What happened in Toronto stays in Toronto. I will say a little bit, just to tease and torment you gentle reader. We arrived August 30, 1975 and spent the first month in a northern suburb with K's mother. We then found an apartment not far from the downtown core. We moved in, K went away for the weekend and I bought and got high on a hit of mescaline that I bought in a bar downtown. That was my first night in my new digs. I had some wild hallucinations and ended up hitch-hiking on Yonge Street in the hope that someone would pick me up and talk me out of the urge I had to slash my wrists. I did get a ride with a very compassionate individual who drove around with me for two hours. We talked about life, philosophy, values and what makes suicide the "cardinal sin." I will never forget this man or his kindness.
I wandered everywhere in Toronto and worked at various waitering jobs before spending December in the downtown post office. I enjoyed the ravines which provided a fascinating network of hidden parks and often spent hours wandering from one to other. Thus I was able to see a great swath of the city. Kensington Market with its wildly random street side stalls of produce and cheese and bake shops was the place to shop. I often wandered the streets of the Annex, Forest Hill, Rosedale, Cabbage Town and Roncesvalles. I spent time in High Park and on the Toronto Islands. We often smoked pot with a friend in her small garret apartment in the Annex. I bought a bag from her supplier then realized it was way more than I could or wanted to smoke. I ended up sitting in a back table of the Ritz Café, a hip basement café where I rolled joints and individually sold them.
I could write more. I am not going to. I experienced a profound re-encounter with my Christian faith from which I have since never deviated, not in forty years. I got sick of Toronto, the winter was brutal and come February 29 I gave myself a birthday present and flew back to Vancouver.
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