisfaction that I am where I am, overlooking that highway just above those pretty little rocks.

A few months ago I thought that it might be time to end my love affair with Toronto.  Living in the city with two kids definitely has its challenges.  And sometimes, those challenges are enough to make you throw up your hands and consider high tailing it out of here. There’s no space!  There’s no time!  It’s dirty, and it’s noisy and traffic is always a nightmare.  I have no lawn, and my front yard is a receptacle for the neighbourhood garbage. My yard also acts as a toilet for some hard pressed folks.

 People poop in my driveway, my friends.  Poop.

Even at it’s grimiest, Toronto is expensive and everything is  always busy.  The transit overcrowding is unbearable.  Furthermore, owning property is an unattainable pipe dream, with the most recent studies saying that the average (AVERAGE!) price of a detached home in Toronto is ONE MILLION DOLLARS.

It’s easy to wonder: “WHY WOULD ANYONE LIVE HERE?????  I certainly started to wonder, and then I started to consider the alternative.  I visited other places, I did some research, I talked to friends who live that alternative and I thought maybe we could make it work somewhere else.  I had started to feel like living in Toronto wasn’t working anymore and that me, and my family, just didn’t fit in.

After all that I had my feelings resolved and the logistics worked out.  I had started to plan our departure.  Then I stepped outside and I heard a dinging streetcar.  A pigeon shat on my hand as I pushed the double stroller down Queen street.  I smiled at my fortune and a lady asked me for money.  The same lady asks me a second time when I pass her again later.  And now I see the people, the traffic, the aging retro storefront signs.  I see a new Kizmet piece, or a KPS tag or manage to spot a new Lovebot.  I smile and wave at my neighbours, I talk to the independent shop-keeps and I slink by the abandoned mattresses that abound on the streets of Parkdale.  And though I’m a teensy bit sad about the sacrifices Marigold and Alice will have to make by growing up in the city, I’m  excited for the life and electricity and culture they will experience by growing up here.  And in it all I realize I can’t leave.  Not now, and maybe not ever.

 

 

Nine years, this March , I’ve been here in this city and I still have no idea who looks after those little rock signs.  I still get excited to see those white stone marquees lining the Gardiner Expressway, just as I did when I was a kid,    Only now,  when I look up, I know my home is there, just beyond the stones….Where I still belong.

 

Happy Anniversary, Toronto.