Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Out today and to my surprise everyone is wearing a jacket; some of us are wearing scarves.

Scarves are a Toronto aberration. Scarves and jackets are hung on the same hanger, and the Scarf-and-jacket brigade will wear them from today through to about the end of next May.

For two weeks in France I walked around in shirt-sleeves, but as often as not took a train or bus because I felt it was too hot to walk; two days later I am shrugging on my light plastic jacket to trot down the street for the paper; the air here is chilly.

Sunday, October 05, 2014

This time last week, relatively speaking, I was walking around Pontoise.

I have been home for a week; most of my notes are typed up, most of my photos are captioned, most of the movies are identified.

It wasn’t a dream; it was real. And it has had a real impact on me.

I walk around my little district of downtown Toronto and see that two more fast-food joints are closed, the crane is gone from the top of the Aura building.

I watch my fellow-citizens scurrying around and think that they really are no different from the enjoyable people I met on Rue de Reuilly or any other thoroughfare in Paris.

I wonder what it would be like to buy a VIA rail ticket to, say, Belleville and walk around town for a few hours, as I did for two weeks. It would not be the same as having a ticket that would let me wander London, Hunstville and Belleville.

I start a new budget and agonize over whether to spend money on myself today, or to begrudge every penny that might inhibit a trip to Madrid next year.

My plants have survived; I haven’t watered them yet; that’s a three week “drought” for them!

Sunday, October 12, 2014

A weak reason for Toronto’s tiny trees is our narrow pedestrian space. Many of our downtown streets are narrower than the two sidewalks of a Paris street put together. Ten-foot-wide sidewalks mean you can’t have trees with fifty-foot-diameter canopies.

But that is no excuse for the wider streets such as Bay Street and University Avenue.

Another reason is the salting of the roads (Grrrr!) Salt splash and run-off means, I’m told, that we have to have spindly trees like honey-locust which is tolerant of salt, rather than bushy maples.

I learned this when I came across a two-man crew lopping healthy branches from a healthy tree across the street where I live. The struggling branches had to be removed to allow trucks to pass without them tearing the branches.

So, by planting short trees we have to trim the canopy because the trees are short enough to be damaged by traffic.

Huh?

Sunday, October 19, 2014

I had reason this past week to travel from my home to a business in Pickering and back.

The day was fine so I walked from my home near College Subway Station to Union Station, bought a GO train ticket and rode to Pickering GO station, then walked about a mile to the business site. I then walked back to Pickering GO station, took the train back to Union, and walked home to College.

My GO train ticket cost me $14.90. If I had used the subway train, that would have cost me $1.80 each way, or $3.60. I don’t know the cost of the Pickering bus, but I assume it would be about $3 each way, bringing my day’s fare to $24.50, let’s call it $25.

Note that I would have to buy five pieces of paper. In Paris I would have bought a single (multi-zone) all-day ticket - one purchase at the first ticket-wicket and I’d be set for the day.

I noticed that the ticket was a “Day Pass” and checked with the clerk; yes, I was now equipped to ride all day long between Union Station and Pickering GO station.

(I noticed too that the ticket is non-transferable, but that couldn’t stop me meeting someone at Pickering, having a coffee with them, and then sending them into Toronto and back while I worked, then my using the ticket to go home. But I digress ...)

Out of curiosity I asked the price of an all-day pass along the entire Lakeshore line, from East to West and back again as often as I wanted, jump-off and jump-on again: $33.50.

Now in Paris I bought a weekly 5-zone pass, and weekly rates are cheaper than daily rates. But my one-week travel throughout the Ile de France region – and area roughly seventy kilometres in diameter on any form of public transit in the region, was €35 or about $50.

For two-thirds that (weekly!) cost I can ride for a day on one part of one line of the GO system.

It’s difficult to force these figures into comparison, but for one-and-a-half times my day’s business cost I could have travelled for a week between Toronto, London, Hunstville and Bellville.

Go look at the maps!

Friday, November 28, 2014

I keep noticing what seem like minor differences but which may have impact. In the Paris Metro cars some of the seats are arranged in fours – two seats facing two seats, so that we have four passengers facing each other in pairs; two sit facing in the forward direction of the train and two sit facing backward.

Now in no way does this result in an impromptu bridge game being set up, nor do we get a sudden discussion about the latest book/movie/song and so on.

Passengers avoid eye contact as much as they do in Toronto.

But after a few months back on the TTC I miss that part of the Metro that at least gave me cause to face and acknowledge my fellow passengers as I sat down or rose up to get off. In Toronto I feel more as if I am a sheep in a mob; In Paris I had a feeling that I was one of four unique individuals who shared a small space for a short while.