My wife and I recently travelled to Toronto for a work-related business trip. Since my lovely wife celebrated a birthday close to that date, we felt it would be a nice trip for her to join on, since we would have our evenings to enjoy each other’s company and a much-needed break from our little ones. We were lucky enough that their grandmother was able to come spend a few days with them so that our trip could be accommodated. This would be the first time my wife would actually stay and wander within the City of Toronto.
I should preempitvely start this post by mentioning that I have no inherent dislike or hatred for large cities in general. After all, having travelled the likes of New York ( 8million people) and Tokyo (about 13 million people), Toronto is a far cry sitting at only about 3 million people. Still, that’s a marked departure from our home city of only about 250,000 people and the difference in population exposed us to some very harsh realities of modern society at its worst. Here are some of the highlights…
Our trip started decently enough, albeit with a 30-minute flight delay on our departure. While this didn’t affect our 1-leg direct flight, some of the passengers connecting in Toronto were visibly nervous and upset with the delay. Understandably so. While not seated together (we booked separately as my job covered my flight cost), our flight was uneventful and we landed in Toronto in late afternoon. The differences in our home environment and the big city were immediately evident upon trying to get through the terminal.
Majoratively and for the most part, I’ve noticed that people in the big city will go absolutely out of their way to avoid eye contact with others. While this is a personal choice and fine in concept, the practice is a bit more problematic. Especially when you’re in a large crowd. As we were walking at a rushed pace to find a cab, I had to repeatedly ask people to bring their eyes up as most people either had their eyes down on their phone or would simply walk right into others by virtue of not making eye contact. Just to be clear, I’m not of the impression that it’s everyone else’s job to get out of my way. But at least have the decency to keep your eyes up and contribute to the flow of foot traffic instead of being a hindrance. This would be common sense but I guess if sense were common, there wouldn’t be a term for it.
We stepped out of the terminal into. 36-degree summer heat. The sweat immediately bloomed on my forehead and the dizziness from the heat kicked in immediately. Exhausted and harassed by the crowds, we were quite happy to get to the hotel and check in. Not wanting to exhaust ourselves further, we opted to dine at the bistro located within the hotel, where I enjoyed a very lovely gourmet burger and some crispy fries. It was a nice ending to a day’s travel. We retired to the room and unceremoniously passed out shortly thereafter.
The next morning saw me deal with day 1 of my meetings, followed by an evening of dining with the group at an organized dinner. The menu was too extensive to get into, quite honestly, and the food and wine flowed freely, which made for an excellent evening of conversation, food and relaxation. The following day saw my meetings end around the noon hour. With the second day of conferences completed, we now had the remainder of the day to ourselves and decided to venture into the downtown core to shop and explore. This is where the issues began…
Besides being misdirected to a shopping centre we didn’t want by a “helpful” taxi driver, the heat basically floored us and sapped all life from us. By the time we reached the downtown core, we experienced the full gamut of human ignorance and indifference for one’s fellow man. Walking like a flood of angry badgers and completely oblivious to other people in their path or attempting to walk through, the population continued on the almost religious adherence to avoiding eye contact and willingly walking into others. Despite some verbal attempts, I even had a couple of occasions where I had to hold a had up to prevent someone from walking face-to-face into me. I’m surprised I didn’t get into a fight, to be honest.
Our overall downtown trip was not only disappointing but was enough of make us realize that populated city centres are not our thing. We begrudgingly made our way back to our hotel and once again dined in the main floor bistro, as it was convenient and easy. While we were still ultimately happy at having had some private time to spend together, the overall experience that was Toronto was not ideal. For us. Just to be clear, it wasn’t ideal for us. But we still had the opportunity for good conversation, some fine meals and the opportunity to travel together. That still tips the scales to the positive side.
The lesson for anyone out there reading my little rant right now, is that we live in a world of continuously evolving technology and as it carries on, we get more and more immersed in this technology. We ignore the real world in favour of burying our face in screen where we suddenly become brazen, outspoken and even quasi-offensive (or sometimes flu-blown offensive). But yet in the real world, we ignore the people around us and pretend they’re not there, even in a large crowd. In many ways, this is quite sad.
Let’s just say that I’m quite happy living in an environment that has a little population as it does. Both my wife and I are from towns with a population of a few thousand. Neither one of us can stand large crowds or millions of people. Despite this, we try to accommodate living in the real world because that’s where we all exist. But I won’t lie when I say we were quite happy getting back to our little city and making it to our quiet home in our little suburb. ☯️
The Blogging Buddhist 