Toronto (Yes, we CN…)

Seeing unfamiliar place names when I arrive somewhere new always sends a thrill through me, tinged with a frisson of fear. It’s an awareness of the unknown, that I could so easily be lost and never find my way home, but also the excitement of so much to explore and so many new things to find. In a strange juxtaposition, I have a similar feeling when I return home, Sheffield or Wellington/Ohakune, and recognise familiar names and the thrill of seeing places and people I hold dear.

We arrive well after midnight and even this late the heat, like the hot breath of a dragon, envelops us as we leave the cool of the arrivals hall. In the city Annette Street, our home for the next few days, is deserted and silent and we carry suitcases rather than risk waking the neighbourhood by wheeling them. Inside is marginally cooler than out. A combination of little sleep on the plane and a time difference my tired brain can’t begin to calculate means we do nothing but climb into bed, sleeping until 10.30 the next morning.

We set out to explore where we are, a residential neighbourhood a little way out of the city, streets of two-storey bay-windowed brick houses. It feels quite foreign to our eyes, although maybe wouldn’t if we’d travelled from England, where it reminds us of. Some houses look neglected and in need of care, others are well-maintained with fresh paint, new roofs and fences. All sit behind small front gardens, again some tidy and full of colour, others ragged with overgrown lawns and broken paths. Large trees offer shade, for which we are grateful – our bodies are struggling in the midday 30C when less than forty-eight hours ago they layered up against 6C. The heat wraps around us, a patina of moisture soothing my dry and flaky winter skin within hours. It has a smell I struggle to describe, dry and woody and of parched earth. As I always do, I forge sentences in my head as I walk, remembering that I write not just to share, but to preserve memories for myself when I am far away.

The next morning I’m up early enough to sit in the small yard before it gets too warm, surrounded by pots of colourful blooms, larger ones painted on the wall behind. A snow shovel is propped against the wall, incongruous in this heat.  Some sounds are familiar: birds sing somewhere, probably in the tree that drapes above me, and traffic noise filters through from the street, the stop-start of a refuse truck, the thump of a plastic wheelie bin against it. A bus stops, the squeal of its brakes accompanied by the sigh of its doors opening. One sound is new: the groan of an air conditioner kicking into life, the drone of it running. A smell wafts towards me, the sweet and earthy aroma of cannabis, which is legal here and much more pleasant than the acrid pungency of tobacco.

Doing something different to the everyday makes a holiday and today it is descending stairs to the coolness of the underground railway to get into the city. For someone normally directionally challenged, Neil seems to have an inbuilt ability to find his way around these things, probably due to him growing up in London. Whereas I would have to pause and study maps and charts, he flicks them a cursory glance and marches confidently to where we should be. In the city we take a streetcar (disappointingly named 504A) probably the most civilised way to move around a city.

Our destination is The Distillery District, which will surprise no one, but this area has been abandoned for decades and is now transformed into a dining and shopping destination. You can keep the shops; the attraction for me is the original buildings, uneven brick paths meandering through them, a huge chimney towering above, old machinery dotted around – a reminder of what used to be here – along with some fascinating new sculptures. Building works surround us, new apartment blocks climbing around it, suggesting this will soon be the area in which to live. As we wait for the return streetcar the sky darkens. No rain falls but a gusty wind rises, blowing dust in sharp stabs into my bare legs, obscuring the skeletons of high-rises and lifting all sorts of debris high into the air.

The next day we’re off to the St Lawrence Market. One of my favourite places to be is a market. Maybe because I like eating, maybe because it evokes childhood memories of wandering the aisles of Sheffield’s (sadly now extinct) markets clutching Mum or Nannan’s hand. Then it was usually to select fabric for dress or curtain making, a quick swing into the fish and meat market next door before catching the bus home. Here, multiple meat and fish stalls are mixed with those where multi-hued olives glisten in buckets next to bright red jalapeños stuffed with pale cream cheese. Slices of marinaded aubergine are wrapped around crumbly feta and dull green dolmades nestle next to them. Other stalls have huge rounds of cheese awaiting a knife, and large slabs of cured meats pushed against slicers. I could pitch a tent and live here.