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November 28th 2009
Published: November 28th 2009
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Forget the maple leaf. I think Canada's national symbol might be a coffee shop.
On queueing at Canadian immigration, we got talking to a young couple from London (Ontario, not English capital). They were just returning to Canada after two years of living in Ireland. Having absolutely no idea of what to do and see in Toronto, this was the obvious query that we very quickly piped up with. I was hoping that they'd share a favourite arty neighbourhood with us, a quirky studenty cafe, that elusive club where you could stomp the night away to French drum n' bass or something. The girl, dressed head to toe in fleece (on second thoughts maybe she wasn't the best person to ask for such places...), thought for an extended period of time. Finally:
"Err... d'you guys know the CN tower?"
"Of course we do. It's Toronto's, and probably Canada's, most famous landmark."
"Right... you should go up that. I've never been, but the view's supposed to be... real nice."
"OK... We've sort of got a visit to to the CN Tower as a given. Anything you could recommend as a local? Good restaurant? Coffee shop?"
Another extended pause,
Downtown TorontoDowntown TorontoDowntown Toronto

After some rain
followed by a quick look at the near-mute boyfriend, who shrugged. But now a spark of recognition
"Oh, if you like coffee you should definately try Tim Horton's", and a smile splashed across her face, "it's amazing!"
"Oh really? Where is it? I love independant cafés!"
"Oh no, it's not one of them. They're all over Canada. But they don't have them in the States!"
On this the boyfriend was finally moved to contribute excitedly:
"We don't go to Starbucks here!"
So it wasn't looking good. It would be like me recommending that a visitor to London should go to Buckingham Palace and then make a beeline for a Costa Coffee. This was a city where, besides the main tourist attraction, the city's Eiffel Tower or Colosseum, the most appealing feature was that it had a chain of coffee shops whose major appeal was that they weren't American.

Later in the trip, after having discovered Toronto's vibrant ethnic neighbourhoods, awe-inspiring harbour views and delicious inexpensive cuisine, we conjected why the immigration queue girl could only recommend this most bland and homogenising of features, this Canadian Dunkin' Donuts, an icon of the clone-town age. So we
Niagara FallsNiagara FallsNiagara Falls

Oh the natural beauty...
dived in to the nearest branch (it took seconds to locate one) and ordered two cappuccinos and two donuts. They were repulsive. The coffee, as weak as dishwater and probably less flavourful, was pulled from an automatic press-n'-go machine of the type you find in British petrol stations (no baristas in sight), while the "donuts" actually more similar in texture and taste to a bar of soap. But everywhere we went Canadians seemed proud and enthusiastic about this iconic, uniquely Canadian, brand. And I conject that the reason for this is that Tim Horton's is not American. It's a piece of national identity. They don't go to Starbucks.

It's not America
The fact of the matter is, that coming from Europe, Canada seems like America in so many ways. The wide gridded roads; streets going left to right; avenues up to down. The dependance on the car for everything and the limited public transport. The endless suburbia with its strip malls and behomathic Wal-Marts. The accent, although being here for a while you do start to tell the difference. Despite numerous American jokes about Canadians saying "aboot" for "about", they don't actually do this: the way to recognise a
Bilingual sign in OttawaBilingual sign in OttawaBilingual sign in Ottawa

Arret indeed: even in France they just say "stop!"
Canadian is indeed with this word but they actually pronounce it with a more Scottishy-sounding "ou". Unlike Americans (and Englishmen who live south of the Watford Gap) who pronounce this "ow", Canadians say it closer to the spelling as do people in some parts of northern England, Scotland and northern Ireland.

Anyway the reason I start by stressing the similarities with the superpower to the south is that these were, as a European coming to north America for the first time, this is how it seemed. But this was probably because our base for exploring the Toronto area was the suburb of Ajax, which is probably to downtown Toronto what Woking is to London. Why we ended up in Ajax is a long story for another time, but has something to do with a certain house-swapping website and not checking the aforementioned suburb's position on the map carefully enough.

Anyway Ajax is pretty much typical north American sprawl. Mile after mile* of identikit Stepford Wives-esque hemetically sealed dwellings, not a soul in sight, not a window or door open despite the 24-degree heat. Local "green" bylaws enforced a six-dustbined recycling regime that I'd imagine would even leave the
The stunning Parliament buildingThe stunning Parliament buildingThe stunning Parliament building

Deserves to be better known!
greenest of Swedes perplexed, yet the hanging of laundry in the open air was strictly forbidden (you HAD to tumble dry lest Marv and Francine next door are offended by your gaudy beach-towels) and you literally couldn't open the windows (air-con in September it was!) Despite the population density presumably being relatively high, though we never saw anyone arrive at or leave any of the climate-controlled abodes, there was no business of any kind for miles around: no convienience store, no bar, no nothing. The nearest place to get a pint of milk or paper or whatever you need when you get home from work and realise the cupboards are bare as a bone was a Wal-Mart in a "strip-mall" about 20 minutes drive away.

