May 22: To Toronto

At around 4:30am, everyone in the hostel was woken by loud, piercing beeps. As we congregated in the entrance hallway in various sleeping garb, the hostel managers ran from room to room trying to figure out what had set the fire alarms off. After a few minutes, they shut them down and we all went back to bed. Later that morning, I asked if they had found the cause. They reckoned it was a faulty battery.

After I finished packing, I handed back my key and said farewell to Ottawa Backpackers Hostel. Took a slightly more scenic route to the metro station, to see if I could catch any last sightings.

I had little more time or reason to hang around towing two cases, so I got on the metro and arrived at the VIA Rail station early.

At 11:43am, I set off in the train bound for Toronto. While I like the more relaxed feel of train travel, this journey took too long: sometimes we were speeding by; sometimes just trundling; sometimes waiting on a side track for another train to pass. (Who is organising all this?) Consequently, the trip took 5½ hours to reach Toronto.

After disembarking at Union Station, I looked over the public transport. After a little initial confusion, I found that, like Melbourne, Toronto also has trams—sorry, “streetcars”—along with subways and metro trains. Looking out onto the inner city streets, my first impression of downtown Toronto is that, with its streetcars, tall buildings, cooler weather and relative lack of older architecture, it’s the most Melbourne-like city I’ve seen in Canada.

The tram I needed started underground from Union Station. There was already a queue waiting.

Wilson!

Traffic was terrible and the tram was pretty slow, despite having its own section of road. Another thing I noticed was that, unlike other Canadian cities, most of the signs are in English only; very little trace of French.

Over six hours after I’d left Ottawa, I finally reached my accommodation for the next few days:

Wilson Hall is a dormitory of The University of Toronto. It’s designed in that copper-and-concrete brutalist style you see in academic buildings from the 1970s. Although still used for students, it also offers travel accommodation. It’s a bit pricier than a hostel, but I figured it’d be nice to have my own room for a change.

The room’s small but basically equipped. Very welcome was the nearby laundry room.

The place has a few oddities, though. There’s a small common room with TV, fridge, microwave and stove (on which someone had left an element on, which I quickly turned off). But it has no plates, bowls or utensils to use (apart from one lone fork). In my room, I’d been provided with a cake of soap, and a plastic tumbler wrapped in a plastic bag, which I assume is my intended drinking utility. The men’s toilets and showers, across the other side of the floor from me, seems to have been only recently segregated, as it still has a tampon dispenser on the wall. And the long, empty corridors give the liminal vibes of The Shining.

After getting some supplies from a nearby shop, I checked my email on my laptop and discovered nothing was coming through. Had a drink at a university pub and checked email on my phone; nothing coming through there either. Concerned, I went back to my room and checked my hosting site; it was down too. After a bit more digging, I learned that my website and mail host had been hit by a DDoS attack and it was trying to remedy it.

May 23: Well Heeled

This morning, I checked email and found that it (and my acting website) were running again. One of the first emails I got was from VIA Rail, apologising for the late arrival yesterday and offering me a discount on new tickets.

Made breakfast using a 7-Eleven coffee cup as a bowl. Outside, the day was grey and lightly wet, so on went the ski jacket and vegan Doc Martens, and off I went to my first visit for the day a few blocks away: The Bata Shoe Museum.

The museum was created by Sonja Bata, wife of Thomas Bata, founder of the Bata Shoe Company. It has over time collected over 13,000 shoes from various periods.

Staff let people in a few at a time, then let us look around the exhibits at our own pace.

Relative Encounter

While looking over the cowboy boots exhibit, I got a text I’d been expecting. I hurried back to Wilson Hall in increasing rain and waited for the arrival of Virginia Vuleta.

Virginia is one of my many Vuleta first cousins. We hadn’t seen each other in 25-30 years but, learning she worked in Toronto, I’d made contact with her while putting my trip together and we’d agreed to meet up. She arrived with her husband, Jim Monteath, and we drove to a nearby restaurant.

Virginia and Jim moved to Toronto several years ago. She now works as Director of Digital Strategy at AMI, a non-profit media company that provides original content to people with disabilities. We caught up on each others’ lives, what other family members are doing and compared cities. It was a good get-together.

Down the PATH

The weather was no better after the lunch so, rather than check out something outside, I ask Virginia and Jim to drop me off near an entrance to PATH. They drove into the downtown area, past queues of people huddling under umbrellas waiting to look at other historic sites. Near City Hall, they dropped me off at the CF Eaton Centre, a huge shopping complex linked to PATH.

PATH is a network of underground passages and overhead walkways linking shopping and civic areas across downtown Toronto. It runs for about 30km in total.

I decided to see if I could traverse PATH to its south-west corner. Along the way, there were shops within PATH itself (most closed because it’s Saturday) and, every so often, stairs up to shopping centres or street level.

After passing under hotels, though Union Station and along walkways, I walked the whole way to the CN Tower and Toronto Aquarium without once going onto a street. Mind you, the sight that greeted me at the end wasn’t pretty.

I backtracked a few blocks, then had a little look around street level, but the rain was becoming colder and more driving, so I hurried to the streetcar depot, travelled back to Wilson Hall and changed into dry clothes; a rather damp and disappointing end to an otherwise good day.