As assault at the corner of Bloor and Spadina
On Sunday afternoon, I sat with the dog in a park at the corner of Spadina and Bloor. I was waiting for some food to be prepared in a restaurant across the street and was just idly watching the city. It’s probably one of the busiest corners in Toronto, and there was an awful lot to look at.
A college kid who might have been drunk, tried to walk on his hands.
A tall woman wore an ugly hat.
A cyclist yelled at a car.
Two nuns stopped to get a hot dog.
A large, meaty man with a ponytail stood in the middle of the street. Thinking that he was getting out of car, I allowed my eye to pass over him. When my gaze returned, I could see that both his arms were in the driver’s side window. For some reason, I thought that his arms must have been caught, but then I noticed him repeatedly punching down onto the driver.
I didn’t know what to do.
A car with two men in it noticed this happening and yelled “HEY!” The guy in the middle of the street turned to them and yelled, with one fist cocked, “ MIND YOUR OWN FUCKING BUSINESS!!” and even though those these two guys did not look like the types to mind their own business, they did, and they drove away. The man delivered one or two more blows, and then stalked off to the sidewalk where a thin and greasy looking man stood grinning. The man who had been assaulted, sped his car off through the intersection, while the assailant and his buddy, disappeared around a corner.
The entire incident, from the mysterious assault to the disappearance of all the participants, probably took about 30 seconds. I expected there to be some sort of response–pedestrians with cell phones shouting, people running out of restaurants, the car pulled over, people hustling to attend to the driver, but there was nothing. There was no residue that something horrible, something potentially tragic had just happened. All the people who had seen it had moved on, instantly replaced by a brand new flow of urban traffic.
It was an utterly startling event, and I sat there shocked and ashamed, desperate for some sort of closure, but none was offered.
