A rchive Date
[ 03-07-2000 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[Snow was a welcome break
Toronto becalmed.
By JEAN SONMOR - Toronto Sun
January 16, 1999
It was a sight I never thought to see. And one I won't soon forget. Nobody was going anywhere. Nobody could go anywhere. And nobody seemed to care. And in fact as we were forced to abandon our tyrannical agendas, we got nicer and - big surprise - we had more fun.
Someone on the radio called downtown Toronto a "ghost town" yesterday but there was more to the story than that. Much more.
True, the core was empty. Hundreds of thousands of commuters stayed home and were enjoying an impromptu long weekend. At 5 p.m. in the city streets, there was nothing remotely resembling rush hour. (The 401 was another story.) But it wasn't just a lull. Our stalled city didn't have the exhausted feel of an ordinary Sunday morning. It glowed. And I don't mean just in the afternoon when the sun came out.
Everybody I talked to, without exception, was well pleased with our weather "emergency." Even if they'd spent hours shovelling and hadn't got any real work done, they talked with delight about how beautiful the city looked. Some admitted with a pleased sigh nothing much had happened at the office beyond a little socializing. And everybody seemed to bask in the luxury of forced free time.
"You know, it's kind of fun," said Michael Disney, a lawyer who was standing in Nathan Phillips Square taking pictures of the coloured lights and the snow around the outdoor rink. Disney lives in the west-end in a house with a long driveway and digging out Friday morning had taken 2 1/2 hours. But he saw the record-breaking snowfall - the most for a January since they started keeping records in 1840 - in a fanciful way naming the six-foot-high piles he was shovelling for famous mountains in the Alps and the Himalayas.
"I even had an avalanche," he said sounding every bit as pleased as a kid with a snowfort. "This isn't like a hurricane or an ice storm, nobody gets hurt. Well, I guess there have been heart attacks but ..."
Disney comes suspiciously close to sounding like a happy man. That's not really what we're about is it? Toronto is a big city in the northern part of the hemisphere and here the absence of joy is a given.
We know this in our bones. Despite our high rankings as a great place to do business or launch a career, Toronto perennially trails Vancouver as a good city to live in. We're not bothered by such trivialities. Really, when it comes right down to it, we're too busy for pleasure. We're a city wracked by protestant guilt where life is dominated by speed, pressure and overloaded timetables.
How many times when you're late and stuck in traffic have you tried deep breathing exercises to keep calm? Ditto on the subway or in a crowded elevator. Watch the glazed eyes, the interior focus of most of the folks around you, and you know you're not the only one.
But yesterday was very different. Everybody had time. Everybody talked. The most amazing exchange I had was with the parking lot attendant at City Hall. As I paid he told me spontaneously how he and his family had fared through the emergency, told me about his five-year-old twins, his three-year-old son, his wife's course at Centennial College and how they'd like a larger house but were doing O.K. and were secure. Now that's a lot to tell someone who asks if you're having a good day. And an incredible amount to squeeze into the brief encounter of accepting a parking fee. Neither of us noticed if anyone was waiting. Neither of us cared and nobody honked.
The mood was infectious. I'm not the kind who enjoys heavy lifting. But on my way into work, in the wagon track that is our street, a truck the size of a moving van was stopped. The back was open and one guy was painstakingly moving windows from the front of the truck to the back.
There was no room to go around him and another truck was blocking the other end of the street. I was, true Torontonian that I am, in a hurry. I rolled down my window. "How long will you be?"
"I'm all alone," he said looking sheepish. I don't know what possessed me but I instantly jumped out of the car and started to help him, carrying the windows to the side door of my neighbour's house. She was there to receive them and a little taken aback by the spectacle. "You've got the neighbours helping you?" she asked the driver incredulously.
No matter. In five minutes the load was delivered and we were on our way.
They say there's more of the white stuff due this morning and again on Monday.
And I, for one, say: Let it snow.
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