Toronto

❄️ First snowfalls in Toronto. One of my favourite scenes in Mad Men is of course the Carousel scene. Posting photos on my site allows me to briefly jump back and relive a year in seconds. It is one of the most powerful parts of any personal site (and probably the inherent power behind Instagram as well). So much life has happened. 2024 has been a wild ride.

For the last 5 weeks we have been hitting the Toronto pavements in search for a house. It’s been a brutal experience. What has surprised me sometimes is the level of mess that we have encountered in some of the homes we have visited. I mean in some cases it’s been really eye opening to see how some people choose to surround themselves with stuff. So. Much. Stuff.

I am a distance from being a true minimalist (or someone who has enough), but so many out there could really do with some Marie Kondo advice.

☀️ Fresh Monday morning in Toronto. The world is a little better when the sun shines.

Big fan of Ottolenghi cook books. I’ve used a few of the recipes recently (one today in fact) and it’s exactly the kind of colour and flavour that I absolutely love. The thing is that these books actually benefit from being physical items rather than entries into an app like Mela (which I love). I tend not to buy many books anymore, because of the whole Toronto Public Library thing, but I might make an exception for these books.

Power outage map for Toronto today was insane.

Yeah this is not what we signed up for Toronto. The start of the long weekend (and the kids summer holiday) begins with a rainstorm.

Weird ass weather in Toronto this weekend. Yesterday was rain all day. Today has been rainy, sunny, super windy and overcast across the day. It’s end of June and I expect, nay, demand heat and sunshine, all the damn time. Fists screaming at the sky!

🤒 Day 3 of this bloody flu. Honestly I’ve been more ill in Toronto than I’ve been in a decade. Thankfully weekend is upon me, just need to get through tomorrow which will another long day.

So walking around Montreal, at least the centre and I understand why this city was the ‘capital’. Such a pleasant city to walk around probably because the municipalities have something called taste, a quality that I find distinctly lacking in Toronto.

Finished reading: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel 📚. The book begins life in Toronto, and set in my neighbourhood. Also, as it describes different parts of London and Toronto, I knew exactly what it was talking about. The inclusion of comic books was pure icing on the cake. Great read.

I get it now. The reason for Toronto’s limited bookstore culture is because the Public Library system is the single best thing the city has to offer. An incredible resource that is making my stay in Canada, infinitely more enjoyable.

Surreal sitting here on a sunny day in Toronto (after rain and more rain). A conflict is about to begin in the Middle East that has been brewing for a while now. What exactly is the endgame with all of these conflicts? Seemingly there is none.

🌞🕶️ Honestly, throughout the day it was totally overcast here in Toronto. Come 5:30, sun is out and not a cloud in the sky. So annoying.

Can’t remember when I bought The 99% Invisible City, but this week away from work I started reading it and the first chapter/nugget was something I noticed on my walks around Toronto yesterday. Orange markings everywhere, denoting telecom lines.

😎 Today was an incredible day of sunshine in Toronto. Spring is definitely nearly here.

So I’m at Dark Horse Espresso Bar in Toronto. Barista, really not great. Coffee is from a company called Detour (roasted in Hamilton). Got myself a bag of Costa Rican beans that had an interesting profile - no idea how strong or weak it is. Really appreciating the information given on the Pilot Coffee bags which is perfect.

😎 18°C in Toronto today (forecast). In March.

People in Toronto are slowly coming out of hiding. The weather is a little more forgiving so there is more life on the streets.

🌞 Genuinely glorious day in Toronto this morning.

Apparently Sprudge is one of the big websites surrounding coffee. It’s not the best put together web experience, but it does have a few interesting elements. Firstly, they are the Apple Maps guide to coffee (already bookmarked a few places in Toronto), and there is a book, The New Rules of Coffee, that I’ve just ordered as well (breaking my no new books until I’ve finished reading other books on my list self imposed rule of 2024).

