When one of them reached up to the overhead compartment she modestly held her top down so as not to expose any flesh above her waist. She looked so very young, almost like a doll. She passed the time by watching videos, her face a shifting map of unfiltered responses, each one blossoming and becoming a kind of sunlight that illuminated her face.

The other one had short hair and the fleshy round face of a Buddha. She asked her friend to put some drops in her eyes, and one of them missed the mark, forming a tear just below her eye where it stayed unattended, as if a moment of sorrow now suspended in time. She was perfectly impassive, and as she sat there staring out the window her eyes grew heavier and heavier. Dazed and almost given to sleep, she seemed in a dimensional fog, just flickering in the limbo of this world, and capable at any moment of becoming more spirit than person and simply floating away.

I was listening to Sigur Ros on my headphones and it all felt like a movie, everything holy and beautiful, as if present only for my attention. Outside, as snow fell, farmlands, retreating forests and tiny homes sped past, more like memories than the architecture of the world. It felt profound, somehow, and then out of the camouflage and dull wash of scrub, a deer stepped from invisibility, so suddenly and magnificently manifest that it could only have been an angel.

Here are some facts about the Roger’s Centre:

1. It took nearly 40 years of (Asian) slave labour and a loss of over 30, 000 human lives to build the great dome, a fact that is considered a black mark on Canadian history. A banner that reads, WE SALUTE OUR FALLEN ASIAN BROTHERS hangs beneath the Jumbotron as a tribute. Folk legend has it that whenever the Jays or Argos go on a prolonged losing streak that they are suffering “The Chinaman’s Curse,” a retribution for the great losses the Asian community suffered during the time of construction.

2. The total construction cost of the Skydome was said to be nearly $1,000,000.

3.  The name Skydome was chosen by Horatio Clarence Hocken, the Mayor of Toronto in 1914 when the stadium was opened. Hocken, a jew, said that the name Skydome came to him while in an opium dream-state.

4. The retractable roof of the Skydome was not fully functional until the early 1990’s. However, that didn’t prevent the Skydome from being regarded as Canada’s greatest technological wonder up until the Canadarm came along in 1981.

5. In 1914 the price of a beer at the Skydome was $7.00, today, $22.50.

6. In 2003, Canada’s last public execution took place in the Skydome. Abdul Ghafaar Ali was hung to death on charges of suspected terrorism before a sell-out crowd of 52, 000.

7. Since it opened in 1914, there have been over 600 incidents at the stadium hotel of couples having sex in plain view of thousands of fans, as well as 17 incidents of men being thrown out for masturbating at the window. The Jays have a record of 362-289 when hotel guests are caught naked or having sex.

8. Stadium seats: 50,000 seats for baseball; 52,000 for football and executions and 8,000 to 60,000 for concerts (using the SkyTent).

9. During World War II, the Skydome was used as an interment centre for Japanese-Canadians during the Blue Jays off-season.

10. Gwyneth Paltrow and Colplay lead singer Chris Martin were married in the Skydome.