there’s been so much ink spilled about global warming, ecological footprints and exhaustion of fossil fuels, notably by yours truly. but there’s a competing consideration – i pay many hundreds of dollars a month for the possession of my honda civic, more for insurance, and still more for gasoline and maintenance (which would actually be an actual cost if i actually drove my car). as it is, my car sits in its premium parking space underground accumulating a thick crust of dust. it dawned on me this week that the dust-crust was actually a symptom of my reticence to embrace toronto.

i chose to live in my current neighbourhood of high park because it is ridiculously convenient and everything that i could possibly want is within a short to medium walk from my apartment. the benefit of this (apart from the aforementioned environmental concerns) is that i get to partake of a community with its own character and profile and style, which is something somewhat lacking (with a couple of notable exceptions) in my old home town of edmonton. however, it dawned on me that people drive all over this gigantic metropolis for all kinds of reasons, just like in edmonton (where this is a necessity due to the demise of all small retail businesses there). i also detected in myself a certain longing for shopping parks and outlet centres like the ones back home, so i decided it was time to trek out to see what i could find… to sort of “make myself feel at home” here by learning where to go to get stuff.

southwest of where i live is the city of mississauga, where many of my colleagues and some friends live, and where i knew the shopping was to be found. at mavis and britannia rd., i found perhaps the biggest collection of shopping parks and outlet stores that i’ve ever seen. by way of comparison, i’ve taken a snapshot from google earth of the south edmonton common shopping park – one of edmonton’s newest and largest retail districts, and site of the highest frequency of minor traffic accidents in the city (due to the lack of signal lights and the incomparable stupidity of edmonton drivers). i’ve also taken another snapshot of the site at mavis and britannia… the area in mississauga is over four times as big!!! they must have hundreds of gigantic shops that would take… well, days to go through! outlet stores for fashion, stationery, electronics, athletic supplies, whatever! enormous versions of little restaurants found in the core of toronto, and even a krispy kreme which i thought were all dead from this country (even though i can’t stand the things myself – it was a neat observation).

in this enormous area, this monument to consumerism, i had found a little piece of home, and i had also broken out of my self-imposed preconceptions about how life in toronto ought to be.

now, i recognize how shallow and fatuous an epiphany this is, and what a flimsy excuse for a weekend adventure this must seem. but the shopping thing is just an aspect of coming to terms with a much larger issue for me. there are times when i’ve not done a great job at being independent. i mean, when i was living in edmonton, the city where i was born and grew up, surrounded by friends and family and the familiar sights that i’d known for decades, it was easy to be independent and to not need anyone. i could go out, i could stay in, i could go to a club, or i could go to a movie alone – all these possibilities were well understood and choices were easy to make.

moving here has been a slow transition. i’ve tried in fits and spurts to acclimate to life here, and of course, there have been set backs, while i get perspective, develop associations and generally learn enough about the city to express some preference for this or that thing or place or really anything at all. originally, i had to depend on a single person or a small group of people to introduce me to new things or to new situations, and because of that fact, that person or group of people became tightly associated with almost everything that i’ve experienced here. since moving to high park, i’ve been spending more time focused on my fitness training, and on getting used to life in my little community, and maybe in the occasional extreme adventure, and i’ve not really figured out things like where to go to get “x” or where mimico is or… anything outside of my little bubble of experience. perhaps, i’ve even harboured the reluctance to really settle into toronto because then i could keep one foot headed to the airport to fly back to edmonton, which of course, is not really fair to my life here and now. so for this reason, this little adventure of figuring out my own frame of mind with respect to toronto has been really important. it’s really driven home that i need to start thinking and living like a torontonian, since that is what my drivers license and my ontario health card tell me that i am now.

i did other things this weekend that also contributed to the theme of living like a torontonian. i initiated my first imason after-work drink-up… which went rather well, considering half of the company is sick. a group of seven or eight of us hunkered down at what is becoming one of my favourite spots, alice fazooli’s, for some well-deserved drinks (martinis for me, more reasonable drinks for everyone else). it was great because the social aspect of imason is really amazing, and there are such varied and fascinating people there that conversations, even the bitch-sessions about work, are all so entertaining! the last few remaining alcoholics (obviously including myself) went to the fat belgian, to which we have been before and i’ve written about. so seven hours and a hundred dollars later, i had a thoroughly lovely evening with the co-workers and i was starting to really feel like i was settling in at imason.

after my trip to mississauga and my my first swim-bike-run workout this year (which totally kicked my ass), i went out with my buddy, jim, to the birthday party of a friend of his from college. we went to this chic place in little italy, “clerverly” called “li’ly resto-lounge”. this was a pretty good test of my torontoness for several reasons… most of jim’s friend’s friends are financial types – the kind that i would normally have huge reservations about hanging with for their masters-of-the-universe complexes. also, the place was pretty poshy and had some minor fashionista-pretense, which i can pretty much also do without. finally, it was full of well-dressed, but still remarkably identifiable “ginos” – i mean, this place was PACKED with ‘em. jim said it best – it was a freakin’ sausagefest in the basement dance club. so i guess that it was a treat to leave with the birthday girl and her equally gorgeous younger sister (in that we collectively added to the aggregate gino-frustration-quotient of the universe) for late-night chinese food. again, having a good time in a place like that, knowing no one but my buddy, not having to hang on to someone to look after me at a party – i really felt like i had finally come into something of my own in the big smoke. i guess after more than a year, it’s about freaking time.

sunday, the weather was beautiful and i had a great 10k run along lakeshore in the sun.

and i sent shonagh flowers. since she has been the best part of being a torontonian that i’ve yet encountered, she absolutely deserves flowers.... sigh.

- g

adventure cost:
gas (+ carwash) for the month of feb-mar: $39.77
flowers for shonagh: $60.37
borat + the big lebowski dvds from gigantic future shop: $47.86
dinner at the “excellent cantoniese restaurant” on spadina at 5am: $61.59
lotto 6/49 ticket (which again, didn’t win): $5.00