The CNE Air Show, which had been raging away in Toronto for the last five days, ended on Monday. For those of us who live in the city, I think there’s been a sort of hipster cachet to complaining about the thing. The implicit point of view is that it’s a tourist spectacle staged for simple-minded outsiders, the sort of people who like loud noises and monster truck shows. The rest of us, the sophisticated urbanites that have actually flown in a plane, suffer as we try to go about our daily business of walking our dogs and finishing our literary masterpieces.
The truth, of course, is that we’re just scared. We may say that it’s our pets that are frightened, but the truth is that it’s us, too. There’s something eerie and intimidating about jet airplanes screaming over a city. It’s an ominous portent, one that sparks in us some primal shudder of fear and awe, that later, seeps into our dreams.
On Monday, Rachelle and I went over to Centre Island to visit her aunt and uncle, who live on the sailboat they keep moored there in the summer. Given a little bit of distance, and the comforting expanse of Lake Ontario, the Air Show took on a different character. Instead of looking up and catching a disorienting and threatening microsecond of a plane exploding past a building—in which you couldn’t help but think of disaster and war– you saw the planes at a distance, in perspective.
Arcing across the sky in perfect synchronicity, the planes were still awesome and formidable—as they should be– but they were also majestic. Set against a field of blue, with the beautiful skyline of Toronto behind them, they were actually inspiring in their ambition.
We came out of caves to build such cities and to fly such planes.
Just think about that.
Rachelle’s uncle, who is in his 70’s, but honestly looks and lives at least 20 years younger, sat watching. He used to fly jet airplanes when he was younger, and you could see a sort of melancholy in his eyes as he recalled those days, fifty years earlier, when he and his buddies were the ones dazzling the crowds thousands of feet below.
From the sailboat we sat there watching.
The end of a beautiful day, the summer once again having flown by too quickly.