🏂🏻 First proper snow in Toronto. Maybe this means the kids will get a chance to go tobogganing down the hill tomorrow (they’ve been waiting for months).

After a little over a year in Canada, I can definitely say that I honestly believe that Toronto has some of the worst graphic design of any city I’ve lived in. I think I’ll start taking some photo evidence to demonstrate. It’s soo, soo bad.

☕️ It took me a while, but I finally found my coffee beans purveyor of choice in Toronto, Pilot Coffee Roasters. Great quality. Solid selection. My only suggestion is increasing their Japanese tea selection (looking for some Hojicha).

💥🎧 So loud. Toronto is so loud. Mainly the stupid vehicles that roam the streets blurting out unnecessary sounds. Whether it’s the engines of cars, the fire truck or ambulance sirens, the horns of the streetcar when a dickhead doesn’t stop for the passengers getting off (I’m ok with this). So, so loud.

I’ve been on a serious food nostalgia trip this weekend. Made Lebanese rice pudding. The only missing ingredient was mastic (which I’m sure I can find somewhere in Toronto, just haven’t found the place yet).

2024 Total Eclipse Map by The Eclipse Company is a great visual of where the next total eclipse is coming in 2024. Straight through Toronto! Hopefully it won’t be cloudy that day.

Just came out of Banksyland in Toronto. 5/10. Tiny venue. Sparse collection. This statue was my favourite part of the entire show.

A Question of Home

‘Where is home?’

I hate that question.

It sometimes comes as a comments. It’s sometimes a question. It’s sometimes a bit of both. Either way it’s annoying to me, because I cannot claim to have one home. Home is not where I was raised 30 years ago, or where my parents were raised.

I have had many homes. Home is where I am at in that moment. It was Athens. It was Nottingham. It was London. It was Dubai. Until last year it was Copenhagen. It is now Toronto.

Home is where I feel safe to raise my children and make a life for myself.

I’ve been reading BlogTO for a couple of months now in an attempt to get a high level feel of what’s happening in Toronto. The reporting is generic and base, however it does offer a slice of Toronto, warts and all. This week however I’ve been shocked by the total breakdown in civil behaviour amongst people in Toronto, some as little as 5 minutes from my house. Good natured Canadians exist. They’re just not very common in the cities it seems.

🛝 As parks go, Regent Park in Toronto is extremely kid friendly. Can see I will be spending a decent amount of time here for sure.

🍦 Top Toronto Tip: Ice cream cone from Zuzus.

One of the simple pleasures that I was hoping to have when we moved to Toronto was the ability to have some external space. Even though the last few days have had forest fire smoke everywhere, tonight is much better.

There is a slight calm in the air along with a temperature that needs a hoodie and is pretty much perfect.

I am sitting outside on some new garden furniture I have had my eye on for a while now. Finally I get to sit outside, have a beer and chill. I have music playing softly, from a tiny little Mi speaker I bought in Dubai 5 years ago and that is surprisingly great.

In the background I can hear the ambient hum of Toronto streetcars doing their thing. Every once in a while I hear a dickhead in their car revving their engine.

Summer has arrived.

TCAF 2023. Soo packed. Can’t say it was an elegant experience (not that I was expecting one), but hoped for a little bit more…space. Having said that the Toronto Reference Library is a good venue, just too many people.

Visiting The Cinema

The last time I went to the cinema was probably seven years ago (I watched Once Upon a Time in Hollywood in Dubai with my cousin). As I write that I realise that my life has in fact completely changed since I had kids. I remember hearing that life would change, but I just didn’t understand how much.

I think it was seriously fitting to finally see the Super Mario Bros Movie with the kids. This was the perfect introduction to what a cinema experience is about (the large screen, the popcorn) but then we stumbled on Imagine Cinemas in Toronto, which added a very cozy setup and some of the best (reclining) seats I have ever experienced. The staff was amazing, the bathrooms were clean and overall it was exactly what I wanted.

