There’s construction up on Dupont, and if you’re walking on the north side of the street and want to avoid it, you need to pass through the entrance to the subway station.
The doors are always a little bit difficult to open, as if vacuum sealed, and when you do a whoosh of warm, subterranean air greets you. It was raining outside on Tuesday, and a tense, somewhat overwhelmed looking student approached. Perhaps she was far from home and lonely, perhaps everywhere she looked she was facing an obstacle, perhaps she hated this life that had called her. Perhaps anything.
Plugged into her iPhone she looked so remote and sad, so invisible in the loveless expanse of city, but when she opened the door a warm gust of air came upon her. She closed her eyes as her hair lifted and blew back. Her face unclenched and a look of relief fell over her, and it was as if she had just travelled back to wherever she had been happiest. And for a moment she was transported, becoming something glowing, before stepping on the escalator and slowly vanishing beneath.
I continued to watch her, and just a little further up the street she joined a small group of 20-something women waiting for her on the sidewalk. They were beautiful and happy, these women. Smiles were their default setting, and as they stood there in a semi-circle chatting with one another and comparing the signs they’d made for the Women’s March, they seemed so full of light as to very nearly be glowing. They were going off to do something important, they were going to try to influence the world rather than merely survive in it, and knowing that made me hopeful and proud.
I didn’t actually attend the Women’s March. I was a little bit uncertain if it was my place to be there or not, and so I stayed home and watched from the sidelines. But I should have known just from looking at these women, from the way they genially accepted my clumsy thumbs up from the window, that I would have been entirely welcome.
Millions of people, it turned out, rose to this occasion, millions were welcome.
All through the day my social media streams were flooded with images from the marches. As I was following via Facebook and Twitter, I was seeing the feeds of people I knew and loved, so they were not strangers to me, but real people– warm, intelligent and kind people with complicated and sometimes difficult lives. It was their faces, and those of their daughters and sons and partners that were looking back at me from my computer monitor, and regardless of how heavy or congested their lives might have become, there they were, all so beautiful and strong and joyous.
And in spite of the sneering rhetoric that’s been the baseline of our daily lives for so long now, the marches had a celebratory, almost parade-like quality. They were happy places, and they opened up a new space, one that allowed us the opportunity to pause and breathe deeply for a moment.
It was incredibly moving to watch this, cathartic even, and I am not overstating things when I say that I felt like something essential had just changed in the world.
For one day our concerns and anxieties were blown away like bad weather and we felt safe and protected, encircled by a good that was spreading out in concentric circles. And everywhere you looked, you saw one of your better angels smiling back at you, there they were, thousands and thousands and thousands of them, building that shining city on the hill.
It was a cold day in Toronto, blank and windy, and none of the people I was accustomed to seeing were around. The woman normally stationed right at the corner of Huron and Bloor, the one that I don’t much like, wasn’t there. Neither was the ghost man in front of the Second Cup or the woman with the swollen legs who dozes on the bench. It was too cold, and they must have all been taking shelter somewhere.
And then I saw two young students, happy and kissing on the street corner. Bright-eyed and lost in one another, they seemed wholly ascendant and in love, drawn to one another as if out of the pure, unbidden force of chemistry. Radiating optimism, they were a little stream of light running through this otherwise bleak day and I thought about giving the basket to them. I imagined how special they and their love would feel, that out of the entire universe– on the eve of the apocalypse, no less– they were chosen for this gift. At night they would feed one another the weird, unpredictable delicacies from the package, and cozy in their student apartment would watch a favourite movie on the laptop, excited about going home for Christmas, about growing up and being in love.
But then I thought, “No, I should stick to my plan.”
And so I kept walking and very soon came across an old man reclining defiantly on the sidewalk as if a Playboy centerfold. A burning cigarette was in the hand that propped up his head, his toque was askance, his beard dirty, yellow and mean, and he had a look of permanent indifference to him. I asked him if he wanted the gift basket. He asked what it was, more of a challenge than a question, really, and I told him. He said sure and so I put it down beside him. I don’t think he thanked me– it was just more stuff, something he might be able to translate into something useful to him. As this was taking place a young woman was walking into the Noodle Bowl and witnessed this unexpected moment on the last day of the world, “Merry Christmas,” she yelled, chasing after me, “that was beautiful, Merry Christmas, Merry, Merry Christmas, and I love your dog, she’s just the cutest thing, oh, this is the best, thank you, thank you! You have no idea how much I needed that!”
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July 1st, and on Bloor Street some people were dressed to celebrate Canada Day, others to support Italy or Spain– who were to clash later in the afternoon for the Euro Cup final– and even more were dressed for the Pride Parade, an event that would see 1, 000, 000 lining the streets of the city on a scorching hot day.
Near Bloor and Yonge a young beggar sat on the sidewalk beneath the shade of an awning. He had his shirt off and he was pale, bruised and unpredictably tattooed. He seemed messed-up, and as people passed by he reached out for each one, as if taking a swipe at their legs. People were avoiding him like the plague, but a beautiful woman in provocative red hot pants with a Canadian Maple Leaf on each ass cheek stopped in front of him and bent over as if posing for a Page 3 shot. She then put both her hands on his face and kissed him.
The Time Warp blared from a float and a riot of middle-aged men in tank tops and red pom-poms exploded in front of us. Joyously performing a carefully choreographed dance number, their teeth could not have shone any brighter. Teenaged girls, their bodies covered in glitter, wove through the crowds as the scent of pot wafted by indifferent, happy police officers. Drag queens, like Barbie Dolls melting in the sun, smiled bravely from their flotilla perches, waving past us like the celebrities they’ve always known themselves to be.
The palest Goth girl in the world sat in a wheelchair that was being pushed along the sidewalk by a large Indian man in a kilt. All in black and wearing a Hijab, a small woman with bony, root-like hands squeezed through the crowds smiling and taking photographs.
A hopeful young man wandered about armed with two massive water guns. As if performing a public service, he asked everybody, “Free water spray? Free water spray?” He delighted when an elderly couple declared that they wanted one. Smiling and still holding hands, they raised their arms and closed their eyes as if on a roller coaster, and the young man sprayed them cool, the nearby crowd cheering encouragement.
A mother was taking a photograph of her daughter standing beside a wall of Pride Posters. The girl was perhaps 18, and both she and her mother were wearing the convenient, floppy hats of tourists. The girl held a Rainbow flag and even though she was smiling, her eyes were inflected with a touch of melancholy. Who knows what journey led the two of them to this place in time? The song Like A Prayer rolling down Bloor Street, the two of them walking away now, arm in arm.
