Friday, 2 October 2015

Places Where I Have Lived: Toronto

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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