Two million people are coming, they told us. The University of Toronto circulated a message saying 'feel free, no need to show up to work or class'. The mayor said 'let your people go' to all the employers in town. I didn't exactly attend the parade but I went to the office, practically on the parade route. I dressed in several layers and headed to work, thinking, "Toronto, you could be warmer. It is mid-summer in a few days." The thermometer maybe hit 18C.
Younger son, a year of uni under his belt, has a new job volunteering as a researcher on a project based at St. Mike's Hospital. The hospital has research offices in the Eaton Centre, Toronto's downtown shopping mall, just the other side of the parade destination.
Public transport was rammed and jammed. Son reported that it was shoulder to shoulder on the subway train. A Pakistani friend at work said that on the bus this morning he felt like he was back in Karachi, the way everyone was pushing close and closer.
I rode my bike and parked it off the street near my building. The hordes of fans in black and red streamed past. I wore black and red, too. The security guard stood out in front, soaking up the atmosphere. At lunchtime I called my son and said, "Let's meet." He headed west while I walked east, just on the edge of the parade route, and we found a table at a below-ground Vietnamese restaurant I had wanted to try. I saw empty tables through its windows and scurried in. Some of the hordes followed and the tables filled.
We poked our heads into a crevice of the big square but could get no further. The crowds cheered and laughed and I thought, "I could get to really like this city. What spirit." Son returned to his office and I to mine.
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| 100,000+ Raptors fans in Nathan Phillips Square (photo from Twitter) |
News footage showed that politicians mounted the stage when the basketball stars arrived in their busses: Mayor Tory, Premier Ford, and Prime Minister Trudeau. The crowd, bless them, hundreds of thousands in the square itself, booed the premier, Doug Ford, who is systematically and maliciously decimating the best of the province and most especially, of Toronto, his nemesis. He is defunding public health and education, reducing the cost of beer and increasing its availability. 'Keep them sick, stupid, and drunk' seems to be his motto.
A couple of hours later, son texted me. "Are you in lockdown, too?" Not words to thrill a mother's heart.
About three seconds of Googling told me that there had been a shooting in the square. There were police on scene immediately of course but the shooters ran--right into the Eaton Centre, across the street. Hence the lockdown.
Scary stuff. Gunmen in the building where my son was at work. In truth I my fear was less for the physical safety of son and colleagues--those offices are darned hard to find; I've tried--than for his discomfort and anxiety. He would have a bad time and I so very much wanted him to be happy.
As it happened, he was fine. He hung out in his supervisor's office with other volunteers and research staff, and had to chat with them. Good. The shooters got caught and disarmed by the cops. The victims are recovering in hospital, having been taken thence by an ambulance escorted by mounted police.
"Are they letting you go now?"
"They're not telling us anything," son texted back.
I tried calling the hospital's Communications office and identified myself as the mother of one of the research volunteers at their Eaton Centre offices and asked when the staff there would be released. "We have offices at the Eaton Centre?" the woman on the other end asked. She said she would call me back.
Before she could, son texted that they had the all-clear and could go. He decided to stay and finish his work for the day, though.
I spoke to him when he got home. He was sanguine. "Dad says dinner will be late because his bike got stolen," son reported. It had been parked and locked on College Street, not far from our house. It was a great bike, gorgeous blue and yellow. Thieving vermin.
I finished off my own work and headed out, hoping to find my own bike in its place. There it was amid a floe of rubbish and other detritus from two million people celebrating their team getting an orange ball through a metal hoop the greatest number of times.
Still trying, Toronto. I am still trying.
