THE ART OF COMMUTING
Travel times are on the rise, but for some, the journeys are adding up in a good way
The long trip to and from work can be a stressinducing health hazard that’s a complete time suck. Or, it can be an opportunity to do something fun, creative and useful with your time.
The reality is that daily commute times are getting longer and are on average nearing an hour — up from 43 minutes in 1994 — according to the 2016 Canadian Index of Wellbeing National Report, done by the University of Waterloo.
The Star asked readers how they maximize their time in transit. Many said being immersed in a good book, or audio book, is the perfect antidote to subway delays and traffic snarls.
One man binge-watches TV shows on the GO train from Ajax to Toronto, freeing up evenings for his kids. One PhD student gets so much course reading done on the 506 streetcar, travelling between Leslieville and the University of Toronto, that she plans to give it a nod in the acknowledgments section of her thesis. And another woman rides the TTC with her so-called toy bag, containing sudoku puzzles and embroidery needles.
Here are some other ways folks are fighting commuter fatigue.
The artist
In December, Grant Thomas’s job in digital media relocated to downtown Toronto and he became a GO train rider, commuting from Oshawa.
Because he’s an automotive artist on the side, this trained illustrator decided to use his hour, each way, on the train to practise his drawing. He decided to keep it “old-school” with a sketchbook and fountain pen. Watercolour gets added later at home.
At first, he drew the train, passengers, luggage — whatever caught his eye. But then he started using his iPhone camera to capture street scenes — passing streetcars, old buildings, storefronts — and sketching the image during his commute. The “beautiful architecture” around his office on King St. E., near the Distillery District, features prominently in his sketchbook, which fills up quickly because he usually does one sketch per day.
“It’s become a little essay on the east side of the city,” he says. “Had I not started this I probably would’ve missed all this stuff around here . . . This gets me out and looking around a bit more.”
He enjoys taking eyesores, such as the Gardiner Expressway, and creating something beautiful from it. “It’s probably the least interesting piece of architecture one could possibly find. But . . . (that drawing) became one of my best.”
The social butterfly
Imagine happy hour on a GO train — the laughter of folks unwinding after a day at work — but without the booze.
That’s the vibe amongst the so-called GO Train Gang, a group of regular passengers on the Lakeshore West route. It got its start seven years ago when Barbara Reid of Burlington was bored with a book and started chatting up those around her. Nowadays, there are about 40 people who make up the overall group, but depending on what train Reid catches, she may only see a handful of them.
Because they spend between two and four hours a day commuting to Toronto, the group has become a kind support network for one another. They celebrate special occasions in each other’s lives with cards, balloons and baked goods, and have Christmas parties on the train, complete with decorations, music and Santa.
“We want to have fun and de-stress on our way to and from work,” says Reid, who admits their banter pushes some passengers up a level into the quiet zone.
Blowing off steam is key for Reid, whose pressure-cooker job as a consumer-complaints officer means she can get yelled at all day long.
“If I did not have our GO gang I might not have a husband, as the commute home gets rid of the stress caused by the job.”
The musician
Mark Johannsson’s car is a rehearsal space on wheels, rolling along Hwy. 401, which connects his home in Bowmanville to his office in Toronto.
That’s because Johannsson, who works in technical support for a company that creates software for the property-management industry, moonlights as a musician, performing rock ’n’ roll cover songs in local bars and pubs. Traffic jams call for lighter rock tunes by the Eagles, Cat Stevens or Billy Joel, because they have “a more calming effect.”
But when he’s zipping along the open road, his song selection goes in a different direction.
“Harder rock songs are more fun to sing because you’re going at a faster speed and it feels more invigorating.”
Recently, he’s been practising songs by Soundgarden and Audioslave to include in his act as a tribute to the bands’ former frontman Chris Cornell.
“I’ve seen people with strange looks on their faces, especially when I have the windows down,” says Johannsson, who will be performing throughout the summer at Zingers Sports Bar and Grill in Whitby. “You’re going to have people staring at you while you’re playing at the show, so why not in the car as well?”
The runner
When Margaret Bennett moved from Toronto to Burlington in 2011 and started commuting by GO train, she was too tired by day’s end to squeeze in a run.
So, she incorporated physical fitness into her commute by running between GO stops. That’s how she trained for Around the Bay Road Race (30 km), Moon in June (10 km) and the Road 2 Hope Marathon (42 km).
She would run from her office in downtown Toronto to the Mimico GO station, about 10 kilometres, to catch the train. Although she was sweaty, and a bit smelly, other passengers were impressed to learn that she was training for a marathon. She would also hop off the train one station early, at Appleby, and run 7 kilometres into downtown Burlington, where she lived.
“A great thing about running to and from the GO train is that you have to take a backpack,” Bennett says. That meant carrying her clothing, laptop, wallet and water bottle — up to 10 extra pounds — which made her faster on race days and better able to handle hills.
Bennett now lives in Hamilton and commutes by Go bus. Although she’s not training for a race, she still gets off the bus a few stops early to get in a good run before arriving home.
“It’s a way of staying in shape,” Bennett says. “For people who are sedentary and commuting, there are huge health risks with that.”
The wannabe polyglot
If you happen to sit next to Ubayd Deen on the TTC you may hear him, in hushed tones, practising his French.
The Ryerson University accounting student has been learning French over the last two years on Duolingo, a free language-course app.
“I do it every morning,” says Deen, who spends about two hours a day travelling from his Scarborough home to Toronto, where he works and goes to school. He’s hoping that French gives him an advantage when he enters the workforce.
It certainly helped last year when he visited Quebec and was able to order food in French.
He has also started learning Spanish and understands a little bit of Tamil, his parents’ mother tongue.
But there’s one language he would love to master: Japanese, a recent addition to Duolingo.
“I’ve always been interested in Japanese culture,” says Deen, who grew up watching a lot of anime (Japanese animation) and reading manga (Japanese comics). “And I want to go to Japan someday so it would help me while visiting.”