I Live in Toronto: A Profoundly Delayed Reaction
Sunday, February 5th, 2012Over the past few weeks, for the first time, I really feel like I live in Toronto. Granted I am about a year and a half or so late in this realization, but I’ve always felt like a student who comes to Toronto for school, and leaves to go back home to Ottawa for all breaks and all of summer. Recently, however, I’ve found myself more and more aware of my new, blossoming native status here in Toronto.
The events that prompted this revelation, are, in my view, not necessarily the happiest of circumstances. There is, first of all, the mouse in my apartment. My roommate and I have been dealing with this burglar since the beginning of the first semester, who breaks into our home all too frequently to eat scraps of cheese and rice cakes off the ground, and scurry around in the elements of our stove. At first, I naturally came up with an elaborate back-story for the mouse, imagining that he was a tough city mouse, probably part of the mouse mafia, come to torment me ceaselessly just to turn over a little profit to the intimidating head mouse who constantly has a cigar… or something. My roommate and I cursed him and, every time I saw him, I would retreat to higher ground. But something has changed in the past few appearances of the mouse – although, admittedly, I still tend to jump to the nearest elevated surface in his presence and send out a text cry for help to a few friends – I’ve felt less a panic attack, and more a familiar feeling of dread. I’ve even begun to call him Stuart, after the fun-loving and charming Stuart Little, and we’ve reached a state of frustrated, cooperative tolerance.
Secondly, I went to the dentist here in Toronto. I hate the dentist – and this is a big debate between my roommate and I, who claims that hating the dentist is totally weird and most people love the dentist and, just as an aside, she is still wrong – and therefore was dreading going. So I went to the dentist, and it was your average dental appointment but, when I left and made an appointment for my next cleaning, I realized I had established my first doctor here in Toronto.
In one of my lectures this week, my professor reflected that it is amazing how quickly people become natives where they settle. When I walk down Bloor Street, everywhere I look I have my own memories - good, bad, inspiring, absolutely far-fetched. When I walk down Harbord, past all the familiar storefronts, I feel like I’m among weird, vaguely loveable neighbours. On St. George, as I’ve said before, I’m among my fellow soldiers on the U of T battlefield, struck by familiar senses of camaraderie and competition. It’s a wonderful feeling that, whichever way I walk - towards campus or towards my apartment - I feel like I’m walking somewhere that I belong. I’m walking in the landscape of my own history.
I think that, for those of us coming to Toronto from somewhere else, whether from somewhere across the globe or as close as a town in Ontario, that realization – that ‘Toronto’ moment, where you claim this city and this school as your own – comes at different times. It’s a subtle feeling, an instinct, but one that surprises you when you become aware of it. It’s not just an idea anymore; Toronto, the Big City, a hazy notion of tall buildings and busy people. It’s tangible, it’s living, and it’s, you realize, yours. For me, it took a mouse and a dentist to really cement this as my home – not just somewhere I visit for school, but somewhere I live.
