We went back to Toronto in December for the first time since our move. Strangely, our first visit wasn’t for family, but for business: we spent two days in Toronto almost as tourists, staying at the Sheraton Centre where I was attending a meeting of the board of the Agile Alliance. Now we’ve stayed in Toronto hotels before, and even quite nice ones, like the Westin Prince, but this was the first time I felt like a visitor to Toronto since I grew up in Brampton. It was a little odd. The following week we came back “for real”, and it felt more like home, even though we mostly stayed outside the city in, of all places, Oshawa. (Ew.)
We visited friends and family for pre-Christmas, a happy accident, since it gave us time to meet up with friends before they got sucked in to visiting only family. I got to see friends from high school, university, and even rode the TTC, even though I had to buy a Day Pass for the first time in over a decade. If it weren’t a business expense, I’d frame it. In the large, of course, Toronto hadn’t changed much in six months, so I don’t quite know what I was expecting. It felt quite familiar, although I truly did sense myself a visitor. Most notably, none of the keys in my pocket opened a lock anywhere in the city. I had nowhere to stay in the city that I could call my own. I wouldn’t be returning up the Yonge line to Sheppard, then getting on the Sheppard line to Bayview, then walking a few hundred meters to the door. I didn’t see Bayview Village on the way out nor on the way home. I did, however, go back to Spadina/Bloor, a neighborhood I hadn’t frequented since my aborted graduate studies at University of Toronto. It was an odd mix.
So what did I get from the First Visit Back? People miss us. It’s a little ironic that we’ll probably see them more now than we did when we lived up to an hour away. Also, we’ve bought a bunch of tickets to Blue Jays games. We’ll probably see 11 or more in 2008, compared to the two or three we got to when we lived there. I suppose I have to admit it: Toronto is now a tourist destination for me, just like New York or Stockholm. Winnipeg is now “the city” for me. I really do live here now.