One of the things that has been a serious improvement on our lives in Denmark is the very fact that we are allowing ourselves to live a little more. Maybe the fact that our kids are a little older. Maybe the fact that there isn’t a global pandemic raging at the moment. I know it’s just the bloody cinema, something that I would typically do multiple times a month, but it’s a start to building out life and enjoying the simple things as well.

🚇 Public transport in Toronto is interesting. If I choose to walk from my house, I get to work in 25-30min. If I take public transportation it takes me 20-25min.

Visiting a new city is always a fun thing. Montreal has been on my list of places to go since I was 18. Finally made it there. Overall it feels like a better put together city than Toronto. Smaller for sure but reasonably sized as well.

🌞 Glorious day in Toronto. Little bit nippy but oh so sunny.

😎 7°C. In February. In Toronto. Welcome to global warming.

Some weird-ass sculptures here in Toronto. Ah-thank-you. I’m here all week.

Even though I really like the ‘new’ weather app in iOS16, Weatherstrip is such an amazing way to visualise something so fluid like the weather.

Toronto for the coming few days:

29 / The Summer of Disruption
I woke up early on the Tuesday. Quickly checked the news to see where Hurricane Ian was at? The airport released a statement that they were shutting down and cancelling all flights after 16:30. Yasmine’s flight was due for take off at 12:30.

4 hours.

After waiting four months, four hours was all that separated her from being stranded even longer. What if the flight was delayed? What if the airline decided not to fly that day? Four hours was our window of error.

I took a deep breathe.

I could only think of the ending of the movie ‘Argo’. Her plane took off. She had finally made it out and was en route to Toronto.

28 / The Summer of Disruption
Yasmine woke me up around midnight. ‘Quickly, get onto the website, two tickets have appeared for a Tuesday flight out of Tampa to Toronto. Book one before they go!’

I groggily opened my computer and tried to buy the ticket. My credit card was maxed out. No time to top up funds. I pulled my other credit card and tried again. It went through. We had a ticket out of Tampa.

The next bit of good news came the next morning with the triumphant return of her passport.

Now we just needed a hurricane to behave itself.

26 / The Summer of Disruption
The news about Hurricane Ian began making the rounds on Thursday. For my entire life, hurricanes were things that happened in far off American lands. Now it was about to happen to us. A one in a hundred year hurricane was heading towards Tampa, a city Yasmine had called home for 3 months.

We got word that Yasmine’s passport was on its way. The earliest it would likely arrive was on Monday. Saturday morning we sat on the decision to buy a ticket for Tuesday, by Saturday afternoon all the flights out of Tampa (to Toronto) were sold out.

Even if she got her passport in time, was she going to make it out? So the weekend of panic began.

23 / The Summer of Disruption
I took time off and tried to enjoy Toronto with the kids. We went to parks, bookstores, the Royal Ontario Museum. I took them on the Streetcar and the subway. I took them to a city farm. We went to the mall - an activity that now felt like a real novelty as we had not done this throughout the pandemic.

That entire summer I felt like Charlie Brown. Every time I was close to kicking the ball, Lucy (or the IRCC), kept yanking the ball away from me.

40 days became 50 days.
I am Charlie Brown.

Days passed and we heard nothing back. Our lawyers sent messages to their counterparts and our member of parliament…and we got nothing back. Yasmine’s application was in progress.

50 days became 60 days.
I am Charlie Brown.

Monday came and with it a glimmer of hope. We were now over the number of days the website advised. We should hear back any minute now.

60 days became 65 days.
I am Charlie Brown?

15 / The Summer of Disruption
Unlike in Copenhagen, the summer in Toronto was hot and humid but not unbearable (that description id reserved for Gulf summers). The best way to experience a city is not by car, rather it is by foot. The architecture around me was inviting and warm. There were porches and chairs. Many of the houses and buildings were old. Not in a European 100s of years old, but in a North American, wooden facades that have faded and weathered slowly with the passing of the years and haven’t really been maintained.

