Day 37 Around Toronto
Tue 16 Jul 2024
Distance covered: 0km motorcycle, plus 6km of walking
Museum day! Plus lots of rain and power outages and why do I run into some infrastructure failure every week here in Canada?
OK, had to go to the Royal Ontario Museum. It's marmot bait--natural history and a little bit of culture/anthropology and shiny minerals too! Took the bus to the subway with an umbrella and an anorak and definitely needed it... others that had walked the 400m or so from the Bay subway exit were drenched.
I really liked that the museum did not emphasize dinosaurs--that's just a recipe for shrieking kids--but put them in the context of "there were hundreds of millions of years of life before the dinosaurs, and here's what that looked like". Those murky times have become clearer with recent research, and that's fascinating to me. What are tetrapods? How big was a trilobite (big!)? What about stromatolites? When was Iceball Earth? How big were the club moss trees and dragonflies? I loved it all, and the new displays were great for me (as a Studier) as well as more casual visitors.
But... yes, it's Toronto so more construction, so the Story of Life exhibit just ended after the dinoaurs, because the ROM had decided that the not-quite-20 year old exploding crystal addition was already obsolete so it needed revamping and a skylight and hopefully vertical walls this time for displays. Good--that Daniel Liebeskind style architecture is patently a failure (see his truly extreme Jewish Museum in Berlin which is more creepy fun house than a serious exhibition space). So I never got to see that last 100 million years to the present, which would've been fun to see all the weird extinct mammal families that popped out after the dinosaurs went extinct.
Popped into the minerals and crystal displays which were excellent and saw the 100kg gold coin which for some reason to me feels very Canadian--very slightly goofy but also sincere--and then all the kids in the museums summer camp just started swarming and ok, I've had enough, but not before looking at the Hall of Animals.
Back outside it's still pouring, and lunchtime so what now? Oh, food court at the Eaton Centre, so subway to Bloor and what is all this rainwater streaming through the ceiling light fixtures and pattering on the subway car roofs and tracks, is that safe? Ate some dismal office-worker sushi and saw the sun come out and said "walk time!" and headed west on Queen Street to find a streetcar or bus west, intending to head to Northbound Leather. Saw city hall and snapped a pic.
Went a block south to King Street and oh, the traffic lights are out but someone in a safety vest is directing traffic, more construction no doubt, just like Queen Street which was mostly closed, but the office workers are complaining about having to walk down ten stories so OK, fine. Busses still running so headed west... and then after ten minutes of slowish traffic the bus driver said "uh, power is out" and people clamored to get out and walk so I bailed as well. The woman next to me showed me the Toronto Hydro outage website on her phone and tens of thousands of people were without power across the western part of the city. I knew I wasn't get to Northbound Leather, so asked her what to do and she breezily said "find a streetcar, they usually have power and head north to the subway line".
Her response was so casual and calm... made me think that huge infrastructure failures are just an everyday occurrence, and I started to think that since arriving in Canada on the 30th of June I've had my share of them. There was a "do not drink tapwater: the Halifax water treatment plant failed" (1 July), "electricity and cell service is out for all of southwest Newfoundland" (10 July), and now "electricity is out for western Toronto" (16 July).
OK, sure, bright sunny day, walked north and then east and then north again. There was either major traffic, people driving on sidewalks... or nothing at all. An empty streetcar on Bathurst pulled up heading north and opened its doors, sure I'll get on it along with a few others, then the next stop it was filled up.
Back on the Bloor subway, but it's still bright and sunny. Maybe see the Village? Sure, but there's nothing compelling (I already have all the lime-green neoprene harnesses I need in my wardrobe), peered in at the Black Eagle, it was unsurprisingly dead but had power and had water and a beer.
Met Aaron's at Michael and Pangus's... a good meal with slow service at an Italian place in Cabbagetown, then back to Aarons to pack up for leaving in the morning.
Curious and interesting and long day.