So first day we pretty speedily jumped on an early train to downtown Toronto, a 45-minute jaunt by an efficient and spotlessly clean commuter railway known as the "Go-Train". We disembarked at Union Station (which H kept calling "Grand Central"), and made our first tentative steps into Toronto's Manhattan-esque downtown. But not a soul about. We walked up Yonge Street and left on Dundas - right bang in the heart of the city. But
Beautiful OttawaBeautiful OttawaBeautiful Ottawa

Laid back, unpretentious national capital
we couldn't even find anywhere for a coffee save a depressing-looking Tim H's tucked under a giant bank. The skyscrapers towered over the streets, blocking out the bright sunshine for 90 percent of the time. Just before I was about to proclaim that Toronto was quite possibly the more boring town I'd ever been to, we thought: wait. We're in the heart of the Financial district on a Sunday morning. The City of London would probably be deader. Let's think about this for a sec.

We hopped onto the subway's Yellow line and got off at Queen's Park, in order to check out the uni. Term's just started, the sun's shining - the place will be packed with students surely? The University ended up being a revelation: stunningly beautiful old buildings that wouldn't be out of place in Edinburgh or York except in the latter two cities they likely wouldn't be bathed in bright sunshine as they were here. Good move - what were we thinking just inanely getting off next to Citibank and expecting to be instantly entertained?

We spent the next day and a half wandering and exploring Toronto's wonderful neighbourhoods. This was the real attraction of the city. We've been told numerous times that London has 300 languages and a quick Wikipedia search that the city with the most foreign-born residents in the world is actually Miami, but in my opinion nowhere does multiculturalism as vibrantly as Canada's economic capital. The various communities that have settled here have been encouraged to preserve and celebrate their diversity, to the result that Toronto has become a world in minature. As well as about four Chinatowns, an Irish quarter and Little Italy, central Toronto boasts a Portugal Village, Koreatown, a Vietnamese district, Greektown, Little India... and the inner suburbs are just as ecletic. We drove through Mississauga (think Croydon) later in the week and every store sign was in Persian. And the thing is about these neigbourhoods is that they are not just a token street with a few restaurants. Most are proper communities.

While London's "Chinatown" is really just two touristy streets in Soho that have evolved as a focal point for the Chinese community (the vast majority of whom live elsewhere), the most central and established Chinatown we visited in Toronto (the one focused on Dundas and Spadina) is a dozen or so blocks that transport you thousands of miles across the Pacific to the Orient. Canteens, whose menus were a delightfully incomprehensible scrawl of characters with not A, B or C to be seen, served up delicious-smelling and rediculously exotic looking dishes to an entirely local crowd out en famille. Grannies in conical hats squatted on small plastic stools, hawking vegetables that don't even exist in Europe. It was fantastic - we literally spent hours after our visit to the uni just wandering and soaking it all up. Koreatown, up on Bloor, was our destination for our last dinner in Toronto - a delicious steaming Bibimbap washed down with massive bottles of east Asian beer and served by a giggling waitress who didn't have a clue what we were saying.

We did of course do the CN-Tower - H's parents (whom we were staying while they did their house-swap in Ajax) took us up there for lunch and I must say I don't think I've ever seen a view so breathtaking in my life. I felt as if I was in the end scenes of Vanilla Sky, when Tom Cruise goes up into the sky in that glass elevator... and the sun continued to shine. The waiter was the most bizarre fellow, however. He had obviously been to the discreet-but-attentive school of customer service; as he'd eavesdrop on our conversation and offer a calm one-liner before meekly withdrawing before we could make any further conversation. At one point he saw my digital memory-box casually positioned to my right and just took it wordlessly. As I was about to shout "stop! theif!" he gestured that we get into a pose with the view of Lake Ontario behind us and he snapped a photo. "Thanks, I guess", I began, but he had already returned the camera and scuttled to the bowels of the serving area before I could say any more.

*or I should say kilometre after kilometre: well done Canada - you've leapfrogged the little Englanders still mindlessly clinging to our miles and feet and inches yet filling our cars with litres and buying veg by the kilo. At least the US has the balls to stick two fingers up to the world and cling resolutely to imperials rather than our confusing and pointless hybrid system that perplexes foreign visitors and leaves both the "patriotic" metric-martyrs as well as the sensible modernisers pissed off.

**(known as Cabbagetown due to the residents former propensity to grow the aforementioned cheap but nourishing vegetable in their yards, but now gentrified to the extent that we named it Toronto's Islington)




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