All together now: What unites this city,
Kawhi Leonard holds his MVP trophy in the Raptors’ victory parade in June. This photo is as close as it gets to an accurate snapshot of Toronto, Shawn Micallef writes.
There’s a photo of the Raptors victory parade that is one of the most beautiful pictures of Toronto I’ve ever seen.
It was snapped from atop one of the open-air double-decker buses that carried the team as the victory parade crossed Front Street and headed north up University Avenue. The sea of people that filled what is normally a massive, five-point intersection, framed by Union Station, the Royal York Hotel and other nearby buildings, was a carpet of euphoric humanity: an instant public common filled with an arena’s worth of people.
The unifying power of sport is probably overrated, as even during the biggest bandwagon moment since the Blue Jays won the World Series nearly 30 years ago there were still many here who weren’t moved by the Raps’ underdog victory.
That’s OK, though: close is good enough because the crowd that day looked like
Toronto. Everyone in this city, I’m nearly certain, if they could zoom in to the picture, would see somebody that resembles themselves. It was as close to an accurate representation of who lives in Toronto as organically possible, a city that is increasingly separated by economics and race.
That’s how hard it is to find something that unifies a city as heterogenous as Toronto. It’s a thing to hold on to, tightly, as there are so few things that truly unify us, and many forces trying to pull us apart.
Sadly, we’re unified in the things we fight about.
If there’s anything universal in the Toronto and GTA experience, it’s the transportation struggle. Whether crawling along the 401 or teetering precariously on the overcrowded Yonge-Bloor subway platform, standing too close to the edge while watching packed trains go by, getting around is trouble in Toronto. It should bind us together.
Yet, ironically, that trouble pits us against each other. Motorist vs. cyclist. Motorist vs. pedestrian. Cyclist vs. pedestrian. Motorist vs. motorist. Cyclist vs. cyclist. Differing levels of risk of death and grievous injury in these confrontations, but it’s a conflict that unites us. That’s no way to build a city, but it’s how we built it.
The weather unifies us too, though that’s not specific to Toronto. It’s something that isn’t political that we all endure or love together, equally, except for, say, the fact that suburban sidewalks are cleared of snow and ice by the city while those in the older parts of Toronto are not.
So even the weather is political, after all, and has the potential to divide. Finding things that unify us isn’t easy.
Maybe it doesn’t matter. We all chose to live here, didn’t we? That’s something. Then again, many people don’t have that choice and they’re in Toronto for economic or family reasons, accident and fate rather than an affirmation of this place.
And once here people can feel stuck. Stories of not wanting to move from an apartment with reasonable rent because everything else is too expensive are common. Ah, there’s something that unifies us: an obsession with real estate. Torontonians talk endlessly about it. How much homes sell or rent for is the city’s pornography, but again it’s an uneven unity: for some it’s a way to get rich, for others the city seems to want to price them right out of town.
The raccoons are innocent, though, aren’t they?
We’ve all got some kind of relationship with these mostly benevolent beasts who, even when they’re bad, are bad in the lovable way a toddler might be bad. They make the mess, we clean it up, and they remain cute. Apartment dwellers who don’t have garbage bins of their own may not even worry about that part. The raccoon should be the city’s mascot, a symbol to rally around.
It’s an odd thing to be a Torontonian.
Ride public transit and look around: the moment eye contact is made we all look away, caught in the act.
If you weren’t from here you might wonder if people think you’re disgusting, always looking away, but it’s just the way we are. Go up to Montreal and strangers will hold eye contact for unbearable amounts of seconds. Unity through looking away from each other doesn’t seem so great, though.
Ultimately a city will be unified by some things and divided by others, but as long as there’s enough overlap, enough Venn diagrams of common cause across it, a place like Toronto can be knitted together in a way that holds.
Still, the desire for something, one unifying symbol, is there. Perhaps why the Raptors matter beyond the game itself.
What if that first truly warm and sunny weekend in spring, before the middle- and upperclass people have left for their cottages, when the sidewalks are teeming and everyone is outside feeling the warmth after a long winter, unifies us once a year?
It’s one beautiful moment, but somebody is probably already complaining it’s too hot.