First things first, breakfast. My first day in Toronto began at a breakfast spot in ‘Little Italy’ - it was the only place open on an early Sunday morning. As I quietly ate my eggs I was reminded of when we moved to Copenhagen three years earlier when again we ran into visa issues. That was resolved pretty quickly though, so hopefully this would be the same.

14 / The Summer of Disruption
The world is vast and we have developed seemingly countless ways to do practically the same thing. Build houses. Buy and sell goods. Raise children. Go to school. Heal ourselves. Live life. Yet each city and country goes about things in a different way.

The feel of discovering a new city is one of the few magical moments that one can manufacture. I highly recommend that everyone challenges themselves to experience this at least a few times in their lives. While I have travelled this journey more than most in the last few years, the magic of discovery was strong in Toronto. The city offered a cornucopia of discovery.

13 / The Summer of Disruption
As the summer continued, I felt that I was ready to go back to work. Yasmine and the kids would have to stay back in Florida, hopefully wait a little bit longer for the visa to arrive.

The narrative I told myself was that this was a good thing. That this would allow me to settle into Toronto, get my bearings and get things ready for the family before their arrival. Even though it was a forced decision, it wasn’t a terrible situation. Yet.

Graphically speaking I really don’t find the city of Toronto to generally have its sh!t together. I have a much larger post about this but it has been interesting to see the difference. Copenhagen was good. Dubai was better. London was best.

Toronto

It’s been an entire month in the city of Toronto. A month in I can definitely say that I am starting to get this place a little and starting to really love it as well.

I have tried a few eateries. A lunchtime Mexican, an Afghani, Italian and a Harry’s burger. All were excellent except a pizza place on Dundas. Totally overpriced and never to receive my patronage again (I always vote with my wallet).

Canada is not a slightly different version of America. It’s actually a very different version. Sure the big highways exist, but the train, bus, tram networks are clearly more robust. The architecture is different. The stores are different. The people landscape is very different.

Bumps & Bashes

The biggest and most painful issue has been the fact that I have not really been able to see my family in this entire month. That has been the hardest part of this journey so far. It’s also been unnecessarily delayed by the Canadian government that has not been able to issue a simple enough visa (even though the original timeline was a week). At the moment things are all over the place and causing major disruption. It’s not clear when things might settle down.

Every start is difficult. This one has been much more difficult that it needed to be.

First burger in Toronto. Seriously excellent. Gonna definitely try all the different options.

Toronto does murals really well. Much more inviting than random rubbish graffiti.

Toronto is really growing on me. Sun was shining. Blue skies. Short walk up to Koreatown. Peach Bubble Tea. A couple of books from the second hand bookstore - I could have easily gotten a lot more (will be heading there in the future for sure).

🍁 This week has flown by. Every day I try and move the needle a little bit, whether it’s in trying to get settled in Toronto more widely and at the new office. Part of me wants to wait for the family to do a lot of the home searching but the visa office is making that hard.

🇨🇦 Good Morning Toronto!
Alright, alright, alright. Time to explore this city…actually probably scratch that maybe just enough time today to explore my neighbourhood.
First stop is to get some much needed breakfast and then grab some essentials for the empty fridge.

Gonna miss this little guy, can’t see us needing/taking this to Toronto.

Been watching Workin’ Moms, mainly to get a feel for Toronto as a city. Turns out this is a really funny show - certainly within my sensibilities (and probably infinitely more relatable as our timeline with kids matches the shows pretty closely).

Canada

So our Denmark adventure is coming to an end this summer and we look towards a new home and new life in Toronto.

I’m still processing all the different things that I am really looking forward to in a life in North America, but the access is key. Access to incredible nature. Access to an NBA game. Access to pen shows and comic conventions. Access to large English book stores. Access to North American products that would get crazy taxed in Europe.

Three months will fly past very quickly.