Tuesday, 13 March, 2023
I’ve been in Toronto for four and a half months now. It’s a strange limbo existence much of the time and I’m tempted to say I’ve done nothing. I have, of course. There are far too many photos to share, things to say, so I’ll simply have to abbreviate the whole thing.
We moved to Bloordale into an Airbnb for two months in the middle of November. It’s not an area I have spent any time in so it was all new.
We had two rooms upstairs – a kitchen and living room, and downstairs was a bedroom and bathroom. It was nicely done but we had some issues. Mostly with the downstairs – there was no rail and I often felt very unsafe and scared. Secondly, it was freezing down there. Krish’s parents gave us a little heater and a rug for the cold tiled bathroom. We had a washer and no dryer (we spent a while feeling sure it must be there but no) so all the washing had to be done and hung across some cleverly installed clotheslines that ran across both floors from wall to wall. I’d laugh at how that looked and would say, this is our luxurious accommodation!
We did have a bit of an oasis there for a while, though. It was nice to have our own space. There was a decent couch and a TV and I set about decorating a little for Christmas, not spending much but borrowing lights from my sister and a few dollar store items to round it out. I was actually looking forward to Christmas and having people over.
Then Covid hit me. It was out of the blue. I’d been careful but I had been on public transit more than usual and in more restaurants than usual and, of course, I was somewhat run down so that was that. And it hit on a Friday. There was no way to get to the doctor, and the walk-in clinics were all closing early. I was advised to take Paxlovid but again it would have to wait till Monday when a doctor could see me. I’d be out of commission until the 28th. Skipping over these details, of course I recovered, and I had my Christmas dinner with Robin and Jennifer – a meat pie, not turkey, that’s all – just a bit late.
Bloordale is in the west end of the city, a bit north of the centre. It’s six kilometres from the centre of town and it is a relatively easy journey to Robin’s place. Bloor Street, that gives Bloordale its name, has no bus or streetcar but is on one of the two main subway lines . It takes less than ten minutes to reach Yonge Street, the main Toronto street that divides Toronto east from west. They’ve called it the longest street in the world at 56 km. Toronto lays claim to a lot of ‘biggest,’ ‘longest,’ ‘first,’ etc. Who knows how many of these are real?
Bloordale, though, is an area that’s considered up and coming. These days every city seems to want to name its separate areas into village names. Bloordale a highly diverse, mixed-income community of Portuguese, Caribbean, Italian, Bangladeshi, Latin American, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, Burmese, Chinese, and Vietnamese people, many of whom speak a different native language than English. What we noticed most was Latin American and Portuguese. We could have tacos every night if we wanted and we liked getting the boulinhos de bacalhau and pada. We tried not to eat all the pasteis de nata, though. Many nights we would get the little $1 tacos of the day – five to eight of them – and I determined again to learn to make horchata. There were thrift stores and a vintage record store. There were two health food stores.
What there wasn’t: a supermarket, a little grocery store. That made things hard. We also had Dufferin Mall, with two supermarkets – Walmart and No Frills. We didn’t like either but we’d go there sometimes, and my friend Leslie would drive me to the bigger store every couple of weeks so I didn’t have to struggle home in the snow.
And, yes, now we had cold temperatures with snow and ice. It made walking harder. I started to hate the subway which had no escalator or elevator in the entrance closest to us. I moaned about there being no seats on the platform as I waited for my train after navigating three sets of stairs with my winter clothing and cane.
We did find the neighbourhood colourful and quirky in its own way. The streets had those typical Toronto houses you find in Little Italy and Little Portugal. Semi-detached, two storeys with a basement and backyard, and little porches to the front door. Every now and again I’d come across some crazy Christmas illuminations. In typical Canadian fashion, the storekeepers were cheerful and friendly for the most part. We were quickly remembering that customer service here is a different level than we had become used to in London.
We decided not to renew our contract in Bloordale. The rent had been expensive and those stairs were a problem. So mid January we moved to our next destination, Parkdale. That’s another blog entry.
